What Else Does He Do?

The students are in their mid-semester break at the moment which in some ways gives me a bit of a break too. Actually, it's more of a time to do some future planning as I start to think about next year and what that might look like for the group.

My time with AFES is only 2 days of what I do during the week, so this month I thought I might give you an insight into what else I get up to.

MTS Graduation

As many of you know, last year I finished my MTS apprenticeship at The Branch (although I didn't get the official baton till July 😂). This year I have continued serving as staff in a unique role titled "Ministry Coordinator". The hope of my position is to support, resource and get alongside all our ministry leaders to bring more unity across our church, particularly in line with our new theological vision.

Our vision is to glorify God as a grateful community of people rescued by Jesus Christ and filled with his Spirit, growing in love for God and one another, and calling everyone everywhere to Jesus.

One of the more major tasks that I have been engaged with, is developing a series of Bible studies exploring the biblical convictions that build up our theological vision. It's been great to work on these as it has helped me come to greater clarity in my own understanding of some related doctrines. At the moment I'm thinking about the role of the Holy Spirit and his work in distributing gifts for serving others. Our hope is to get our whole church to do these studies at the start of next year.

Growth Group Studies

Connected to this, part of my work allows me to continue overseeing our Growth Groups ministry. We highly value our Growth Groups at The Branch, particularly as our church grows in numbers. They are a place where people are cared for within a smaller setting that regularly meets together to help each other understand and live out the truths that the Bible teaches. This year I have been providing more intentional training for our Growth Group leaders in prayer, hard questions/topics and encouraging evangelism culture.

More recently, I have been working closely with our evangelism team leader. We recently ran a meeting for our church to think about what it means to love others intentionally. Unless I'm looking in the wrong places, in preparing for this, I was surprised at how little Christian thought has already been put toward the conviction of loving others being the basis for evangelism. Much that has been published mostly focuses on strategies, tips and apologetics. While having these resources is very important, I feel most people in our churches struggle with how to even get started in sharing their faith. I wonder if it is worth stepping back even further and looking at the basic motivation for sharing the gospel — "We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19).

It's something I want to put more dedicated thought into. If you have any ideas to contribute to this discussion, please let me know.

My position at The Branch is ideally a temporary role to keep some momentum while streamlining our processes within the church. This will be helpful with the transition if we have a new senior pastor come on board during my time.

God may have other ideas but after this, my current plans will be to head off to Sydney in 2025 for Bible College. As I continue to do this work, both with The Branch and AFES, I can see how having some theological education would make me much more effective and productive in what I'm already doing.

Please join me in praying for my work and the ministries I'm involved with.

There will be many students going to NTE this year. Last year it booked out with 2100 students and staff Australia-wide. This is the annual conference where students are trained, transformed and sent with the gospel.

During this conference, AFES also runs a Guest program for all those who partner with our ministries, like you. You would join in with students for the main conference talks, interact with the speakers (Phillip Jensen & Richard Chin) and participate in special Guest Program sessions explaining the vision and ministry of AFES.

If you would be interested in attending this, please let me know.