God's Plan; New Role.

On Sunday the 19th July, Birkdale Baptist Church held a member’s meeting and overwhelmingly voted to support their church offering me a call to minister to them. That means I'll be finishing up at Deception Bay Baptist in September after almost 4 years, and moving down to Redland Bay on the south eastern side of Brisbane.

Birkdale is a church of about 400, that now meets over two different campuses.  About 18 months ago they agreed to plant a congregation in the old Cannon Hill Baptist building (closer in towards Brisbane CBD). That means there is now a morning service at Birkdale and the young adults serve and run a small morning service at Cannon Hill as well. There is then a combined youth and young adults service called ‘BOOST’ in the evenings at Birkdale.  Once a month they run a community focused “Sunday Afternoons For Everyone” (SAFE) BBQ and Gospel presentation – local families come along and are then invited to stay for the evening service.

My role won’t be specifically youth, and another associate pastor looks after young adults. They have  also just hired a part time children’s worker and a student pastor who has extensive experience in outreach and evangelism (and who happens to be a very good friend of mine). I will serve in a wider church role focusing on the responsibilities of worship and discipleship. Worship-wise I will be overseeing music teams at both campuses and leading in all three services, as well as preaching in all three services at different times. The discipleship role will have me overseeing the small groups ministry of the church and ensuring the youth leadership team is properly discipled and that they are discipling the youth at their Friday night program. So, as I said it’s a very different role to what I have been doing here at dBay, and I think that was part of God leading me at this time, feeling I could move into something new, that will stretch me even more in some ways. I am going to enjoy my last few months here in dBay as a youth pastor but I am looking forward to what God has planned in this next stage as well.