Starting with a trickle of combined events over recent years, a beautiful collaborative relationship has emerged amongst many churches in Victoria’s southwest – most recently seen in a camp for five Baptist churches in May, and a Blokes’ Brekky involving a dozen churches in April.
The camp will bring together Naringal, Warrnambool, Port Campbell, Portland and Hamilton Baptist churches, with the five pastors sharing the lead on activities, and studies about Jesus’ parables.
“We’re all looking forward to getting together and building on friendships,” says NBC Ministries Coordinator Matt Jellie. “We will share all our meals together. It will be structured but relaxed too, with plenty of free time and fun. The aim is to create spaces to encourage each other.”
Matt and NBC Pastor Mal Ward reintroduced church camps for Naringal several years ago, and Naringal has held joint camps with Warrnambool and Port Campbell for the past three years. This will be the first year that Portland and Hamilton will join in as well.
It’s not just Baptists getting together in the area – NBC together with Gateway Church of Christ in Warrnambool, Warrnambool Presbyterian Church, Warrnambool & District Baptist Church and Warrnambool Kardinia Church organise the Blokes’ Brekkies three or four times a year. This draws a crowd of 100-200 people for an egg and bacon roll, quality coffee and a speaker – in April they enjoyed listening to Collingwood Football Club Chaplain Brendan Nottle. Around a dozen churches of many denominations also help out, advertise, host and attend this event, inviting their local friends and family along. The blokes have challenging conversations on topics like toxic masculinity, mental health and servanthood.
“Our coming together has happened a bit organically, but there has been some intentionality as well. We have a Christian School in town with a lot of denominations represented, and a lot of families have become friends through the school. We hope to continue to build on what we’ve started. We all realise we may have different flavours but it’s the one God that we serve, and we can be united, celebrating what we agree on and celebrating our differences too. At the end of our April Brekky, Brendan commented to the church leadership that it was unique, something to press into and not take for granted.”
Many youth groups in the area also run combined events, after a couple of friends suggested getting their different youth groups together. “I think the next generation has an increasingly collective attitude towards other Christian churches – that it’s God’s one church rather than a them-and-us thing. They are getting that real sense of togetherness, that it’s good to mix and do things with others, and we’re hoping that continues.”
Over the Easter weekend, several churches helped to run three days of arts and crafts workshops at NBC as part of the Warrnambool & District Easter Arts Festival.