Nourish: Sowing into one another

Last Friday, we saw over 190 pastors and leaders gathered together at Nourish where we spent the day hearing from Rev Dr Bill Brown and a panel of leaders on how we can sow into one another, sow into ourselves and sow into younger leaders.

We also celebrated the Ordination anniversaries of our pastors and congratulated our very own Rev Meewon Yang who has dedicated 20 years of service at BUV. It was a wonderful day of sharing as we gained valuable knowledge and built positive connections with one another.

Speaking about Nourish, Head of Pastoral Leadership Support & Development, Jonathan Stark, encouraged us all to take up the challenge and sow into others:

“I love the way Nourish brings Baptist pastors and spouses together from across Victoria. Hearing how Bill has sown into others over his 40 years of pastoral ministry is something I won’t forget for a long time. He shared vulnerably his joys and challenges in sowing into others. I can’t think of person with more credibility in this area. I’m sure that pastors were so thankful they came.

Bill concluded his talk by cutting an apple in half and asking us if we thought we could count the seeds in the apple. He then answered the question with a quote from Karen Jensen, “You can count the seeds in an apple but you can’t count the apples in a seed.” Bill reminded us that when you sow seeds into another person you never know how many lives you will influence. That seed may become an apple tree that many apples come from. I hope this image will stay with all who were at Nourish and that pastoral leaders will sow thousands of seeds, influencing thousands of lives for good, who in turn might just influence countless more lives.”

Members Dinner
In the evening, over 320 delegates attended the Members Dinner to celebrate our achievements, hear from our 2019 Ordinands, discuss how we can be together on mission and pray for our work for 2019.

The dinner opened with a team from New Vision Church leading us in praise and worship. We also welcomed four new Faith communities into our BUV family: Gospel Baptist Church, Matu Immanuel Church, Werribee Karen Baptist Church and The Vine Church Rutherglen. We celebrated the merger of Beaumaris and Mordialloc Baptist Churches and marked the closure of Sandringham Baptist which has rebirthed as SandyLife Baptist Church.

Our discussion topic was centred around mission with Geoff Maddock, member of our BUV Mission Catalyst Team presenting a perspective on mission that stimulated conversation around the tables: Mission is embodied love for the world. The best way for us to grasp mission is to remember, ‘God so loves the world!’ God’s love for the world reconciles, restores, redeems, and resurrects. Our mission together is to join with God to love the world in these ways.

“Members’ Dinners are a terrific expression of ‘together on mission’ and I thank all who came and engaged in the evening.  I encourage all those who were in attendance to feed back to their churches the information and discussion from the Dinner.  A special thanks to Union Council, our BUV Staff, in particular our Comms and Events Team for their organisation and support of the evening.” said Daniel Bullock, Director of Mission and Ministries.

Thank you to all who attended Nourish and Members’ Dinner. We look forward to seeing you at our next gathering on Friday, October 18th.

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