Our 2019 Annual General Meeting was held Sunday 1 December 2019.
Highlights are provided here. If you are a Redhiller and would like further information on any of the AGM updates, contact us.
Worship
Emily Minto
At the beginning of the year we identified four key words for our worship team: collaboration, creativity, connection and cultivation. What we’ve been doing in 2019 feeds into those things.
Team nights. These included sharing our stories and getting to know each other.
Building our team. We’ve had five new people coming on board this year - Shaun, Rachelle, Jamie, Rio and Bea. God has been so faithful in continually building our team, bringing people who have an amazing heart and amazing gifts.
Presence nights. Held once a term. We’ve seen people come from different churches, and we’ve had peaceful and powerful times together. We’ve also been building more creative expressions into these nights - thank you Lani for organising art supplies.
Sunday venue change. We have moved our Sunday venue to Lyons, which has brought some challenges due to very quick set up time and almost non-existent rehearsal! The team has been very gracious in this.
New PA system. This has capability for recording and for growing with us. Thank you to Ro and Brent for researching, purchasing and setting this up.
Sunday worship times. This is an integral part of what we do. It’s been a wonderful thing to come together as community, remembering what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, giving our praise to Jesus who is the only worthy one.
Creative Praise Sunday in October holidays. A real highlight! We saw the church community express praise through art, through music - we wrote a song! - and though writing.
Songwriting. We continued writing together, both within Redhill and collaborating with writers from other churches in Canberra. We’ve also been recording some demos, looking to record in future.
Collaborating with other churches. Emily has been able to help lead worship at another church’s youth camp and some of their services through the year.
Our purpose. In all of this we keep coming back to our goal, which is “To seek, honour and enjoy the presence of God.” That’s the core of who we are as Redhill worship.
PA thank you. We honour the hearts and sacrifice of the PA people who are behind the scenes - Urusula, Jeremy, KL, and Rohan.
Musicians thank you. We honour the musicians who give up their time to choose songs, rehearse and get here early. Thank you!
Children
Candace Spencer
It’s been a big year; an incredible year! The kids dance, they stack cups, they hide, they seek, they do craft, they shoe-shine, they jump in mud, they flash mob, they foosball… they do lots and lots of things together! We try to ensure church is an inviting and engaging place for them, and at the same time we know this is an opportunity to feed into their lives.
Teaching. This year we dug into story of David, linked to a colour each week. We also did a series on the Fruits of the Spirit.
Moving venues. Our move from the Salvation Army building to Lyons has been incredible for kids as we can now divide them into more age appropriate programs: 3-6 year olds and 7-12 olds. It has been great to be able to pitch things at their level.
Child Safety.
Over the last two years we redeveloped our Child Protection Policy, taking note of new requirements under the ACT Reportable Conduct Scheme.
Candace completed training in the Child Safe National Standards.
New register of WWVP cards for kids church volunteers - we would like to include the rest of the church in this, so please let Candace know if you have a WWVP card.
Child Safe Training currently in progress for our volunteers (a 90-minute online course).
Looking ahead to 2020:
More volunteers. We would love more volunteers. If you feel you could help out once or twice a term we’d love to hear from you! It is amazing out there; they are so full of energy and full of life.
New resources. Will look into different teaching and worship resources. We may start off the year with Parables.
New branding. New groups need names! We will be working on some branding in 2020.
Junior helpers. Possibility of some of the 9-10 year-olds occasionally helping out with the younger kids.
Safety awareness. Need to increase our safety awareness after our gatherings, as there is a potential gap while parents are still talking and while helpers are packing up.
Young Adults
Aidon Scott, on behalf of Jordan and Jeremy Bromhead (absent)
Young Adults have a lot of fun! Our main purpose is to ‘be family’.
In 2019 -
Hangs. We’ve gone for dinner after church, had picnics, enjoyed ‘summer daze’ (after-work and weekend hangs throughout summer).
Going deeper. We had mid-week nights once a term where we went deeper. For example, a guys/girls night, and an evening on ‘Faith in the Workplace’ when we heard from some Redhill-ers from the ‘older generation’ :) about their experiences with God, faith and work.
In 2020 -
More Hangs. Looking forward to continuing to hang out together. If you want to host these social gatherings, let us know!
Summer Daze. We’ll return to ‘summer daze’ in Jan 2020.
Delve. Our mid-week nights - now called ‘Delve’ - will continue to explore deeper topics, such as ‘Loneliness’ in Week 5 of Term 1.
Community and Discipleship
Julie Geddes, on behalf of her and Rohan (Ro absent)
Most people at Redhill are in a small group. Groups provide an opportunity that a Sunday setting doesn’t provide - to be able to share our lives and get to know each other in smaller groups where we can support each other, pray for each other, read the Word together and share stories.
In 2019 -
Term 1: we finished up our old small groups that had been together for two years.
Term 2: we mixed up our groups. Everyone got mixed up and moved around different houses, which was a great time of getting to know people.
Term 3: the new groups were formed.
New groups: We now have five different groups meeting on different nights. We don’t all do the same thing - the leaders are all amazing people who love Jesus and are able to gauge what their group most needs. For example, one group has been sharing testimonies, including taking time to pray for the person sharing and waiting on the Hoy Spirit to speak.
Group leaders meet together to share, pray and encourage each other. At our recent meeting we had a great time praying, and there was a lot of excitement about how the groups are going.
Thank you. Thanks to group leaders for having people in your homes, and thank you to everyone for going along to groups, as in doing that you touch each other’s lives.
Looking forward to 2020 -
Resources. We are praying about what we are doing next year in terms of study options.
Addition from Brent:
Julie and Rohan have spent time this year studying together, doing the ‘Discover’ course run by Fresh Hope. This training, as well as their previous work in studying the ‘Tangible Kingdom’ resources, has provided them with great teaching and growth in the areas of community and discipleship, which they will be able to share with the rest of us going forward.
Finance
Andrew Spencer
Activity this year
Audit for 2017-18 completed.
All historical amounts owed for employees paid – we are up to date and paying as they are due.
Undertaken all required reporting to government.
Registered with Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.
Implemented Single Touch Payroll – new requirement for all organisations.
Implemented an accounting system – no more manual spreadsheets!
Closed our old bank account.
Income
Tithes and offering - $90k (20% more than last year)
Mission giving - $4k (64% more than last year)
Well done, and thank you!
Expenses
Employee expenses - $75k (39% more than last year)
Why the increase? Had two employees for the whole year rather than part of the year. Also some final adjustments to recognise employee entitlements owed.
Mission support - $9k (120% more than last year). Represents approximately 10% of our total expenses.
Other expenses include insurance, ministry expenses, rent.
Assets
Bank accounts and cash - $21k
Was $33k at the end of the previous year – change is primarily due to final payout of employee superannuation.
We also have the office shipping container listed as an asset.
Liabilities
Employee liabilities $1k (previous year was $13k)
What’s next?
Finalise the audit.
More frequent reporting (new system allows this)
We are asking: What else is God asking us to do with the resources we have?
'Budgets’ for ministry areas – to give some freedom to ministry leaders.
Potential increase in our missions giving.
More information
If you have questions or would or would like a copy of the financial statements, let Andrew know! (contact us)
Pastor’S REPORT
Brent Smith
Pastoral care. Group leaders oversee pastoral care for your group. As well as your group leaders, Brent and the core leadership - Jill, Vaughan, Emily, Candace, Andrew - would love to meet with you to chat and pray.
Preaching. We have seen new preachers rise up, with people who have been part of our Preaching Community putting their hand up to preach for the first time. We’ve been coaching and releasing people to speak on Sundays and will continue to do that going forward.
Leadership.
Core Leadership: Emily, Vaughan, Candace, Andrew, Jill and Brent meet every 1-2 months to talk and pray over the church community and what God’s doing in our midst.
Ministry Leaders: Brent catches up with ministry leaders monthly to ask: how are you doing, what’s God saying, and what would you like to do next? So excited by the passion of the ministry leaders - these leaders have a huge impact on the direction of Redhill.
Communications. We have lots of different ways of communicating with you. Thanks to Jill for her work in this. Going forward, we want to hear from people who would like to help in this, particularly photographers.
Mission. We have three families that we partner with in overseas mission. Each month we focus on one of them, and this has been great for us to think outside of ourselves and to partner with people we know and love. We also get alongside Missionheart here in Canberra. Thank you to Amanda who does a great job organising and overseeing these partnerships. We are discussing how we can bless our overseas partners over Christmas - stay tuned.
New venue. In August we moved from the Salvation Army in Swinger Hill to the Lyons Church of Christ building in Lyons. It is amazing to be in this venue. It has taken a lot of work to get here. Thank you to Jamie for your input in designing this space. Thank you to Lyons Church of Christ who are very kind to us. Going forward, we need to look at how we contribute to cleaning the property.
Looking forward to 2020 -
The Marriage Course. We would love to invite every married couple to be part of this course, likely mid-2020. It will be open to the community. Thank you Claire for offering to oversee the event management component of this.
Local mission. We are enjoying our existing partnerships with others making an impact, but we need to consider what we ourselves could actually do. What would it look like for us to reach out into the community? Brent, Amanda and Shaun will meet to discuss.
Spiritual Retreat. We are looking to run a retreat weekend mid-late 2020 with a guest speaker, providing opportunity to stop, and wait on God.
Prayer. We want to increase our prayer life. We will have regular times to meet to pray over our city - stay tuned for details. Let’s see what God will do!
We are continuing to be partners in the gospel. We partner together with God and one another, in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Prayer
We prayed for the ministry leaders, breaking into groups to pray into each ministry area. As we prayed we shared communion.
Gift for Smiths
The church surprised Brent and Jill and the girls with a generous financial gift to put towards a modified vehicle. Thank you to all who contributed!
Further information
If you would like any further information on the updates provided at the AGM please contact us.
