Local church leaders from the Western Australian (WA) Conference came together for a weekend of leadership training for Thrive 2019 at Carmel College from June 22–23.
With around 30 presenters and 200 attendees, participants learnt skills on everything from discipleship to social media and more.
“Thrive was the first focused leadership training for our conference for some years,” said WA Conference president Pastor Steve Goods. “We ran Thrive to invest in leaders who are involved in local church. Volunteers are key in the local church and our focus on is on growing people who share the good news.”
Keynote speaker Alina van Rensburg, who is also Young Adults leader for the South Queensland Conference, introduced the key principles of “growing young”.
“I was really happy with the way the weekend went with clear focus given by our plenary speaker Alina on the issues of engaging with young people and ways we can move forward,” said Pastor Goods. “This obviously tied in well with what we are wanting to do as a conference with our strategy of each church being a place that encourages intergenerational healthy churches.”
The WA Conference executive launched the conference’s strategic plan at the event.
“It’s been a long process” said Lucy Dessington, a member of the WA executive. “But it’s exciting to hand an empowering vision to the people of WA.”
“Our conference team placed a clear direction of involving young people on the running of the weekend event and the number of young people attending clearly indicates to more experienced people like myself that they want to be part of a church that includes them,” said Pastor Goods. “The feedback we have received from the weekend had been really positive and we intend to make it a regular event.”
