Church News, Prayer Points, Weekly Blurb
From TAC to SWAC
Saturday 11 November, 2006 · Posted by Neil Atwood
Last Sunday, we announced that we would be leaving Toongabbie Anglican Church at the end of January, for a new position at Springwood Anglican Church.
As I said in church last week, this was not an easy decision to make. Ministry is all about relationships, and it’s very hard to disentangle yourself from relationships and move churches, making a whole new set of relationships.
But the fact is that Toongabbie will have a new Senior Minister at some point next year, and having a ‘clean slate’ to work with in terms of staff will be something that he will benefit from, and will help him establish his ministry strategy sooner.
What will we be doing at Springwood?
Some background: Springwood Anglican is a large church by Sydney Anglican standards: It has 10 congregations meeting across three centres (Highway church, ‘The Factory’ Ministry Centre and Winmalee). There are nine paid staff (six full time, three part time).
I will be pastor for two congregations: Church @ 5 on the highway site, and FNC (Factory Night Church).
Church @ 5 was only planted early this year. It has about 45 members and is looking to grow and expand in 2007.
FNC has around 180 people attending each week and has a makeup very similar to our own SNC – Mainly school and Uni age, with a healthy number of older people too. We will be looking to take some people from exisiting congregations and plant a new congregation in 2007 on the Valley Heights campus of Blue Mountains Grammar School, looking to build that up from the parent body of that school over time.
A new full time Youth Pastor is also being appointed for 2007, and I will have some oversight of his role.
I suspect I will also get drawn into helping with the church website!
So there are many new challenges to be faced. Bigger groups, large leadership teams, working in a large pastoral team, planting congregations, etc. We have always had a real heart for the people of the Blue Mountains, and it will be a real privilege to work amongst them (and a bonus to be closer to our home at Blackheath!).
We will be living on site on the Highway church property, which will make it easy for Robyn to get to church. We will give details of that in due course.
As Philip acknowledged in his announcement read out last week, we realise that our departure may complicate the situation at TAC in 2007. But we know God is sovereign, and we are sure he will care for all us in this period of transition.
We would value your prayers as we wind up things here and prepare for the physical and emotional move.
Neil & Robyn
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