The Journey So Far!

Our church was originally established in 1990 through the joint effort of the Blackburn Baptist Church (now the Crossway Baptist Church) and the Baptist Union of Victoria. Chris and Faye Pope were our first pastoral leaders.

Our Sunday worship services were initially held at the Narre Warren North Community Hall but later were held in the community room of the new Pre-school Centre in Parkhill Drive on the Timbarra Estate. After a couple of years the name of our church was changed to Berwick Community Baptist Church. After four years Chris concluded his ministry and in mid 1997 Charles & Marjorie Olsen commenced their pastoral ministry with us.

When the new Timbarra Community hall was completed in 1999 we held our worship services and other meetings there until January 2005. At the time this was a very wonderful provision of God for us.

Our congregation has grown steadily since 1997 and in the early 2000's we began planning for our own building in Narre Warren North. First, with the help of the Baptist Union, we purchased land in Fox Road then began planning stage one of our new building, which was constructed in 2004.

Our new building was officially opened on Sunday 20 February 2005 with the Rev Alan Marr (Director of Ministries of the BUV) as our guest speaker. A few weeks later the Nazaret Spanish Speaking Baptist Church began sharing the property with us as our ministry partner.

VIAJANDO JUNTOS (TRAVELLING TOGETHER)

All journeys begin with the first step. Our journey began in early 2005 when we began a ministry partnership with the Nazaret Spanish Speaking Baptist Church led by our two pastors Charles Olsen and Antonio Rodriguez.

Our partnership is no mere sharing of a building it is a common journey of sharing the gospel and building up the body of Christ. Our two churches feel the same joy towards each other as the apostle Paul when he wrote to the Philippians "you have been my partners in spreading the good news about Christ" (Phil. 1: 5).

The journey has included great times of shared worship, celebration and luscious food!

A great strength has been the amalgamation of our young adults work and youth work including two shared camps.

Our journey together enabled us to jointly call Wally Starchenko to work full-time with our youth and young adults and he began this ministry as Associate Pastor in February 2006.

All of our five pastors - Charles, Antonio, Don, Wally and Lin meet together weekly for prayer, sharing and planning. All have a passion to see people come to Christ and people grow and develop in Christ.

We are able to accomplish much more in ministry because we are working together. "Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one, they get a better return for their labour." Eccl. 4: 9

A significant step was taken in September 2006 when both churches agreed to function as one church for the next two years. Legally we remain two churches but will have one pastoral team, one Leadership Team and one shared vision for the future. We will continue to have English and Spanish language services and a young adults service on Sundays.

The final step of this first journey will be taken in September 2008 when our churches will decide whether we will permanently amalgamate our two churches and begin the next stage of our journey together.

We look forward to that great day!

Finally

God has blessed us wonderfully over these recent years and we are looking forward with great anticipation to what God has for us in coming days.