Across the Street in Hobart

This is the first episode in a new resource called Across the Street: Local Mission Stories.

Through this series, we will meet leaders from Australian Baptist Churches who are engaging with their local community in creative ways. We celebrate that the world has come to Australia and yet recognise that this brings additional complexities as we seek to share God's love across cultures, languages and backgrounds. 

For this first episode, our Executive Director Scott Pilgrim sat down with the team at Citywide Baptist and Hobart Nepali Church, Matt, Paul, Jivan and Dan. Across cultures and multiple campuses, this is a church passionate about loving their community and each other. 

In this conversation, you'll hear about the driving school, how the Nepali and Citywide congregations came together, and how they navigate the ongoing complexities of being one church. 

Discussion questions:

1. What surprises, challenges or inspires you in this story?
2. How are you seeing your local community evolve? (Culturally, socially, religiously, economically etc.) How is this change impacting the way your church runs and reaches out?
3. What are the needs of your local community? How are you responding to these needs? Are there any new missional opportunities God is leading your church to engage in? 
4. How is your church community intentionally seeking to be one, unified in Jesus? What has the potential to sow division and undermine unity?
5. As you reflect on this example of active love, welcome and one-ness, what questions are being prompted about your church's local and global mission engagement?  

Episode links:

• Video of the full conversation
• Video on the Learner Driver Mentor program
• Video of Matt sharing about being one church 

Chapters

• 0:34 Introduction
• 1:21 The Citywide Baptist Church story
• 4:13 Our changing world
• 8:27 The Hobart Nepali Church story
• 12:30 The birth of the driving school
• 16:19 Community connections
• 18:32 One church
• 21:10 The future
• 25:14 Local to global
• 26:55 The bigger picture