Our ministries
Much of what we do at Unley Park revolves around gathering people. This includes our Sunday services, Kids Church, Youth ministry, and Growth Groups. We value biblical teaching and generous service towards others. We engage with our community through our Playgroup and basketball club, and at our Christmas Street Party. Unley Park is great at providing care for people and we are growing in strengthening peoples’ wellbeing through seminars and programs.
Our vision
We want to be a church where people grow in faith as they follow Jesus, strengthen communities through creating connections, and build belonging with all we encounter. Our focus is on our mission in the marketplace, serving our local area, and reaching young families and young people.
Current changes and challenges
COVID-19 affected our ability to gather people. Like others, we learned to live stream services, Zoom our growth groups, online resource our kids, and Google Hangout with youth. We struggled to engage children, young people, and young adults with our online format. Hence, we regathered these groups in-person as soon as possible. Now we have returned to in-person services, around 40% of our Sunday congregation attends online. Plus we discovered live streaming our parenting seminars worked well. No babysitting required! We had over 400 people attend, an increase of 250% when compared to last year.
We know live streaming lowers the barrier for people to ‘check out church’ and we have been excited to see an increase in unchurched family and friends attending, through our online service.
Our volunteer numbers reduced dramatically, forcing us to reassess what we do and how we do it. There are benefits. Enforced simplification has improved our Kids Church. Our AV and worship team have more young people serving in key roles. There is also real challenge. It has been difficult to keep up with pastoral care challenges, with less people in the care team.
COVID-19 has shown we need to strengthen our church community. We have required programs, particularly Sunday services, to bring us together.
When removed, the inter-connections between people is fragile. We would love to see more of our community building community.
In this period, we have seen people leave our church. New people have also joined. Such changes are unsettling, but we hope all our people gain renewed commitment and energy for the church they want to belong to.
The reduction in volunteers has meant staff have taken more on. We know our church should simplify further, but we are also keen to enable our people in their service.
Pray for Unley Park
God give us the insight and energy to harness our challenges as your opportunities
