God calls the leaders of local churches to humbly, lovingly, wisely and courageously grow followers of Jesus taking into account their particular context and the gifts and opportunities they’ve been given. This “contextualisation” means that while the MISSION is fixed, the METHOD is flexible insofar as it remains consistent with the gospel itself.
At Southern Cross we love to “have our cake and eat it too”. Our METHOD aims to make the most of the benefits that both BIG church & SMALL church bring to the mission of growing followers of Jesus.
BIG CHURCH = EXTENDED FAMILY
We believe that God has blessed us with a thriving extended church family and when we all gather together we love to celebrate the gospel unity that God’s given to such an outwardly diverse group of people.
We love that there are almost 100 kids in our church family, many older folks, and everyone in-between.
We love that we have pastors who are able to teach us God’s word and spur us on to live it out in repentance and faith.
We love that we’re served by quality musicians as we join our voices in singing the good news of Jesus.
We love that our kids have many peers to grow up with as followers of Jesus and that our dedicated kids & youth teams take such care and delight in helping them to be growing followers of Jesus.
We love that we’re able to put on occasional events that can serve as entry points for our friends who don’t yet know Jesus and for the wider community.
We love that we’re able to employ staff to teach us, equip us and organise the ministries of our church family.
We love that we are able to give generously to ministry outside of SCPC.
All these things that we love about SCPC are blessings of being a big group of people.
SMALL CHURCH = IMMEDIATE FAMILY
We also believe that God has called each of us to develop deep spiritual friendships with a smaller group of people from within our extended church family. At Southern Cross we call these smaller groups “Gospel Communities”. Gospel Communities behave more like immediate family – people we’re in touch with throughout the week, helping each other to be growing followers of Jesus in all the everyday circumstances of life.
We believe that community is the best context for growing AS followers of Jesus.
These smaller groups are also the focus of our missional activity as we reach out together to introduce our friends to Jesus and the life that he offers. As we love each other in gospel-rich ways, we invite our friends to experience this same love in the prayer and hope that they’ll see our love for what it is – the fruit of knowing Jesus. As Jesus himself put it “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).
We believe that community is the best context for growing MORE followers of Jesus.
For more on gospel communities, please checkout the dedicated page under “our ministries”.
PLANTING CHURCHES = GROWING FAMILY
We have also recently committed ourselves to be growing followers of Jesus by planting churches. Our desire is to plant as many churches as God enables us to, starting here in our local area and then extending outwards wherever there are needs and we have the capacity to meet them.
Our first goal to plant a church in Goonellabah, came about in 2017.