Associate Pastor: Community Engagement

Gymea Baptist Church in the south of Sydney is an established, multi-staffed community of faith. Our vision is to see lives changed by Jesus and our purpose is to help people find their place in God’s family and in God’s mission. We seek to do this with intentionality, generosity, curiosity, integrity, and a focus on others.

We want to reflect our priorities in our staffing and, to that end, are in the process of restructuring our pastoral roles to align to those priorities. This position description is for a new pastoral role overseeing Community Engagement.

Overview of Responsibilities

Community Engagement is one of GBC’s three strategic priorities and this pastoral role has a number of emphases which form the primary responsibilities of the role:

• To cultivate space for faith in Jesus to grow. This faith-sensitive space will be reflected in our services, ministries, and church-culture (e.g., a non-anxious, open-to-questions culture which also has clear “next faithful steps” for people to take in their exploration). Meeting people where they are at and journeying with them towards Jesus.

• To develop, resource, and align the evangelistic efforts of our community of faith with the wider missional commitments we hold and the evangelistic environment we are living in. This requires an up-to-date/current awareness of that environment and an innovative approach to match (e.g., not dedicated to out-of-date models and methods).
  • The outcomes would include an identifiable cohort of people who were part of our community of faith but who were on a journey towards faith, people regularly putting their faith in Jesus for the first time or returning to faith in a significant way.

• To help GBC be a community of faith for our community; a place (and a people) they are familiar and comfortable with and who genuinely love and serve them without condition. This will involve building bridges with our community including:
  • Programs to address their needs (e.g., ESL, community hubs, Playtime).

• Non-proselytising activities (e.g., Kids Hope).

• “Open door” events (e.g., the Fair Trade Market [including oversight of the Catalyst Team], Festival of Christmas).

• Leveraging our relationship with Hopefield. The Community Engagement Pastor would be expected to be significantly engaged with Hopefield (a liaison officer of sorts).

• Developing wider community networks (e.g., Sutherland Shire Council, U3a).

• To work with the Belonging and Spiritual Journey Pastors to develop our engagement with our community as a reflection of the overlap between the roles: welcoming people into our spiritual family and encouraging them to follow Jesus. Specific areas of overlap include:
  • Overseeing GBC Sent (Global Mission) which overlaps with Spiritual Journey.

• Communication & Marketing which overlaps with Belonging (external facing comms vs. internal facing comms).

• Participation in pastoral leadership of the community of faith (e.g., preaching, Senior Staff, and service leading).

Reports and committee commitments would include:

• Playtime (staff report)
• Catalyst (volunteer leader)
• GBC Sent (Global Mission and May Mission Month; committee involvement)
• Kids Hope (volunteer leader)
• The Festival of Christmas (committee involvement)

Others would be included as ministry areas are developed (e.g., an Alpha team [or similar], ESL, or community hubs).

Skills and Competencies

This role would require the following skills and competencies:

• Strong interpersonal skills.
• Demonstrated leadership capacity in strategic thinking, implementation, and the development of teams and key leaders.
• Good communication; written and spoken.
• Administrative ability in the creation and maintenance of strong processes and systems.
• Demonstrated giftedness in evangelistic endeavour.
• Theological education is preferred though significant ministry experience will be taken into account.

Interested candidates should send a current CV and a letter expressing interest via the 'Apply to this Job' button below.

Applications will be accepted until close of business on Friday May 9, 2025.