About Us

2024 Ministers Report for Denham Court Anglican Church

Annual General Meeting, 25th February 2024

We meet together to encourage each Other in our faith and the Writer of Hebrews says in 10:24-25 that we should not neglect to meet together as we stir each other up to love and good deeds.

Thanks to all those Who serve our church through their ministries on Sunday. Thanks to those who maintain our church site through cleaning our buildings and looking after our grounds Thanks to those who play music and lead singing. lead prayers, do bible readings, lead the services, preach, do morning teas, run the sound systems, teach Sunday school, present all age talks and welcome people.

In the past year we have had sermon series on: Luke 9-14, David (l and 2 Samuel) Revelation, Titus and the Apostles Creed. I am grateful to those who have assisted me in preaching, and we appreciate their ministry Thanks to Eddy Fracarossi, Marge Mills, Jacinth Myles, Jackie Stoneman and Martin Yeomans for providing us with edifying, creative and challenging sermons over the past year.

We have been greatly blessed by God in having Rev. Jacinth Myles and Rev. Jackie Stoneman join Our congregation a few months ago. They serve, along with Rev. Marge Mills as honorary ordained ministers. Jacinth and Jackie bring a wealth of practical experience and gifts to our church, and they are already making very significant contributions to the ministries here.

Our small group ministry expanded during the last year. We now have four regular Bible studies two led by me, one by Eddy Fracarossi and another by Jackie Stoneman. It is great to have groups of people meeting together regularly to study God's Word. We are also excited by the number of people who have done, or are now doing the Christianity Explained and Discipleship Explained groups run by Jacinth Myles.

Thanks to those who attend our Friday Prayer meeting and as I said recently in a sermon, our growh in numbers attending during the past year is directly linked to this vital meeting. We have seen God answer our prayers and rejoice that we now have a number Of young families regularly attending our church.

Thanks to our three church wardens, Chris Nobbs, Neil Robinson, and Martin Yeomans, The wardens and I have met regularly to make decisions about property and financial matters. Chris Nobbs has done a great job in overseeing the team doing community service at our church on Saturday mornings. He has also been very helpful in doing maintenance around the church site and organising tradesmen to in and do specialized maintenance. I have found his support of me, in his capacity as Rector's warden, very encouraging and helpful.

Martin Yeomans does a wonderful job as a warden and as our church treasurer. He is very efficient and produces great reports for Parish Council, and as you will see, for our AGM. Thanks for his tireless work for our church.

Neil Robinson has provided great service as a warden of this church for more than 20 years. During this time, he has given very considerable amounts of time and energy to serve our church Due to medical reason Neil has unfortunately lost his driving license. Because of the limitations this imposes upon him, he has decided to step down as a warden. But Chris, Martin and myself have asked him to continue as an advisor to the wardens. So he will continue to attend our meetings. This will enable us to tap into the extensive knowledge Neil has about our church property. This year Neil is standing for election to parish Council, but not as a Warden. 

The three wardens and I are also part of Parish Council. I would also like to thank the other members of Parish Council, Julie-Ann Cowan, Chris Craddock, Eddy Fracarossi, Patricia Gee, Lee Parbery, Catriona Robinson and David Symonds for their contributions to our church over the past year.

My wife Marge is an ordained Anglican Minister who teaches at Mary Andrews College. She is a partner in ministry She has been involved in these ministries: leading our Songs & Play musical playgroup, preaching, teaching at our Sunday school, running our church library, leading church services, organizing our all-age talks and music at the 10am service. She also has played music and sung at our church services, In addition to all these things, she makes many contributions to our church through discussing church matters with me and coming up with great Ideas. She is a wonderful supporter and encourager of my ministry.

I also greatly value the contributions o' our daughter Lucy. She has run the Sunday School, done very creative all age talks, played the cello, piano and ukulele and sung at church services.

We have three groups that are aimed at people outside the church. These groups are places where we can develop relationships with people who do not attend church and share the good news of Jesus with them.

Our Craft and Games group meets fortnightly on Tuesday afternoons at 2pm. Thanks to Marilyn Bates and Jan Crundwell for running this group. Our Mobile Community Pantry and Drop In centre meets fortnightly on Tuesday mornings, David Symonds runs this ministry very efficiently. Thanks to all those from our church who also serve in this ministry.

Our Songs and Play group is for children aged 0 to 5 and their parents or carers. It is held on Tuesday mornings during school term time. Thanks for Chris Craddock, Catriona Robinson, Roz Gesson, Gayna Nobbs, Penny and Ken Calderwood for helping with this ministry over the last year.

Our monthly communion service on Fridays attracts about 15 to 20 some of whom travel a distance to attend it. Thanks to Thelma Lyell who assists me in running this service. We thank Thelma for her contribution to our church through voluntary office administration one morning a week for our church.

Thanks to Allan James for once again being our voluntary cemetery manager. Allan does a great job  organising burials and internments of ashes. I continue to do a number of Baptisms each year. This is a great opportunity to connect with people in the local communities and to share the good news with them. I generally do them on Saturday mornings and also encourage the family of the child who is being baptized to attend our 10am service three times. This has meant we have had a number of visitors to our church services who gain an understanding of what we believe and do as Christians.

We are now teaching Special Religious Education (Scripture) at two local schools. On Thursdays at Edmondson Park primary School, Lydia Hucman and I teach classes Lee Parbery assists with one class. On Friday I teach another class at Bardia Primary School. Lydia teaches a class of year 5 and 6 students. I teach classes of years 3  and 4 students at both schools. We are fortunate to have people from other churches also teach Scripture at these schools.

We are excited to have seen the growth in numbers attending church over the past few years and especially over the past few months. We are now averaging over 80 people each Sunday attending our services. When Marge and I commenced four years ago this number was about 30 people attending our Sunday church services.

We rejoice at this growth and pray that we as a church will be used by God to make an ever increasing impact on our local communities.

The change in size of a church impacts how a church operates. I have shared with our parish Council some insights from Tim Keller about how church size dynamics work. Tim Keller was an American Pastor in New York city who died fast year. Over the years, he and his wife grew a large church in New York and he then wrote about church growth dynamics. I believe he has great insights into how churches grow. Here is an extract from a page he wrote about how different size churches operate.

a. House-church - 0-40 attendance

• Character. The 'house church' is often (in urban areas) called a 'Storefront church' or (in rural areas) called the 'country church. '

  • It operates essentially as an extended small group. It is a highly relational church in which everyone knows everyone else intimately.

  • Lay leaders are extremely powerful and they emerge relationally—they are not appointed or elected. They are usually the people who have been at the church the longest and have put  in the most time and money to the work.

  • Decision—making is democratic, informal, and requires complete consensus. Decisions are made by informal relational process. If any member is unhappy with a course of action it is not taken by the church.

  • Communication is word-of-mouth and information moves very swift/y through the whole membership.

  • The pastor often is a 'tent-maker' and part-time though a church of 10 families who tithe can support a full-time minister. The minister's main job is shepherding, not leading or teaching.

• How it grows. House-churches grow in the most organic possible way - through attraction to its warmth, relationships, and people. New people are simply invited end continue to come because they are befriended. There is no 'program' of outreach.

• Crossing the threshold to the next size-category. The house-church, like any small group, gets to 'saturation' rather quickly. Once it gets to 40+ people the intense face-to-face relationships become impossible to maintain. It then faces a choice: either a) multiplying off another house-church or b) growing out of the 'house-church' dynamics into the next size category of being a small-church.

• If it does not do either:

  • Evangelism becomes essentially impossible.

  • The fellowship itself then can easily become ingrown and 'stagnant' — somewhat stifling, sometimes legalistic

  • An ongoing problem for the stand-alone church of this size is the quality of ministry to specific groups like children, youth, singles and so on.

• If it opts for "a" above—and multiples itself into another house-church, the two (and eventually several) house-churches can turn an association which does things like youth ministry together. They could also meet for joint worship services periodically.

• If it opts for "b" above — and grows out of the 'house-church' size into a 'small" church, it needs to prepare its people to do this by admitting the losses (of intimacy spontaneity, informaliy) and agreeing to bear those as a cost of mission. of opening their ranks to new people. This has to be a consensus group decision to honour the dynamics of the house church even as it opts to change those dynamics

b. Small church - 40-200 attendance 

• Character. This category includes churches that are just barely out of the 'house-church' stage up to churches that are ready for multiple staff. But they all share the same basic characteristics.

  • While the relational dynamics are now less intense, there is still a strong expectation that every member must have a face-to-face relationship with every other member.

  • While there are now appointed and elected leaders, the informal leadership system remains extremely strong, there are several laypersons—regardless of their official status—who are 'opinion leaders.' If they don't approve of new measures and the rest of the members will not support them

  • Communication is still informal, word-or-mouth. and still relatively swift.

  • The pastor is primarily a shepherd.

    • While in a larger church the people will let you pastor them if you're a good preacher, in a smaller church people will listen to your sermons if you are a good pastor.

    • Effective, loving shepherding of every member is the driving force of ministry - not leadership or even speaking ability. (A pastor who says, "I shouldn't have to shepherd every member - I've delegated that to my elders" is trying to practice large-church dynamics in a small  church environment.)

    • However, the pastor of a small church will (as the church grows) feel more and more need for administrative leadership skills. Small churches do not require much in the way of vision-casting or strategizing but they do eventually present a need for program planning, mobilization of volunteers, and other administrative skills.

  • Changes are still processed relationally and informally by the whole congregation, not just the leaders. But since the congregation is larger, decisions take a longer time than in either the house-church or the medium-size church. Ultimately, however, change in a small church happens 'from the bottom up' through key lay people who are central to the informal leadership system. No major changes can be made unless you get at least one of these people to be an ally and an advocate for the change.

• How it grows. Small churches also grow through attraction by newcomers to the relationships of the congregation. However, in the small church it is the personal relationship to the pastor that is the primary attraction to a new person. The pastor is therefore key to beginning two or three new ministries and/or classes/groups that bring in new people. He can do this by securing the backing or participation of one key 'informal leader. ' Together they can begin a new group, class, or ministry that will bring in many new people who were not previously attending the church.

I would be happy to discuss how Keller's thoughts apply to our church. 

I give thanks to God for the opportunity to serve as your minister over the past 12 months. I look forward to what He will do through us in the coming year, for the spread of the gospel of Jesus.

Grace and Peace

Richard Mills