baptist church
baptist church
baptist church
Our People
Who’s here and what they do
The congregation
In Baptist practice, the congregation itself is the primary minister, and the primary authority. Every person who gathers with us shares a call to participate in the ongoing ministry of Jesus — healing and renewing the world, and bringing compassion, kindness and hope into our workplaces, neighbourhoods, families, and friendships. That is where most of the ministry of this church actually happens. The congregation, meeting prayerfully to discern the leading of the Holy Spirit, is also the highest human authority in our common life — responsible for final decisions about the direction, governance, and leadership of the church. The people you’ll read about below serve and lead within that wider reality, not above it.
The Host Group
The Host Group is our equivalent of what other churches might call a diaconate, an eldership, a church council, or a leadership team. It is a small team of congregation members who have covenanted together to take on the practical and spiritual work of hosting this community. The name is deliberate. Drawing on the image of a shared feast, hosting means preparing the space, tending the details, holding the vision, and making sure there is room for everyone. Host Group members identify themselves through prayerful discernment and are affirmed annually by the congregation. They carry responsibility for the day-to-day governance of the church, working closely with the pastor, and their meetings are open to anyone who participates regularly in our life. The Host Group currently consists of Eliz Cook, Ian Cook, Rob Davis, Liesl Filippi, and Shelley Taylor.
The Pastor
Nathan Nettleton has served as pastor of this congregation since 1994 — which means he has been here longer than almost anyone else in the congregation. He grew up in Melbourne’s suburbs, dropped out of university, got kicked out of Bible College, drove trucks for a while, and crashed both a motorbike and a marriage. After such an idyllic preparation for Christian ministry, his first pastoral appointment was working among the street people of St Kilda in the early 1990s. He was ordained as a Baptist pastor in 1994 and completed an honours degree in theology at Whitley College in 1995, followed by a Master of Theology in Liturgical Studies from the University of Divinity in 2001. In our church, he carries particular responsibilities for the preaching, teaching, and ordering of worship and prayer, and for pastoral care. He also writes liturgical resources for a global audience through LaughingBird.net, and serves as a board member of Open Baptists. Nathan is married to Margie, and they have an adult daughter, Acacia, and two dogs. His other obsessions include dog training (because every pastor longs to have someone who will obey them), telemark skiing, and craft-brewed beers. He can hold a basic conversation in Spanish, attempt one in French, and get absolutely nowhere with his few words of Chinese.
Visiting Pastoral Overseers
We have always believed that a healthy congregation needs honest perspectives from outside its own walls. Our Visiting Pastoral Overseers (VPOs) are people from beyond our community — recognised for their pastoral wisdom and experience — who are invited to stay close enough to our life to offer us those perspectives. They are available to any congregation member who wants to raise concerns or questions they would find difficult to bring to the pastor or Host Group directly, and they offer counsel and guidance to the pastor as needed. They visit us for worship several times a year and are kept informed of the significant questions we are wrestling with. Just at the moment we only have one Visiting Pastoral Overseer, but we hope to appoint at least a couple more in the near future. Our current VPO is Brett Mitchell, our Baptist Union of Victoria Regional Minister.
