Come and sit at the feet of one of Australia's most senior Aboriginal Christian Leader's, Aunty Dr Jean Phillips, with nearly 70 years in ministry. Aunty Dr Jean Phillips has been appealing to churches for decades to adopt an Aboriginal Leader in ministry.  Come and hear about Aboriginal ministry, the support needed, and how and why it is important to adopt an Aboriginal Christian Leader. 

Tony will share his personal journey from country Victoria to West Africa and how a God inspired tree regeneration technique has restored vast areas of degraded land, improving the lives of millions of small holder farmers and given birth to a global environmental movement. He will share biblical insights on God’s love for creation, his continued action in maintaining it and our Christian duty to be good stewards, giving examples of creation of care activities undertaken by contemporary churches. This will be followed by a time for Q and A and breaking into small groups to discuss how Christians can engage in creation care in Australia.

Worried about climate change and what it means for our futures? Join us for a workshop introducing climate anxiety, grief and distress; why these emotions matter for the church and church leaders; and sharing resources for supporting each other, our communities and our young people through these experiences.

Tearfund recently commissioned NCLS Research to undertake research into what Australians think are the most important global challenges facing the world today, their levels of concern about climate change, and how hopeful they feel about the future of our world, of Australia, of their local community, and their personal future. 

In this workshop, we’ll explore people’s current levels of concern and hope, how belief in God, religious and spiritual practices, and fellowship affect these things, and tangible ways in which Christians can take hope-fuelled action in response to poverty and injustice.

Stolen Land, Stolen Wages, Stolen Generations, Stolen Lives.  The calls for Australia to hold a national truth-telling commission have been decades long.  Truth was one of the three central calls of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.  Post Referendum we have seen the Queensland Government cease a State Truth-Telling Commission, the word "truth" weaponised, and an increase in racism towards Aboriginal peoples.   Come and join us to learn about our shared history of the last 250 years and what actions you can take to support truth-telling.  Also hear about the Truth-Telling Commision Aunty Jean and Brooke ran in 2019 and the hopes for the next steps. 

Aussies have a strong preference for egalitarianism.  We don’t like tall poppies or top-down power- plays.  While there’s much to celebrate about this approach, it also means that we tend to ignore or downplay the power we do hold.  Come be a part of a hands-on conversation about power in the upside-down Kingdom of God.  Together we’ll plot our levels of power on the wall and have a conversation about what emerges: what does it say about the power we have?  How might Jesus’ example shape the way we use that power in the messiness of life?  And how might what we see inform our relationships with those who are first in the kingdom of God – the last, the least and the lost?

In a world filled with isolation and despair, how can we create local spaces that unite people and reflect Jesus' subversive love, especially to those on the margins? This workshop will explore practical ways to embody hospitality, foster inclusion, and nurture safe, welcoming spaces. Stephen and the Foothills team have been living this out in their local community by distributing 50,000 free, nutritious meals each year. Their motto is "Everyone is welcome at our table."

The Referendum gave many non-Indigenous peoples an opportunity to practice Reconciliation however post-Referendum racism towards Aboriginal peoples is higher than ever, ongoing injustices continue and have accelerate like Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, prison incarceration, age of criminal responsibility and the lack of closing the gap means the gap continues to widen.  Through the story of an Aboriginal person and a non-Indigenous person and a local church taking real action, come and learn through story and leave empowered and enabled to take action to practice Reconciliation with truth, justice, and action individually, in community, and in the church. 

Financial inequality continues to increase in Australia and globally. With wealth comes political power, so increasingly 2:30pmthe wealthy can skew the political system to their interests. People on lower incomes have become more likely to distrust democracy and believe their needs are not represented. The trend is undermining social cohesion and trust in our society and across the globe.

Surveys show middle-class people feel justified in discriminating against people with lower formal education, even when such people know more than them about a particular topic. Given the middle-class base of many churches, how do we get back to Jesus’ example of solidarity with the marginalised? The workshop will explore how Christians and churches can stand with people who have been marginalised and explore responses, such as codesign of government policies and democracy vouchers to reduce the influence of the wealthy.

Simon and Kaylene Reeves, with their 3 kids, have been living out their radical discipleship journey for over 20 years in some of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods across Melbourne, Alice Spring and Geelong. They are the founders and managing directors of The Good Neighbourhood Project

Over their time Kaylene and Simon have experienced burnout, compassion fatigue and a range of personal health challenges. They have learnt the importance of doing small things with great love, and building a trellis of rhythms and practices that can be the support system for their journey to live an active life of radical life. 

In this workshop you will hear stories from their neighbourhood and explore practical tools to build into your journey, whether you have been doing this for a long time, or are just starting out. Living a life of radical love in tough places doesn’t need to be a sacrifice, it can be full of joy, good health, rest and abundance. Join us to hear more.

Jesus was criticised for allowing expensive perfume to be poured on his feet. Judas said the money spent on the perfume could’ve been given to the poor. Interesting statement for a crooked Treasurer to make! Jesus said that the poor will be always with us, but he won’t, and the anointing was preparing him for burial. Interesting statement for Jesus, the champion of the poor, to make.

I wonder if Jesus had in mind that Old Testament statement from the Book of Deuteronomy (chapter 15), where it starts out by saying that there will be no poor among you (v4) but then quickly adds instructions for looking after poor people (v.7) because the reality is ‘there will never cease to be poor people in the land” (v.11)

This workshop will explore, in the light of these Biblical statements, what poverty is in the Australian context, and what is/can be done to address it. It will involve a panel, moderated by David Wilson, consisting of people who are working in the area and who also have ideas for addressing the issues in the future. The moderator will give some teaching on the topic, the panel will have a conversation, and the audience will be invited to participate, thinking through the question of what the Jesus Revolution will look like as far as poverty is concerned.

If Jesus was a modern, non-Jesusy saviour, he might well declare: “I have come to set the oppressed free through advances in technology and increased legislation.” But he’s not, and he wouldn’t. 

While we want to avoid calling anything a golden bullet, we have a hunch that good food and hospitality are undervalued in our society despite being important to the upside-down revolution Jesus invites us to participate in.  We’ll share some lessons we’ve learned from the economically poor communities we serve in South-East Asia, and together – while enjoying delicious snacks and micro-hospitality of course – we’ll explore how the Gospel and the expertise of the economically poor might inform our attempts at living upside-down.

In this thought-provoking workshop, David from ZOE Foundation Australia will bring the focus to where Jesus would likely be found today—among the marginalised and the vulnerable. David spent over 11 years of working with ZOE in Thailand and has firsthand experience in supporting children on their pathway to healing and restoration. ZOE works to prevent child trafficking, rescue children from slavery, and restore new life to survivors and at-risk orphans. 

This workshop will highlight:

- Our connections to modern slavery.

- The hidden problem of child slavery in Australia.

- Holistic ways to end child trafficking.

- Practical ways you people of faith can engage and work toward ending child slavery in our lifetime.

We invite you to join this powerful conversation and be part of an upside-down revolution in oursociety and our churches

Come spend some time with Mike Frost, chatting through what it means to try and live formed around Jesus’ Upside Down Revolution. Mike is an internationally recognised Australian missiologist and one of the leading voices in the missional church movement. Along with being an author, speaker and lecturer, Mike has formed missional movements, missional communities, continues to protest against Australia’s treatment of refugees, and advocate for racial reconciliation, foreign aid, and gender equality. This workshop will spend sometime unpacking what it means to embody a life that some would call ‘questionable’.