2025 Annual General Meeting

Somewhat surprisingly, our AGMs are awesome! We take the opportunity afforded by the legal necessity and reflect on how God has been at work in us and through us as a church over the past 12 months. Yes, there’s a particular focus on things like money, buildings, and the type of worldly things that we just rely on to preach the gospel - but that’s worth doing from time to time too.

Here’s the minutes from this year’s Annual General Meeting.

There’s an update from the Association Committee (Elders), the Finance Committee, the Building Committee (which wrapped up in 2024), and the notes from the open Q&A. But please remember that you don’t have to wait for an AGM to ask any question at all about this stuff. We value transparency and we’re always keen to hear people’s questions. Email finance@hunterbiblechurch.org if there’s anything you’d like to know.

2024/2025 Finance Update

Listen to audio

We want to give you a quick update on our finances because we believe it’s super important to keep things transparent and accurate when it comes all things money around church.

How did 2024 go ‘financially'?

Well, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news:
In 2024, we grew our assets significantly. We finished the renovations at Garden Suburb, and we also purchased our future office on Rosewood Close. In total, HBC now has about $10 million in fixed assets—Amazing! But, as you can imagine, this also means we’ve had to take on some extra costs, like loan repayments, new equipment, signs, maintenance and resources. And that’s on top of costs for the City campus as well. In total, it cost us just under $3 million to run church in 2024.

The bad news:
Our income wasn’t quite what we expected. While we received some really generous donations allowing for outright purchase of the Garden Suburb office, our General Giving came in about 4% lower than last year. Since we’d budgeted with the expectation that giving would increase, that puts us about $200k behind where we thought we’d be at this point.

The Plan

We knew that expanding into the City and Garden Suburb would mean a few years of financial strain before we got back on track with our budget. Our plan, which we discussed with the bank, was to use our savings to cover things until General Giving catches up.

But since 2025 has a lot of fixed expenses, we’re going to make a few changes right away:

• Cutting spending: We’re going to reduce costs across the board for programs. We always run things on a tight budget, but this will mean fewer resources, less food at events, and less new equipment.

• Switching to interest-only loan repayments: For now, we’ll move to interest-only repayments to help reduce costs, but our goal is to pay down the principal as soon as we’re able.

• Using our offset accounts if necessary: If General Giving doesn’t reach where we need it to be, we’ll tap into our offset accounts (about $500k in total for the Garden Suburb and Rosewood office) to cover interest repayments.

The Prayer

We desperately want to see people come to Jesus and be saved, grow and established in him for eternity. That’s why we’re invested in these buildings, and in our staff and programs. Our prayer is that we’d all pull together as a church family and stretch to cover our expenses in 2025 and beyond.

Thanks for being part of this journey with us!

New to Giving?

If you’re a part of our church we think it’s important that everyone partners financially in supporting church. It’s not about the amount, but the heart behind it.

If you want to think about giving as a Christian, check out a short resource on why God loves generosity.

Already Giving?

Praise God!

Maybe this is a moment you can take time to prayerfully look at your income and how you’re using the money God’s given you.

Some of us will be able to increase our giving as our circumstances change. Others can’t, and that’s totally between you and God.

Make it regular

According to our finance team, while 80% of our church members give at least once a year, only about 50% give every month.

While some households are intentional about giving once a year, most people are in a situation where it’s best to give regularly.

Please consider how you can make your giving to church a regular thing.

Staffing Plans for 2025

One of the joys of launching HBC City and Garden Suburb is welcoming more people into our church family, as well as creating more pathways for reaching our community for Jesus. And with these new opportunities, there often comes the chance to bring on new staff while we keep thinking how best to equip and mobilise the saints. As Paul says it,

“Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”

— Ephesians 4:11-12

So what does this look like for 2025?

Lucy Langfield and Prue Hilton

With Jo Clark taking a break from the staff team, we’re thrilled to welcome Lucy and Prue onto the HBC Staff team. Lucy did an MTS Apprenticeship with HBC in 2019-2020 (trained by Jenny Jefferys), before doing a BDiv at Moore Theological College and working with Campus Bible Study. Prue has been a member of Unichurch and Hunter Bible Church for more than 22 years, and has been married to Sam for nearly 20 years. Prue’s been involved in nearly every area of ministry over this time and brings a wealth of maturity insight and skills to the team. Lucy and Prue will both be taking on part-time roles and focusing on developing and supporting key leaders in various teams across our campuses.

Nate McGlumphry & Cassie Smith

Nate and Cassie are a bit of a wonderful surprise; two gospel workers whose salaries are covered by supporters in the United States.

Nate was a Children’s Ministry Director at Parkview Evangelical Free Church in Iowa. In 2017 Nate packed up and moved to Newcastle to do full-time ministry in Public Schools; Teaching SRE and serving as a volunteer Chaplain. Nate joined HBC in 2023 and has been serving with Kids and Youth.

Cassie was born in North Carolina and worked as a Senior Project Coordinator in Florida for New International. After running a Mission Training Program in Newy around 2019, an opportunity opened up for Cassie to be a missionary to Newcastle focusing on youth and community outreach. Cassie also joined HBC in 2023 and has been heavily involved in our Youth, Kids and Mission teams.

From 2025, both Nate and Cassie will join our staff team, with the full financial support of New International. While they’ll continue teaching SRE in schools, they’ll also be taking on bigger roles in our Youth and Kids teams, coordinating leaders and various programs.

Other Staffing Updates

One of the unique principles of our staff team is the inherent flexibility of their roles. Since our staff are committed to the big prayer of God giving 30,000 souls to Jesus, this means is quite common for roles to shift and change year to year, as needs arise and pressures change. While there’s not heaps of that happening in 2025, its worth going through what various staff will be focusing on for the next 12 months.

Jocelle Jenkins will be returning to the pastoral team part-time after maternity leave with a focus on developing and supporting key leaders, as well as overseeing the Admin team. Debbie Reid, who’s been covering for Jocelle during her mat leave, will stay on part time to keep this aspect of our church family functioning.

Zac Metcalf, together with Dan Kirk will continue pursuing our Magnification Purpose and overseeing that team, while they both do part-time Bible College. Sam Talbot also continues his studies part-time while overseeing our Unichurch campus. Stu Harrison continues leading our outreach to International Students, similar to Andrew Horsfield and Pete Munday to leading our outreach and oversight of Youth and Kids. Dave Robertson, Dave Allen and Richard Sweatman will continue to pursue the areas of Mission, Membership and Maturity respectively. Jenny Jefferys continues to play an important role in various areas of our church, particularly training and mentoring Ministry Apprentices and Harvest Leaders. Dave Moore will continue to help oversee much of the background operations, with the support of Pete Witt over Communications and Facilities. Sam Hilton and Scott Curtis play important roles as Campus Directors (over HBC City HBC and Garden suburb respectively) while also leading Membership and Ministry areas. And Greg’s around too :)

There might be some more staffing updates to announce before the end of the year, but as it stands we’ll have about 13 full-time staff, 9 part-time staff and 7 MTS Apprentices being freed up to give themselves fully to the work of the Lord in 2025.

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.”

— 1 Corinthians 15:58

Praise God!

Taking a break for the sake of long-term fruitfulness: Jo’s Update

Hi Church Family,

A few big things going on in my life – just thought I’d share an update.

Among other things, over the past 12 months I’ve been working through some health issues. I decided to take long service leave just to have some fun and recover a little. Long service leave was SO great. I listened to lots of sermons from 2 Corinthians – very spiritually refreshing to be reminded of God's power through our weakness. I also enjoyed a special holiday with my sister on the Sunshine Coast, my mum and brother both came to visit, and I road-tripped to Perth and back (my mum came with me on the way back). I had an amazing time exploring the dog beaches of Perth (yes, I took my dog with me!) and the pastry scene too (SO many recommendations if you’re planning a trip to WA). The Long service leave also gave me some space and time to think through how to best deal with some of the things I'd been wrestling with before leave.

After lots of prayerful consideration, I’ve decided to take extended leave from full time ministry for the next 6-12 months. God has been growing me through this time to trust in His power and grace, and I'm thankful for this lesson. I have been so loved by so many people, particularly my mum, sister, brothers, friends, and the staff team.

You might be wondering what this leave looks like:

• I’m still part of our church, and part of the Garden Suburb PM congregation. This is a time of rest for which I’m thankful to God, and I consider it a privilege to be a regular church member under our staff’s leadership and teaching.

• I’m going to miss hanging with the staff team SO MUCH. I’ve known many of them since 2004 - this team are my close friends, members of my spiritual family. I absolutely love each of them, and can without a doubt say that I love being united with them in our mission to see 30000 in Newy and Lake Mac be given to Jesus, just a start. Please pray for them amidst this change.

• I’m still leading my awesome Growth Group (I love those women!)

• I’ll still be training Josie in Harvest Leadership. She is so precious to me.

• I’m going to step back from being an MTS Trainer for the time being.

• I’m going to get a part-time non-ministry job because I think that’ll be good for me to be working a little during this season. The staff team offered (multiple times!) for this leave to be paid leave. But I don’t want that. God has kindly provided amply for my financial needs, He's so good.

I’m excited to see what God does around Newy and Lake Mac in the next 6-12 months. Praying for lots of new people to join as we launch the new Garden Suburb site, and another City congregation. I’m excited to be part of it.

With love ️❤️ Jo

Greg and Scott talk about starting Garden Suburb am + pm

What might we expect from 11 February as we launch our two new congregations; Garden Suburb am and Garden Suburb pm? What will it be like while we wait for the new building? What chalenges are we going to face? What can we prayerfully expect?

Listen to Greg and Scott talk about all these issues and more…

Greg and Sam talk about the City Launch

How are Greg and Sam feeling about the city launch? What are we prayerfully expecting the first few weeks to look like? How can we be prepared well?

Have a listen as Greg and Sam talk through these big questions and more.