Across Tasmania, Baptist churches are sharing God’s love in practical and creative ways. From Chat and Choose and food distribution to radio ministry, chaplaincy and mainly music, these activities reflect the many ways churches care for and connect with their communities.
The Tasmania-wide Local Mission Showcase at the November Assembly will bring these stories together, celebrating local ministry and offering fresh inspiration for churches across the state.
Every story has something to offer. A ministry does not need to be large or unique to make a difference. Simple acts of care, faithfully sustained, can build meaningful connections and encourage others to explore new ways of serving their communities.
Share Your Church’s Story
Baptist churches across Tasmania are invited to submit their local mission initiatives by 15 October. For each initiative, please include:
1–2 photos showing the activity.
100–200 words describing who is involved, what happens, when and where it takes place, why it began and how it serves the community.
These stories will help celebrate the impact of local ministry and may inspire another church to take its next step in sharing God’s love.
Tas Baptists gives thanks for the life and faithful service of Joan Edna Holwill, who passed away on 13 September, aged 89.
Joan’s Christian faith shaped a lifetime of ministry, leadership and care for others. After arriving in Australia from England in 1964, Joan and her husband Peter eventually settled in Tasmania, where they became deeply involved in Baptist life. From 1991–1996 they served together as the pastoral team at Penguin Baptist Church, with Joan bringing her own considerable gifts in preaching, pastoral care and encouragement.
In 1996, Joan became the first woman to serve as President of the Baptist Churches of Tasmania. She was a trailblazer who encouraged women to use their gifts and served in significant state and national Christian leadership roles.
Yet Joan’s influence reached well beyond the positions she held. She was a counsellor, confidante and friend who took time to listen, encourage and walk alongside people.
We give thanks to God for Joan—a remarkable woman whose faith was not simply something she believed, but something she lived.
God’s love often takes shape in ordinary acts of care: time shared, a listening ear and a friendship that lasts. Children and young people in Tasmania’s north and north west are waiting for that dependable connection. Fostering Hope hopes to match each with a mentor by year’s end.
Their program equips Christians to walk alongside one child or young person growing up in care. No previous mentoring experience is needed. Screening, training and ongoing support help keep relationships safe and stable.
Could God be inviting you to explore this practical way of caring for a young person and their carer family?
Launceston training has two parts:
Part 1 on Thursday 8 October, 7–8pm, or Wednesday 14 October, 1–2pm.
Sometimes community begins with something as simple as opening the doors, creating a welcoming space and giving people a reason to come together.
Exhale Community Choir grew out of a need to do just that—to breathe. During and beyond COVID, there was a real sense that people needed somewhere to connect, make music, support each other and simply stop for a moment. Devonport’s LifeWay Baptist Church provided a home for that idea, and today around 60 singers gather there every Wednesday evening.
Led from the beginning by registered music therapist Alex Morse, Exhale welcomes everyone—experienced singers, complete novices and anyone who simply wants to sing. There are no auditions and no pressure. It is about making music together and enjoying being part of something.
But Exhale has become much more than a Wednesday night choir. It has participated in Festival of Voices, Devonport Jazz and community events, and was nominated for a 2025 Tasmanian Suicide Prevention Award. Last year’s Devonport BIG SING with Clare Bowditch brought 160 people together for a wonderful day of music and connection
And the Exhale family keeps growing. Inhale provides a relaxed fortnightly singing circle for women, while Exhale Junior is giving children aged 5–12 the opportunity to discover the joy of singing together.
This weekend LifeWay will again open its doors as Exhale hosts the Australian Girls Choir, filling the auditorium with more than 120 voices.
Perhaps that is what makes Exhale such an encouraging example of community mission. It is about a church being willing to open its doors and make space for something good to grow—something that brings people together, builds relationships and contributes to the wellbeing of the wider community.
Ray Hawkins, who planted The Point Baptist Church at Beauty Point, was farewelled at his funeral on Tuesday. As one of our 29 churches, The Point is part of the continuing fruit of a life spent following Jesus, loving people and helping churches take root.
Ray’s call to ministry developed after attending the Billy Graham Crusade in Sydney in 1959. He began Bible college the following year, setting out on a path that would take him and his wife, Mary, into church planting and pastoral ministry across several states, and later to England.
Together, Ray and Mary served through the ordinary pressures of raising a family, making ends meet and caring for people. At one stage, Ray supplemented his minister’s stipend by selling vacuum cleaners while Mary worked as a nurse and sold encyclopaedias. They kept seeking God’s direction and responding to the opportunities before them.
When they moved to Tasmania to be near family, they were approaching retirement. Ray soon became involved in the communities around Beauty Point and Beaconsfield, and helped establish the church we now know as The Point Baptist Church. There were still people to meet, relationships to build and good news to share.
Ray loved cricket, a cup of tea and an op-shop bargain. He was friendly, patient and cheeky, with a habit of finding uses for things other people were throwing away. He also liked rearranging furniture, sometimes extending his enthusiasm to spaces where others would have preferred things left where they were.
That same willingness to get involved continued through his final years at the Beaconsfield District Health Service. Ray started a church service for residents, helped organise activities and found ways to encourage people through poems, drawings and conversation. As his physical abilities became increasingly limited, his interest in people remained.
Even when confined to bed and unable to move, he compiled another devotional book. Shortly before his death, he learnt that it had been sent to the printer. His response was simple: “That is so good.”
On the mirror in Ray’s room were the words, “We love because God first loved us.”¹ Those words help explain his life. Ray knew his own imperfections, but he also knew he was loved by God. He wanted the people around him to know that love too.
For our family of churches, Ray’s life is an invitation to keep paying attention to the people God has placed before us. Our circumstances and abilities change. There are seasons of starting something new, seasons of sustaining it, and seasons when our contribution looks very different from what it once did. Ray continued finding ways to love and serve through each of them.
We give thanks for Ray, for his partnership with Mary, and for the churches and people shaped by their ministry. We remember his family and The Point community in their grief, sharing the living hope that sustained him through a lifetime of service: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.²
How do we respond when we disagree with someone at church? Do we speak up, withdraw, try to keep everyone happy, or quietly gather people who see things our way?
Pastors and leaders from Tasmanian Baptist churches gathered at Riverlands this week for our regular Pastors Muster. From lunchtime Tuesday to lunchtime Wednesday, Tim Dyer and Luke Morgan helped us explore how we can become more competent in handling conflict. It was a warm and encouraging time together, with plenty to think about and put into practice.
One starting point was recognising that conflict is a normal part of life together. We bring different experiences, expectations and convictions into our churches. We care deeply about people, ministry and what we believe God is calling us to do. Those differences need to be understood and worked through.
Our biblical starting point was Ephesians 4. Paul calls us to humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love and making every effort to maintain unity. He also gets practical: speak truthfully, deal with anger, and use words that build people up.¹ The way we handle disagreement is part of learning to follow Jesus together.
We spent time considering why conflict in churches can become especially complicated. Friendships, family connections, volunteer roles and spiritual authority can all overlap. A disagreement about a budget or a room can carry years of history. Avoiding the conversation may feel easier, but it can leave hurt and misunderstanding to grow.
One of the clearest themes was the importance of good process. How are decisions made? Whose voice is heard? Are responsibilities clear? Do people know how to raise a concern? These practical questions matter to the health of our relationships.
The training also helped us look beneath the surface of a disagreement. Are we working from different information? Are there problems with structures or power? What interests, relationships, values or beliefs are involved? Understanding these different factors helps us ask better questions before deciding what needs to happen.
We also considered the stories we tell ourselves. Someone does something we don’t understand, and we begin to explain their motives. Before long, we can be responding to our explanation as though it were a fact. We notice the things that support our view and miss the things that might challenge it.
Slowing down, listening carefully and checking our assumptions can make a real difference. What matters to this person? What am I missing? What might we both care about beneath our different positions?
Luke helped ground our discussions in Proverbs through five biblical approaches: truth-telling, justice-seeking, grace-giving, peacemaking and wisdom-seeking.
We also explored our natural conflict styles through some memorable animals: the direct Bull, persuasive Camel, accommodating Koala, compromising Fox, withdrawing Turtle and collaborative Owl. Recognising our usual response gives us a starting point for learning when a different approach might help.
This is an important part of our work as Tas Baptists. We want our churches and leaders to have good processes, useful tools, policies and habits that help them face difficult conversations well. That takes practice, honesty and a willingness to keep learning. As we finished up, Tim walked us though a Draft Conflict and Grievance policy set (available here) and encouraged churches to rigorously discuss before considering adoption.
We are grateful to Tim and Luke for helping us take these steps together. Our hope is that what we learnt will shape the next difficult conversation—in a church meeting, between ministry leaders, or over a cup of coffee. Each is an opportunity to practise courage, humility, wisdom and grace, and to reflect the reconciling work of Jesus in our life together.
The Bible translation project is now in full swing, with the translation team working through multiple chapters of the Gospel of Matthew. But this project is about much more than taking words from one language and putting them into another. It is about giving a whole community the opportunity to hear, read and live out God’s Word in the language they naturally speak.
For the past few generations, since the gospel arrived in this tribe, believers have had to read the Bible in another language. Through conversations within their communities, they have then helped one another understand and internalise what they have read in their own language.
This matters because these people live surrounded by different languages, some more intelligible to them than others. While these languages may be geographically close, the differences can be significant—ranging from something comparable to the difference between English and Flemish, through to English and Farsi. Speaking to someone in a related language is not necessarily the same as speaking in the language of their heart.
Local conversation across languages has therefore been an essential part of developing church leaders. Language affects everything: mission, as leaders more easily explain the gospel to people in their community; families, as parents raise and disciple their children; and church life, as believers teach, encourage and help one another grow.
Our collaborative translation project, God willing, will substantially change this dynamic. The goal is not simply to produce a completed Bible, but to produce a text that the community already knows, trusts and has helped shape. This means that when the translation is completed, its adoption can be as seamless as possible.
A proposed Tasmanian law raises questions about how churches teach, pray and care for people. The Greens’ Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 aims to stop practices directed at changing, suppressing or eradicating a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. These terms concern who someone is attracted to and their sense of their own gender.
Greens Leader Dr Rosalie Woodruff released a draft Bill in June 2026, which Tas Baptists and many others responded to. Following public feedback, a revised Bill was introduced into Parliament on 10 September. It has received its first reading and is not yet law.
We are not aware of conversion practices taking place in our churches, and other heads of churches have told me they are similarly unaware of such practices in their churches. That does not prove they never happen, nor does it dismiss anyone’s experience. But we want clearer evidence of the current practices this law is seeking to address, and a clear line between harmful conversion practices and ordinary Christian teaching and pastoral care.
The meaning of “suppressing” needs to be clearer. The Bill uses the term but does not separately define it. When does helping someone live according to their own faith become an effort to suppress their sexuality or gender identity?
Religious teaching is protected, but there are limits. The Bill says that expressing a religious belief or principle, including in prayer, stating what a religion teaches, or saying that a belief ought to be followed does not, of itself, amount to a conversion practice. These are important protections. However, the boundary becomes less clear when someone seeks personal pastoral help to live according to those beliefs.
Asking for help does not settle the issue. The Bill can apply whether or not a person consents to the conduct. An adult may, for example, freely choose celibacy—not having sex—because of their Christian convictions and ask a pastor to support them in that decision. We believe the Bill should make clearer what support a pastor can safely provide in circumstances like these.
A single act could potentially qualify. The definition does not require a repeated course of conduct. This means that, in principle, a single conversation or prayer could fall within the prohibition—but only if it meets the full definition of a conversion practice and is not covered by the Bill’s protections or exclusions.
Someone other than the person receiving care can make a report. A report to the Conversion Practices Commissioner does not have to come from the person directly affected. The Commissioner has safeguards and discretion about how reports are handled, and a formal investigation involves an additional seriousness threshold. Nevertheless, a church or pastor could become involved in a regulatory process even when the person who received the pastoral care has not made the complaint.
The revised Bill significantly narrows the main criminal offence. For that offence to apply, a person must intentionally engage in a conversion practice, the practice must cause physical or mental-health injury, and the person must have been negligent about whether that injury would occur. That is an important improvement.
However, the Bill also contains a separate general prohibition on engaging in a conversion practice. That prohibition does not itself require proof that anyone has been injured. This distinction matters. It means that conduct could potentially breach the general prohibition even when it would not meet the much higher threshold required for a criminal offence. For example, a single prayer could potentially fall within that prohibition if it met the full definition of a conversion practice and was not protected as an expression of religious belief.
Tas Baptists will always support protecting people from coercion, abuse and harmful practices. We also want legislation that clearly protects safe, freely chosen pastoral care and good-faith guidance from parents.Our concern is that, despite improvements to the revised Bill, some of those boundaries remain insufficiently clear. Churches, pastors, parents and individuals should not be left guessing about where lawful Christian teaching and pastoral care end and prohibited conduct begins.
The Bill remains listed by the Tasmanian Parliament as a current Bill, with its first reading recorded on 10 September 2026
Regular rate: $65 until 15 September | Late rate: $75, 16 September – 24 October, 2026 REGISTRATIONS ARE ROLLING IN Don’t miss out! A waitlist will be in place once we have reached our limit.
WHAT’s happening: At the Day of Abundance, we will celebrate God’s ever-flowing provision and extravagance. God creates all life AND sustains all things AND loves all humanity. Over and over and over. For all eternity. We are all FILLED BEYOND MEASURE.
This week, Tasmania had a voice at Converge in Canberra, where Baptist leaders from across Australia met with politicians advocating for stronger action on family and domestic violence (FDV).
Representing Tasmania were Matt Garvin, Jennifer Mountney, Kay Hunter and Nick Alexander, who joined with others from the Baptist Churches Nationwide to encourage the Federal Government to move proactively on this issue. Converge carry’s the collective voice of 140,000 Baptist church attendees nationwide which often gives us access to senior politicians.
In this instance the message is simple: it’s time to act.
Baptists believe every person is created in God’s image, loved and valued, and should be treated with equal regard. There is no place for physical violence, coercive control or other abusive behaviour in any relationship. Yet FDV remains a widespread and deeply entrenched challenge. The Converge delegation is calling for greater political will and practical investment to change this.
Among the priorities being raised are stronger capacity for communities and leaders to identify and respond to FDV, more wraparound support for people leaving crisis accommodation, increased social housing, more diverse men’s behaviour-change programs, and greater investment in healing and recovery for children and young people.
Teegan from the national team commented “Converge was filled with overwhelmingly positive meeting with Federal politicians. We shared about the issue of family and domestic violence, how Australia Baptists are responding through support services and local churches, and the important role federal government has in enacting positive change.”
With 1 in 4 women experiencing violence from an intimate partner, and 2 in 5 children witnessing… we can’t look away. We can use our voice to advocate for vulnerable people, following in the just ways of Jesus
