Building Together in Australia: The Glorious Christ

An update from Riley Spring, Lead Pastor of Sovereign Grace Church, Parramatta and Regional Leader for SGC Australia…

In early August, we had the joy and privilege of hosting Jeff and Julie Purswell here in Australia for our TOGETHER 2025 combined churches retreat. We went away to the coast for the weekend and, even though it rained the whole time, that didn’t spoil it at all. We enjoyed rich fellowship, fun, worship, and time sitting under God’s Word. It was a special event for us as we held our largest church retreat yet, with over 340 people attending, and it marked 15 years of Sovereign Grace Churches Australia. It truly was memorable.

Over the weekend, Jeff unpacked the theme The Glorious Christ across four sessions, which you can listen to here. I highly recommend listening to these sermons. They were passionate, carefully exposited, clearly applied, and powerfully exalted Christ in our hearts and minds. God was very kind to us as He helped us sing with joy and faith, minister to one another with our gifts, and knit us together in love. It truly felt like one big family.

Jeff and Julie brought with them such warmth of love and an intentionality to greet, welcome, serve, and care for our churches. It was a joy to watch them in action—often catching them in prayer or embracing someone they had just met as if they were lifelong friends. This is one of the beautiful things about our partnership in the gospel across Sovereign Grace Churches!

We also held a separate training day on the Thursday before the retreat, where Jeff gathered with all of our pastors in Australia to look at the need for doctrinal fidelity and gave an edifying overview of the Pastoral Epistles—whetting our appetite for the PC Course in 2026. At the same time, the wives met with Julie and were blessed and encouraged by her example, experience, and endurance. That evening we all gathered together for an SGC Australia Pastors and Wives dinner, feasting on smoked lamb, sharing stories, and simply enjoying being together.

True to SGC form, “we may be small… but we are slow!” Yet despite this, the Lord is on the move here in Australia among us. There is a wonderful unity across our two pastoral teams and our churches. We have seen two pastors ordained this year, with more hopefully to come. Both of our churches are stepping out with even greater intentionality in evangelism through the Bridge Course, and we are seeing more people come to faith.

It is our hope that as we build well—and build slowly—we lay a foundation for the future: playing our small part in the gospel ecosystem of Australia, aiming to reach new people one at a time, to plant more churches in the coming years, and to raise up future pastors. We would love your continued prayers as we seek to plant and strengthen churches here in Australia.

We are already looking forward to our TOGETHER 2026 one-day event with the Global Leaders and Leadership Team!