Albury: Co-heirs and co-workers

The Albury Presbyterian Churches have embarked on a mission to “turn up the volume” on equality in their church projects, recognising men and women as co-heirs and co-workers in gospel ministry.

Rev. Dave Hayes, Rev. Mike Wong and Chelsea Edwards recently told the Clarity Not Consensus podcast how the Albury Churches see leadership as partnership. Dave sees intentionally sharing responsibility as a way of recognising each another, as heirs and co-workers in Christ’s service. He and Mike have brought that mindset into every decision. They began by auditing every ministry area—children’s ministry, outreach, administration—to understand the who and how of ministry appointment.

“I think you can just see women taking responsibility for different things and some of these women are particularly gifted. So we want to bring them into our leadership teams where appropriate. And that works really well.”

Chelsea, a ministry apprentice, sees the benefit of the process, and enjoys knowing the playing field. “I know I’m walking into a space where I can have a robust and respected conversation with the guys,” Chelsea says.

“Chelsea is really good at asking questions. So often she’ll ask a question that we hadn’t thought about, and it’s really helpful,” Mike says.

While elders retain oversight of mission and vision for the four churches that make up APC, leadership teams work with the pastors and elders to plan and decide on the day-to-day implementation of the elders’ direction. At Albury, you can find men and women living out gospel partnership in ministry.

“We can see in the Bible, principles of headship and relational ordering in the church and in families,” Dave says. “For us, the most obvious application of that is the authoritative teaching of God’s word, in preaching to mixed gatherings, and in the kind of church discipline that directly protects the gospel.”

“But we do want to be careful not to over-apply those principles; the early chapters of Titus, for example, talk about rich gospel partnerships,” he says. “Romans 16 is also compelling.”

The trio acknowledged theological questions from sessions and congregants, and addressed them.

“There have been disagrements and we want to aim for that robust conversation, talking through things, and there’s a richness as we debate,” Mike says. “Some things take a lot longer to work through because we want to have conversations, and let people listen to each other as well.”

“It’s been a joy to see the fellowship that happens and then just have an opportunity to work together for the gospel,” Chelsea says.

By examining both structure and intent, Albury Presbyterian Churches offer a model of how complementarian churches can live out shared ministry authentically.

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