Speakers
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Andy Hawthorne (UK)Andy Hawthorne is the founder of The Message Trust an award-winning Christian mission organization that works with over a 100,000 of the hardest to reach young people in Greater Manchester and beyond. Andy’s particular calling to enable young people growing up in difficult neighbourhoods to hear and experience the gospel led him to found Eden. Eden is a network of missional communities in which teams of Christians move, work and support local churches in some of the UK’s most disadvantaged communities to reach young people. | Jon Owen (UNOH)Jon has been a part of UNOH, an incarnational order serving the poor, since 1997. He believes that small groups committed to Jesus can change the world, through radical acts of hospitality and loves dreaming with others about ways they can connect with their communities in strategic and prophetic ways. Jon has ministered amongst refugees, asylum seekers, prisoners, people who are homeless, the dying and is waiting for a nudist to complete Matt 25. He currently lives with his wife Lisa in one of Australia’s largest public housing estates in Western Sydney, ministering to the urban poor of Mt Druitt. | Sereki Korocowiri (Fiji)Sereki is part of the Praxis network and is the Pacific co-ordinator for Ola Fou (meaning ‘new life’). Ola Fou is an initiative aimed at supporting Pacific based youth workers develop their leadership skills and gain a qualification around working with young people in their community. Sereki is based in Suva, married to married to Asinate and is a dad to two great boys. | Melinda Tankard Reist Melinda is a Canberra author, speaker, commentator, blogger and advocate for women and girls. Her work has included helping establish a supported accommodation and outreach service for women pregnant and without support, involvement in projects to address poverty, trafficking and sex slavery, and working to highlight and address the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in Australia and globally. Melinda is the author of a number of titles including the recently released Big Porn Inc. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Goma Jungarrayi Conlon (Qld)Goma Conlon is the training co-ordinator for Jisas wantaim which works across denominational and geographical boundaries, focussing on partnering to advance the Gospel in our Indigenous communities. They key objective is equipping, empowering and enabling Indigenous Christians and ministries.. | Cheryl Catford (Vic)With a background in education, Cheryl spent fifteen years at Tabor College Victoria, first as a lecturer, then as a principal and now as the Head of Theology. She has a strong interest in the access of women to ministry opportunities and for six years coordinated the network, Women in Ministry. She has more recently worked as the Director of Evangelical Alliance and Director of Victorian Council of Christian Education (VCCE). |
Mick Duncan
Mick, a convert out of the hippie drug counter culture has pastored churches in Dunedin, Manila, Melbourne and Auckland. With his family, he lived in the slums of Manila, engaged in church planting, mercy ministries, community development and justice making. He has degrees in sociology and theology and has authored several books including his most recent Wild Ones (2006) He travels and speaks extensively in Australia and New Zealand inviting people to be there for those who sit and stand alone. |
Graham Paulson (Qld) Australia’s first and up until recently, Queensland’s only ordained Indigenous Baptist minister, is creating a new pathway of Christian leadership training for Indigenous communities and churches. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Stephen Said (Vic)Steve has been the National Youth Coordinator with TEAR Australia for over 10 years, is part of the leadership team of Missio Dei, a faith community based in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and also a sessional lecturer with Tabor College Victoria and ACOM. He is now the Residential and Community engagement Coordinator for Urban Seed. | Mark SayersMark is the co-director UBER, a ministry initiative that provides research, commentary and insight into today’s culture and the pertinent issues affecting the lives of young adults. Mark also spends his time doing mission and ministry with the Red Network — an innovative network of urban churches. Mark is the author of ‘The Trouble with Paris’ and his second book ‘The Vertical Self’ is soon to be released through Thomas Nelson. | Jarrod McKennaGandhi said, “I claim to be no more than an average person with less than average ability” and Jarrod McKenna is convinced that all of creation groans waiting for “average person[s] with less than average ability” (like us!) to lose our lives in the extraordinarly beautiful business of living God’s love; of being “The Beloved Community”. As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it “A new world is emerging”(!) Jarrod has been seeking to inspire, equip, educate and empower communities in the grace-filled practices of living into this “new world” by rediscovering the “Sermon on the Mount”. | Tony & Francine RichesFrancine and her Husband Tony live and minister in Melbourne’s west. They are pastors at the Melbourne Indigenous Church Fellowship. Both have many years experience in ministry, community and business in Aboriginal communities Francine is also an artist who works with both acrylic and oil on canvas as well as sculpture in many mediums. |
