As Christians, God has asked us to love Him and love those around us. However, part of practising leadership is also sustaining our own wellbeing. But is this selfish? How do we know and what can we do to reduce stress and bring balance to our busy lives? This four hour workshop will explore leadership and wellbeing from a Chrisitan perspective. Participants will walk away with:

An understanding of their own wellbeing at present

A biblical view of wellbeing and leadership

An opportunity to practice taking a systemic approach to their own internal resources,

Practical strategies to decrease demands and increase resources

Trainer: Kara Martin

Date: Saturday 9 November, 10-11.30am

Cost: $50 (Greenhouse Member discount applies)

Trainer: Kate Groom

Cost: $40 (Greenhouse Member discount applies)

How can you faithfully manage the financial resources God entrusts to you? How can you make wise money decisions? In this pilot course, Kate will equip you to navigate life’s financial ups and downs and manage financial risks. You’ll build confidence in your financial skills while reflecting on God’s gracious provision.

In our post-Christian society, it is tempting to assume a decline in identification with formal religious faith equates with a loss of belief in general. Interestingly, studies showing that about two-thirds of people would self-describe as spiritual, or spiritual-but-not-religious, or spiritual-and-religious have challenged this possible correlation.

As a chaplain, Kate visits and cares for religious and non-religious people, those of different faiths and none. She is interested in people and their spirituality, how they perceive it, and how she can support and scaffold them in a deeper understanding and experience of reality.

This seminar introduces the idea of spirituality, including a very brief historical overview and a discussion of what spirituality is, and where an understanding of spirituality fits in Christian ministries.

Trainer: Kate Groom

Cost: $40 (Greenhouse Member discount applies)

How can you faithfully manage the financial resources God entrusts to you? How can you make wise money decisions? In this pilot course, Kate will equip you to navigate life’s financial ups and downs and manage financial risks. You’ll build confidence in your financial skills while reflecting on God’s gracious provision.

Trainer: Jodie McIver

Cost: $30 (Greenhouse Member discount applies)

In this workshop, Jodie will help us think through how we can pastorally support women and couples becoming parents and create a culture which honours the female body and motherhood as God does. This workshop is perfect for ministry workers, family and friends of expectant parents.

Trainer: Fiona McLean

Cost: $25 (Greenhouse Member discount applies)

Our society is increasingly multi-cultural, and God has given many from non-English-speaking backgrounds an openness to finding out more about Christianity. In this session, Fiona will explore some principles for meeting together one-to-one to share the gospel with our non-English-speaking neighbours using the Christianity Explored Universal resource.

If you’ve ever gone looking for good Christian content on the internet, you’ll probably have found it a frustrating experience! But for many Christians around the world, their access to good teaching is limited, and places like YouTube provide an easy and accessible way to learn more about our great God. And as more and more of us live our lives online, it’s so important that there is excellent, biblically-sound, relevant content available to find – and that exactly what our September speaker Zoe Earnshaw is setting out to provide.

As an experienced TV producer, and a Bible college graduate, Zoe is passionate about creating excellent content that will help real people understand the Bible in light of its whole story, and apply Biblical teachings to our real lives. In 2023, she started her own YouTube channel, Real Life Bible, as a new and fresh way of doing just that. At our September gathering, Zoe will share her rationale and strategy behind how as a Christian she’s using YouTube to (God willing!) reach many people with the content she’s creating. She’ll also give us some tips and tricks for how to get started as a Christian content creator – or even just how to improve your online presence and up your visual game (better zoom calls, anyone?). Whether you’re a digital native, or just interested in hearing about how Zoe is using her gifts and her experience to serve God and his world in the online space, you’ll find this an encouraging and inspiring evening.

You’ll also have a chance to connect with other Christian women, enjoy some delicious food, and hear more about what The Greenhouse has to offer to women in different industries, workplaces, churches and stages of life. We’d love to have you join us!

Can’t make it in person? Join us online! We’d love you to share in the experience.

Relationships and God’s Word are key to being Christians – and reading the Bible with another woman is a great way to bring the two together! Meeting each week or fortnight to read through a book of the Bible together can be a great way to encourage another woman, help her (and you!) grow in your faith, and support one another to live for Jesus in every sphere of our lives. In this training, Fiona will help us think about the motivation for investing in others in this way and provide some practical guidelines about how to go about this. This session will be suitable for those who have never done this before but also useful for those who have some experience meeting one-to-one but want to grow in this area.

Cost: $25 (or $20 for Greenhouse members - follow this link to access your 20% discount)

Do you feel called to hook hearts and minds for Christ? Enjoy learning to employ successful storytelling tools for creative, compelling, and impactful gospel teaching, whether in a sermon, a talk at youth group, a kids church spot, or any other context in which you are teaching God’s word.

Do you know someone who cares about the environment but doesn't know Jesus? Many of us do. Studies show that environmental crises are a leading source of anxiety, especially in young people. Is the gospel good news for people who are about the environment? If yes, then how? "I'm not good at bringing up the gospel in regular everyday conversations." Is this you? It's often hard to engage in spiritual conversations in Australia these days. But conversations about the environment can actually turn into deep spiritual gospel conversations if we see how the Bible speaks to these issues. Donna will share what she has learned the past 18 months writing her book on the topic "Good News for the Earth" and share how it's possible to encourage people towards faith, and help them see how the gospel is Good News for the Earth and also for them. For those who want to delve more deeply into this topic, Donna will be hosting a series of three online training events prior to this meeting as part of our Greenhouse Training Ground. Those will be August 5th, 12th and 19th. Register here.

You’ll also have a chance to connect with other Christian women, enjoy some delicious food, and hear more about what The Greenhouse has to offer to women in different industries, workplaces, churches and stages of life. We’d love to have you join us!

Birth is central to the Bible’s story. Jodie will help us explore the spiritual significance of women’s own experiences of life-giving. We will think through how we can pastorally support women and couples becoming parents and create a culture which honours the female body and motherhood as God does. This workshop is perfect for ministry workers, family and friends of expectant parents.

Life is a wonderful gift from God and we’re all embedded in many relationships and undertaking multiple activities. Many of us can feel overwhelmed by all the things we need to get done and lack clarity about how we’re best to manage our time. We know that we cannot control everything, but could having a well-ordered life, where we have clear ways of planning, managing our weekly time and to do lists, make us more effective in carrying out our responsibilities and bring us a sense of peace as we live in the fray?

Life is a wonderful gift from God and we’re all embedded in many relationships and undertaking multiple activities. Many of us can feel overwhelmed by all the things we need to get done and lack clarity about how we’re best to manage our time. We know that we cannot control everything, but could having a well-ordered life, where we have clear ways of planning, managing our weekly time and to do lists, make us more effective in carrying out our responsibilities and bring us a sense of peace as we live in the fray?

Are you struggling to get people to respond to your requests, care about what you care about, or give you their best effort? Whether you're a leader, a fundraiser, or just a person with a dream, you can use storytelling to to capture attention, communicate your passion and convince people to take action! Suitable for women working in non-profits, business or driving their own projects, this webinar will go through:

- why stories are powerful

- models of storytelling

- applying this in your context

- examples across contexts (including using stories on social media, in emails, in presentations and more)

We will have interactive activities so you can put what you learn into action straight away!

In the western world we now talk about loneliness as an epidemic. Studies reveal that feeling lonely is very common among the adult population - even in young adults. Research shows this is having a huge impact on our mental and physical health.

As a community of redeemed relationships with God and one another, the church is uniquely placed to offer friendship and even relationship skills training to our local communities.

Our world is broken and God’s call to every one of us, who calls ourselves a follower of Jesus, is to partner with him in the restoration and reconciliation of all things. Sadly, women have often been held back from using their God given gifts and graces, particularly in leadership, and when this happens; it's not just them who suffer. Their families do, their churches and communities do, and the world does. What are the barriers preventing women from using their voices in the way God calls and gifts them to? What can we, and the organisations we are a part of, do to bring change? Why does this matter so much?At our June Greenhouse Gathering, experienced leader and CEO of Baptist World Aid Melissa Lipsett, will share why she is committed to raising up women to use their gifts, particularly in leadership. She will give us some insight into what that looks like in her context, as well as some ideas for how we can all be better leaders, and better at encouraging the women around us to use our gifts and graces to serve our families, our churches, our communities, and our world.

We all know that ongoing learning is important – that it’s good for our brains, for our communities, for our careers, for our ministry. But how do you find good training and learning opportunities? How do you know they’ll be good quality, welcoming, safe? And how do you find training and professional development opportunities that are delivered from a Christian perspective, that actively help you think through what it means to be a Christian woman working or learning or serving or creating in this space?

Welcome to the Greenhouse Training Ground: our new place for Christian women to learn, grow and develop in their professional, personal and ministry lives

Come along to our launch evening on 13 June, to hear TED-style talks from each of our Greenhouse trainers. You’ll leave with tips on how to better manage your time and your finances, how to better integrate your work and your faith, how to use your strengths in your workplace and your personal life, how to be a better leader, a better writer, a better mentor, how to have difficult conversations with your kids, and more!

The Greenhouse Training Ground: training by Christian women, for Christian women. We’d love to see you, in person or online, on 13 June.

What makes for a great conversation? We’ve all experienced them – conversations with other Christians that leave us feeling encouraged, challenged, inspired and uplifted. Yet so many of us feel like our own lives are too “ordinary” to be worth talking about. How can we be better at talking about the work of God in our own lives, and hearing from others how he is at work in theirs?

For nine seasons, Jenny Salt practiced the art of conversation on her podcast Salt: Conversations with Jenny. Each episode featured a conversation with an “ordinary” Christian, sharing their experience of serving an extraordinary God. Along the way she learnt a lot about how to ask good questions, what it means to listen well, how to draw out the threads of the gospel from people’s lives, and how we can all have better conversations – conversations that encourage, challenge and grow each other in our love and service of Jesus. At this month’s Greenhouse Gathering, she will share with us some of the conversations she most treasures, and the things she picked up along the way about learning from each other.

If you're a first language English speaker, you will never have had to wonder what it feels like to only be able to read God's work in your second, third, or even fourth language. For many of our First Nations brothers and sisters, however, this is not something they have had to wonder about - it is their reality. In fact, of the 120+ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages in Australia still spoken today, only one has a full Bible translation.

At our April Greenhouse Gathering, Amy Cruickshanks will share her experiences as a translation consultant with the Bible Society Australia, working with Aboriginal Christians around the country to translate the Bible into their heart languages. She’ll talk to us about why this work is important, how it is preserving languages at risk of being lost, and how it is a way for us to love our Indigenous brothers and sisters. And she’ll share some great stories about the people she’s met and partnered with, and some amazing things she’s learnt about language, along the way! If you’re interested in hearing what God is doing to bring his word into the lives of people right here in Australia, this is an evening you won’t want to miss.

Our April Greenhouse Gathering will be a special occasion, as we celebrate with St Stephen’s Newtown their 150th anniversary. St Stephen’s was the parish church of a number of the early deaconesses in Sydney, the place where they were spiritually cared for, and out of which they cared for those around them. At this gathering, you’ll hear a bit about their stories, and how they impacted their growing city.

As Christians, we spend a great deal of time thinking about spiritual maturity, and working on strategies to become more mature in our faith. But what does it mean to be emotionally mature, and how should we think about emotional maturity as Christian people? How might growing in our emotional maturity impact how we work, how we connect with our families and friends, or how we approach the ministries we’re involved in? And how can we grow in our emotional maturity?

At our March Greenhouse Gathering, Lauren Errington, social worker and Director of the Family Systems Institute, will help us think through why emotional maturity is important, how it is different to and intersects with spiritual maturity, and how being Christian impacts how we think about this area of life. She’ll offer examples of how growing in our emotional maturity can benefit not only ourselves but those around us, particularly as it impacts our work, our ministry and our relationships. And she’ll give us concrete and practical tips on how to grow in our emotional maturity in 2024.

Christians throughout the history of the church have engaged in many and varied ways to help them live for Jesus. Many of these spiritual practices have been forgotten or misunderstood, but they provide us with a rich heritage of spiritual disciplines that help aim our love and desire towards God.

At our February Greenhouse Gathering, Di Morgan will introduce us to some of these forgotten practices, helping us explore and consider what practices might be most valuable for each of us in living wisely and faithfully in our responsibilities and relationships this year, aware of the challenges in doing so.

Our hope is that this evening will inspire us all to take realistic steps towards developing regular life practices that will help us to keep our fixed eyes on Jesus in 2024.

Have you written a book, but you have no idea where to start when it comes to getting it published? Or you have an idea for a book, and would love to get some great advice on whether it’s worth writing? Or you’re just interested in learning more about how the publishing industry works, behind the scenes? At our first Greenhouse event for 2024, you’ll have an opportunity to meet two women working at Acorn Press, Head of Publishing Susannah McFarlane and Managing and Commissioning Editor Kris Argall. They will share their experience about how to go from an idea to a published book, and Learn moreanswer any questions you have about the process. This is an amazing opportunity to connect directly with the publishers – an event not to be missed!

You’ll also have a chance to connect with other Christian women, enjoy some delicious food, and hear more about what The Greenhouse has to offer to women in different industries, workplaces, churches and stages of life. We’d love to have you join us!