About Me

Impacted by Jesus with a heart to see people grow and thrive.

//About Me //

Hi, I am Ben and I am characterised by three things. I love God, I love people, and I love having fun. The most important people in my life are my family, my incredible wife Meagan, and our daughter Zaidee who we were blessed with in 2023. I love doing anything with people and do not believe that there are strangers in our world, just friends that I havn’t met yet. I get most excited by seeing people come alive when they experience the depth of God in their lives.

I am a full blown extrovert, have a healthy dose of wrestlessness, and always have a project on the go. I enjoy both playing and watching soccer, drinking filtered black coffee, and doing anything outdoors.

// Biography //

Work

I have been serving at Croydon Hills Baptist Church as a member of their Pastoral Team since 2016. Currently, my particular area of focus is on how we grow faith within the community. As part of this, I have been running an Internship Program, Deeper Faith Development Workshops, Oversight for our 6 pm Community, Coaching our Cross-Cultural Youth Workers, and writing resources to support the community.

In conjunction with this role, I am also a director of Sharing Hope which is a NFP organization supporting Karen refugees and internally displaced people on the Thai-Burma border who have experienced conflict, oppression, poverty, and disadvantage.

Before these roles, I worked for myself as an Electrician and have run my own business since 2011. I continue doing electrical work to maintain my qualifications and relationships with my contacts within the Trade Industry.

Study

Over the years I have focused on Theology, Professional Youth Work, and Professional Supervision.

  • Diploma of Youth Work - Praxis Victoria 2015

  • Bachelor of Theology - Eastern College Australia 2017

  • Bachelor of Arts Youth Studies Major - Eastern College Australia 2017

  • Grad Cert of Professional Supervision - University of Divinity 2024

  • Grad Dip of Professional Supervision - University of Divinity 2024

  • Ordination as a Reverend of the Baptist Union of Victoria - 2024

  • Masters of Theology - University of Divinity Completion Sem 1 2025

Faith Story and Motivation

I grew up moving through football club circles more than church circles. My dad was a professional Australian Rules footballer and most of my childhood was spent in football clubs or playing football. This was until I was around 15 when I started attending a youth group and became aware of who God was. For the later part of my teenage years, I was walking between both football clubs and church circles. When I was 17 I had several experiences that led me to be challenged by the question “Is God just a nice story or is it a reality that we can hold to”. This belief that God was a reality and not just a story shifted the way that I contemplated and understood the world.

Throughout my 20’s I had many experiences that shaped and impacted the way that I have understood and expressed my faith. I have been in bible studies that idolised expanding knowledge as the primary way of worshiping God and Missional Church movements that idolised living authentic lives as the way we worship God. I have been involved in both large church expressions of faith and rhythms and a micro-community that served men in prisons through sport as a way of living faith. I had incredible mentors that impacted my life and direction as well as mentors who had epic failures and negative impacts on my life and direction.

These experiences fueled within me a desire to have a genuine and authentic experience of God and to help others experience and grow in their relationship with Jesus. In all things I desire to help people become all that they can be, which I believe is when they live in alignment with who God made them be. This impacts how I pastor and walk with people as I do not want them to experience faith through a religious practice lens but rather a way of living life and seeing the world. I now understand discipleship or helping people understand and grow in their faith to be less about imparting knowledge and more about creating spaces to ask and explore questions of faith together.