All-Life Collective is a Simple Church network covering a few locations across Sydney. All Life was planted by Jen Trevena, who is also the Mission Catalyst at the Baptist Association and part of the Simple Church Network Steering Committee.
After a slow start in late-2020, All-Life Family relaunched in 2021. Based on the experimental beginning, over three years of some struggling and new attempts, they still have remained micro-size gathering, they found the groups could reach out to many people in their neighborhoods. Now All-Life Family found the best way to connect on Sunday is online hybrid for people who didn’t have a home church and has no geographical limits.
All-Life Collective also includes Pilgrim, a Korean speaking house church. Pilgrim was planted this year by a couple in the Collective. The community is growing, and they have already grown from five people to twelve.
All-Life Family employs a discipleship model, focusing on equipping people as missionaries wherever they are.
Every time All-Life Collective starts a new group in their network, Jen starts it with a future potential leader in mind. As the group grows from planting and evangelism, through to a discipleship community, that potential leader is growing in and alongside the group. They are learning, training and being equipped as they see modeled what leadership of this forming community looks like.
They started Bethany Hope Family, a ministry to the homeless in Chatswood. The ministry has now moved to Parramatta, and they plan to launch another gathering in Blacktown within a couple of years. At this mobile pop-up church, they tell Bible stories and share life together. “It’s been an encouraging time of people confessing faith and having encounters with God,” reflects Jen.
Recently, All-Life Collective has expanded its ministry to include Bethany Hope Mum, a ministry to single-parent and low-income families. Every year, they raise funds for a scholarship for students starting year seven. They provide families with $500 to help pay for school uniforms, shoes and other necessary resources.
They invite scholarship recipients back each year around Mother’s Day. This year, they also invited the mothers out to a local Korean restaurant for dinner. All-Life have been running this ministry for three years. Each year God has provided the exact amount of funding needed to provide the scholarship for all of the local families that apply. In 2024, they raised enough funds for six scholarships. And exactly six students were received.
“We’re not inviting them to church or anything,” says Jen, “we’re just doing it as Christians, as the church. We just bless them. When we decide to give a scholarship, I ring and talk to them. Some want to meet in person, and most of single parents have tears in their eyes.”
For most of the families receiving the scholarship, they appreciated that they could buy new uniforms for their kids.
At their Mother’s Day dinner in May, Jen was able to share the Gospel with two of the mums. One of the mums is from Buddhist background, and the other said she was not a Christian but had recently started coming to a local church.
“As a church, we are simply connecting and blessing marginalised families,” explains Jen.
Jen looks forward to the continued growth of the Collective, and they expect to see at least one baptism in each group this year. Please pray with All-Life Collective for their group to connect with more people from non-Christian backgrounds and reach the marglinalised in their community.
