It began with a simple but powerful vision: to create a safe place where people on the margins could belong. Not just attend, not just receive but truly belong, grow in faith, and discover they had something valuable to give.
This vision gave birth to the Rosebud Community Group Hub, also known as the Empowered Faith Community (EFC), an expression of the New Peninsula Baptist Church.
In its earliest days, the community was just a small home group connected through the COACH Community Mentoring program. People gathered in a living room to share life, build relationships, and explore faith together. But something meaningful was happening, something that couldn’t stay small for long.
The group quickly grew.
By 2014, under the leadership of Rosebud Campus pastor Richard Cathie and Mark Matthews, this humble gathering evolved into something more intentional: a new kind of community. The original members became the foundation of what would become the Empowered Faith Community.
From the very beginning, the approach was different. Instead of focusing on what people lacked, the community looked for what was already there – the strengths, the gifts, the potential within each person. With backgrounds in community development and social work, Mark Matthews and Toby Baxter helped shape this vision using Asset-Based Community Development principles.
The result was a community where people weren’t seen as problems to be fixed, but as people to be valued.
At Rosebud, this came to life in simple but powerful ways: sharing meals around a table, praying together, worshipping, taking communion, and creating space for everyone to participate. Everyone mattered. Everyone contributed.
And as people found belonging, something else happened they began to grow. Confidence increased. Faith deepened. Relationships strengthened. Lives changed.
What started in a living room became something much bigger.
Over the past 12 years, the Rosebud Empowered Faith Community has grown into a thriving local hub and more than that, it has become the birthplace of a movement. Today, this model has spread beyond Rosebud into other churches, denominations, and networks across Australia and even internationally.
Yet at its heart, the vision remains the same:
a community where people encounter faith, experience belonging, and discover that they have something to offer.
Because when people are seen, valued, and empowered, transformation doesn’t just happen in individuals, it spreads through entire communities.
