A Pastor’s Story

Rick Brewer

Richard Mark Allan Brewer is one of the Location Pastors of Faith Family Church, currently leading the Taree location alongside his wife, Jenny, and two of their five children. Rick is also a member of Faith Family’s Committee of Management, the group that oversees all churches and portfolios across our network. Previously to their time in Faith Family, Rick and Jenny were pastors of the Citipointe North location, having pastored in and around that network for over 15 years. Rick was heavily involved in the development of Citipointe’s location model and has continued to share his knowledge and expertise in the development of Faith Family’s location model.

Born in Redcliffe, QLD, Rick grew up in a difficult environment, moving out of home at 16 and moving in with his close friend, Phil Campbell. Rick and Jenny met at youth group (where Rick professed his love almost immediately) and would eventually go on to marry Jenny in July of 1990 in Brisbane, surrounded by 100 of their closest friends. Throughout high school, Rick professed to being “not super academic”, vowing to never go on to any form of tertiary study - this would maintain until Rick’s second job, as he and Phil went into banking for separate organisations after being painter’s labourers for some time. While working for ANZ, Rick would return to continue study at a tertiary level, in addition to when Rick eventually went to bible college for further study and when he chose to pursue his MBA, majoring in Leadership and Marketing with a Principal’s Recommendation.

Since early on in his various roles and jobs, Rick has shown a strong value for developing healthy systems. Coupled with a natural entrepreneurial spirit, Rick recalls a time during his transition from youth ministry back into the workforce where he worked with a friend in their company, fulfilling a Customer Service role and dealing with difficult clients:

“While in this role, I would look at how we were outsourcing, which led to me getting my real estate licence, then my agency licence - this led to us developing our own real estate agency, our own property development company and our own mortgage development company; I went from being a Customer Service Officer to the General Manager of the company in 18 months. We went from turning over $200k - $300k to $400M in just over a couple of years. Staff changes, too - my receptionist was a terrible receptionist, but became head of our Finance department, as she was much better suited to that (but was just in the wrong spot for her giftings). They called me “General Manager”, but I was just “pastor”. I just pastored them exactly the same as I would in the church and developed them and helped them achieve their goals, because if they achieved their goals, we were achieving ours. We were able to develop a school for people in a refugee camp near Mae Sariang, Thailand - fully paid for the whole school, education, uniforms, teachers, food, everything; fully paid for by our business. Did that for a number of years, then came back to full time ministry.”

Since moving to Taree in 2019, Rick says he and his family have been able to be “found faithful” in their ministry; moving from a growing and bustling situation where they had several pastors under their leadership and a strong portfolio to a location that, at the time, had immense pressure and internal struggle and debt was not “an ideal career move”, but Rick expresses that this has never been about about career development: “It comes back to that identity - if you’re trying to “make it”, this is not the route you’d take; as a career move, I’ve probably made a wrong move, but that’s the wrong way to look at it - you’re not looking at the big picture. I am not interested in building something for myself. I am massively interested in our Movement; I love it, I love the body of Christ. People get upset with the Church - I’ve never been upset with the Church; I’ve been upset with people, but I love the body of Christ. I want to leave it better, more robust, more diverse, more in-tune, but I recognize that we need to be careful with the model of church that we do or we’ll run out of time and this model will be superceded like lots of models before us - the Wesley brothers were revolutionary, but now that church is basically non-existent; Martin Luther and the Lutherans are similar and sometimes these things do have a shelf life, but if that is not God’s intention, then I think we are to continue to grow and develop and be relevant. I know I have a set amount of years to train up and leave this place better, not to look after myself - my priority is developing a model that is replicable, sustainable, survivable and also robust enough to pivot when needed. Regional Australia has all these churches, all these ageing pastors, but no plan - we need a plan to continue to develop the church of God so that it’s strong and solid and so that we can provide a future for our children’s children, just like the Bible has said to do.”

Rick is passionate about growing and adapting for the sake of caring for others and developing people; he is a man of consistency and faith and is looking forward to what is to come for Faith Family in 2022!