In an ever-changing world, we need to be world changers. -Kyle Self

Kyle and Tina Self are the Senior Pastors of World Changers Church Gold Coast (WCCGC) in Australia. Their vision is to spread the Gospel of Grace to every corner of Australia, ultimately freeing people from their hurts, habits, and hang-ups with a revelation of God’s favor on their lives. They have pastored for over 17 years and have a collective wealth of experience and knowledge across multiple platforms, such as evangelizing, pastoring, overseeing pastors, and rebuilding, restructuring, and relaunching ministries. They are world-renowned conference and itinerant speakers. Their heart is to partner with the community in Australia with love, passion, and purpose to inspire change.

Prior to COVID-19, they were renting a school hall, but during the pandemic, WCCGC essentially didn’t have a building. The Selfs had to do everything from their home; they turned their garage into a studio so they could continue to get the Word out through live broadcasts. The ministry had both a 10:00 A.M. and a 6:00 P.M. session daily; these times were focused around pointing people to identity, who Christ is, and how they could all trust in Him and His protection during this time. “There are countless stories of people who said that if they didn’t have that, they don’t know how they would have gotten through the first period of uncertainty with COVID,” said Jeremy Duxfield, a WCCGC volunteer. “The church brought a solidness and certainty to their lives they could rely on, receiving encouragement, the Word of God, and even communion together as a family. The Bible talks about unity; in this moment, they were able to come together, united and trusting God. The pastors made that available for people.” When some of the COVID restrictions lifted, WCCGC members began gathering in home groups. Now that the country is more open and since they’ve worked out registration and QR codes, they are able to gather in a movie theater with comfortable seats and a huge screen.

Impact of COVID-19

“The pandemic shaped and changed how we do church. The whole reason that we came here to Australia was for church and a mission work. We had to reach inside, and seek the wisdom of God to figure out how to virtually do missions, how to virtually do church, how to virtually support families,” said Pastor Kyle.

WCCGC was impacted by the global COVID-19 pandemic in many of the same ways as ministries around the world, but one area of significance was mental health. At the onset of the pandemic, Dr. Creflo Dollar began to teach about controlling emotions, fear, and even began daily confessions over social media to keep congregants engaged and encouraged. “We took his lead of doing daily confessions and started doing the same thing twice a day here. We would come on in the morning and at night. We saw a massive increase in the need for supporting people in their mental health during that time,” said Pastor Kyle. During that season, the ministry was able to make over 100 contacts with individuals through Messenger, email, phone calls, and WhatsApp on suicide prevention and mitigation. People from all over the world were watching their videos. A doctor called from Germany after watching the Facebook livestream to share that he had found purpose to live after contemplating suicide. Pastor Kyle also went on a local radio station, Juice 107.3, to do a segment on biblical insights on mental health every Monday. God’s grace opened an opportunity through the daily confessions and weekly messages to allow His message of hope to continue to move forth, even though the church doors were closed.

Marriages were severely impacted over this past year, as well. There was a lot of marriage breakdown and a lot of potential divorces in the community. Pastor Kyle and Pastor Tina stepped in and facilitated separations that became violent and unhealthy. They’re not vigilantes going into these situations, but have made contact with the local council and gained support for their efforts in this realm. They now have a healthy system where the ministry workers are able to remain safe in these situations. Pastor Tina is involved on the front-end to help identify domestic violence, then to provide court support, and facilitate restorations. Pastor Kyle steps in with the men, to minister grace and make sure everyone walks away from the situation whole, healthy, and safe.

Along with other communities worldwide, Australia experienced a shortage in hand sanitizer and toiletries. The ministry found distributors who were withholding toilet paper from the public in order to distribute it to charities; so WCCGC was able to distribute toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and toiletries to about 100 households in the church, as well as about 30 homes outside the church, a foster care home, and four local businesses. Without those supplies, the business would have had to shut down, so they were given three months of hand sanitizer and supplies to help ensure they could stay open. During this time, families were finding it hard to find meat and basic groceries. Through connections with distributors, WCCGC was able distribute care packages to families, including several who had special needs children. When Australia was on a complete lockdown, Pastor Tina would set up a box outside her home every day from which people in the community were able to take toilet paper, cans of tuna, and other necessities, including a Bible.

Unlike in the U.S., laws and regulations in Australia prohibit entities outside of local health departments from doing COVID-19 testing; nevertheless, the ministry found ways to sow hope in the surrounding community. The city of Melbourne was on complete lockdown for seven months and a local nursing home was struggling as half of the staff had COVID-19. Two nurses left their jobs elsewhere to go and provide helping hands for the residents for several months. God protected them during this time and they did not contract COVID-19 as they cared for the elderly in the absence of other staff. When they returned home, they let the WCCGC community group know that they were in need of a vehicle. Eight days later, someone contacted the ministry to sow a car. Then, the ministry was able to provide a car for these missionary nurses.

Christmas 2020

WCCGC greatly scaled down their Christmas outreach last year. They considered putting off their efforts until 2021, but people sowed into their Care for Kids mission efforts without them advertising it at all. Typically, they’d give gifts to approximately 120 kids through the Ronald McDonald house, and provide for a major need for one family. Due to COVID restrictions, the ministry could not come in contact with the children at the Ronald McDonald house last Christmas, so Pastor Tina contacted a local chaplain to see if there were any families who would be interested in WCCGC adopting them for Christmas. She was given the name of a single mother with three special needs children, and they decided to sponsor the family during the holidays. The mother was scheduled to have surgery on her hand just a few days before Christmas, and it appeared that there would be very little Christmas for her children. The family television was broken, and the floor had turned into a coloring book for the children. WCCGC provided meals for the entire week she was recovering from her surgery, replaced the broken television, and provided gifts for the children. She and her children’s caretaker were both amazed at the kindness of strangers. The mother was receptive to prayer for her family and for healing in her hand. Many times, we focus on volume and quantities to define impact, but Jesus recognized the great value in reaching one lost soul. “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” (Luke 15:7, NIV).

To read more about WCCGC’s community outreach, disaster response, and social justice efforts, come back next month for Part 2!