Fruitpickers

Making Disciples in Sydney and Beyond

Story

“Therefore go and make disciples…”

Fruitpickers started as a ragtag group of Jesus-followers who felt that they were not fulfilling Jesus’ final command to his disciples.

A few years later, Fruitpickers is now a network of disciples, missionaries, teams, and churches all over Greater Sydney and surrounds with a shared vision to see a movement of disciple makers spread across Sydney and beyond.

What is a movement?

Our vision is to see a movement of disciples of Jesus in Sydney. What does this mean in practice?

A disciple-making movement happens when…

ordinary people are consistently making disciples who then make more disciples
the process is simple, reproducible, and not dependent on experts
new disciples are quickly empowered to share and lead others
obedience to what is learned is prioritized over just knowledge
the Gospel moves into new communities, rather than converts coming into Church buildings
the movement continues to expand across communities and generations
brokenness in the community is healed
most importantly, the Holy Spirit moves in power!

Christianity in Sydney

Sydney is home to more than 5 million people and is growing rapidly. Different cultures and nations are well represented in this city, with more than 43% of people born overseas.

Tragically, although Sydney has a rich faith heritage and 1,742 registered churches, Christianity in Sydney is declining at an accelerating rate. In just 5 years between 2016 and 2021, Australia as a whole lost more than 1 million Christians. This decrease occurred across most ages, with the largest decrease for young adults (18-25 years). Source.

Not only are we losing faith, but we as a city are also losing the next generation of leaders. Dwight Moody once said, “If we reach the cities, we will reach the nation. If we fail in the cities, they will become cesspools that infect the entire nation.”

Our Vision

Fruitpickers was born out of a burden to see God’s Kingdom radically unleashed, on His terms, into every family, subculture, suburb and social network in Sydney. Jesus commands us to ‘Go, and make disciples’. This is our priority, and we dream of seeing believers in every context who can reach their community and redeem their affinities by making disciples who multiply.

We have a network of disciple makers across Sydney all pursuing this same vision.

We see microchurches as the most relevant expression of church in our city. To quote our friends at KC Underground:

“Microchurches are extended spiritual families, that live in everyday gospel community, they’re led by ordinary people, not paid professionals, and they own the mission of Jesus in their network. For some, this is a very specific pocket of people or a corner of culture. For others, this is a geographic network of relationships often defined as a neighbourhood.”