BroadGrace Church

Our Leadership

Elders (overseers)

We currently have four elders who lead the church, under Christ:

Daniel Ernst

I am married to Joy, and father to Naomi and Abigail. I currently work 3 days a week as an IT consultant for a firm in Manchester, and serve the rest of the week as a trainee minister at Broadgrace. We moved from Manchester in 2013 to join Broadgrace with a view to training ‘on the job’ with the long term goal of serving here to spread the gospel in North Norfolk. For the last 3 years I have been studying with the Acts29 Oakhill Academy.  I am constantly amazed by the love and grace I find in Jesus, and thankful to him for my wondeful family and church family!

Matthew Hall

I am married to the lovely Sarah who puts up with me remarkably and have 3 great children Annabel, Ethan & Linya. We were among the founding members of BroadGrace and have learned to appreciate God’s grace more and more. His undeserved, unstopping, never giving up love for us that’s not dependant on anything we do, so we can enjoy every day in the present with its glimpses of Jesus in everything and look forward to living with Him in perfection later. Don’t get me wrong, life is hard - disability, business concerns & responsibilities and not enough time, to name but a few, but God is good.

John Hindley

I have been a follower of Jesus Christ since 1996. That was when I finally realised that the stories I had grown up believing were not only historically true, but true in a way that left nothing else the same. I am married to Flick, a wonderful wife, and the grateful, happy and constantly-learning father of Daisy, Eliza and Sylvia. I love Jesus, and am increasingly amazed that he would have me as his follower. I love my family, and I love the church that our Lord has put me in.

Steve Michael

I am married to Hannah and we have two fast growing-up kids - Jed and Katie. We moved to Norfolk in 2013 to be part of Broadgrace and to try to help to share the gospel in this part of the world. We love living here and being part of such a caring church family. I work as a commercial consultant and, when I'm not doing that, try to make sure the business and finance side of church is kept in reasonable shape (very ably assisted by others). I enjoy preaching occasionally, kayaking on the broads (must get out more), games on the beach and good movies.

How we see leadership

Jesus is the leader of each Christian church. He is the senior minister or pastor, the one who actively and perfectly guides and governs his people for our good and for his glory.

He does this through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is one of the three persons who make up the family of God: the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. It is this family that Christians love and worship. The Holy Spirit lives with those of us who follow Jesus, he lives in us and he guides us as we follow our King. The principle way the Holy Spirit does this is through the Bible, the collection of books that he wrote about Jesus.

To put it simply, King Jesus rules his church through his Spirit and the Bible. He does this through two groups of people – the leadership and the membership (see our membership page for more on this group).

In the Bible, leadership (or 'elders') seems to be made up of two groups of people. One group is the 'overseers' (like an overseer on a building site) and the other is the 'servants' (often left as the Greek 'deacon' in English translations of the Bible). The overseers (often called simply 'elders') are to make sure the building of the church goes up straight and their main work is praying and teaching the Bible. The servants make sure the church is looked after well and their main work is looking after everything else – the finances, administration, care of church members, and everything else that needs doing!

Both groups are humble positions of service – it is the building that will look beautiful, not the builders, and it is the master-builder, Jesus, who will get the credit, which is fair enough as he does all the work!

Our hope as a church is to grow to have a body of gentle, Spirit-filled, loving, relational, servant-hearted overseers and deacons to lead the church. This may take some time as the Lord raises people up to fulfil these responsibilities over the months and years. Our current leadership is made up of the following people.