Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia - Organisation

Organisation

The PCEA’s supreme assembly is a Synod which meets annually hosted by one of the congregations. The PCEA has a long-standing arrangement enabling ready interchange of ministers with the Free Church of Scotland, and is a member of the International Conference of Reformed Churches (ICRC). More recently, interchange of ministers with the Reformed Churches of New Zealand (2006) and with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the US (2007), both also ICRC members, has been approved. The PCEA does not operate its own theological college, but has trained ministers in the Free Church of Scotland College, Edinburgh, at the Reformed Theological College, Geelong, and, more recently, in the training institutions of the mainline Presbyterian Church. In Victoria it has friendly relations with the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Australia which has congregations at Geelong, Frankston and MacKinnon.

The current communicant membership (31/12/2011) is 530 with a total community of about 1000. At the same date there were 12 ministers in pastoral charges and another seconded to provide leadership for Australian Indigenous Ministries (formerly Aboriginal Inland Mission). A significant work is has developed among Sudanese refugees in Melbourne, with one minister from the Nuer people of South Sudan.

The main centres are:

• Northern Presbytery: Brisbane (Woolowin); Northern Rivers (Maclean, Grafton); Hastings (Wauchope, Port Macquarie)
• Central Presbytery: Manning (Taree); Hunter (Queens Avenue, Cardiff, Raymond Terrace); Sydney: St Georges, 201a Castlereagh Street, Mount Druitt, Bexley North
• Southern Presbytery: Geelong (Newcomb), Melbourne - Knox (Wantirna), All Nations (Mulgrave); Carrum Downs; Narre Warren; Ulverstone, Tasmania