Seasoned army chaplain Andrew Grills will exchange camo pants for board shorts next year as he and his family move to the coastal city of Geelong to plant a church with Melbourne’s City on a Hill.

Andrew’s been based at Kapooka, the army’s training centre in Wagga Wagga NSW for the last few years, reaching out to new recruits with the gospel. During his time as a Padre, he’s witnessed a number of what he’d describe as mini-revivals, as young men have come to him desperate to give their lives to God.

At one Sunday service, Andrew recalls around 35 recruits expressing a desire to come to Christ – an experience which put a fire in his belly to see the same kind of response elsewhere.

In 2013 Andrew, his wife Danna and four kids will move to Geelong, a city perched on Port Phillip Bay, 75 kilometres south west of Melbourne, with the hope of sharing the same message with its 220,000 residents.

“The future is exciting; it’s a little bit intimidating. At the same time it’s exhilarating, because having seen God work in the past and a little bit of what he can do –I know it’s not restricted to the army, I know he wants to reach people everywhere,” says Andrew.

Geelong’s growing at a rate of two per cent a year due to the rising cost-of-living in Melbourne. It’s an ideal location for a church plant. City on a Hill itself was planted just five years ago by Guy Mason with the support of St Jude’s Anglican Church in Carlton.

Since it began, City on a Hill has moved from a brewhouse at Docklands, to two congregations meeting in a cinema and a space under serviced apartments in the heart of the city. Now independent and growing rapidly, the church is ready to support a plant of its own.

Geelong has number of strong churches and is home to the Reformed Theological College, but City on a Hill believes you can’t have too many good churches in a growing city.

“Even if we’re going to stay still with the current percentage of Christians in Geelong, we need more churches,” says Andrew.

“And we don’t want to just stay still, we want to go forward.”

To hear more of Andrew’s story and the vision for City on A Hill, Geelong, watch this video: