Kat Elliott brings a rich background in education, the arts and international life to her new role as Families, Youth & Children’s Ministry Facilitator for the Anglican Diocese of Adelaide.
Kat Elliott is less than two months into her new role — and she is busy making connections.
She is the first person to hold the newly created position of Families, Youth & Children’s Ministry Facilitator for the Anglican Diocese of Adelaide. Her brief is both broad and responsive: to support parishes that are already doing strong work with young people and families, and to come alongside communities that are looking to grow in that area.
“I’m coming in with an open mind,” she says. “There are some communities doing fantastic work and I’m looking to learn from everyone I’m meeting.”
Kat brings to the role a career that has taken many turns — all of them pointing, it seems, toward this moment. She grew up in a family shaped by diplomacy and movement. Her father served in a series of Australian embassies and Kat’s childhood unfolded across Bangkok, Dhaka, Warsaw, Paris, Rome and Algiers. She went on to study at universities in New South Wales and Victoria before finding her way to Adelaide in the mid-1990s.
Her first connection to the city was through the arts — she arrived to work on a production of The Marriage of Figaro with Co-opera, a company dedicated to nurturing emerging opera singers. But it was teaching that became her calling.
Over the years she built a distinguished career in education, with a love of drama, Italian and history, eventually serving as Deputy Principal at both Pedare Christian College and St. Martin’s Lutheran College.
Now, stepping into this diocesan role, she describes it as “a new chapter” — a chance to see things from the other side of the fence. One avenue she is keen to explore is how to build on the strong connections between the diocese and school chaplains, as they often have deeply engaged young people and well-established family networks in their communities.
With children of her own ranging in age from 17 to 24, Kat can see opportunities for the church to speak the language of young people — with music, expression, and even structures of community life to enhance the ways we can engage people of all ages.
“I believe in the power and the beauty of the church as it is,” she says, “but I also recognise that what I experience now is not the same as what was happening 200 years ago.”
And so, her approach is deliberately adaptive. Rather than wanting to impose a single model across the diocese, she is focused on meeting each community where it is — recognising that the challenges and opportunities facing a growing multicultural parish will be quite different from those facing a smaller, older congregation. Kat is looking for ways to support connections between parishes and communities, building on strengths and sharing resources across geographic and demographic boundaries.
“Every area is unique and every community is unique,” she says. “Tabula rasa — we’ve got a complete fresh start to say: what’s the potential? What’s possible?”
A member of St. Jude’s Brighton, Kat lives in Adelaide with her husband and three children. Her family are in country Victoria, but she is clearly at home here — and ready to get to work.
“I’m looking forward to being present in people’s communities across the Diocese and learning how we can best work together.”
