New Things are Happening
Preparing for Christmas
Society gives us the best opportunity for evangelism as Christmas is celebrated widely in Australia. Our job is to make the real story of Christmas relevant and what better way to do that than by loving the poor and the outcasts with a banquet, worship, prayer, drama and friendship.
These fine lads have letterbox-dropped 1200 flyers for our TWO CAROLS EVENTS for December. We’ve put up posters, written chalk messages on the concrete and sent SMSs to stake holders.
We even painted an advertisement on our fence which opens onto the local park!
We have a formidable team, a formidable plan and are supported by an army of intercessors, well-known in heaven. In fact, a new partner, Richard, hosted a Prayer & Fasting for these events for with some mighty prayer warriors. I’m more than excited! I’ll let you know how it all goes at the end of December.
Second Men & Boys Bonfire Night
Last month a Men & Boys night somehow evolved, so we tried again this month and invited women and girls, but the only woman who came was Christine. We were amazed that we have an unlikely combination of Christian men and non-Christian boys.
This November event was our last for the year and it was wonderful weather and it was a lovely night of fellowship, cooking, chopping wood, yarning, kayaking and creating a core group upon which we could build things in future. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking an ‘introduction to boxing’ night, might be great in the new year – please pray for guidance and maximum fruitfulness.
We will rest over January and PRAY FOR GUIDANCE as we want to do the God things, not the good things.
Leading Church for two weeks
I’m thrilled to have been ‘acting senior pastor’ for the last two weeks while Paul Hills was away during November. Nothing went wrong. We actually had a super time with one new decision for Christ and some solid signs of health, love and faith. I was also on the Radio 96Three in November talking about OUTREACH to the poor.
Pop-Up Church
November Pop-Up Church was amazing. About 60 people came and there was so much love shared and people made friends and the Lord was glorified. This is a truly amazing ministry as it requires the Christians to be warriors, to step up and love the locals. It makes evangelism front and centre for church culture. It brings evangelists from many churches together and we are seeing lovely results.
Evaluating our Christian Playgroup
Today, as we near the end of the year, I want to discuss with you the future of Playgroup. As I see it, we have several options for next year: Stop the playgroup, change it to once a fortnight, or continue weekly as is, or continue with some changes and increase the publicity.
The reason I’m sharing this discussion is because attendance has recently fluctuated wildly and right now we average between 2 or 3 kids per week. So I’m evaluating our future options and the purpose of this blog is to share the journey of mission here in Corio. Rather than pretend it’s all simple, I want to work through the issues with you.
Jesus was happy serving the ones and twos. So shouldn’t we be also? But it certainly feels strange when we have four leaders, one parent and one child. Should we stop because numbers are low?
If you’ve been with me for a while, you might remember our blog last August which relates a powerful supernatural phenomenon. After several weeks of very low attendance, we asked the key christian women in the group, our church leaders and intercessors and also those following this blog to PRAY for God’s clear direction. Then, for the next three weeks we had over 24 people attend! When I asked them why they came, they said: “God told me to come”. At that time we turned up the spiritual temperature as God had said. And a wonderful new leader also joined at this time. But then attendance plunged again to 10 in total which means about 2 or 3 kids.
So I’m really not sure how to interpret all this. From a purely natural perspective, our area needs a Christian playgroup for migrants to help the poor get a leg up into education and to create viable early faith experiences. So we should keep going to fulfil our mandate to serve the poor.
Or we could say there are too few people to justify the work. Or I could say, I’m getting tired of it given all the other ministry responsibilities I have. Or we could say God will provide new leaders and we should keep going to serve the few. We could turn up the entertainment value with cooking, painting or even Gymbaroo to be the best playgroup around. We could do some research into what other options people have and we could increase our advertising among the churches in the area.
Overall I trust God to lead us, but I also believe we get stronger and wiser if we embrace the struggle of evaluating the issues, the options and the value given and generated as best we can. I’ve seen God close profitable doors on me and then open more profitable doors later on. I also pray frequently for maximum fruitfulness so we may need to drop this for something more fruitful.
I leave this with you for now and ask you to pray for God’s guidance as this is a living, breathing thing. Finally, our new helper has suggested we schedule a Prayer and Fasting for playgroup direction between Christmas and New Year. We will make this a big deal and get everyone involved and pray and fast together for God’s guidance in all our outreach ministries.
Thank you for being part of the journey 🙂
This photo is from our last playgroup for 2022 where the women expressed their gratitude for our kindly love.