Overview of 2023
I (Angus) started the year as Assistant Pastor of Bethel Christian fellowship. This ended in March and we joined CCCVaT and became an incorporated association. Then we received a vision of a community centre run by Christians and began the Bus Stop Cafe at Corio Christian Centre. Overall this year we have had 2300 meaningful Christian engagements with different people in Corio and Norlane. This is 53% more than 2022! Sixty percent of these engagements were with children! We employed Richard Gregorio and partnered with Mainly Ministries to get a grant to host Mainly Play in 2024. We have continued with an executive prayer group meeting on Zoom every Friday to prayerfully sift through new ideas coming in and pray for revival. We have a wider prayer team of 37 people who receive this monthly blog and specific prayer requests and praise points. We have tried to position Little Miracles Community Inc as an outreach team anyone can fund who cares about growing evangelism in Geelong and we are very confident in God for a busy and fruitful new year and for the evidence of revival to continue to grow in 2024. We also launched a rock band to support Pop Up Church and had several camping trips to recuperate.
Pop Up Church
What a blessing Pop Up Church has been! Over 700 people have been engaged with this gutsy outdoor testimony of God’s goodness, love and power to change lives. Our Christmas event was rained out, but our friends from One in Christ were outstanding! The climax of the event was their Hip Hop Dance for Jesus.
Also, during 2023, our videographer friend Olly Allars made THIS VIDEO about Pop Up Church to help popularise this awesome outreach concept.
Bus Stop Cafe “Christmas Quiz”
Praise God for our Christmas celebration at the last Bus Stop Cafe for Term 4! It was a dream come true. Through our intimate prayer times, God had given us a vision of preparing the school children for a Christmas quiz four weeks prior. So we gave the children learning sheets every week. On the last day, some kids came in and asked, “Can we do the Christmas Quiz today?”. We were so thrilled.
Once the kids got their hot chocolates, they went into the sanctuary where we had prepared a track with four stations. At the first station, Christine explained that Isaiah and Micah had foretold Jesus’ birth 700 years before he was born. The kids got a lolly and went to the next station where Nilla and Noelle told about the Angel Gabrielle coming to Mary and they got another lolly. And so on. Twenty five children completed the quiz and each receive a small bible and Simone wrote their name inside.
Next year we plan to open Bus Stop Cafe every day in Terms 1 & 2 and focus on loving and serving the families in a variety of ways to lead them to Jesus! We’ll experiment with sewing, cooking, computer access, table tennis, jamming, chess etc!
This video was made for us by Olly Allars from Trust the Vision.
Carol Singing – A bunch of little miracles
We’re seeing more and more little miracles, such as the story of how this carol singing came about. I (Angus) attended the regular Wednesday Bethel prayer meeting (the church at which I once was the Assistant Pastor). It was 2 weeks before Christmas. The new assistant pastor and I got into a groove with our prayers for revival, for thirstiness for the people, for the gospel to go out and then for us to take the gospel out. Then we started brainstorming how we could do a carol singing before Christmas. Very unusual behaviour – like an act of God! Then out of heaven, we came up with a plan to get permission to sing carols at Corio Village and recruited a crew of carollers from three groups plus including Anthony Aitken, the deputy mayor of Geelong. Around 40 shoppers lingered to enjoy the music as we worshipped the newborn king! Praise God for spontaneous evangelism!
Leaders’ Party
On New Year’s Eve we hosted a house party for our frontline workers, executive prayer team, wider local pray-ers, new-comers and visitors. We had a lovely BBQ, worship time, prayer time and discussion of the plans for 2024. Please join me in thanking God for over 2000 meaningful Christian engagements in 2023 and please pray for increased wisdom, fruitfulness and revival in 2024.
Rigours of Leadership
You probably know it requires more resilience than expected to do what we do, but you may not know how many times I seem to have been rejected. Maybe it is not rejection, just people moving on. I don’t really know… Either way, I won’t stop finding effective ways to bring the gospel to the poor in 3214. I’m so glad we have built up everything we have and 2024 should be the best year so far.
This month, we say goodbye to Richard Gregorio from employment with Little Miracles and from living in a caravan in our backyard. He has accepted an internship with Dismas, an effective, life-changing ministry for those coming out of prison. We give thanks for Richard’s amazing ability to engage outsiders in positive, natural conversations about spirituality and then to connect them to appropriate Christian churches and support people. Bless you mate in the season ahead. We trust God for provision for our substantial plans for 2024.
Thank you
Thank you for praying as we pioneer outreach in Corio and Norlane. We have 40,000 people in our suburb and in the last 5 years we have “reached” just 3200. One key component of fruitful yield is extensive seed-sowing. We all have to play our part. You are praying, we are sowing seeds and empowering frontline workers. We need to increase our effectiveness in the quantity and quality of seed-sowing and create methods for discipling and empowering leaders in the years ahead with you.
Bless you Angus & Christine
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