“If you want a challenge, go to the top playground. Those kids are pretty rough.”

My section had been given permission to hand out invitations to mission events at the local High School during lunch. There were 10 of us and we divided into pairs. Blonde Sammy and I decided to tackle the tough nuts.

“Hey guys, how are you?” I said. They hadn’t even bothered to put out their cigarettes.

“Yeah, ok.”

“We’re working with a couple of local churches to put on some events for teens this week. We’ve got a combined youth event on this Friday evening and Wednesday night we are running a short film festival down at the Metro.”

We handed out the invitations (which looked absolutely fantastic).

“Think you might come along to one of these?” asked Sammy.

“Yeah, maybe,” they said, seeming genuinely interested.

“Ok guys, have a good day,” I said, and we moved on to the next group. And it was pretty much the same wherever we went " the kids were receptive, quite polite, seemed genuinely interested. We probably handed out 500 invitations. Everyone had lots of good conversations too.

“So, do you guys have a scripture teacher?” Sammy asked a year 10 kid called Clayton.

“We used to, but he left. He said stupid things, like you would go to hell if you weren’t a Christian.”

“Why is that stupid?”

“Well, if Jesus died for the whole world, why would only Christians go to heaven?”

Now, I’ve spent much of my spare time reading theology. Augustine, Anselm, Luther, Calvin, Baxter, Owen " you name it. The end result, of course, is that I am unable to answer this very simple question from a 15-year-old.

“Blurm,” I said, or something like it. Fortunately, Sammy has read less theology than me and spent more time talking to real people.

“That’s really good you know that Jesus died for the world. Do you ever pray or read the Bible?”

And the conversation went on. Clayton was not the sort of kid you would expect to find in church, but he seemed genuinely interested. He said he would come to one of the events.

Everyone else in the section had the same experience " the kids were very receptive to the invitations and interested in talking about spiritual matters. It was very encouraging.

There a couple of lessons I drew from the experience. Firstly, there are people out there who have a spiritual hunger; we just have to find them. Perhaps we spend too much time talking to the "hard cases'. Perhaps we need to shake the dust off our feet more often and move on to someone else.

The other lesson " mission skills are not going to be learnt in a classroom. You actually have to be out there doing it. This week has been so valuable because it has been a week "at the coalface'. And if we are going to share the gospel with Sydney, it is not the theologians (God bless them) who will show us the way " it is those evangelists who are already out there doing the work and seeing fruit. They are the ones we need to listen to.

More than ever I’m convinced there is a harvest to be had…