Free fun, food and friendly evangelism were on offer last Saturday as Blacktown Anglican sought to connect with its community.

Christ Church, Blacktown held its first ever Family Festival from 10am to 3pm last Saturday as part of the church's lead-up to Connect09.

The church offered a range of free food, fun and services including car washes, sausage sandwiches, espresso coffee, face and plaster painting for the kids, and live music provided by two bands made up from musicians at the church.

People trained in personal evangelism engaged guests in conversation and other members distributed brochures with information about the church, evangelistic tracts and gospels.

The Family Day's greatest success was in breaking down barriers between the church members and locals, according to the rector of Christ Church, Blacktown, the Rev Michael Robinson.

"People were surprised that everything was free. One man said, "Is the car wash really free? You won’t make any money that way!'" Mr Robinson reports.

"Maybe we started to change his perception of the church as giving something away rather than always asking for money. We pray that this might make him more open to the idea that the good news of salvation is free!"

Parishioners Tanya McNamara and Jen Pratt were part of a team of seven who washed 30 cars on the day.

“People expected there to be a catch,” says Tanya. “They were asking, ‘Do we have to pay to get in?’.”

About 50 of Christ Church, Blacktown's members from all four Sunday services including some from the Sudanese congregation staffed the various activities.

"God was very gracious to us by providing the right number of visitors throughout the day," says Christ Church, Blacktown's Connect09 ambassador Graeme Marks.

"We were pleased with the involvement of members, but next time we will need more hands on deck as more people turn up," Mr Robinson says.

Fun leads to connection

The festival also included a “test your strength” machine, on which church members placed signs up the scale such as “kind to cats”, “giving to charity”, “going to church” and “heaven” at the top.

"It was supposed to be set to make it impossible to hit the bell at the top - but some tough guys were able to hit the bell anyway," Mr Robinson admits.

"So much for the sermon illustration about not being able to get to heaven by your own effort!"

However, there was a good flow of people from Scripture classes, the church's day care centre, play group, those who received info in their letterbox and those who had been invited by neighbours and friends, says Mr Robinson.

While he says the event also helped familiarise locals with the church property, he hopes Family Day grows beyond the capabilities of the church grounds.

"I suppose it helps people know where we are and maybe they will have happy associations with our property, making it easier when they come to church," he says.

"Long term, we hope this event will be too big for our church property and we’ll have to take it to the public park over the road!"

The event set a new standard for outreach events run by the church.

"I don’t think we’ve done anything on this scale that was totally free " just giving something to the community with no strings attached, other than a warm invitation to come to church," Mr Robinson says.

"Of course, with all such activities we keep in the forefront of our minds that we are connecting in order to share the word of God. Without that last part, we are wasting our time."

The connection value of the event is already being seen with one family attending a Sunday service at Christ Church, Blacktown the next day.

"Mum and the kids were going shopping. One of the kids heard the music and dragged the others in. They stayed for two to three hours," Mr Robinson says.

"They were pleased to find a church that was kid-friendly, and enjoyed the service the next morning. They’ve all asked for name tags."

Looking to the future

Mr Robinson says the church already has another large outreach event planned for December with Carols in the Car Park.

"This is an expansion of our annual Carols for Kids - a joint venture of the church with our day care centre," he says.

Mr Marks says it was hard to estimate numbers as no official count was made with people coming and going all day, however, he gives the following numbers as a guide.

"We gave out 253 sausage sandwiches and served around 300 cups of coffee. I'm not sure what that tells us other than there seemed to be plenty of people," he says.

Mr Marks and the leadership team will be conducting a review of the event soon.

"We want to make sure that we repeat the things that worked well but adjust things that didn't for next time to make the event better," he says.

"One of our values as a church is "simplicity with excellence'. We do the best we can with what God has given us. Mediocrity does not honour God. We can always improve and we pray God might be pleased to use us to glorify himself."

PHOTOS: Graeme Marks