MBM Rooty Hill has continued to grow the number of new Christians, with 2017 seeing more than 90 new conversions in the church.

The leader of mission at MBM, Dave Jensen, says one of the most heartening things about that number is the mix of ages in the group. “As a rough number, half of those people are adults, about 30 per cent are teens or youth, and the other 20 per cent are children,” he says.

“I think two of the reasons for the number of adults is, firstly, because of the kind of church we are. We do have a fringe of people who attend, maybe even attend regularly, but may not be converted. So we don’t assume that everyone in our pews is a Christian.

“Secondly, Sydney in general – but western Sydney in particular – has seen such a huge influx of refugees and immigrants in the past few years, and there are second- and even third-generation kids from other countries who have simply never heard the gospel. So there is a huge number of people out there waiting to hear the gospel from Christians.”

One of the new converts is Warren Kuschert. Mr Kuschert says that while he’s long had some understanding of God and the gospel, he spent much of his time running away from God, and only recently came to understand what has been done for him in Christ at MBM.

“I’ve been in churches before – I was actually at St John’s, Minchinbury before coming to Rooty Hill – and only ended up here because I knew people,” Mr Kuschert says.

“It took me a long time, but some experiences I had earlier [last] year convinced me I was tired of running and of sinning, and that came with a real understanding for the first time about what has been done for me by Christ’s sacrifice. It’s been a transformation for me to not run my own life anymore, but to follow Jesus.”

Mr Kuschert is currently involved in growth groups, and also helps mow the church lawns. According to Mr Jensen, MBM has what it calls an “evangelism pathway” that seeks to guide people all the way from seekers to disciples – disciples who themselves invest into others on the pathway.

“We try to be really intentional about that, and we do also want to be a church that is somewhere both non-Christians and Christians want to be and want to invest their time in,” he says.

“We don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive, and we work really hard to ensure not only that we offer solid Bible teaching and spiritual encouragement to Christians with us, but that we also pursue evangelism as much as possible, in as many ways as possible.”