Spring has sprung and all around my neighborhood houses are for sale. The Jacaranda comes into flower and the Auction Signs go up. The open for inspection houses become the third space for us to meet the neighborhood. Saturday's Price Guide in Domain is compulsory reading. School gate conversations turn to mortgages and rate rises. Those that bought in years ago are smug.

Soon the removalist trucks will block the streets. Our kids will try and read the truck's contents for signs of new kids and new friends.

Australians move a lot - on average once every six years. The ABS says that in 2007-08, 43 percent of Australians reported moving in the previous five years. During this period, 19 percent of Australians moved once, 8 percent moved twice and 15 percent moved three or more times.

Moving and ministry

In our parish, older people are selling and moving into assisted care, and families with young children are buying in.  (The Parish statistics we got from Anglicare for Connect 09 give a much more detailed breakdown of these movements.)

This means if you are in a parish with 18,000 people then each year around three thousand new people will move in!

That's a significant number of people. It's even more significant if you accept the anecdotal evidence that this group is more likely to make new or renewed connection with a church.  If you had just 1 percent of them joining your church then you would see 30 people join each year.

What do you do for people who are new to the area?

Here are some suggestions:

1. Pray for them - ask some good pray-ers at church to take on prayer for this group for the spring/summer.

2. Encourage people at church to be the welcoming face for the new arrivals - invite them to a BBQ but invite them to church as well.

3. Have someone at church who takes on the responsibility to gather information about new arrivals to the area - a retired real estate agent would be perfect! You can't make good plans without this information.

4. Create welcome packs for new arrivals - a welcome letter inviting them to church, some home baked biscuits, information on the local area, discount vouchers to local cafe, Essential Jesus etc

5. On top of normal welcoming at church, plan for the larger number of summer arrivals

6. Make sure your signs/website/newsletter make sense to new arrivals

We're not doing all these things at the moment but see it as an easy and important area to reform. What else might work?

One final thought - don't forgot those with you who are moving. Are you helping them to link up with a good church if they are moving too far to keep coming to you?