For the past decade Blacktown Anglican has been present at the council-run Blacktown Festival giving away tea, coffee and cake to those who pass by.
“We wanted to let people know that the church is part of the community," says senior assistant minister the Rev Graeme Marks. “We wanted to break down barriers because there’s lots of preconceived ideas about church – we decided we would give away tea and coffee rather than selling it, because it was more important in a tiny way to show something of God’s grace. God’s gift of salvation is free to the recipient but is costly to him.”
“We wanted to break down barriers because there’s lots of preconceived ideas about church"
Church members also give away gospel tracts, bibles, flyers and some years have handed out showbags as well. But the biggest opportunity they have to speak of Jesus is when people ask them why they’re doing it.
“In the early days we had funny comments like, ‘You’ll never make money doing this!’” Marks recalls. “It’s really hard to have gospel conversations with the community. Doing this for free gives us a soft introduction. Our approach is a soft approach where we invite people to church.”
He says it is a huge encouragement to see people in the parish work so hard at the festival to engage with the community.
“We haven’t seen a huge direct result but God is in control of all of that. Results are in his hands, not ours. We have to be faithful to the opportunities that God gives us. [Being at the festival] is successful because it is God’s people out doing God’s work, and God will bring fruit when he wishes.
“It wouldn’t be surprising if, when I get to heaven, someone taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘You don’t know who I am, but I’m here because of the Blacktown Festival’. We may not see results this side of glory and that’s okay.”
The team at Ingleburn take a similar approach with the Ingleburn Alive Festival, hosted by Campbelltown City Council. They use the day as an opportunity to engage with their local community and advertise their Year 5-6 Boys’ Club and ESL classes.
The festival fits in with the church’s four “E” strategy to engage, evangelise, establish and equip.
“We’re not setting out to do evangelism – no street evangelism or cold calling – but there are incidental Jesus conversations,” says Ingleburn’s assistant minister David Blowes. “The focus is ‘engage’. The Boys’ Club come and run one of their fun activities. This year it was making cardboard roll ninjas! It’s an easy invite and we get a chance to chat with the parents.”
“We’re not setting out to do evangelism – no street evangelism or cold calling – but there are incidental Jesus conversations,”
The festival isn’t the only way people at St Barnabas’ are reaching out to their community. Blowes says God has been incredibly kind and blessed the parish with a number of people who are not just on the lookout for opportunities to engage, but busy creating opportunities.
“One lady is an absolute gun with her neighbourhood and once every couple of months she runs a street party and tasks her husband to invite people,” he says. “She befriends the neighbours and has them over for meals. She organises a trip into the city with these people and spends time with them. She pours herself out to her neighbours with no embarrassment.
“After the street party she asked people, ‘Who wants to watch the Jesus DVD?’ For six weeks people came to her house and they watched the Gospel of John DVD. She’s clearly very intentional. If you find people like this, make sure you look after them. They’re gold.”
