For One1Seven church in Redfern, Moore Missions started off being low on the agenda for the year.

“We’re a very small church," says One1Seven senior pastor Matt Johnson. "I just wasn’t sure that we had enough going on to keep a Moore College team occupied for the week. As a student, I wanted the missions to be a good experience where I could learn lots of different things and have a lot to go to. I just wasn’t sure that we’d generate enough activity.”

After Moore kept asking if Redfern wanted to come on board, though, One1Seven brought a team to the inner city suburb, with the team also spending part of their time in Surry Hills with St Michael’s Anglican.

For a new church located across the road from what has previously and infamously been termed the ‘suicide towers’ in Redfern, having extra hands around the place has proved to be a great help.

“It’s good, it’s been working out fantastically,” says Mr Johnson. “I’ve actually rented the front of a pizza shop down at Crown Square that doesn’t open until five o’clock at night, so we’ve rented that during the day, we have a proper coffee shop set up and are doing a lot of walk up. Our church is kind of tucked away in a back street, so we’ve been trying to do some profile building.

“We’ve also been going into the housing commission buildings across the road, last night we had a women’s event called ‘Death by Chocolate, Life through Jesus’, playing on the ideas of Easter and chocolate fountains.”

Another big event coming up for the team is an evangelism night Friday for the local housing commission community. The church typically hosts a soup kitchen for on average 60 people in the local area, and the Moore Mission team is going to help run the Friday event by sharing the gospel and answering questions people may have.

The church, which runs out of the old St Saviour’s building in Redfern, started as a small core of about a dozen people, so profile raising and reaching out to people in the immediate area has been a big part of the operation of the church recently.

Mr Johnson also says he hopes the experience in Redfern will be helpful for the team, and will aid them in future ministry.

“They’re a really good team,” he says. "I think it’s a good experience for a lot of them, to have housing commission exposure, it’s such a diverse demographic here. I think it’s stretched them, maybe freaked a few of them out knocking through the towers during the week. It’s been good.”

Plug directly into the Missions feed at mission.moore.edu.au