Thirty nine believers from Dapto have travelled thousands of miles and combined their creative energies to reach a remote Western Australian town.
Ranging in age from an eight-year-old to a retiree in their seventies, the 39 members of Dapto Anglican Church recently travelled from the Illawarra to Carnarvon, a coastal farming community of 8,000 people 904 kilometres north of Perth.
They worked in partnership with St George's, Carnarvon, whose rector is the Rev Michael Stuart, a graduate of Moore College.
Most of the team stayed in Carnarvon for two weeks, paying their own way to fly across to Perth and hiring mini buses to travel to Carnarvon where they stayed in a caravan park.
Eight members of the team, who travelled across the country in caravans, stayed for six weeks.
They helped the church in advance planning and following up new contacts after the rest of the mission team left.
"We didn't just want to just come in for the two weeks, make some noise and then clear off," says the rector of Dapto, the Rev Stephen Semenchuk.
Together with the church, which has a membership of 20 to 30 people, they ran outreach events that included a young mother's group, high school and primary school seminars, a craft evening and trivia night and a men's breakfast.
In addition, they doorknocked the town, ran a Da Vinci Code evangelistic event the same week that the film opened and cooked eight breakfasts that combined a gospel presentation at seven caravan parks.
Stephen says that a few people became Christians at the caravan parks during that time, one of whom is a permanent resident who has since joined the church.
A kid's club held over several days was well-attended by local parents and children " numbers started at 50 and climbed to 67.
"There are only three children in the Sunday school so that's a fairly good result," Stephen says.
The large Aboriginal population of the town meant that the team members received training in Indigenous ministry upon arrival.
Stephen says the mission trip came about after the church decided it didn't just want to support its link churches through finances and prayer alone.
"We wanted to do more than send them money and pray for them," Stephen says. "That was our reason for wanting to go."
He says a mission is also "a great way to train people' that helps to build a mission-focused culture within the church and provide opportunities for training and evangelism.
"[It gave people] a new enthusiasm and perspective on what we could do in Dapto, and more zeal to mission in the future," he says.
The next step for Dapto will be to organise a local mission in 2007 or 2008 and then in three years time take a group to Indonesia.
New lessons for both churches
It was the first mission of its kind of Dapto under Stephen's leadership and also the first for Carnarvon under Michael Stuart.
Alongside Dapto, St George’s, Carnarvon is financially and prayerfully supported by Menangle Anglican Church in Sydney's South West and by St Alban's, Highgate in Perth.
The Bishop of North West Australia, David Mulready, is actively encouraging closer links between better resourced parishes in Sydney Diocese and smaller, under resourced parishes in the North West.
There have been other mission trips from Sydney and other like-minded parishes in recent times, but the latest trip to Carnarvon has been the largest and most dynamic, according to Michael Stuart.
"It was a great moral booster for our church and for other Christians in the town," Michael says.
"You're small, you're struggling and" the distances are too great," he says. "That can wear you down spiritually and emotionally.
"To have them come, you think "what commitment and what faith'. You're so thankful and grateful."
He says it a "buzz' for his church to see young people and families getting involved in ministry and see other ordinary Christians "having a go' for the Lord.
Michael says the aim for his small congregation was to pick up at least one ministry activity that began during mission.
As a result, the parish will start hosting a monthly Bible fellowship for young mothers, which was first run during the mission weeks.
Michael says he is also talking to other Christians in WA who are keen to plan a children’s mission.
"There's something there " [it's] another possibility that we're wrestling with."
The fruits of the spirit weren't the only fruit that the fellow believers had in common during the visit.
Carnarvon is famous for its banana plantations, a welcome change from the high banana prices and scarcity of the fruit in Sydney due to the devastation caused by Cyclone Larry in North Queensland.
The people of the parish presented each member of the mission team with the gift of a banana upon arrival, confirmed Stephen.
