Event: Combined Outdoor Carols
Church: St George's, Hurstville
When: Sunday, December 17, 6:30pm
The activities: A multi-lingual service in English and translated into Mandarin and Cantonese including singing. Features a kids talk, an evangelistic message and a Chinese choir.
Where: Lawn area at front of church building facing onto busy Forest Road.
Attendance: 300 people including children.
Elements that worked best
The rector of St George's, the Rev Allan Beaven says holding a multi-lingual event in the centre of Hurstville's large Chinese population sends a good message to the community.
"It shows that our church has a willingness to work together to promote the gospel in the community," he says.
"Because it's outdoor doors people walking past and even people in the surrounding high rise flats come out onto their balconies and watch and listen to the carols."
What could be improved?
"Because we had our 150th anniversary celebration the Sunday before which had a lot of effort from a lot of people, we didn't have a lot of time to put effort into this event," Mr Beaven says.
Mr Beaven says numbers were down by about 100 on previous years but believes it was still worth running the Carols night.
"Even though we didn't have time to promote the event as we have before we have run it for six years now and we wanted let the community know that it's Christmas and present the gospel to them."
