Story by Dorothy Roberts, Door of Hope Christian Church
Dorothy Roberts has been in ministry at Door Of Hope Christian Church in Launceston, Tasmania for 13 years, overseeing the Generation Ministry, with a demographic spanning Birth to Young Adults.
Door Of Hope Christian Church moved to our current location, a 100 year old woollen factory that has 9 acres of building under roof, 20 years ago. We have developed this facility to be a dynamic community centre that sees approximately 30,000 people move through the building every month.
In 2015 our church articulated 3 major goals that would move us towards the vision God had given us to be a door of hope, through Jesus Christ, in a fragile and uncertain world. These formed our 2020 Vision document and our focus was to grow Hope, grow Invitations, and grow Mercy (H.I.M). As we progressed through the years it was clear that growing our peoples’ capacity to share Jesus was a challenge. An encounter with Power To Change introduced Shift m2M thinking into our Generation ministry and we recognized this was the critical piece we had been looking for to achieve our goals.
It was evident that God was going ahead of us, providing us with the resources we needed to do His work. The leadership group and eldership board embraced the framework and we launched into training our ministry leaders in Shift m2M and training our key influencers to understand the lifestyle concepts from MyFriends.
The invitation to join the Summit towards the end of 2022 happened at a significant moment for our church as we entered a season of restructuring leadership, a critical move towards further growth and increased momentum. The opportunity to participate in a global community of disciple makers located at significant biblical sites was an encouragement to the ministry team that God was with us.
This experience has been a “mountain top” moment that I have been able to bring back to our church leadership in a detailed report which will inform our decision-making process. I encountered a powerful movement of the Holy Spirit in the room while worshipping – I could feel it vibrating! I also received important insights into the early church, the power of households of faith, how this impacts the current model of discipling, and how these can help us further develop our disciple making strategy across the church organisation.
God has worked through Power To Change and Concentric to impact my personal faith journey, ministry leadership and that of our church ministry team. As we progress in implementing the Jesus model of ministry we are seeing incredible growth in numbers but more significantly in active followers of Jesus, who are witnessing lives being transformed. The door of hope is flung wide open!