I loved going home to the UK this Summer – the church I grew up in is known for its amazing music – and this Advent season it didn’t disappoint.  The choir at St Alphege was spectacular and their Christmas Services are full of visitors.  My church here in Australia has fantastic Christmas activities but I wonder how many of our visitors come back in the New Year?

What about your church?  Have you got a plan to reconnect with these new or lost people? 

What would it take to connect with these awesome people – that have an interest in Christianity – but aren’t part of a regular faith community?

Many of you may have anticipated this issue – compounded by Australian summer holidays – and provided newcomers with an information pack about what you do and how you can meet their needs.  You may have chatted to them after the service or activity and personally invited them to come again.  You may have even managed to grab their contact information (Woo Hoo!!).  

So now is the time to follow up…..  and for those of you who grabbed some contact information a great way to get to know someone is over a cup of coffee  (yes, I do live in Melbourne and a cold drink may be more relevant for you or even a bubble tea depending on the culture of the area you are in).  This “get to know you” cuppa is a great start to start showing God’s love and care to someone.  The purpose of the meeting is to connect with them and find out more about them, their life, circumstances and where they are on their spiritual journey and what their needs are.  The fact that they are willing to meet with you indicates that they are at least curious.

Some great questions to ask are:

• Tell me a bit about yourself?
• What made you come to our church ?
• Did the message make sense to you? (if they came to a Christmas service)
• How do you think our church can help you?  (let them identify their next steps first, this helps them own it)

It might be good to have some resources to have with you such as your churches worship times and activities that you have such as playgroups, English classes, and Alpha.  They may be ready to come to church and it is always nice to have someone that you know there for the first few times you go who can introduce you to other and help them feel part of the community.  Sometimes someone isn’t quite ready to join corporate worship and an offer to read the bible with them over a cuppa using a Discovery Bible Method to discover the basics together using a tool like in MyFriends.network can be great way to help someone along their spiritual journey.

But what if you didn’t collect peoples contact details?  Ask your congregation who they asked to come to celebrate Christmas at church.  Did any of them recognise any of the visitors … Ask your church members to arrange for a cuppa to connect with their friends, family or neighbours and show God’s love to them through prayer and caring from them – meeting them where they are at on their spiritual journey and supporting their needs – intentionally living like Jesus.

MyFriends helps everyday Christians connect intentionally with their friends and give them the tools, skills and confidence to have spiritual conversations with their social networks. Contact Fiona.Dunn@Powertochange.org.au to learn how to run MyFriends at your church or join us over zoom for an online MyFriends course to find out what its all about.

The post Maximizing connections with a cuppa! appeared first on Power to Change.

Faith-building, says Suan Lee, doesn’t always require dramatic events; instead, it often flourishes in the simple, everyday interactions we have with others. Suan emphasizes the importance of genuine presence and heartfelt care, echoing the famous saying, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” This genuine care, Suan explains, is guided by the Holy Spirit and constantly covered in prayer.

She has found remarkable success in integrating faith into casual settings, like at her local gym, in exercise classes, and at a cafe. One of Suan Lee’s key strategies is to make the most of ordinary interactions. Whether she’s chatting with gym-goers or meeting up for coffee, she emphasizes the importance of being present and open to where God leads. She notes that real faith growth happens when people feel truly heard and valued, and this is made possible through a foundation of prayer and the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

By using Discovery Bible Studies (DBS) in these relaxed environments, Suan Lee creates spaces where people feel comfortable to explore faith. Building faith in everyday moments involves lots of prayer, attentive and active listening, and building authentic relationships.

These informal settings are just the beginning. Starting with informal gatherings like cafes and Bible study groups is a great way for new believers to begin their journey. These settings can lead people to find their place in a church community, where they can receive the support and structure needed for spiritual growth.

If you’re eager to build others on their journey of faith, getting involved and being present in these spaces is an excellent place to start! Suan Lee’s story is a powerful reminder that meaningful connections and genuine care, nurtured through prayer and spiritual openness, can lead to profound spiritual growth.

The post Growing Faith in Everyday Moments? appeared first on Power to Change.

My family has identified 100 houses around ours and look for ways to connect with them, get to know them, and start spiritual conversations. We drop off biscuits at Christmas, flowers at Easter, and look for other opportunities to care for them – like helping a neighbour move house.

Our neighbours, as with yours, are not just those whose houses are near our own. Neighbours, by definition, are people in relationships, the people near to you.

You may have programs that help connect outwards like special interest groups like a play group, a craft group, English lessons, or a market. Door of Hope Church in Launceston uses their amazing site, The Old Woollen Mill, to connect with as many people as possible in their community. You could learn more about that by joining us at Multiply where Door of Hope Church will welcome us and show us their disciplemaking pathway.

To find out more about or register for Multiply Disciplemaking Churches Conference , head to https://powertochange.org.au/multiply

The post Relationships are Key appeared first on Power to Change.

When some of their leaders, including pastors, assistants, other key ministry staff and elders did the MyFriends training, they quickly realised that it was about how they live, looking for opportunities to share their faith.

Dorothy Roberts, Generation Minister at Door of Hope, caught the message that MyFriends is about faith as a lifestyle that creates opportunities to share Jesus.

“I have to be what I want to multiply,” she explained.

Door of Hope piloted moving a young adults small group that had done the Alpha course straight into MyFriends training. This immersed them into having a sense of community and allowed them to learn how to share their faith.

The effect of MyFriends is seen in Door of Hope’s children’s ministry, where people are now learning and teaching about living a lifestyle which invites their friends to experience Jesus. They’re also starting a youth Bible study group in which they teach the basic skills of living a life that makes disciples.

Dorothy is encouraged by the positive impact that the MyFriends training has had on their congregation.

“We see this as an incredible tool for a church to equip their people,” she says.

The post Transforming disciples into disciplemakers appeared first on Power to Change.

At Jules’ church, the playgroup ministry was in decline and after COVID only one or two families were coming regularly to the two weekly sessions. The playgroup team wanted to revitalise the ministry and use it as an outreach ministry – showing God’s love to local families.

The team attended the MyFriends training and learnt to intentionally look for ways to love, pray and care for all their families from the moment they showed interest in coming to playgroup.

This caring heart and welcoming nature changed the culture of playgroup. They also had a child focused space with lots of activities at the church’s first Christmas Makers Market.

Fast Forward six months – all the playgroup spots are full and have a waiting list! At the last “All In” Creative Family service over 50 children attended.

The post Revitalising playgroups with MyFriends appeared first on Power to Change.

The biggest thing that happened for the Church Movements team in 2022 was the Expansion Project. The team was keen about reframing and repackaging their training courses to be done online. That meant ramping up and expanding to reach a lot more people around Australia.

What this means is that we’re no longer limited by geography, which in a country the size of Australia, is such a benefit!

Now that, as a result of COVID, everybody uses Zoom and other online tools, the team can run training in Perth just as easily as they can in Sydney.

The team has also been super busy in the last year doing MyFriends training. The great aspect of this training is that it equips Christians in any small group or church to make disciples themselves.

Anton and Esther are great examples of how to share the gospel well in any situation. Both church planters on the Gold Coast, they regularly go the gym, not only to get fit, but to prayerfully look for opportunities to help people experience Jesus.

Anton said, “I spent two hours with a guy called Kai at breakfast after I prayed with him at the gym and he experienced the Holy Spirit. He’s already told his brother about his experience and he is also interested.”

Similar stories happened with two other people, Jay and Matt. The Church Movements team prayed for these guys.

The Church Movements team want to continue their great work of connecting people to Jesus and build in what is their DNA of forming small groups and multiplying them. They’re going to call it Our Generations. It’s basically a coaching, mentoring and training community for people who want to form and multiply small groups of unchurched believers.

But wait; there’s more!

The SHIFTm2M training is the Church Movements team’s third main training pathway. The team has been meeting with pastors and leaders for many years, taking them on a slow chronological journey through the life of Jesus and looking at how they can apply his disciple-making principles to their own context.

The training for that has been happening all over the country. They’re also working with some Pacific Island countries to do the training.

The team would love you to pray that they would be able to develop ways of doing their work so they continue to grow in numbers. They would also love your prayers that Jesus would remain their first love, that the team would be growing in closeness to Him, and that they would be able to see God working through them to help other people experience Jesus and come to know Him personally.

The post Expanding to reach more people with the Gospel appeared first on Power to Change.

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!

The post Flinging open the Door of Hope! appeared first on Power to Change.