Our Survey - Why are we doing it?

Part of our initiatives is a survey being carried out on the estate and that has good and bad parts to it. The majority has been very positive and I understand there has been a lot of response. People have been invited into homes and had opportunity to share and pray with people. One lady asked for prayer for a family situation and 2 days later came into Unit 3 to say thank you and to tell us the situation had been resolved. Also, Dillon shared today that with his daughter they had spoken to a man who had lived on the estate for many years and said although he wasn’t particularly interested in going to church he had seen over those years a decline in the quality of life on the estate until we arrived and now he is seeing a shift, a slowing down or bottoming out of the decline. That is somebody outside of the church and outside of the faith saying those things and it is very positive feedback. It goes beyond these 2 examples.

We are trying to engage with people and say ‘hey, we are ordinary people but we have an extraordinary God’. We are hoping to set up a series of events. I would like us to think of next year as a year of mission. As charismatics we are all for experiencing God and the more we can hear God the better, but we can get introverted in the way we look at ourselves at times and our conversations can be all about what we can do about this or that problem, logistical problems with the building, noise, children’s rooms, etc and they are all real problems. But outside there are people who do not know Jesus. It doesn’t mean that we ignore these problems but it is getting the perspective right. I feel at times we are quite small in our view of life, what affects me now, my needs, my wants. And we have got to break away from a self-centered faith to a faith that is generous, giving space to one another and encouraging to do what God is asking us to do. God is big enough to embrace the world we live in. That might sound like apple-pie and motherhood and all good values but for me it is very important. The way we live our lives in society, our generosity, our willingness to give ourselves away in situations, speaks volumes to people.