ON CHURCH AND COMMUNITY

Carl Gustav Jung formerly a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and founder of analytical psychology said this:

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

The purpose of church (personality one) within society is to engage its community (personality two) and provide a positive alternative to the way we live life. The church offers purpose through Jesus, a sense of belonging through relationship and a clear direction for your future through teaching from God's word... all things that I believe the majority of the community are constantly longing and looking for.

The challenge is to bring these two personalities to a point where, as Carl Gustav Jung suggests, there is a reaction that causes transformation.

I believe our great church at Hinterland Christian Centre has caught the importance of engaging with our community and taking church to them instead of expecting the community at large to just come to our church building. Something is noticeably different this year in the way we are planning and running our different events that engage our community...

Our youth group of around 50 young people is overseen by Michelle Hulcombe and her husband Luke and together they stormed the local Cooroy skate park with our youth last Friday night.

A free BBQ was on, crazy games, loud music, a game of touch footy (that suspiciously looked like tackle) and other fun and games were all put on by our youth and we had well over 150 come. What a brilliant result for our first attempt!

To follow up this night we heavily promoted Chris Wayne, illusionist extraordinaire, who was at Flame Youth last night and as a result our youth had over 70 in attendance! Simply because the church literally engaged with its community the week before...

In a similar fashion, our Savvy women's ministry is putting on a High Tea today with a two fold purpose.

1) To raise money so our church can contribute to building a house in Uganda for children who are AIDS orphans or affected by war.

2) To engage with our community in a unique way and to share the love of Jesus through the demonstration of our support towards the Ugandan children.

We have over 140 women coming today and I will be the one in black slacks, white shirt and bow tie serving the woman and dabbling in a bit of crooning while I am at it...

The cool thing is that 40% of these women are not church folk and will be experiencing church for the first time. Sure its not a church service nor will there be an alter call for salvation, but seeds will be sown and another opportunity will have been taken to fulfil the God given vision our church has embraced which is:

'to bring God and people together...'