Awakening West - 250 at Launch Spell Hope

Source: Ramon Williams - The Australian Christian Channel

On Saturday night, the 3rd of August, the western suburbs of Melbourne were charged with excitement as more than 250 Christian people gathered in Laverton for the launching dinner of Awakening West and Awakening Hobsons Bay.

This is a dream of seeing the church reaching out together with the love of Christ to the West. Those present represented one of the most diverse mixes of people from the Church in the West. Stretching from Werribee to Tullamarine and Melton to Essendon, spanning Traditional, Evangelical and Pentecostals churches and reflecting the cultures of Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. In fact the biggest concern of organisers was the sheer number that wanted to attend and having to make extra space for those not booked.

Awakening West has a vision of reaching out to every person in the western suburbs with the gospel of Christ. It is a network drawing upon the churches to work together locally to strategically impact their community. The dream began in the year 2000, when a local church decided to run a Christmas festival to impact on their local community. This then grew as it broadened to involve a number of churches. In 2001, a young man by the name of Michael van den Brink, who was involved with this festival, spoke with his pastor and others of a dream he had of encouraging Christmas outreach events across the Western suburbs and linking them together by promotion and resource sharing under the banner of Christmas West. A team formed who then linked together 35 different events across the Western suburbs, promoted through regional shopping centres, public noticeboards, flyers and a website named Christmas West. This focus then culminated with a large regional festival held in the Baseball Stadium in Laverton.

The vision grew this year as the team met with the Aussie Awakening movement and realised their common heart for seeing the church work together in unity in reaching out to all people with the love of Christ, and decided to become Awakening West.

The Awakening movement in Australia began in '88 with 50,000 people gathering in Canberra for the largest prayer gathering the church has ever seen. Since then the church has worked together in regions and capital cities across the nation firstly to Reclaim Easter and more recently Christmas with Festivals, Advent Pageants and Marches of Witness.

The Awakening has been instrumental in providing the direction for Awakening West in their new strategy of community outreach through inter-church outreach fellowships (called Nyuyuni groups).

Awakening Victoria's State Coordinator, Poul Bottern, shared at the dinner how the churches around Australia have been discovering ways of reaching out to Aussies in a culturally relevant way and that these ideas have been captured in practical mission manuals that are available to the churches.

The other key element of Awakening West is the promotion of pastors praying together in their local area and encouraging the church to join together in prayer. Rob Isaachsen, Coordinator of the Melbourne Pastors Network, shared the vision of seeing regular combined church prayer meetings throughout all 31 municipal areas of Melbourne. He reminded us of the time just one hundred years ago when there was a significant revival in Melbourne during which many prayer groups operated right across the city area.

The launch included presentations from a number of pastors in the West with a particular focus by those within the Hobsons Bay area where this vision first began. Pastor Mark Barnard shared how around eighteen months ago a number of pastors commenced praying together weekly and through this found incredible encouragement.

This has since grown to up to 17 pastors meeting for prayer and they have now established a covenant relationship with one another providing protection and blessing for the body of Christ in the city. This has now resulted in the launch of Awakening Hobsons Bay as a sub-set of Awakening West.

Speaking on the concept of Awakening West, Pastor Stephen Holt shared the need for the churches in each area of the West to discover their own unique way of working together.

Awakening West provides a framework for them to commence this process at both the pastoral and congregational level. Pastor Milo Velebir, whose Slovak church hosted the dinner, shared the vision of churches working together as being a principal promoted by Jesus himself and clearly illustrated in light of our future together in heaven. The degree of unity now being seen within the church is something most pastors would not have imagined possible only a few years ago.

Under Awakening West is the realisation that there is only one church in Melbourne with many congregations. Applying this at the more local level there is only one church in each municipal area and so Michael van den Brink, coordinator of Christmas West, shared the concept of Nyuyuni groups and how they operate in providing an opportunity for the church to developregional mission groups like Awakening Hobsons Bay, or target specific groups like youth, children, older persons, etc. They enable a group of interested persons to pray, plan and engage the church within their area in significant community outreach. This enables the church to share its resources in order to see individuals with specific gifts and passions to work together across congregations to share the Good News within the community..

Finally, a key strategy of Awakening West which was also launched at the dinner was a new website called www.awakeningwest.com. Churches in the West can be accessed through the website and other information on groups, missions, events, resources and news are available. There is provision for each municipal area to have a separate section and the first one of these established is for Hobsons Bay.

To cater for those that do not yet use the internet, Awakening Hobsons Bay has developed a monthly combined churches newsletter, Unity in Diversity. Ben van der Merwe, coordinator of Intercessors for Hobsons Bay, described how the churches would be able to insert this into their own newsletter. Itenables pastors to include their congregations in the practical outworking of unity in the body of C hrist as they share in prayer, outreach opportunities, special guest speakers, ministries and events. Ben also described the important role intercessors play in the vision of Awakening West.

People left with a sense of excitement and a growing awareness of how they can play their part in seeing Gods Kingdom come in the West.

Poul Bottern

Useful link: www.awakeningwest.com