On Friday night, my car got a wash for the first time in 12 months. And if you’re wondering, no, it’s not because I suddenly became motivated to clean; or even because I had a special event to drive to and didn’t want to show up with a year’s worth of highway grime caked onto my hub caps (we’ve all been there…). Actually, it’s because last week, the crew at St Mick’s Youth spent their normal youth group time serving others.
At St Michael’s, we recognise and value all members of the body of Christ, and truly believe that every single disciple of Jesus has been given gifts to be used for service so that the church might grow, both in maturity and number (Ephesians 4:11-13). What’s really special about this truth, is that there is no exception or limiting factor. It doesn’t matter if you’re 8, 18, or 80 – everyone has gifts, and a call to use them for serving.
Armed with that truth, at the beginning of St Mick’s Youth last week, our teens were given two options of ways that they could serve our community in order to show the love of Christ. They could either stay at the Wollongong church site and offer a free carwash to anybody from the community who wanted one, and hand them an invitation to our Christmas events on their way out, OR they could go down into Wollongong Mall in groups of 3 and try to have gospel conversations with people they had never met before.
Amazingly, we had an almost exact 50/50 split – with more than 20 young people choosing to go and try some ‘walk-up evangelism’ in the mall, and another 20 sticking around to wash cars and hand out invites.
God is so good, and despite the consistent rain (sub-optimal conditions for a car wash…), we got to wash the cars of 10 people from our community who have had no other contact with our church before (plus one Youth Minister, who may or may not work at St Michael’s), and invite them all to our church at Christmas. Please be praying that God will work in their hearts and that this small act of service will go a long way in softening their hearts to the gospel.
Down on the Mall, DOZENS of great gospel conversations were had by our evangelism team. The stories of God at work in those conversations flooded in as we debriefed at the end of the night, and we were able to hand out more than 100 Christmas flyers, along with information about our ministries and Explore Courses. Please be praying that the seeds planted will be watered by others, and that God will make them grow!
I hope this is of great encouragement to you! Praise God for our youth, for their gifts, for the leaders who encourage them, and most of all for our Lord Jesus!
Matt Shannon
Youth Minister
