In the face of coronavirus meeting restrictions, Bacchus Marsh Baptist gave prayerful consideration as to how church should look for them. While they were grateful for the many online worship services being made available from other churches, in Pastor Jeremy Van Langenberg’s words, “we were concerned to maintain a sense of ‘us’ –   our local church community”.  

They began by placing all church attendees including children, youth and young adults into cluster groups. For the first time ever, everyone in the church is in a small group! So far this is working well with groups meeting digitally or by phone.

Sunday sermons are pre-recorded online in a fairly simple fashion and for those without digital access, sermon notes and orders of service are hand delivered (with careful thought to hygiene). A weekly prayer guide is also being provided for the church to pray at the same time each Wednesday.

While church finances were initially struggling in the absence of physically meeting on Sundays, in recent days more church members than ever before have signed on to direct debit giving. While these last few weeks have been challenging and stretching, Jeremy reports the church community are encouraged, thankful and in good spirits.

Crossway LifeCare is a community services organisation passionate about helping people in tough places flourish. Although some of their services have been suspended due to COVID-19, LifeCare has found ways to fulfil its vision during this time.

Prior to the COVID-19 shutdown, Crossway LifeCare delivered about 30 food hampers a month. In the last 11 weeks, LifeCare's Community Pantry has distributed 613 hampers!

One client said, "To your wonderful volunteers, and the kind people who donate, please pass on my heartfelt thanks". And another, "I wanted to say thank you again for the generosity you have shown my family today. The kids have already picked out a movie to watch tonight to have the popcorn with! They were over the moon to unpack everything and spent some time together figuring out potential meal ideas. It was so lovely to watch! I felt like they were on a game show. Please know that we are so grateful."

Many volunteers help pack and sort the food hampers. On April 27 this included three of the Essendon Football Club Staff, Gregor, Luke and Andrew. These three men had been stood down from their jobs indefinitely due to financial challenges arising from COVID-19 restrictions, but they wanted to give back despite their personal struggles and were grateful for the opportunity to help.

Every year, Crossway LifeCare's Women’s Centre puts on a pamper morning to celebrate the women who attend the Centre for Mother’s Day. Most of the women who attend the Women’s Centre are mothers, and all of them have experienced family violence. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, this year’s pamper morning was unable to go ahead, so instead, the Centre delivered flowers to all the participants. After receiving her flowers, one woman said, "It's been a long, long time since I received anything for Mother's Day. They are beautiful, thank you ".

There are many more ‘good news’ stories and photos on Crossway Lifecare’s facebook page, demonstrating that even a pandemic cannot stand in the way of God’s love in action!

Crossway LifeCare Facebook

In the middle of January his year, as part of a discussion about how to use for mission, the musical talents and gifts of church members, the Melbourne Bangjoo Church Leaders had the idea of conducting a praise school.

Since February, Byungsuk Lee has undertaken general planning, and been in charge of the proceedings and publicity to prepare the praise school. In March, he was able to promote the school of praise through various routes. 

The Praise School was aimed at children who had no experience of faith, or those who had been brought up in Christian families but were not living in faith. The intent was to make it possible for the children who participated to meet God naturally through praise and music.

The children participated in one of four Praise School programs:

Praise and dance Class for Prep

Rhythm Class for grade 1 ~ 3

Band Class for Grade 4 ~ 5

Choir Class for all children combined

Byungsuk Lee shared his excitement that he couldn't believe they could do so much in such a short time, '' but God was finally praised through the lips of the children. Hallelujah!"

One example of a “better together” story is happening in the outer east of Melbourne with Kilsyth South, Wandin and Ferntree Gully Baptist churches. Pre- COVID-19, the pastors of each of these churches would meet regularly and on occasion, Kilsyth South provides preaching and musician support to Wandin.

When the social distancing measures came in so quickly late March, Kilsyth South was fortunate in being able to create an online platform soon after the restrictions were announced. The other two churches were not in the same position at that time, and so Peter Nielsen, Senior Pastor of Kilsyth South invited both churches to join them online.

In addition to these churches connecting with Kilsyth South, Peter is aware of others connecting to their online services from around the world. He shares this encouraging story:

“We had a Japanese young lady come to faith late last year after befriending one of our church regulars.  He brought her to church, she asked to see me and gave her life to Jesus.  Her fears about going back to Japan and to a Buddhist family were very real, so before she left in early February, she was baptized in a small service at the church where we were able to pray for her and commit her to Jesus.  She went back to Japan, and less than a month later we were live streaming – she has logged on each week to watch and worship with us and each week she sends a photo of her watching the service and letting us know how she is going in her faith!  God has blessed her immensely – and we are being blessed through her and her faith that has gone back to her homeland!” 

It all started with a friendship—with a Syrian woman I met in Shepparton in December 2017. When I asked her how I could help her and other Syrians recently arrived in Shepparton, she said they needed help practicing conversational English.

From that I began to teach classes, creating a program called Thrive Shepparton, with a plan for a creative expansion called Shepparton Story House. When students began to ask for writing and grammar alongside conversation, I knew it was time for Story House to begin.

Only it didn’t begin right away. Unable to secure a new working visa, I went home to the U.S. for nearly a year, during which time Rev Richard Horton at Shepparton Baptist Church contacted me. He’d read my plans for the Story House program and he wanted me to return to Shepparton to begin this program at his church.

In the year and a half since he contacted me, Shepparton Baptist Church has become home to two Congolese fellowships, an Indonesian fellowship, and continues to have an English service each Sunday and a Chinese service fortnightly. In mid-2018, Thrive Friendship Café launched at Shepparton Baptist Church, and friendships began to form between volunteers and close to a dozen Syrian families in our neighbourhood.

My working visa to begin Shepparton Story House at this already diverse church arrived the same week as COVID-19 restrictions. Not wanting to let down our expectant students, in term two we launched our three levels of English classes online, as well as our Bible Story & Chat program and Creative Writing Hub. With God’s grace, these programs have all continued through the past three months, growing despite launching online. Now we’ve also launched our program’s Story Platform with an online storytelling series: “Coming to Australia” which aims to show the diversity of migrants in our city and pave the way for our future story platform program at the church.

These programs aren’t just for our Syrian friends, but for those in our own church and all of those in the community around us who are learning English. So far our program participants have been from over a dozen countries.

It all started with a friendship— and as we hear and tell our own stories through our programs, we are blessed with many friendships across our beautifully diverse community.