Gathering Together

As Sydney enters into a period of transition from lockdown, no doubt there are many things we can look forward to. As Christians, being able to gather more freely, especially as we look to the all important milestone of 80% double dose, is one of those things.

Life Anglican Church (LAC), Marsden Park, will be keen to get back on track with their planning to move into their own space. Mark Collins, the Lead Pastor, spoke with me in one of our initial meetings about the challenge of coming out the 2020 restrictions. It was wonderful that they were able to build up their numbers by the middle of this year to between 120 and 150 regular attenders.

Let the Little Children Come

One thing that I picked up from our conversation is the prevalence of primary aged school children in the Marsden Park/Riverstone area. This is a key area of focus for the church, but made all the more difficult in lockdown as well as not having the flexibility of purpose-built spaces for mid-week children’s ministries.

“Marsden Park had the biggest primary school to start in the state at the beginning of this year. 850 students were ready to go from day one in a small demountable city while the actual permanent facility is being built.” Northbourne Public School is this “demountable city”.

Mark goes on to talk about the numbers in the other schools, “There are 250 children at the existing public school, then there is Richard Johnson Anglican School, which has between 250 to 300 and then there is the Australian Christian College, which has about 500 kids!“

I did my own searching and discovered that the Marsden Park area has six schools in its locality. Clearly, this is a suburb ready for strategic children’s ministry! Yet, there is only one evangelical church in the entire suburb: LAC.

Please pray that as they resume from lockdown, God will give them grace in their harvest field. Please also pray that we can support them with their own purpose-built facilities for children’s ministry.

The construction site of the Northbourne Public School, Marsden Park, at the end of 2020. By the beginning of this year they were at 350% of their enrollments!