a week of communityaction
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The following section of photos are taken from a highly successful week of events in the community which I've coordinated with our church here in Hamilton.
... we've been fully flat-out over the past week.
It took a good few weeks of planning & a few stressful sleepless nights on my part but people pulled together so well over the final 10 days leading up to the event that it ended up coming together amazingly well (better than I could have possibly imagined).
The week of events kicked off with an evening of prayer/ worship on a friday, which was immediately followed by the start of a week of 24-7 prayer in the church.
My British friends Sarah & Rob did a fabulous job in decking out a room in the church into a dedicated prayer room for the week... with lots of different stations with different themes (more details on 24-7 prayer and photos of the room can be found further below).
Then on the first Saturday about 60 people showed to help out - a mix of builders, gardeners, painters and other people who were simply willing to get involved in any way they could (including my good friend Matt Watson - who'd especially flown up fom Wellington to be part of the first weekend).
15 of the hard core men set about work on a local men's night shelter, a former restaurant .... doing lots of manual labour - including building some lockers, ripping out an old chiller area, knocking out a wall, blocking up a window, removing a lot of dangerous fixings and filling in some dangerous holes in the ground with concrete - generally making the place a whole lot safer and improving the atmosphere and living environment.
... whilst the rest of us took over a local struggling primary school. Some began painting 2 wicked murals (one right on the road-side - 56m in length - very bright and visible for everyone to see to give the school a visual focus in the community), and the rest set about doing some gardening & cutting back a 'shed-load' of overgrown bushes/ trees & shrubs (filling about 15 trailers worth of foliage for the tip).
We together had such an amazing day of community & fun. The school principal was on board all day helping out too together with a few of the teachers and pupil's parents.
There was a real sense of belonging with people thoroughly enjoying themselves with such a genuine heart of serving.
We as a church put on a bbq lunch for everybody, and then at the close of the day some of us piled up to a cafe we have at church.
On the Sunday afternoon following our church service we continued with more of the same - completing most of the work at the school & the nightshelter.
Then during the next week, on a couple of evenings we targeted some of the poorer areas around the school, offering to do people's gardens for free. On the Tuesday evening we had 17 helpers.. and a great atmosphere as we took on 6 heavily overgrown gardens (bit scary doing the door-knocking thing!)
Thursday saw some further work done on the nightshelter and then we headed out again on the friday after people had finished work for a final evening of garden action!
Most evenings people would make use of the cafe at the top of church to hang out, build community & enjoy delicious cake baked by some of the older ladies in the church alongside flat-whites (proper coffee which the kiwi's are really into) & hot chocolates!
The week nicely finished off with a traditional hangi meal on the second saturday evening with about 80 people from church out near our local beach in Raglan.
(A hangi basically involves a 'roast' type meal prepared in advance, carefully covered up and then lowered into a deep pit in the ground full of red-hot coals. The pit is covered with earth, and the meal is left to slowly steam cook under the ground for around 7 hours. Ours was slightly less traditional but still a great experience)
So all in all its been an incredible week.
I'm hoping we can maybe try something like it in southampton next year?
Some people have really got behind it here - and there's a sense of real desire to press in with more regular projects over coming months to build on the momemtum
('bout time we as church get outside and meet the real world - thats what i say!)
So right now I'm rather exhausted and looking forward to catching up on some sleep this week but its been a fab time & well worth the sleepless nights and organising!
The reason behind the whole project was to test the water & see how the church & community would take to such events with a view to establishing some larger long term projects in the future and perhaps working alongside other churches in Hamilton. My heart for it came from a DVD I saw at Hillsongs conf earlier this year of a similar but much larger scale school refurb project coordinated by a church in Adelaide.
Part of my thinking was that as well as it being an excellent opportunity to serve the community and try & be a blessing, it has also been an excellent learning opportunity for us as a church - to learn something about who our community are, to actually get outside the church building & begin to relate to the outside world (something which western churches in my book can be pretty poor at).
posted by mat comer at 1:35 pm
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