Dear Friends,

This week as part of the annual Moore College mission week, students have been taking part in various local-church missions within Sydney and beyond. During the team meeting on Tuesday at Watson’s Bay, someone shared about how they’d just had a great conversation with two young backpackers from Munich they’d met while out doing walk-up evangelism. Another team member remarked that they too had spoken with these two men, and then another… Turns out that over the past 24 hours, 11 people had sought to share Christ with these two hapless backpackers, offering in addition to fix their car and take them out to lunch!!

What these polite young men (one Lutheran, one Catholic, neither believing) made of all this is anyone’s guess (please pray for their salvation). But at the very least, they must be thinking that Australia is a strange land indeed full of strange but lovely people desperate to share with and show Christ’s love to others. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that were true!? Sadly, I suspect that this impression will change once they leave the parish boundaries of Watson’s Bay.

But it got me thinking…

At St Thomas’, we’ve just come to the end of our invitation week and we certainly have much to thank God for.

Our loving Heavenly Father has been very kind to us! And on behalf of the ministry team, may I say a big thank you to all who contributed to the success of the week by presenting, serving tea or coffee, manning / woman-ing the book stall, sound desk or in other ways too numerous to mention. A particular thank you to those of you who invited friends along (whether they ended up coming or not…). The week couldn’t have happened without you!

Please do continue to pray:

But of course, while the big invitational “push” might be over for now, it’s not as though mission is over, is it? For Jesus has come and conquered sin and death by his glorious death and resurrection, we have good news for our perishing world, and “today is the day of Salvation” (2 Cor 6:2), as Paul reminds us. All of which means that we’ve got a job to do… May God bless you this week as you seek to share with and show Christ’s love to those around you.

In His grace,
Mike Clark