SPECIAL FOCUS: HOPE MELBOURE CHURCHES

HOPE MELBOURNE WAVERLEY CENTRE

Hi, I' m pastor Ian Foley from Hope Melbourne really exciting to see what God is doing in our churches around Oceania this time and in Hope Melbourne we have seen some very exciting developments over the last 2 years with the establishment of the Frankston centre and the Darebin centre last October

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Moving forward, starting new churches

And we are really going through an interesting transition stage in our churches as we seek to come together and work together as a multi site church as

we seek to form a core leadership team over the whole of Hope Melbourne and really to press on with the task of building our churches and really going out and starting new churches.

so there are already plans in place for the start of new senders which are been developed we don’t quite know when that is going to happen but during the next year or so, we hope to see more advances been made.

New office and church staff

And we are seeing blessing in our people and we are also restructuring Hope Waverley, has just leased an office space both Hope Melbourne Waverley and City centre we started employing other staff, so delighted to welcome Fook Chun on the staff and Ruth Hii coordinator of Frankston she’s working 1 day for the administrative task of our church, and we are looking soon to employ someone else soon to do some of the other work that is necessary so we are really seeing God's blessing in wonderful ways.

We are really praying for this year, pray with us that we may see many salvations this year and please come visit us, join us and visit any of our centers so you can see for your self what God is doing amongst us!

Pastor Ian & Daisy Foley, Hope Melbourne Waverley Centre


HOPE MELBOURNE CITY CENTRE


Greetings from Hope Melbourne, where we are, we’re down under right in Melbourne, I' m here in Brisbane, with every body, its been a really fantastic convention, and we have really seen God at work here I think we feel particularly inspired to be more contextual and touch the local community in an even more powerful way.

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Oceania Convention: A Contextualised Church

In fact when we get back from this convention it has been in my heart that we need to touch families in our local area more effectively.

Our church is based in a community centre, so we have people coming in and out of our doors; the entrance to the hallway is sort of situated right next door to the entrance way into a community centre, where there are people from the local community coming in all the time.

• Please pray for us, because we really want to touch the people that are coming in through the door there, that are using the pool and other facilities in the community centre for Jesus Christ.

• Please pray that we will be able to upgrade our KFC (Kids for Christ) our outreach in that area of the church so that we can be more effective in touching the people.
  

Establishment of Christian Club


One praise point from Hope Melbourne that I want to share is that we really saw breakthrough in the student ministry at the end of last year.

When we started our church, I think it was significant that happened when we started what happened was this we had been trying to register a club a Christian group on campus at Melbourne Uni, which is one of the main unis in Melbourne and we’d been tying for 15 years could you believe it? 15! About that much time. And we have never been able to do it. Countless times, year after year, people have gone and spoken to the student union and requested that we could register the club, but every time the door was closed, and we were flatly rejected. and some how by the Grace of God last year, the student union, we reapproached them and they were favorable and one of the guys that actually initiated the process went to a conference and he got a vision of how this club will take on a very special form.

Its called 'SALTS" (Student, Arise Learning To Serve) and the kind of angle of the club is related to focusing on people’s needs..

Anyway miraculously God has blessed that vision and enabled us to register the club and it happened just as we started the church, and its meant that this year we were able to be a lot more contextual and involved in peoples life on campus because we registered there.

Mission Trip to Papua New Guinea


And I just praise God for his goodness and another exciting thing is that this year we are going to PNG. Which is one of our target groups.

PNG or Papua New Guinea is based obviously north of Australia, we don’t know much about it, but im planning to lead a team of people and even last night during our conference, there were quite a number that volunteered to be a part, please pray for us, because we are planning to go in September I believe. And we are looking at doing an exploratory trip that will lead to starting a church in PNG.

God bless you, and it’s great to be a part of what God is doing in Oceania and all over the world.

Pastor Mark & Susan Rusic, Hope Melbourne City Centre


HOPE MELBOURNE DAREBIN CENTRE

Hi, my name is Eric, im the centre leader for Darebin centre in Hope Melbourne I would like to share how God used me to pioneer the centre, it all started around 3 years ago when Pastor Ian and Mark shared the strategic direction of church planting in Melbourne and I actually wrote down a goal to plant a church in my life time.

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And it came to pass in 2007, I felt called by God to rise up and take the challenge, despite the internal challenge that I had.

I felt God spoke to me through the book of Mark as well, when the disciples and preached the gospel everywhere and God worked with them and accompanied his work by signs and wonders and as I claimed that word, as I had confidence in God and stepped out in faith, I almost immediately knew God confirmed His Word.

He is Faithful. and there was 11 visitors that came along to the 1^st meeting and the week after, an Australian guy accepted Christ and from then on we had people from Hope Bangkok and hope Singapore join us...

and encouraged to work the momentum and there were people who accepted Christ and were baptized and we formally launched the new centre in Darebin at the end of September 2007 and its been a real privilege to be involved.

I pray that all of you out there as well will really take the call of God and personalize in your life and make a significant difference in your life as well. God bless you.

Eric & Atom Fan, Hope Darebin Centre