HOPE FAMILY NEWS
Hope Auckland Multicultural Sunday
On the 26th of July, 2009, Hope Auckland took the opportunity to throw a celebration to honour the various nationalities in our church. We have people from New Zealand, Ghana, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Japan and Nigeria, to name a few.
Our members arrived in colourful costumes from their respective home countries and were armed with delicious food. Our walls were decorated with information about each of the countries and their flags, thanks to the hard work put in by the Young Working Adults LG. The service was packed with performances, including a debut performance by SPARCK (Special Performing Artists for Christ’s Kingdom), our newly established performing arts ministry. They performed two high-energy dances: a South American speciality followed by Jai Ho.
Our Kids Church sang “One World, One God” written by two of our own members. Charles Dwamena (from Ghana) delivered a powerful message, refreshing our views of unity and diversity. Both members and visitors alike were challenged to not only appreciate diversity at a group and cultural level but also between individuals. They were also encouraged to embrace their God-given uniqueness.
Following this, we feasted together with our visitors on the scrumptious food. All in all, we believe each of us walked away with a new found awareness and appreciation for the diversity we are so blessed to have in our church.
Pastor Bernard and Angela Soh
Hope Auckland, New Zealand
Hope Hobart 4th Anniversary
In the first week of July, Hope Hobart celebrated its 4th anniversary. It was our privilege to have Pastor Wilson, together with Pastor Lai Ling, Daniel and Deborah join with us to celebrate the occasion as well as receiving their inspiring teaching during "A Mobilized Church" seminar.
Looking back over these four years, we have much to thank God for at taking us from those early times up until today: From initially meeting as just the core team of three in a living room, we have now grown to three life groups meeting in two locations during the week and combining together in a strategic location in the heart of the city for Sunday celebration worship with an attendance approaching thirty people.
The greatest blessings have been in the people the Lord has added to our number - some already believers who the Holy Spirit drew to join their hearts with ours in partnership for His work, and some whom we had the privilege to lead into relationship with Him for the first time. There have been times of real struggle as we came face to face with our own need to grow in both skills and character before we could see the fruit they had been hoping for - often this resulted in seasons of discouragement for the team, but praise God that He is always faithful and helped us through every single difficult time!
As we think about where we are now, and also where we are moving as a church to fulfill the vision God has entrusted us, the rhema word that came through the seminar teaching was particularly relevant and we are trusting God to see us mobilized as a body where every part is functioning effectively in its place.
In summary, over the last four years, we would like to praise God for:
* Growing us in number from three to around thirty
* Adding to the core team of leaders - from initial three to now six
* Growing from one seed life group to three established life groups
* Securing a strategic venue in the heart of the city
* Giving us favor to establish a campus ministry in University of Tasmania
* Graced to practise mission at our doorstep with people from different continents coming into our fellowship
* Seeing scores of people come to know the Lord in our midst, with many being baptized in water and receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit as well
* Bringing us through all our times of struggle and discouragement to grow stronger in character and more fruitful in ministry
* Giving His burden to many people for His work here in Hobart, causing many to pray for us and minister to us during important times.
Hallelujah!! And God bless you all! Love from Hope Hobart
Shen Ye Kun
Hope Hobart, Tasmania
Hope Adelaide Multicultural Sunday 
We celebrated our annual Multicultural Sunday in June 2009. The place was buzzing with people dressed in flamboyant colours to reflect the heart of multiculturalism in Hope Adelaide.
This year we had a bush dance, an African cultural dance, an Indonesian choir, our yearly Best Dressed contest and to top it all off, some delicious and 'authentic' local and international cruisine!
We had three rounds in the Best Dressed competition before we narrowed it down to select the winner, the runner-up and third prize.
In each round, each contestant was asked to come on stage to sing a song or perform a dance that would explain something about their culture. Each contestant was judged on their costume and performance. It was a lot of fun watching and we had lots of laughs! It was good to learn something new each year about the various cultures in our church.
Finally, Ps Brendan, dressed in a Pakistani costume, preached a message on missions and reaching out to other cultures which was significantly relevant for this event.
Our Multicultural Sunday ended on a high and we hope that it will continue to weave a beautiful tapestry of cultures and relationships that will last for all eternity. Amen!
Pastor Brendan & Pastor Helen Kirby
Hope Adelaide, Australia
Hope Canberra News
I’m Caroline Ashlin and this is my husband Tony. We just really want to praise God for what he has been doing among us and in Hope Canberra. And we are really pleased to announce that just recently, three months ago, God blessed us with a little baby girl Hannah after many years of waiting. God really blessed us! It’s such a joy to be parents and to be Hannah’s parents.
Hope Canberra Video Interview
We are really encouraged to see what’s God is doing with building up the church here. We are in the process of seeing our third and forth life groups being started. Currently, we have a couple of family life groups, a life group for young singles, and also a Filipino life group which is reaching out to people working in the embassies. It’s really encouraging to see different things happening. We also have a heart to see a student group and an international group rise up as well as more local life groups.
On the 29th of last month, we celebrated our 5th anniversary. It was a real exciting time. We had 50 people come along to help celebrate. It’s a milestone. Over the past few weeks, there’s just been a great spirit of excitement present in the services.
I am really encouraged to see what God has been doing this year. There is a great potential for the church to really grow this year. We expect God will do great things in Hope Canberra.
Please pray for us that with this year’s Oceania Convention theme being ‘Moving in the Spirit’, that we will really see God’s spirit move more and more in our church and that we will see people hungry for the move of the spirit and hungry for the presence of the Holy Spirit. Pray that we will follow the Spirit’s leading and be solid in the Word of God as he leads us. Thanks!
Tony & Caroline Ashlin
Hope Canberra, Australia
Hope Brisbane Bible Conference: Exponential
What do you get when you have Hope Brisbane’s Morning, Afternoon and Ablaze Services and Hope Gold Coast & Ipswich team coming together? You have Hope Brisbane’s 2009 church conference ‘Exponential’. It was held at the beautiful St Lucia Campus at the University of Queensland on June 26-28. The speakers were Pastor Wilson and Pastor Lai Ling Lim, Pastor Lance Wolter from Hope Gold Coast and our guest speaker, Pastor Denis Lu from Hope Kuching.
Bible Conference Video
The conference kicked off on Friday night with Pastor Wilson sharing about what is an exponential church. There was a tremendous response at altar call with many coming forward to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and others accepting the call of God to be exponential Christians. The first full day saw Pastor Denis, Pastor Lance and Pastor Wilson teaching about biblical principles to multiplication, factors limiting a church’s ability to multiply, the importance of maturity and God’s exponential community. Again altar call saw many ones come forward to seek God and his will for their lives.
Sunday saw the delegation and visitors divided into not one but three halls. The sermon for the Sunday service by Pastor Denis was about the importance of good parenting to multiplication. After lunch which allowed for great fellowship and a large consumption of pizza from all services, we went to the final session where Pastor Lai Ling shared about Exponential Power Control.
Finally, we held our closing ceremony where we thank the speakers and the organising team and the ministry teams for their hard work and effort in making this conference a reality. After another awesome praise session, the conference was pronounced closed. Every member of the church left with a greater understanding about God’s plan to multiply his people across the earth.[View Conference Photos Website]
Hope Brisbane Youth;s first ever Ablaze Conference: Future – catapulted its tent of 140 earnest worshippers on the 3-6th July 2009 (from Ablaze, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Auckland and Singapore) into a phenomenal 4 day 3 night of fun, fellowship, melding of hearts, joining of visions,
life transformations, powerful prophetic words and various kairos moments as the expectant hearts sat inside the cosy enclosures of Maranatha Recreational Campsite in the Sunshine Coast under the anointed teaching of speakers from Ablaze, Hope Singapore and Lifeplace in a three part (past, present and future) theme.
Ablaze Conference Video
The Past was remembered and the intrinsic details of God’s hands in our lives were sealed on the opening night as Torch brought the 140 of us through the scripture of Joshua 4:4-7.
Thanksgiving flowed and past hurts, disappointments, discouragements and uncertainties were healed and given upon to God as His presence moved in assurance to comfort us that He has been with us through it all and nudge everyone into our unknown futures in God.
The second and third day saw us gleaning under the enriching content of various workshops ranging from the High School workshop (who talked about maximising high school life and being a people of influence) and the young adult forum which addressed many relevant issues ranging from time management, ministry to relationships.
Guest speaker Pastor Ben Windle from Lifeplace church shared about the purpose for our lives as he spoke with conviction and passion about The Present and breaking down the clutter of our lives to focus on the simple things of God.
There was no end to the laughter and tears that were shed during the two precious days as youth and young adults alike linked arms to trudge through obstacle courses in the ‘tribal war’ games and abandoned themselves to paint each other’s faces silly and cheer each other on in the sports and games.
And after Pastor Shirley Melinda’s heartfelt shove for all the people to simply GO forth and live a life of no regrets with God in The Future on the last night, there was not a single dry eye as knees and hearts were bowed in surrender before our King.
And even as we closed the night and the following day with raucous voices from praising God and as we looked through pictures and videos capturing the fellowship and moments we never want to forget in between jokes and soft conversation – we all knew in our hearts it was indeed going to be A New Season.
As surely no one who have stepped in could say without a doubt in their hearts that their lives have been forever changed and that we are now ready to venture into the Future.
Torchie KL
Director of Ablaze! Ministries International
www.ablaze.org.au
No comments:
Post a Comment