HOPE NEWCASTLE NEWS

Hi, I am Chris Skinner from Hope Newcastle. This is my beautiful wife Ann-Marie. We have been coordinating Hope Newcastle church for above five years now. We just wanted to tell you about some of the great things that God has been doing.

[Chris & Ann-Marie Skinner (photo)]

Hope Newcastle Video

The Best Orientation

Early this year, we had, in my opinion, our best ever Orientation Week outreach.

We saw over a hundred and fifth people sign up as contacts. More importantly, we really made some great connections and saw a number of new people coming in, leading to salvations.

People just got saved through the stall as we built the relationship with them. It has just been awesome. People have had their lives really transformed by the gospel and by being part of the church. I think during that week in the Cafe Tropicana event, although I do not know the number of people who came, but there were lots of non-Christians and some Christians who were not part of a campus group; so that was really exciting.

Creative Outreach Ideas - Cafe Tropicana

We did an event called “Café Tropicana”. The requirement was to wear a tropical Hawaiian outfit. We had gourmet tropical food around the event, we had trivia tropical which one of our members came up with. It was a really creative event with just a great atmosphere in the place and lots of new visitors. So that’s fantastic. Around 60% of the people who came to Café Tropicana were first time visitors, which meant they outnumbered our own church members; it is great to see that.

Campus Fellowship - The Space

We have also just been seeing things grow especially at our catch-up on campus. Every Monday, we meet for lunch and invite anyone that wants to come along and that’s been really exciting.

We called it "The Space". It’s something we needed to be able to reach out to Aussies. They need relationship; they need no other agenda other than you caring for their lives. So we have this place where we just eat lunch and meet up. It’s been a phenomenal time and it’s been growing. Even students in my own university classes, they said see you at "The Space" sometimes. So that was really good.

Amazing Race around Newcastle

Another thing we have been doing every six months or so is the “Amazing Race” which has been getting better and better. Our last Amazing Race event was the biggest one yet. Once again, about half of those who came were un-churched.

They not only enjoyed the event, but also enjoyed connecting with us. It is important in acting as a bridge for people who do not want to come to church but want to attend events like these. From that point, it opens the door for them to come to the church where we believe they will be saved.

It is a new concept, where we go “Oh! You’ll really like this” and invite them to these events. They are ringing us asking when the next “Amazing Race” is on. They come and they have their teams and we all interact, doing stuff like just normal people: sports, games and racing across the city. It’s been really phenomenal.

I think we serve a creative God. You have incredible resources when it comes to being creative; we just believe that God is going to release greater creativity in reaching out to this generation. We are living in a society that I guess is entertainment-rich and we want to be able to just tap into God’s ideas to really reach people and then introduce them to the message of Christ. It is important and it underlies the “Amazing Race”, “Café Tropicana” and the different events that we have been doing this year.

Embrace - Women fellowship

And I think Generation Y; the reality TV generation is looking for a voice. They are looking to be real as Chris was saying. When we created places where they could share their voice, rather than just fitting our own agenda or waiting for our event, we found that it was really powerful. It occurs at any place such as our monthly dinner at our place. I have this event I call “Embrace”. Many of you have heard of “Enhance”, which is the creative girls’ outreach we run.

With “Embrace”, God really spoke to me and said, “You need to gather together a community of women in your church, not just reaching outside the church but reaching the women in your church.”

“Embrace” is like a hug and it is us getting together at my house on the first Saturday of the month. We bring food. We will just catch up and just pray for each other. We find out what God is doing in each other’s lives. I just think that’s been really powerful because we then reach out together.

It is another concept that God is really beginning to breathe ideas into us about how to do church in his context and how to be relational in our church. God spoke a phrase to me which really inspired me with the Great Commission. He said, “Ann-Marie, you exist to see the lost being saved and as a church to see the lost are saved and the saved not lost.” I think that’s the Great Commission there: evangelism and discipleship; to see the lost saved and then the saved not lost. It is happening all across Australia. People are getting saved but then later down the track, get lost again. We want to keep all those God has given us. And that’s that really something inspiring us at the moment.

The Combined Christian Event















Another thing that I guess we can tell you about is the Event. It was an innovation that came forth when Ann-Marie and I were talking with some other Christian leaders that have a heart for university students and the young adult generation (the 18-35 years). We have been speaking with the heads of Christian ministries and other local churches. After four months of planning and brainstorming, we ended up putting together not another organisation, but just a space and the time where Christians could come together and they could also bring friends. We actually just kicked off this event last week. We had a great response.

It was really exciting to see 80+ people come. There were different Christians with the heart to be able to see people saved and to be able to see God lifted up because we were coming together despite denominational and cultural differences.

It was a really powerful night. I really believed that it was a great event. Ann-Marie led worship and I, out of all the different leaders, was chosen to speak. It was a great time to come together. We are interested to see what God will do with that in the future.

The relevant scripture that comes to mind is that “one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight”. We just thought we were one church. Now, we can partner across the city with other churches reaching to that generation. It is so important because 18 to 35 covers people leaving the youth ministry at school and your all pump. And then you just get lost; sometimes you face that huge attack while you are on campus or on this age group if you are not married, what do you do with your life? And we thought God has such a vision for that age group. We realised that they will not reached by the older generation or the youth, but it will be their peers – other members of the 18-35 generation that will reach out to them. It led to the idea about bringing them together and creating things so that they can bring their non-Christian friends. It is really powerful to see on campus, when people come along and not only see 50 different groups of people, but they can also see the one thing that we have in common. We personally believe that the city is to be reached by one church; this nation is to be reached by one church.

Prayer Requests

• Please pray for us to really keep God in the cross and at the centre on this ministry. As I said before, we want to see the lost saved and the saved not lost, I felt God saying we will not be lost if we keep remembering all he has done for us. So you can pray that the centrality of what Jesus did at the cross will just be in the hearts of everyone.

• Pray for us to just be able to rise up strong leaders. We have seen a lot of leaders graduate and move on. It is why we’re really focusing on rising up a next generation of leaders. We will appreciate prayer in that arena. And also pray also for all those that we have been reaching out to come to that point of salvation. We believe for a breakthrough and we believe our church will go to a new level, so your prayer support will be much appreciated. See yah!

Chris & Annmarie Skinner
Hope Newcastle, Australia