Jan 2022 - Just after our second successful running of the Worldview Australia youth leadership camp, COVID19 vaccination restrictions took effect in WA, and the organisation under whose auspices Cheers began insisted that Cheers attendees be vaccinated. But our Cheers attendees were determined to maintain full respect for each others' decisions on the matter, and so, not wishing to impose one way, nor wishing to put the organisation at risk, Cheers people chose the third way - to step out from the organisation's auspices. (This turned out fortuitously for us in that we were unaffected by upheavals in that organisation a year later.) So Cheers was without an auspice, insurance, finances, governance, for about a year, while OAC Ministries examined whether we fit their criteria of an outreach and/or church ministry, and how auspicing us might work in practice. Since the community hall is not available to us without an organisational identity, we continued to meet in all-age gatherings at two homes. Bible-based, active learning, & relationships, continue well. During the year, we chose to not run a youth or kids program undertaking duty-of-care for minors, and this was opportune since most of our youth had just graduated into young-adulthood, and the few left were keen to check out other churches' youth groups. The young adults kept meeting and have seen some evangelistic fruit from their Bible-centred home meetings. Over summer they, with a larger group of peer volunteers, helped run the third annual Worldview Australia camp, and also the successful first term of Worldview Bites lectures, where again we have seen people shift from agnosticism to trusting Jesus. Praise the LORD. Thus 2022 was our only year without a family camp (apart from the 2020 covid lockdown), but April 22 fortuitously coincided with our daughter's wedding which meant we had our hands full anyway, and also provided a great celebration for Cheers people as well. The nexus between Cheers and Worldview developed further again this Easter, with the first ever Worldview Australia Family Camp, which was in fact a rework of our annual Cheers family camp, which had run annually under the auspices of our previous organisation since 2003. It was promoted as usual among those connected with Cheers, and followed our familiar format of input, rest and input. But it was also opened further to people around Worldview Australia, families of attendees and their connections. So the input aligned with the Worldview outline: "What we mean, How we know its true, and What Difference it makes," (but of course with less content & processes.) I provided that input in the morning with Core Stuff for kids, and family activities done together. In the evenings Darren & Kathryn Birch ran sessions from Nehemiah specifically about rebuilding families - & relationships in general. So Cheers Neighbours Network is set to come under the auspices of OAC Ministries, and continues to bear witness to Christ, as yet another way of doing and developing outreach and church ministries.
Comments are closed.
|
Categories
All
Archives
April 2023
|