For 16 years, Russell Grainger’s church has been doing life with the people in Mt Wellington. Russell has been there the whole time, and this is what they have discovered.
“Sixteen years ago, we made the decision to work with the local schools around us. Three primary schools and two high schools are right on our doorstep. Rather than overthink the whole thing, we simply approached the principal of each school and asked, ‘How can our church serve you?’
“We discovered that (1) they were incredibly positive towards us, and (2) they had lists of ideas that were longer than we could possibly fill! Mentoring was one thing we really went after. The schools often give us hopeless cases, kids for whom the road back to wholeness is going to be long.
“That’s the thing with serving community people. It’s a longterm thing with lots of hard yards to done. There isn’t any avoiding that. And sometimes, though not often, you become part of a work of God in someone’s life.”
Someone like Max.
“Max was one of the kids we mentored at school. Working with him was a tough journey, but eventually he started coming to our church. Long story short, Max stayed with us, got married, and is now one of the people who mentors kids in the school where we first met him.”
If that sounds rewarding, Russell is quick to point out the other side of community involvement.
“Yes, you see good things happen, and we’ll happily tell those stories. But you also spend hundreds of hours supporting people in their marriage and with their kids, and it goes nowhere. That happens a lot, but you don’t stop doing it. God calls us to love people.”
For Tania, something certainly did come from her connection with Mt Wellington Community Church. Tania’s friend Rebecca was required to do community service, which happened to be at Russell’s church. As a result of Rebecca’s time there, she became a Christian.
Tania noticed changes in her friend and said, “I want what you’ve got.” To begin with, Tania’s journey towards Jesus started with Bible studies at the church. After some time, she also became a follower of Christ, like her friend.
As Russell explains, it wasn’t all plain sailing. “When Tania became a Christian, we were obviously overjoyed. But her husband wasn’t. In fact, he threatened to leave her. With our church family’s support, Tania weathered that storm and her husband came around. Today, Tania is on our fulltime staff.”
Mt Wellington Community Church has found other creative ways of building into the lives of community people. Large community events are always on the church’s calendar. In partnership with the Auckland Council, the church puts on Glow In The Park every Christmas.
“Our church must have a community reputation because the Council actually came to us and asked if we would run a Christmas event. They even helped fund it. We also run The Light Party, which is our alternative celebration to Halloween. Every year we get over 1000 community people attending.”
The church buildings are also being used for the community. One building houses the Op Shop.
“Our Op Shop is very popular. Every week we get loads of people coming in, sometimes because they need to buy something, but many just come to talk. We have our regulars.”
For a church to engage with community people, and for those people to become part of the church, there are definite barriers that must be overcome. Russell has noticed one in particular.
“When churches start up a service in the community, it’s often very giving and accepting. Christians who serve in these ministries are tremendously warm and open. But often, church on Sunday isn’t like these community outreaches. There’s a disconnect. So, if someone from the community does come along on a Sunday, they notice the abrupt difference. We have to fix that. We have to make the lost a priority, even in our services.
“In our church, we preach on the lost a lot. There aren’t a lot of our people who are winning their neighbours to Christ, but they want to. As a leader, you can do something with that.
“For starters, you can create a ‘permission-giving’ culture. By that, I mean you can give your people the clear sense that if you have a community-reaching idea, the leaders will support you; we’re open. Some years ago, we had one of our Home Groups come to us and say: ‘You say we want to reach the community. We want to do a Sunday Off Service, where instead of coming to the church building for singing and a sermon, we offer to do jobs in the community.’ Great idea. We ran with it.
“Some others came and said, ‘We want to do a Drop-in Centre.’ As leaders, we were only too happy to help them make it happen. As best as we can, we try to empower God’s people to do God’s work.”
In closing, Russell recalls a book that deeply impacted him some years ago.
“Sheila Pritchard wrote a book called ‘Digging Wells or Building Fences?’ The basic idea was that in Africa, waterholes are where the animals gather because that’s where they get refreshed and find life. I understood immediately. Churches should be like wells, where thirsty people gather. “Our church has a well mentality, and I’m glad about that.”
