Borders Beyond Israel!

“God purposed that the borders of our vision would be much, much larger then the boundaries of our lives.” – Paul David Tripp, A Quest For More

“You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord even beyond the borders of Israel.” –Malachi 1:5

We serve a God that has no boundaries, no borders, no limits! He is the same God in the States as He is in Australia. He is making His Name known among the nations, and I truly believe He has called our CCP team to Sydney to participate in some small way in bringing His Name and His glory to the nations. Whatever role that might be, I am excited to share my life and my faith with the uni students in Sydney. And so the journey begins….

We arrived in Sydney Wednesday morning around 11 am. (which is 8pm Tuesday in the US). We were met at the airport by Jim Jung, pastor of Harbour City Church in Sydney, Australia. This is the local church that we will be partnering with and attending all summer. Jim has also started a uni ministry (uni is short for university) on three college campuses in Sydney: Uni Sydney, New South Wales, and Sydney Technology. His ministry is called SOW: Student Outreach to the World. Dan and Theresa Choi are in charge of the SOW ministry and they met us at the airport as well. We will be coming alongside them to help connect Aussie students we meet to this ministry.

We are all settled in to our apartment now. It is absolutely incredible! Our view overlooks Hyde Park in downtown Sydney’s Central Business District. We are so close that we can literally run to the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge—and did so this morning. (It’s only about two kilometers away).

The past two days we have spent in orientation with a number of people who we will be partnering with over the next month.

We met with Rich Priebbenow, Regional Director for Campus Outreach Brisbane. He spent the past two days with us giving us insight into ministry on the Aussie campus: Australian culture, ministry expectations, weekly schedules, etc.

Australia is roughly 5% Evangelical Christian. Just to put this number into perspective, Indonesia has the world’s largest population of Muslims, and it is 10% Christian! It’s a staggering statistic, one that I pray will be radically transformed in the coming years. As a post-modern culture, Aussies are more concerned with sport and leisure than faith. They live simple lives based more on experience than working themselves to death. These are obviously stereotypes and we are learning that Sydney is much more different than the rest of Australia. But for the most part Aussies are very laid back.

Our team consists of 13 people: Matt and Linden White and 11 students from Montevallo, Samford, North Alabama, Auburn and Northwest Shoals CC. We are split into two teams so that we may focus our area of ministry to one of two campuses. These are the teams:

Team One is at the University of Sydney: Caleb Knox, Hunter Cassity, Brandon White, Ramsey Pursell, Kandice Kelley and Erin Duncan.

Team Two is at the University of New South Wales: Brandon Land, Kyle Kehoe, Rachel Bond, Haley Venard, and Beth Graham.

We have four days of ministry each week. Tuesday thru Thursday we will be on campus and on Sundays we will be with Harbour City Church. Each team will be on their respective campuses on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we all will be at Sydney Technology together. There are a number of things that we will be doing from investigating the campus, meeting students, connecting with SOW students, going to meetings, etc. I’ll be able to share more about this next week once we have spent a week on campus.

Tomorrow is very exciting though! Tomorrow is the Mayfair. Basically, this is an all day event that SOW is putting on. We will have the opportunity to meet the students connected with the ministry as well as their friends. It will be a great time for fellowship, food, and fun. They will be playing games, grilling out (which Aussies call barbecue), and there will be a time of devotion and worship too. These past couple of days have been great preparation, but nothing can substitute going out and meeting students. So I am super excited to get started.

Prayer Requests:

-Pray for tomorrow’s Mayfair:
that both believers and nonbelievers would attend the event
that God would use this event to help us build relationships with SOW students

-Australians are very skeptical at first. Please pray that God would break down those barriers of mistrust quickly and that He would bless us with many relationships.

-Pray that God would open doors for the gospel, that we would love the students we meet and be truly broken over those who do not know the Lord.

-Finally I pray that we, as a team, would be growing deeper in our understanding of the gospel, in what it means to be a part of the body of Christ, and what God’s vision for our life is.

Thank you all for your support. I would not be here without you all.