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Melbourne evangelises Sydney

7:30pm Sunday, 13th November 2011

Sophie Gyles
Looking at a map of Mount Druitt in Sydney’s
west, it’s hard to imagine anyone having
the patience to walk along every street, praying
for its 13,000 residents.
But that’s the vision of a team of young
people from across Australia planning to
evangelise Mount Druitt, one of Sydney’s
poorest and most multicultural suburbs, over
summer.
The team was born out of the church
planting arm of Melbourne’s Crossway Baptist
Church, but includes people from Perth
and the Gold Coast.
Just one of a number of grassroots missions
Crossway has planned, the Western
Sydney summer trip has the bold aim of seeing
people come to Christ and form communities
of faith over an intensive three month
period.
What’s their strategy? “Prayer, prayer,
prayer and more prayer,” says 24-year-old
Andrew Pyman, part of Crossway’s young
adult team and a church planter.
He says Mount Druitt was put on their
hearts after someone opened up a map of
Sydney at a meeting, and they started praying
for the gospel to reach Sydney’s neediest
people.
His co-leader, 23-year-old Niro Abraham
has taken people to St Marys and Mount
Druitt four times in the last two years, as
preparation.
“Each time, all we do is walk the streets,
pray and see who God draws to us,” she says.
“It’s walking the land in a spiritual and physical
sense and asking God, what do you want
us to do here? It’s also about meeting people
of peace, in a Luke 10 sense,” she says.
The Crossway team has been prayer-walking
the streets of west Melbourne for around
fi ve years. Andrew says their philosophy goes
against an older attractional model of church
planting.
“It’s less about buying a property in an area
and more and more about raising people up
to prayer-walk regions and share the gospel.
It’s about making disciples. We’re looking to
do what Jesus did and trust that communities
will form, as people come to faith.”
Andrew and Niro have been in contact
with Urban Neighbours of Hope and International
Teams to gain an understanding of
existing missions to the area, and to learn
from them.
They dismiss concerns that they might
ru e some feathers, doing mission in an area
that’s being reached by other churches.
“The reality is there are so many people,
that it’s not a matter of not going since there
are too many Christians,” says Niro. “There
aren’t too many Christians. If someone’s
already being reached by someone, great,
keep discipling them! We’re going to talk to
someone else.”
The team will spend three months living in
rented properties over summer, starting the
day with devotions and training, then going
out prayer-walking in the afternoons and
evenings.
The shape of the mission will change as
they meet people. During their last trip to
Sydney in July, Niro says they came across a
man who had collapsed onto the ground. He
wasn’t responding to police, so Niro sat down
next to him and asked him what was wrong.
He opened up, explaining he was depressed
and wanted to die where he was; he didn’t
have access to his fi ve children.
Eventually, Niro says, the man asked if she
was a Christian: “I was like, ‘Actually Graeme,
I really am. I love Jesus.’ He paused and said,
‘Well Jesus deserted me a long time ago.’ And
I said, ‘Graeme, Jesus has not deserted you.
He has sent three girls from Melbourne to
Sydney to walk on this street today, to tell you
he’s not deserted you.”
Part way through a Graduate Diploma of
Education, Andrew decided to do a teaching
placement in Mount Druitt in September this
year to develop a heart for the area. He says it
was an eye-opening experience.
“It was so confrontational but relational
at the same time, sharing my faith with the
teachers; praying with them, sharing my
testimony, opening the Scriptures. Most of
the teachers live in the Blue Mountains and
can’t wait to get back there each day. They
just couldn’t understand why I’d come all the
way from Melbourne to Mount Druitt.”
Crossway’s church planting arm has also
sent short term mission teams to rural Western
Australia, Darwin and the Gold Coast
this year, with hopes to see faith communities
spring up all over the nation.