Hannah Felsbourg
5 June 2024
Church leaders hope Australians will come to Christ through a project equipping churches to share their hope in Jesus.
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Project officer the Reverend Wayne Schuller said the ethos of the project was to gather wisdom from the diversity of the church.
This was valuable as Christians were able to offer hope amid Australian’s concerns around things like climate change and the cost of living.
He said Hope25 was assembling a variety of resources to make sure every parish found a way to share the hope of Jesus that was specific to their context.
One resource he had been testing was video course Hope Explored which introduced Christianity in just three weekly sessions, making it easily accessible.
Mr Schuller said effective ministry could start with people in the pews who were often inspired to share their faith by going back to the basics of the gospel.
The hope is that people would come to Christ, but also that mature Christians would be encouraged in their walk by seeing new people embrace the faith.
Melbourne committee head Bishop Paul Barker said it was an ongoing responsibility for church leaders to support parishes to reach out to those outside the congregation.
He said the purpose of creating a national project was to foster a sense of encouragement, enthusiasm, and unity among parishes to serve their communities.
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National committee member Reverend Kate Beer said she was encouraged churches could unite in their shared hope in Jesus despite geographical and stylistic gaps.
She said it had sparked a lot of energy to see the Anglican Church working together so beautifully.
“I’ve seen that kind of contagious sense of ‘Actually this is what we’re on about and … this is a shared thing … that we have hope in Jesus, and we want to see others find that’,” she said.
“Just to see people from all different churches … people who wouldn’t normally know each other or have much reason to be working together, to see them gather the contagious joy.”
More information about the project can be found on the Hope25 website.
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