What seemed to be a typical Gong combined youth event with some snags and some games turned out to be much more. Last Friday, 30ish teenagers from Wilton Anglican Youth went down to a Wollongong combined youth event called “Christ for the Coast”. We all crammed ourselves into a mini-bus and a couple of cars and travelled to Figtree Anglican for the event.
The first thing we noticed: The traffic. The street outside the church was mistakable for times square (or Picton Road on a Sunday arvo). Next, we noticed the migration pattern. A dense and constant flow of happy youthy people walking through the gate of the church carpark. Next the smell of cooking onions and finally the sound of a noisy mob of over 700 youths. Seven hundred!
An hour of 9-square/jumping castle/silent disco/slushies/parkour/free t-shirts/sausage sizzle/ping-pong/buffoonery and then we all squeezed into the 650-seat auditorium where many were relegated to the floor at the front or the standing room at the back. A ten-piece band, an interactive stage show, Christian testimonies and prayers from high-schoolers, and then into a full-length sermon on Matthew 14 – Jesus Walks on Water. The preacher said: “Is Jesus worth trusting? It’s the biggest question you could ever
ask in this life. […] The truth is that Jesus is worthy of our trust! He’s worthy because he saves us, and he is the only one who can do that.”
One of the girls in our group gave her life to Christ right there and then. Three more from our group recommitted to walking with Christ again. Many, many other young people made similar decisions. Understandably, we’re all still raving on and on about how good the night was. We’d like to ask our whole
church family to please pause and give thanks to our God – to pray specifically for the four who made deliberate decisions that night, and to keep praying for the growth of God’s vine among the young people of our area.
– Rev. Scott Williams (Assistant Minister)
