Australian Churches Love their Neighbor by Hosting a Party
In a show of unity, over 15 churches in South West Sydney’s Liverpool came together last month with one common goal — to love their city at the annual ‘Love Your City’ Day.
There was a crowd of red as over 250 volunteers donning red t-shirts from a broad range of denominations and churches descended on Bigge Park Liverpool to show love in action.
The event on Saturday, 3 March offered the local community a free concert and sausage sizzle while volunteers went out in teams to feed the homeless, clean local parks and minister to people on the streets.
Pastor John Hemans of Open Heaven Church said:
“The power of the gospel to transform lives was on display as salvations and healings were released in Bigge Park on our first Love Your City Day”
In addition to over 50 people who attended a free lunch at the local Salvos in Liverpool, well over 1,000 hot dogs were given away at the main event. Many passersby stopped to hear testimonies while worship music filled the park. Ministry teams on the street saw at least a dozen recorded salvations and over 10 healings.
Pastor Claudio Alosi of Living Grace Church said of the event:
“We want to come together to make Liverpool a better place. Some people have a certain perception of Liverpool and we want to change that perception – we want to highlight it as a place of hope.’
‘We want to create change through Christian churches coming together, that always works, it’s worked for a long time.”
The idea for Love Your City Day was first introduced as Pastors and Leaders gathered together following the first Liverpool City Transformation Conference.
The community outreach group known as Liverpool City Transformation was founded last year inspired by similar movement called One Heart in Toowoomba.
Liverpool local, Phil Greer, helped set the wheels in motion for the first City Transformation conference:
“The inspiration came from me attending the National Gathering event in Sydney in May 2017 – organised through Ian Shelton’s One Heart organization.
It was a practical 2-day event aimed at inspiring Australian leaders how they could go about implementing city transformation initiatives in their city.”
The Liverpool City Transformation and Liverpool City Women teams were formed soon after and pastors and leaders from all across the area got on board for local conferences, prior to the event last week.
Looking ahead, Liverpool City Transformation and Liverpool City Women will continue the work they started with events and community outreach programs set to keep them busy until next year’s event.
For further information, images and interviews, please contact Bianca Serratore at Living Grace Church.
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