Yesterday was the day: Open house in church. It wa…

Yesterday was the day: Open house in church. It was great! As I wrote Saturday, we were quite nervous if anyone would show up. Well, anyone did… and took a lot of his friends! There were may children in the first place, but also many parents and some other neighbours responded to the invitation. It was chaotic, children running around, screaming, playing and all, but it was a big success. We had a barbecue outside, that drew a lot of attention, and there was lots of food inside. Many of us had prepared food, we had a refrig placed loaded with softdrinks, there was coffee and cake. For the kids we had games, there was a Powerpoint presentation (in Dutch) on auto-repeat with some information about who we are and what we do as a church, we played music, and I guess most of the people were having a great time. And then I forget to mention the most important: there was a little dance performance by the kids from the ‘hood! We really felt blessed with the response.

The thing is, almost no one of the churchmembers lives in the area. We come and go on Sundaymornings, but have little or no contact with the people that live there. Since about half a year we have a kids’ club for kids from the area on Saturdays afternoon, that is real seed-sowing. Especially the adults are hard to reach. There are many muslems living in the area, some of whom don’t want to get in touch with christians. That makes it even harder.

And now the challenge is to build on what was founded yesterday.