WOW!!!!

Last Saturday evening we held an International dinner at our corps. This started off as a fellowship type activity for the corps so that people could get to know each other better. It ended up as perhaps a corps direction changing outreach opportunity.
While there was great support for the event from our regular attenders the large number of people who came was directly because of new people bringing their unchurched friends. The main organiser of the evening attended a local Primary School disco and spoke to heaps of parents about sending their children to a Reading Group at the corps. Some of these were followed up by a lady who attends the corps who made sure they came to the dinner as her friends.
Suddenly our lovely fellowship night for 50 or 60 people became a night for 125 people; a significant proportion of whom had never been in our building before.
The CO's worries about enough food proved fruitless as there was plenty of food left over. The miracle of the loaves and fish was repeated as people under the inspiration of God brought more food than they had indicated. Some corps people broke away from their friends to converse with the people they didn't know.
On Sunday we wondered if the greatness of the evening would translate into positive outcomes or negatives. The organiser had already suffered some unjust comments made to her before the event as well as an horrendous afternoon in other ways. On Sunday the comments were overwhelmingly positive. God was at work! One of the patriarchs of the corps, a godly well respected long term Salvationist, told the Bandmaster and his wife that it was the most exciting thing he had been to for a long time. Indeed he went so far as to indicate that if that was what we had to do to get people into the building then we ought to scrap all our traditional Salvationist ways and go that way.
Now the hard work begins! How do we build on this success? How do we follow the desires of the long term Salvos and the newer people and the very new people? Strangely the desires are all fairly similar. More of these type of events is the common thread. Such consensus can only be the work of God. This event has come at a time when the direction of the corps is continuing to swing strongly outward. No negatives at corps council about starting new community focussed groups, only lots of excitement at the possibilities.
Strangely I remember some people indicating to me that Friendship Evangelism wouldn't work at our corps. Maybe my preaching on building relationships with the lost and urging people to reach out into their community to make new friends is bearing fruit after all.
God, keep bringing the lost into the fold! Help us to lead them to Jesus!