Aug 5 at Gymea Anglican Church.
The night will kick off at 7:30! Hope to see you there

The Soul Revival Jesus Movement is just one of the new Australian ideas for cooperation. It is based on a simple premise. Churches with the same theology, but different practice, can work together in a broad mission strategy. This strategy is about growing local churches through mission rather than transfer growth.

How does it work?

Common theology, common strategy, but different practice in local churches.

1. THEOLOGY: The member churches have a common Reformed evangelical theology. They have shared values that come from their theology:

The Bible as the Word of God: Hebrews 4:12

Prayer and Evangelism: Colossians 4:2-3

Love in Community: John 13:34-35, 1 Corinthians 12:25

Discipleship to Maturity: Matthew 28:19

Holiness with Humility: 1 Peter 1:15, Philippians 2:3-5

Worship as All of Life: Romans 12:1-2, Luke 9:23-24

2. STRATEGY: The member churches share a common broad strategy. This strategy has 4 key parts:

Commitment: Young people called to be committed to Jesus and to each other.

Community: Youth Leaders called to be committed to stable communities in local churches that mission to and disciple young people.

Training: Young people taught to read the Bible for themselves and go on to train for a life time of ministry.

Movement: Local youth ministries partner with other evangelical churches to grow through mission and not competitive transfer growth.

3. PRACTICE: The strength of this movement is that it helps neighboring churches partner together while maintaining a commitment to the local church. To do this each church has their own practice and their own model of youth ministry. Young people are encouraged to have a commitment to their local church and not to drift around from church to church. We gather as committed members of local churches when we get together in Soul Revival gatherings.

Here is how it works:

Personal Mission: We encourage Christians to share their faith in their everyday lives and invite others to local church gatherings. We encourage personal active involvement in commitment, community, training and movement mission.

Local Church Mission: Local churches are on mission to young people.

Neighbourhood Mission: Local churches seek to cooperate in their neighbourhood as much as they want to. There is mission in local schools and neighbourhood hang outs.

Regional Mission: Neighbourhoods get together for mission in occasional regional gatherings as often as they want to.

National Mission: We see benefits in sharing ideas and resources across regions. We also have a global perspective and look forward to more friendships in mission around the world!

Each of these mission circles is headed up by a mission team. This gives the movement a grass roots mission practice that the particular teams sees as the most effective.

Soul Revival’s theology, strategies and updates of its missional activities can be found on it’s web site, soulrevival.org.au. The web site also gives visitors the opportunity to contact us to discuss joining in. We are hoping that more regions will join in with us in the future.

Churches have been exploring new initiatives to cooperate in mission. In August last year, youth pastors from 6 churches in the Sutherland Shire decided to launch a new mission partnership they called the Soul Revival Jesus Movement. 9 months later the movement has grown to 16 Churches. These churches are geographically spread out. So the youth pastors have decided to form three movement mission areas. They are the Sutherland Shire, the Illawarra and the Shoalhaven regions.

The regional structure allows neighboring youth ministries to cooperate with each other and dovetail with regional structures of their particular denominational structures. At the same time the movement can share resources and ideas across the regions. Soul Revival is a partnership between evangelical churches from 3 denominations. Baptists, Anglicans and Presbyterians have joined the movement. Each are hoping to grow more local youth ministries in their denominations.

Stuart Crawshaw from Gymea Anglican wants Soul Revival to be a blessing to the Anglican church. “We don’t want to create more competition. We want to work with and compliment Anglican initiatives, to help grow local youth groups through conversion not through transfer growth. 78% of Sydney Anglicans report coming to faith before the age of 20. Soul Revival is committed to reaching out to more young people.”

The core mission happens week to week in the local High schools and local churches. The Soul Revival gatherings have supplemented these missions. Nearly 100 young people have made commitments or recommitments to Jesus at Soul Revival Gatherings. After the initial launch there we have held been a Shire prayer night and January mission that also strengthen our Christian young people in their evangelism.

With 2 new regions joining Soul Revival this year, the youth pastors decided to hold 3 festivals in March to celebrate. This gave them an opportunity to share the vision of the movement as well as call more young people to commit to Jesus.

The Festivals took place in 3 locations. The Shoalhaven Region saw 120 excited teenagers from 7 churches gather at the Shoalhaven Anglican School. Young people from each church prayed with each other about living as a Christian. Simon Twitchen from Isaiah 40 about having courage under fire.

Jake Desalis from Ulladulla Anglican is one of the Soul Revival regional coordinators who helped organise the most southern festival. “I like what Soul Revival offers. We are committed to Jesus and the Bible when we meet together. It is so clear who we are, who Jesus is and what God thinks. It is great to be working together with other churches with this in common.” Jake said.

Brett Middleton from Miranda Anglican spoke to the 500 young people who came to the Sutherland Shire Festival. “Soul Revival festivals were a chance for local shire youth to get excited about what God is doing through Jesus: that through Jesus we are reconciled to God and one another.” said Brett. It was great to see young people from 3 different denominations meeting in the name of Jesus. “‘Soul Revival’ was a great opportunity for Cronulla Pressie’s Youth to hang with other Shire teens, & be built up by the message that Jesus has done everything to reconcile sinners to God. Very blessed!” says Ian Holder from Cronulla Presbyterian.

Leonard Kiswangi from Africa Enterprise also shared about reconciliation in Africa at the Shire festival. The Shire region has already given $2500 to AE with more to be given this year.”Reconciliation is such an important issue in our world and having both a guy like Leonard sharing about the situation in Congo and a Biblical understanding of what reconciliation means is tremendously helpful and beneficial for young people.” Says Steve Dixon from Gymea Baptist Church.

The Shire Festival had a live Skype link up with the Illawarra Festival at Fig Tree Anglican being held on the same night. Ron Irving, the youth and young adults pastor sees new opportunities opening up as youth ministries work across regions. “I’m excited about the clarity that the movement brings to youth ministry across our diocese as well as the intentionality of working together which brings with it the huge benefit of reminding ourselves there is something way bigger than ourselves, our church or even our denomination…”

The youth ministries like Fig Tree, that have joined Soul Revival have a common theology. But the practices and models of youth ministry vary in the movement from local church to local church and region to region. The movement recognises a need for a new common strategy for youth ministry to reach more young people in our culture. This strategy needs to be broad enough to take into account our different models of youth ministry but tight enough to foster collaboration.

Ron spoke to 110 teenagers about the simple 4 prong strategy of Soul Revival. The Movement calls teenagers to be committed to Jesus, committed to their local church, committed to be trained for a life time of ministry and work together with other like minded churches in the movement.

More from the Soul Revival Jesus movement is expected in the future. Not only are the existing members excited about more missional activity together but hope more churches will join the friendship and that new regions may be added. At the end of the Day the Soul Revival youth pastors are praying that Jesus’ name will be proclaimed and many young people will respond to the good news and make a commitment to Jesus across our Country and beyond.

Soul Revival’s theology, strategies and updates of its missional activities can be found on it’s web site, soulrevival.org.au. The web site also offers visitors the opportunity to contact the movement to discuss joining in.