little lambs

Opportunities in Your Church

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Belonging at St Nic’s

At St Nic’s we love and follow Jesus and so love and serve one another in kindness. Kindness originally links to the notion of kindred, a family relationship. This is expressed practically as the church body lives out its life together.

We are the Body of Christ 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, serving in our homes, at work and at play. This calling is more than just gathering on a Sunday. We express being kind to one another by offering lifts, sharing meals, praying for one another, shopping for those in need, and alerting our pastoral care team to more specific needs. It can also mean serving in a more formal role within the Church community.

Sunday Services

  • Welcomers: Welcoming guests and regular members on arrival with distribution of newsletter and assistance as required.
  • Children’s Ministry: Godly Play has roles for Storytellers and Doorpersons (see Karen D.)
  • Eucharist Assistants: help prepare for Eucharist and assist in serving during the service and cleaning utensils afterwards.
  • Sound: setting up and running appropriate sound for the various services we offer (see Alf H.)
  • Overheads: running the visuals on the overheads for the service (see Dannielle B.)
  • Worship: vocals, keyboard, guitar, drums, or possibly another musical talent not listed?
  • Readers: for reading the various readings during the service
  • Intercessions: leading our public prayers
  • Preaching and teaching: this requires training towards Licensed Lay Minister status.
  • Hospitality: Ensuring the availability of beverages and biscuits, assisting with cleaning up afterwards.

Blessing & Outreach

  • Op Shop volunteer (see Judy B.)
  • Little Lambs volunteer (see Barbara G.)
  • Lending Library (see Jan C.)
  • Wednesdays Dinners (see Verity M. or Kate H.)
  • Nourish Kids (see Carli K.): providing childcare for the Nourish Women’s group is an incredible blessing to the mums who attend and study God’s word together.
  • Parish Council: nominations will open in October for our 2019 Parish Council.
  • Mission Secretary: we are still in need of someone who is called to this position.
  • Alpha and other courses such as Boundaries: prayer for those who attend, and for Holy Spirit led invitations to people beyond our church community. Provision of hospitality or as a small group leader.

Small Groups Ministry

  • involvement in small groups
  • leading small groups: this requires discussion and oversight from the parish priest.
  • youth ministry: soon we will have a real need for a youth ministry to nurture and grow the faith of our older children.

General Operations

  • administration/ volunteering in the office (see Sophie P. or Ian C.)
  • assist our Site Management Team with maintenance and repairs of the church buildings and grounds, including the Historic Church (see Tony W.)

As a community we want to celebrate and acknowledge those who serve in these roles. By listing them here we can pray specifically for those areas in our church. If there is an area that interests you or you feel called into serving please speak to Rev Jamie or a team member.

Adapted from Opportunities in Your Church by St Nicholas Minster.

 

Little Lambs Playgroup: Somewhere to belong and be blessed

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The new year is well and truly underway! Little Lambs has continued to thrive as a beautiful outreach for local families to attend with their children.

A wonderful community gathers together on a weekly basis, to connect and gain valuable friendships and support. We have mothers, fathers, grandparents and friends enjoying belonging to our playgroup. Little Lambs provides a safe place for babies and toddlers to learn, play and grow with an array of toys (including a bouncing castle, which is a firm favourite!).

This term we’ve shared water play together as well as fun in the sand, lots of dressing up and playing kitchens!

We are blessed to have a dedicated team of wonderful volunteers. They provide morning tea: fruit for the children and cappuccinos or hot chocolate as a delicious treat for the adults! We welcome gold coin donations and please remember to bring a bag for the free bread we have whenever possible.

Little Lambs meets weekly, during term from 10am-12pm on Tuesdays. We would love you to join us!

Meet the Team

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Jennifer

What Ministries have you been involved in?

I currently oversee Little Lambs which is one of St Nicholas’ outreach programs

In the past I have been involved in Youth Ministry, Sunday School, Kids club, LL preacher, Parish Councillor, safe church and Alpha.

 

Have you always been a Christian?

Yes.  I grew up in Victoria where my Dad was a minister in the Anglican Church.  My family and I have worshipped in Australind for 18 years.

 

What is your favourite hymn or worship song?

Depends who is singing it!  Lay down your burden

 

What do you enjoy doing?

At the moment I’m studying Sociology and world religion.  I also like bushwalking, gardening, reading and camping.

Op Shop & Little Lambs an Expression of God's Love

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In our Minster parish blessing one another and our community is the first part of our  framework for life together . One of the most obvious ways in which we do this is through our Op shop and Little Lambs ministries. I do not have the stats on numbers readily to hand however it is clear that each week we provide for several hundred people in one way or another. Talking with Judith Bryce I estimated that we shift close to a metric tonne of clothes to the seafarers and prison over a year! This does not include  all that is actually bought at our op shop.

These services to our community are  only possible through  dedicated teams of volunteers led by Judy Bletchynden ( Op shop)and Jennifer Monahan ( Little Lambs).  Through the Op shop and Little Lambs, we are seeking to first be good news to our community.

However, this is not the best we can offer our community. The best we can offer our community is an introduction to Jesus. Ultimately it is for each person to decide if they want to explore or pursue a relationship with Jesus. However, we are encouraged by Jesus himself to go and make the invitation and to show the kingdom of God in our lives, in our actions , and in signs, wonders, and words. We cannot do this if we ourselves are not engaged in that transformative relationship  secured increasingly in God’s love for us. Alpha has helped us with this. Serving in Op shop and Little Lambs is an expression of it.

So once again I want to record my thanks to all who are involved in these ministries.  May you be blessed as you have blessed others.

Shalom

Jamie

"They have real coffee!" – A testimony about grace, friendship and belonging

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“I just found this really great playgroup!” exclaimed my friend. “It’s at a church and they have cake and fruit for the kids and heaps of toys. They even have NICE coffees, like barista style. And best of all? It’s FREE! Want to go with me?” Little Lambs was my first introduction to St Nicks. A noisy somewhat chaotic playdate shared with two dozen mums, twice as many children and a host of mature ladies and gentleman INSISTING that they serve us and we take the time to rest and recharge. For a new mum suffering child-induced cabin fever it was heavenly. My friends and I attended Little Lambs for the better part of a year. What stood out the most to us, and what my friends still remember it for, was how welcoming, encouraging and gracious the hosts were each week.

One week when I was visiting on my own with my (now) two children a lady came and sat next to me. She introduced herself as Verity and we had a pleasant talk before she handed me a pretty little invitation to Nourish, a new Bible Study group aimed at mums of young children. She explained that I would be welcome to bring the kids and pointed out Emma, the organiser, a mum I had often seen and spoken to but until that point had never been able to remember her name and had been too embarrassed to ask.

I was very excited about getting the invitation. I had been a Christian for five or six years but my Christian walk hadn’t so much as slowed to a crawl as stopped dead. I had only attended a group bible study a few times, and only in the company of my husband (as nice as that was, I confess I rather prefer it when we go separately…), and a group that catered for mums with young kids (i.e. not in the evening or during nap time) was what I had been wishing for.

Nourish was or rather IS a blessing. At first it was quite a challenge. Six or seven mums, a dozen kids and a bible. As any parent knows, children have this fantastic propensity to drive you to the brink of insanity and they really don’t care who they do it in front of. Fortunately for all of us, they took turns. If it wasn’t your child throwing a tantrum, pushing the other children over or face planting it into a door that week then you knew most likely next week it would be.

Hence, what I believe, one of the greatest lessons learnt in Nourish, at least for me personally, was grace- both how to give it and how to receive it.

Interestingly the more I received it, the better I became at giving it. Those early days were like a prolonged team building exercise.

We have evolved quite a bit since those early days. We now have MINDERS- truly wonderful people who give up their Friday mornings to care for and entertain our young children. This has really given us the opportunity as a group to delve more deeply, talk more freely and listen more attentively. We have realised we are an extremely diverse group of ladies from different backgrounds and at different stages of our walk but still with so much in common and that we can relate to.

I love it that on Thursday nights my three year old son is always happy to go to bed because tomorrow is Friday and “on Friday mum goes to bible study and that means friends! Friends for Michael and friends for you too mum!”

X Sophie