James Piggott in 1st year tells me that he once ate a peanut m&m that turned out to be his housemate’s Ritalin tablet (medication for ADD). My experience of Rouse Hill in some ways has been the same:
What’s on the outside isn’t what’s on the inside.
Located in the Hills District of North-West Sydney, Rouse Hill is a pattern of spacious, wealthy ‘display homes.’ It’s easy to get lost if you don’t have a map in front of you, because after a while all the streets look the same. However, the pockets of people throughout the suburb are anything but uniform.
During our first door-knocking debrief, one duo reported encountering house upon house of Filipino Catholics, open to
chatting about Easter. Jocelyn and I, on the other hand, encountered a string of large mansions with polite – yet terse and completely disinterested – Anglos. And down the road from our Anglican Church building is a housing-commission-style community in a caravan park.
Undeterred by my first day of stone-faced responses, I returned on Monday to ‘mansion street’ – this time with Kevin Yeung.
I decided I’d go in with guns blazing: give a short intro to who we are, then ask the resident what they know about Jesus. (Like my personality, my approach is blunt).
After the first 40mins, I began to wonder whether I was wasting my time. Door-knocking on Mansion Street was like sowing seeds onto polished concrete. Was it worth it? Is this how the gospel spreads? Should I go do some Greek vocab? … and then we met Jake*. 35 yrs old, just back from overseas, and agnostic, he was on for a chat. After 5mins of listening to his thoughts, he asked us how we would summarise Christianity. I shared the gospel with him… and then we discussed it for another 35mins. Unfortunately, Kevin & I had to wrap it up and get back to the next thing the team was doing; but before we left, I asked Jake* if he’d like to read the Bible with me later in the week. He said yes.
I’m not sure if it’ll go anywhere, but I was at least encouraged to know that door-knocking wasn’t a waste of time. Like fishing, all it takes is one bite and bit of wrestling the line for you to become an amateur angler.
Apart from ‘DK-ing’ (as I call it – i.e. door-knocking), there’s been some great events. The two Sunday services went well, with Tim Rowe preaching in the morning and Brian Rennie in the evening at ‘cafe church’, both on Mt 16:13-20. On Monday night 7 of our team went along to ‘Boing Central’ – an indoor trampoline park – to the young adults event, where Jocelyn and one of the members of RHAC (Rouse Hill Anglican Church) gave their testimonies.
More Ritalin coming your way tomorrow.