The 2005 annual report for the English Ministry can be found below.

Contents

• Worship Services
• Fellowship Groups
  • EDJ
  • Crossfire
  • UG
  • Workers’ Group

Worship Services

The two music teams served at 5.01 this year, with additional members:

Team Natural: Erica Yu, Dorothy Cheng, Kelvin Ng, Ava Lam, Jane Lam, Asa Lam, Vincy Li

Team Sharp: Eddie Mo, William Tsoi, Gloria Kwan, Ka Shu Wong, Daniel Yap, Marianne Chiang, Quincy Cheuk, Keith Chan

What’s been happening this year?

• We welcome our new members into our worship teams: Asa Lam (flautist) in Team Natural, and Daniel Yap (guitarist) and Keith Chan (drummer) in Team Sharp. These new members allow us to add another musical layer to the ever-improving sound of the team and provide us with new freedom and flexibility to experiment with different styles of songs to worship our God. The team members have been very supportive of each other, working together to serve God through the music that they play. These new members are part of our strategic plan for the future arrangement of worship teams.

• Vincy continues to grow as a pianist-in-training for Team Natural, gaining confidence and experience as she plays an increasing number of songs for each service, with support from Jane and Erica. In Team Sharp, Quincy our bassist-in-training has been active in learning and building fundamental skills and is playing effectively as a band

• We launched our song book No. 4 in May this year – with lots of new songs, as well as songs that we’ve introduced over the past year but have not included in our previous three song books.

• We had a Worship Leaders’ Training morning on 4th June, with participants from our church as well as brothers and sisters from Ryde Congregational Church. (about 12 people attended) We looked at the purpose and meaning of worship, the role of the worship leader, as well as practical ideas such as how to choose songs, and how to prepare a worship plan.

• We had the pleasure in conducting a few appraisals for our team members to strengthen and encourage growth and improvements in our playing skills as well as our ability to work in a team to serve our Lord as one body of Christ.

• We are very excited to involve in EDJ worships which happening in Nov and Dec this year

Thanksgiving

• Thank God for his provision of preachers every week
• Thank God for all worship leaders and team members faithful serving
• Thank you Lord for Eddie, Erica and Dorothy of their collaboration, particularly for Eddie and Erica in leading our worship teams to serve God every week, their energy and efforts in those music related church activities.
• Thank you Lord for Jason Mo as our head of attendants to send out reminder every week and controlled our data projector during service every week.
• Thank God for all those people who help out set up and pack up our gears during the relocation at Uniting Church, their contribution make our service run smoothly.
• Thank God for both Eric Cheng and Shirley Mo our church administrators always help us in various ways.

EDJ

EDJ (which stands for Every Day Jesus) is a group of year 7 to 9 students who meet at Epping West on Sunday’s to learn about Jesus and dig into the Bible.

The advisors for EDJ are Gloria, Anna, Dave, Paul and myself. We help to organise and run the programs and activities, challenge each other by God’s word and have fun at the same time!

Another essential EDJ member is Bora Siu, our parent’s representative who act as a channel of communication to let EDJ parents know what’s going on in EDJ and to publicise our many activities.

There has been so much that has happened throughout 2005!

Some highlights include:

1. EDJ—main program

   • Spending a whole term looking at God’s Big Picture, tracing the storyline of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation!

   • From this series, we were able to see that the Kingdom of God is God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing.

2. EDJ+—optional component

   • We spent one term looking at the often confusing and sometimes scary book of Revelation with Dave helping us to understand the imagery and symbolism used and to grasp the main themes.

   • We also had a few weeks where the EDJ members were split into groups, thought of something relating to Christianity that interested them, did their own research and presented it to everyone at the end! It was very interesting to hear about Harry Potter vs Christianity, how the Bible came about and to look at depression from a Biblical point of view (with the help of the 7 dwarves of course!).

3. Walk on HopeStreet / Feeding the Homeless @ Woolloomooloo—April

   • HopeStreet is an organisation run by the Baptist Church, whose focus is to reach those living in poverty in Sydney’s inner city with the gospel of Jesus.

   • As part of our bible study series on Matthew, we went for a tour around the Kings Cross area to increase our awareness of the poverty that exists in inner Sydney and to help distribute food to the homeless.

   • This experience was a real eye-opener for us – opening our minds and hearts to a world we are so unfamiliar with.

4. Camp to Challenge Ranch—“ Get Real! ”—July

   • This was a great weekend away with lots of Bible digging and reflection, physical activity, eating, singing, fun and laughter!

   • We learnt about the gravity of sin and our amazing God who gives us what we need, not what we deserve. We also dug into 1 Timothy 4:12 to think through how our lives should reflect our faith.

   • Hanging upside down on the flying fox, abseiling down really really tall towers with rain clouds rushing in, and working together as a team to get through the commando course were also truly memorable (not to mention running up and down stairs with our luggage for the train)!!

5. Other Events

   • RICE Big Day Out
   • RICE Rally: There’s Gotta Be More To Life
   • The Journey

6. Fun stuff 

   • Photo scavenger hunt
     • What a race it was! We had heaps of fun piling into the lift, hugging the flagpole, climbing the tree, finding pineapples and doing other crazy things, complete with photographic evidence!
   • Breakfast @ Boronia
     • Even though there were no BBQ’s there, we still enjoyed eating strawberries and Nutella and just chilling out!

God has been at work in these young peoples’ lives – pray that His Word will continue to strengthen them and feed their enquiring minds.

Next year, Dave will retire from his advisor role and we have a new recruit - Matthew Tse - as advisor trainee. Our group will also expand when this year’s Year 6 Sunday School kids come to join us. Please pray for us, the advisor team, to have wisdom to serve faithfully in this ministry and for the newcomers to adapt well to the new environment.

Betty Chan

Crossfire

2005 has been an exciting and new stage for the people at Crossfire. Being able to have a new time at 8:-9:30 on a Friday night at a new venue has been a real blessing as we launch into a new stage of growth. God has allowed many to regularly enjoy each other’s company, to study His Word and to put it practice. God has also blessed us with growth in numbers and maturity as many have come to take positions of responsibility and several new members have committed their lives to Christ. Many members are also now regular attendees of 5:01.

This year has been a year about committing to God and understanding Him. The first half of the year, Crossfire discovered more about different topics relevant to young people today such as dating. We also discovered more about what it means to be a Christian in the Sermon on the Mount and the book of Galatians. In April, our camp’s theme was ‘Commitment’ and it challenged members to take up the cross and follow Jesus. From the middle of the year till now, we have been focusing on doctrine and what the Bible says about God.

God has guided and blessed Crossfire in 2005 with many different activities in which we have been given an opportunity to grow in faith. Please continue to pray for growth in the year to come as young people takes new steps of faith.

Crossfire Coordinators
Keith Tang, Erica Yu, Ava Lam

UG

Things you didn’t know about UG:

• The naming of the group was a highly controversial decision, with UG narrowly beating out the popular alternative “Jamaica”
• Our heater short-circuited the Uniting Church electrical system, resulting in total darkness and chaos for Habakkuk and Crossfire

Who are we?

UG is a fellowship targeted towards those currently undergoing tertiary education. A group of around 15 people meet together on Friday nights to fellowship.

Hebrews 10:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

We meet together because we have been saved by Christ, and want to encourage each other to hold firm to our faith.

What things have we done this year?

In the past year we’ve completed a series of bible studies based loosely on “Two ways to Live” which covers some of basic concepts of Christianity. We did studies on various psalms, where we saw God’s unchanging character and how his plan which is fulfilled in the New Testament is foreshadowed in the Old Testament. We are currently finishing a series on Sermon on the Mount where we are challenged again with how Christians should live in a distinctive way as we are people who belong to the kingdom of God. Apart from bible studies, we’ve also had fun together in activities like “Amazing Race”, and games and trivia nights, and enjoyed each other’s company as we eat and relax together.

Thanksgiving

UG was newly formed at the beginning of this year and many of the members did not know each other, but we are really thankful that God has helped build new relationships between the members, and we pray that God will continue to develop these relationships.

Prayer

Please pray that God will continue to work through UG, so that it may be a fellowship in which we help build each other up in Christ, and reach out to those who have not yet come to know him.

Please pray also for developing relationships among UG, that the members may grow close to each other as they grow deeper in Christ.

Please pray for the leaders of UG to lead the group with faithfulness, wisdom and boldness.

Workers’ Group

Meetings and attendance

In 2005, 19 workers attend Workers Group meeting very regularly.

Weekend retreat was held in February discussing the aims, structure and operation.

2 occasional meetings happened in April and May.

2 small groups started in June. Meeting times & venues are varies. 2 groups aim to meet twice in a month. Duration of groups is from June 2005 to June 2006.

Leaders meet once every 4 weeks in average to report, pray and discuss issues.

Group contents

1 group aims to socialization and study the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Another group shares personal & cooperate spirituality, study Books of Kings, and organise 1 or 2 outreach activities.

Thanksgiving

All workers have jobs relevant to their trainings.

Drew and Nadine’s wedding in July.

Matt and Betty’s wedding in October.

Members are very involved during the group times.

Most members are involved in various ministries both within & outside the church and at their work places.

2 workers regularly involves in serving the Eastwood – Ryde community by serving home bounded disable person & elderly.

1 worker will go to China for Short Term Education Program in December.

Many workers support a fundraising activity contributing to the Short Term Mission fund for full time students aged 18 & above.

All workers generously make financial contribution to hold Crossfire trivia night on November 25, EDJ Christmas lunch on December 18, and December 25 Christmas dinner after 501 services.

Future challenge

Groups division aims to serve English ministry and our communities effectively in 2006-07.

A number of workers are going through professional qualified examinations and registration.