Baptist Church At Centre of Storm
Ashgrove Baptist Church in Brisbane has found itself at the centre of a storm that has seen it feature in headline television news for two nights running.
Thankfully, this is a Baptist church making the news for good reasons. Brisbane was trashed by a massive storm on Sunday night, and Ashgrove was hit hardest. The area has been declared officially as a disaster zone by the State government and as part of their efforts to reach out to people affected by the storm the authorities have set up an Emergency Recovery Centre at the premises of Ashgrove Baptist Church.
Last night on the news I noticed amongst all the other services available to people there were ‘Nightwatch Chaplains’. I can imagine that there is an army of people in from the church supporting the effort to reach out to people in need.
This is an excellent example of what our buildings can be: nerve centres of the local community, reaching out and helping to meet the needs of people in our community.
Here’s a story about the Recovery Centre, another one here, and here and here’s the chuch website. By the way, I will be considering their site in my Top Ten Church Websites 2008 Awards. It’s a good one.
To Ashgrove Baptist, I doff my cap. Well done and I trust that you will have built plenty of relationships with both key community leaders and your average person living in and around your church.
Having experienced the wonderfullness of Ashgrove Baptist’s fellowship this week (my people are working there at present) I concur. Ashgrove Baptist’s congregation have been brilliant. We’ve had workers there almost 24/7, and there alongside us at all times have been members of the church helping us, making coffee, helping set stuff up, moving stuff comforting visitors, whatever is needed. And we know many of them are victims themselves, but they are far more concerned about our welfare (as workers), and that of their community.
I do not know who made the inspired decision to set our recovery HQ up at Ashgrove Baptist, but it was a great decision. Ashgrove Baptist I know have freely given of all they have (we’ve literally hammered their one phone line to death, and their fax machine) – we’ve got technical people from our department as well as Telstra and others poking around the corners of the church to make stuff operational … and not only do they not complain, they help!
Well done Ashgrove Baptist. I noted with a smile that our 24/7 operations will NOT run from the church on Sunday. That was the one ‘limitation’ placed on us by the church. Officially that means we should be looking for an alternative home base (we aren’t, we’ll run a mobile skeleton service on Sunday) – we recognise the value of a church surrounds to calm our client victims (and with more storms tonight there will be more victims).
I sincerely doubt that the church was offered up to the government as an ‘outreach’ service – it would have been a genuine love for their local community, and something practical they can do to help. But I am hearing at high levels the praise and interest in the church by fellow workers I doubt have often entered any sort of religious building.
We’ve been told to expect up to 2000 church goers on Sunday … no idea if that’s true (I’ll tell you next week!), but I’d expect a lot of high-powered people out there on Sunday (barring some other new emergency between now and then). That will bring more fantastic publicity for a church just showing love and concern for others.
Thanks for the great info from inside the hub of action down there. I was hoping they were NOT going to have a service and instead do something a little creative.
However, things may well have settled down by then and there could perhaps be less demand. The action has moved on to other parts of Brisbane inundated by water.
This has been good to see on the news: a church in the headlines for good reasons. This is also an instructive episode for those who caricature the suburban church [particularly the large ones] as being anachronistic institutions, and to those who criticise the ownership of buildings by the church.
The church, in common with many others runs community services out of their facilities daily, let alone in a storm aftermath.
Ashgrove has planted at least one other church I know of that has gone on to great success: Bridgeman. Ashgrove has a pedigree that has stuck, making it one of Queensland Baptist’s flagship churches.
P.J., I trust that when it all settles down you will be filling out the membership form, won’t you?