Thriving Auburn Corps ‘a house of prayer’ for all the nations
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 6 hours ago
BY LAUREN MARTIN
There is a giant banner out the front of Auburn Corps that reads, ‘A house of prayer for all the nations’. And, indeed, it is.
Auburn Corps is located in the heart of one of Sydney’s most multicultural Local Government Areas. Five different congregations worship at the corps on Saturdays and Sundays, and each weekday begins with a prayer meeting at 9.45am in the foyer of the bustling building.
“We will often be praying, and someone will walk in and our receptionist will say, ‘Sorry, we are just having a prayer at the moment,’ and the person will wait and listen,” says Corps Leader Natalie Kistan.
“When you walk in our doors, unashamedly this is who we are, and this is what we do – proclaim the name of Jesus.”
With the Auburn Corps building housing a suite of Salvation Army services and corps-based community activities, the constant challenge is to keep everything centred on Jesus. “We’re constantly having conversations about how we can be more transformational and less transactional,” says Natalie.
Friday ‘family meal’ One change the team made at the end of last year was to its Welcome Café, which serves a $5 low-cost lunch every day of the week. This change is aimed at building deeper connections with community members who access the corps’ popular low-cost Food Market.
“We push all the tables together and have two really large tables,” says Auburn Corps’ Community Program Coordinator Narelle Harris. “We invite all of our staff from the different services in the building to come and intentionally connect with people. Everyone stops, and we say grace; it’s really great.”
The cost of the meal on Family Fridays has been reduced to just $2, and Narelle says it’s been beautiful to see people start making friends and inviting others to the meal.
“A lot of the people come every week. There’s a couple who come, and they do their grocery shopping and come and have lunch, and they love it. Recently they have been bringing their adult kids. They love it here, and they found community here, so they wanted to bring their family here, which is really nice.”
Friendship evangelism Don Callahan is a Museum Specialist at The Salvation Army Australia Museum – Sydney, located in the Auburn Corps building. He attends the Family Lunch every Friday and loves it.
“Anyone in the community can come in, but that gives us an opportunity to engage with the community and have a chat,” he says. “It’s friendship evangelism, and that’s what I like about this place.”
Don recounts a story about Salvation Army founder William Booth, who, in the earliest days of the Christian Mission (which preceded The Salvation Army), met a man named James Flawn, who ran a tea shop.
James had grown up an orphan, and Don says he was on the London Bridge one day, begging. “‘Spare me a copper, mister, I’m ever so hungry,’ he said to a passing gentleman,” Don recounts. “But he got rebuffed. And that raised some emotion in James, who said with a bright red face, ‘See when I’m a man, mister, I don’t help out boys like me!’”
James was true to his word and, years later, opened a tea shop and was always generous to orphans. It just so happened that William Booth frequented the tea shop, got to know James, and as Don says, “When the Christian Mission opened its first headquarters on Whitechapel Road, the ‘People’s Mission Hall’, part of that was a soup kitchen that James ran, serving 2000 bread and soup meals a day!
“The good thing about that is all around The Salvation Army it still happens today. Including here at Auburn!”
Relationships lead to faith pathways
Whilst the Friday meal was building relationships, the team was keen to offer community members and volunteers a faith pathway, and discussed the possibility of a Bible study. God drew a Christian couple, the new pastors of a nearby Baptist Church, into their midst at just the right time, and the idea for ‘Open Circle’ emerged.
“It’s a collaboration between us and the Baptist Church,” says Natalie. “It’s a time when we can come together, share a meal, and we get to open up the Bible and read a story about Jesus … These people haven’t read the Bible before, or are from different faiths or no faith.”
Even in the weekly English Conversational Classes, faith pathways will soon be introduced so that, in the final segment of every lesson, a Bible story is used to practise English conversation.
“If people don’t want to stay, they won’t have to – it will be an optional part at the end of the English class,” says Natalie. “Some people might say, ‘Well, I don’t believe in the Bible,’ and that’s completely their choice, but that is who we are, and that is our faith, and when you walk in our doors, unashamedly this is who we are, and this is what we do.”
Narelle says she’s noticed this year that volunteers are becoming more open to prayer and conversation. “The volunteers here don’t necessarily have families, and they would say that this is their family.
“Building relationships and actually being invested in their lives and being grateful for what they are doing here and showing gratitude is important.”
Discipleship focus
On Sundays, Auburn Corps is described as “heaven on earth”, with over 30 nations represented in the worshipping community. Natalie and her family have been worshipping at the corps for 14 years (and leading for the past five), and she says there’s not a Sunday that goes by without at least one newcomer to the service. “That is what has blown my mind so much, is that that never ceases. It’s rare for a Sunday to not have someone new in our midst.”
This year, the congregation is about to relaunch small-group Bible studies with a focus on discipleship.
“Our people naturally gather together in their homes, which is just beautiful,” says Natalie. “They are praying all the time with their families; they are opening up the Word with their families in their household.
“But we are focusing on coming back to being in a church and belonging to Christ and belonging to one another – what does that look like for us? We are going to have groups that meet after church on Sunday in our café space, we are going to have online groups, and we are going to have some groups that meet in homes.”
She says that’s where God is taking the corps deeper – into relationship with him and with each other. Staying focused on Jesus and being intentional in mission every day of the week is transforming lives at Auburn Salvation Army.
