Westserve

Windana - Day 5

Well, that’s it folks!
Windana 2005 been and gone.

I wasn’t around for most of the last day (I had to find some time to finish Sunday Night’s Bible Talk!), but I showed up for the ‘Grand Finale’ at midday, and it was a great time!
The primary section had their highest number of kids all week (103), and the Infants also looked pretty large.

Quite a lot of parents turned up to see what their kids had been doing, and to hear them sing some of the songs they had learned.

Being my first Windana, I have a few ‘outsider’ reflections:

• Windana is a great gospel ministry. No question. The gospel had a central place all week in most of the activities.
• Many of the kids this year appeared to already be linked with churches. Does that mean anything? Probably not. Even ‘churched’ kids need to hear the gospel. Even kids from Christian homes need to be encouraged to ‘walk the walk’and not just ‘talk the talk’.
• The team doesn’t seem very unified. It’s quite a different context to a Beach Mission, where the team live together for the duration. But it would be good to encourage a greater sense of team life together.
• Some areas of the mission seem to be stuck in the 60’s in their style and approach. Perhaps a good long think about the best way to reach people with the gospel is overdue?
• It was a big improvement this year, having ‘D’ Block for the Cafe, Adult, Teens and Creche. But ‘D’ Block is a long way from the rest of the action, and it’s easy for people not to be bothered making the trek.
• I may be biased, but I think the Q&A Cafe is a good addition to the week. It still needs some tweaking (and some more people prepared to engage visitors in God-talk), but it clearly is a non-threatening, welcoming place for people to break the ice in.

I guess Windana is a bit like churches that have been around for a while: every so often they need reinventing in order to continue being an effective tool for the gospel.

I pray that the churches and people that make up Windana would be willing to do just that, to keep on reaching people for Christ every July holidays.
I also pray that follow up will be effective and that we might see people want to make Jesus their King after this week!