Breaking Poverty
In addition to reconciling people to God, one of our major objectives at CityLife International Church in Ethiopia has been empowering people to overcome poverty. Poverty is a day to day challenge for millions of people in Ethiopia. We minister to a lot of people who live in extreme poverty.
In 2014, we conducted a three day seminar entitled ‘Creating Jobs & Breaking Poverty’. It was a very practical three day seminar with workshops, testimonies and coaching. It was meant to unlock people’s potential by convincing them that God has placed in side of them enormous potential and capacity.
Water tanks, schools and visitors from home
CityLife Church has missions partners working in 9 regions of the world. In January 2017, Adrian & Jo Murley with their daughter Beth went out from our church community to minister in Bali. Here’s an update from them on some of the things they have done this year…
Yuliana’s Story
All over the world, CityLife’s missions partners share the love of God both through word and action. In 2009, Rayma Tracy our partner in Timor encountered a young girl name Yuliana who was in a dire situation where a facial tumour had grown to the point that it was threatening her life. The remoteness of this region meant that she had no access to the medical help that she so desperately needed. Thanks to the efforts of Rayma, members of CityLife Church and the medical team at Dandenong Hospital, Yuliana was able to receive the urgent medical attention she needed and today, she lives a healthy normal life. What an amazing testimony of what we can accomplish when we each play the part that God has positioned us for.
Here’s Yuliana’s full story told by Rayma…
Missions Trip Orientation
CityLife World Impact offers a very interesting and comprehensive training program for CityLife members going on a mission trip to visit one of our missions partners. However, I found that even if you are not planning to go on a mission trip right now, the orientation course can still be invaluable. I’m looking to go on a mission trip next year and I found this training really good preparation.
This is an extremely well-organised course delivered in two three-hour sessions over successive Saturday mornings. The presenters from World Impact are first class. They don’t just give you information about mission. They impart the spirit of it.
Alcohol and Rope
Brett and Justine Wiltshire are National Directors of Australian Aboriginal Outreach Ministries (AAOM), national church planting movement that reaches out to Aboriginal communities in the outback as well as urban areas. They travel all across Australia, setting vision, encouraging pastors, ministering at their churches, speaking into their lives and supporting the pastors in any way they can. On a visit to CityLife Church, Brett shared some remarkable stories of the redemptive power of God. One can be found here, and here’s another one:
A Child Raised from the Dead
– by Harris
Ministering in Cambodia is like “living in the time of the Book of Acts”…
CityLife Church’s missions partners, New Life Fellowship in Phnom Penh has a vision to be a positive influence in every sector of Cambodian society; to be a model and a resource centre for planting churches in all 24 provinces of Cambodia and to send Cambodians as missionaries to other countries. In addition, they are passionate about ministering to the poor through the New Life Foundation, a non-profit humanitarian organisation.
Here’s a story from their ministry…
A gift of light and clean water
Missions is one of the core values of CityLife Church, and as a church we provide ongoing support to 12 official missions partners in nine nations across the world. Hundreds of our congregation members actively support these partners and their projects through prayer and fundraising. There are also many people within our congregation who actively carry out God’s missions calling for them as an individual, personally raising funds, going and working sacrificially to make a Kingdom impact on the communities that God has placed on their hearts.
Michael is one such member of the CityLife Church community who is doing this right now, here’s his story…
Missions Trip to Cambodia – Dec 2016 (Pt2)
Every year CityLife Church sends teams of our members to visit our missions partners all around the world. These teams work together with our local partners to be a blessing to the local communities. For more information about our missions trips, visit this page.
In December 2016, a team made up of members from our Manningham and Knox congregations, led by Youth Pastor U-Wen, left on a missions trip to Cambodia. Here’s the second of their updates from the field.
Missions Trip to Cambodia – Dec 2016 (Pt1)
Every year CityLife Church sends teams of our members to visit our missions partners all around the world. These teams work together with our local partners to be a blessing to the local communities. For more information about our missions trips, visit this page.
In December 2016, a team made up of members from our Manningham and Knox congregations, led by Youth Pastor U-Wen, left on a missions trip to Cambodia. Here’s the first of their updates from the field.
We’ve been in Cambodia for two days now, and everyone has settled in very well. I am thoroughly impressed with the calibre of young men and women on this trip – everyone has conducted themselves with excellence, and they are already beginning to step outside their comfort zones, encountering God and discovering more about themselves along the way.
Tree of Shame Replaced by a Church
– by Harris
Brett and Justine Wiltshire are the national directors of Australian Aboriginal Outreach Ministries (AAOM). In 2000, they moved with their children to Halls Creek in the Western Australian Kimberly region to pastor a local church. After planting an additional six churches, an indigenous couple took over as local pastors, releasing Brett and Justine to be the AAOM coordinators for 14 churches, some of them in the most remote and isolated communities in Australia.
Then, in September 2014 they became the national directors for AAOM. They are still based in Halls Creek but have moved out of their home and now live in a bus which serves as the mobile home, office and teaching base. As national directors they travel all across Australia setting vision, encouraging pastors, ministering at the churches, speaking into the pastor’s lives and supporting them in any way they can.
There are nearly 400 aboriginal communities in Australia, some of which are on the outskirts of the hottest and most inhospitable deserts and hundreds of kilometers from shops, schools and services. AAOM is a national church planting movement that reaches out to Aboriginal communities in the outback as well as urban areas. AAOM’s motto is ‘working in unity, transforming communities’.
On a visit to CityLife Church, Brett shared some remarkable stories of how the redemptive power of God is working through their ministry into the lives of Aboriginal people. This is one of them…