Category: Blog

We’ve moved out of the workshop and hit the road with a relaunch. It was so good, I haven’t been able to stop smiling all week.

There were so many wonderful things that happened on the night, however here are some highlights and what our next steps are:

Food

To call it just food doesn’t do justice. The amazing spit roast and salads were a delight on a cool night. Many thanks to Richard, Stuart, Matt Daniels, Brian and the many others who organised the food, prepared the meat and served us our dinners.

We are one church

Relaunching was not something we did alone. Over the past few months, Stuart especially, has been working behind the scenes and publicly to remind us all that we are one Church. This was evident as 56 people joined together to support, encourage and celebrate our relaunch in this new space.

Newcomers

We welcomed some new people who wanted to check us out, a few people invited some friends, some of our commitment helpers and a couple of our friends from Cronulla Anglican joined us too.

It was a delight to hear from our Cronulla friends, Jeanette and Jack about our growing partnership, and their joy in working together to share the good news of Jesus.

The team

A huge thank you to our team who worked so hard and with so much joy as we tried something a bit different. I was blown away by the way we all chipped in a did what we could to make it such an amazing night. We have not only moved to Cronulla and out of the workshop, but we did it with a bang!

We are excited to announce that this weekend we are launching our second stage of Church Planting. At Soul Revival Church, we’ve taken an iterative design approach to our Church Planting. This means we are always evaluating and learning from what we are doing in each of our campuses. 

In the past we have used the term “Greenhouse” to describe our first stage of church planting. So what was the Greenhouse? We used the idea of the greenhouse, because that is where you would plant a seed, cultivate it and grow till it was ready to be taken out into the garden to be planted. The idea for this metaphor came from the book “the Trellis and the Vine”.

However, we also used another metaphor that we were using within our approach. It was the “Shock Absorber”, the idea that the young people of our church are the cultural Shock Absorbers to help the church to adjust to changes we face as a church.

Paul Tait, encouraged us to re-look at these metaphors, as it was confusing to have 2 different metaphors. So we came up with new way of thinking and talking about our Church plants and Church planting.

So, this weekend, we are launching our second stage called ‘Shock Absorber Church Planting’, as we seek to go to 7+ churches. 

Over the coming weeks and months, we will be explaining more about this exciting next stage of Shock Absorber Church Planting and how we can all be involved as ONE Church. You can find out more by watching the video below.

Click here to see the Week Away site map

Celebrating Easter together as Soul Revival Church

Soul Revival is a church with six gatherings across four Campuses. So Easter is a special time at Soul Revival Church, because we celebrate Easter as one Church. This year we will celebrate at three gatherings over the Easter weekend.

And we can sing at all of our Easter gatherings!

GOOD FRIDAY (April 2)

We kick off our Easter Weekend on Good Friday as we celebrate the victory Jesus won for us on the cross. There will be plenty of Hot Cross Buns to be enjoyed afterwards. And we can sing!

9:30 am at the Factory, 40A Flora Street, Kirrawee

EASTER SATURDAY (April 3)

Come and enjoy a coffee and a chat from 5:00 pm as we celebrate Easter Saturday together. Then stay back for dinner after the gathering. And guess what? We can sing!

5:00 pm at the Factory, 40A Flora Street, Kirrawee

EASTER SUNDAY & BAPTISMS (April 4)

On Easter Sunday we celebrate that Jesus is Risen and the new hope we have in Him. In case you missed it, we can sing!

8:30 am – bacon and egg rolls

9:30 am – open air service by the river

10:30 am – baptisms in the river

Swallow Rock Reserve, Grays Point

* Bring your own picnic rug or chair, parking is limited so make time to park nearby and walk down to Swallow Rock Reserve.

Meet Joel McMaster

My name is Joel McMaster and I am married to Karen. We have three children – Leon (7), Everly (5) and Remi (7 months). We have been lucky to be part of Soul Revival from the very beginning and love serving here.

My role will be focused on three main areas:

(1) Overseeing the Soul Revival Digital gathering and the amazing team behind it; (2) Building the Shock Absorber podcast into a weekly release schedule (starting very soon!) (3) Developing a Shock Absorber network for churches and pastors who are interested in expressing church in a similar way to Soul Revival

In the near future, we will also be releasing the first volume of the Shock Absorber book and holding a Shock Absorber conference later in the year.

I’m really excited to be serving God in this role and building His kingdom. I’d love your prayers for us and can’t wait to get stuck in! We are really grateful for everyone’s support.

International Women’s Day was celebrated this week in various ways across the community and across the world. So in line with this, across all our gatherings this weekend, we will have an interview with a different woman from the Soul Revival family. We hope you enjoy getting to know some of the faithful women who are part of our church.

Meet Louisa Zhang

Louisa is a member of our West Ryde Connected Community. Born in Sydney, she grew up and still lives in the suburb of Eastwood with her younger brother. Louisa attended Ryde Secondary College, and then majored in Finance and Psychology at UNSW. Currently she works at Woolworths in the Data and Analytics space.

To get to know Louisa a little better, we asked her the following questions.

Q. How did you first encounter Jesus?

A. Reading about Jesus in the Bible at youth group.

Q. As a committed Christian, how do you balance your priorities and responsibilities?

A. I try to manage my own energy and holistic health well, and plan ahead so that urgent doesn’t trump the important.

Q. What are some of the things that matter to you as a Christian in 2021?

A. Gratitude, community, and innovation

Welcome to Brayden Wall

We were excited to welcome Brayden to our pastoral team late last year as our student pastor.

Brayden commenced study at Moore Theological College this year studying a Bachelor of Divinity.

Brayden is happily married to his wife Bek. Bek works at the Australian College of Theology as an Academic Administration Officer. Bek is also involved in the welcoming and youth teams.

Brayden’s responsibilities will include the oversight of the Friday gathering and being part of the youth team.

Brayden is a big fan of music and Liverpool FC and will happily discuss these topics at length. Bek and Brayden are also awaiting the arrival of their new Cavoodle – Ivy.

We are extremely excited to partner with Brayden and Bek in ministry and please keep them in your prayers.

Soul Revival is cancelling all public services this Christmas weekend due to the ongoing Covid outbreaks across Sydney. We will have no public gatherings this Thursday (Christmas Eve), Friday (Christmas Day), Saturday (Boxing Day) and Sunday. These cancelled public gatherings will be replaced with Digital gatherings across the Christmas weekend.

The Premier spoke again this morning. While the case numbers are pleasingly lower than at the end of last week, the situation across Sydney remains unstable. The Wardens met and decided that it would be in the interest of the safety of our members and guests that we suspend services this Christmas weekend and replace them with digital gatherings. The Staff have agreed with this decision. We are very blessed to be led by our wise, careful and caring Wardens in these health decisions. While the Premier did not mandate the suspension of public gatherings, she did urge caution and mandated no congregational singing, strongly recommended mask wearing and the 4 square meter rule remains in place for worship services.

The numbers we set on our booking website a month ago were based on the previous 2 square meter rule. Almost all our services have been booked out. The new 4 square meter rule means we can only host half the number of people who have booked in. So now our services are over subscribed. Added to this, it is still uncertain how many cases will emerge in the Sutherland Shire over the weekend. The Wardens and Staff considered these 2 problems and decided today that it would be wise to suspend our public gatherings this weekend and replace them with digital gatherings.

Our digital services will be at the following times:

Christmas Eve Kids
Thursday Night at 5:30pm.
Streamed via:
our website: soulrevivalchurch.com
our Kirrawee Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchkirrawee

Christmas Eve Celebration
Thursday Night at 7:30pm.
Streamed via:
our website: soulrevivalchurch.com
our Kirrawee Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchkirrawee

Christmas Day
Friday Morning at 9:30am.
Streamed via:
our website: soulrevivalchurch.com
our Kirrawee Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchkirrawee

Saturday Night (26th) at 5:30pm.
Streamed via:
our website: soulrevivalchurch.com
our Kirrawee Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchkirrawee

Sunday Morning (27th) at 9.30am.
Streamed via:
our website: soulrevivalchurch.com
our Kirrawee Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchkirrawee

There will be no Yarrawarrah or Woolooware Gatherings this Weekend

There will no online Kids Zoom this weekend.Our Children’s Minister Tim would like to encourage all the children to watch and participate in the Christmas services with their families online. And of course we will have a great online Christmas Eve kids gathering to watch on Thursday night.

January
We are hopeful at this stage that we will be able to return to public gatherings in January. We will inform you if this changes at any stage.

Thanks For Your Grace
We apologise for the disappointment and we ask you to join with us in prayer that this outbreak will be contained and that we will celebrate the birth of Christ this weekend in our homes. We would also recognise that our family Christmas plans have been disrupted over the weekend. But we pray that we will still be able to share the truth and love of Jesus this weekend. If you need support or encouragement over the Christmas weekend please contact Paul.

The Wardens and Staff would especially like to thank all the teams that have worked so hard to prepare for Carols gatherings last weekend and the Christmas gatherings this weekend. We also appreciate the effort that the Arts and Communications teams will put in to get our digital gatherings together at short notice. We are sorry for the inconvenience of calling off this weekend. We thank you for your grace and generosity.

We will contact all those who are serving with us in the gatherings this weekend to explain how we will record the digital gatherings. If you have any concerns contact Jai.

Jesus Changes Everything
We are excited that even though we can’t get together physically this weekend, we will be preaching the good news about the coming of Jesus at this Christmas time and we pray that people will be blessed and trust in Jesus as he Changes everything even during Covid.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Stu.

Soul Revival is cancelling all public services this weekend due to COVID outbreaks across Sydney. We are streaming a digital service three times across the weekend.

After the premier announced yesterday that COVID outbreaks were detected in the Northern Beaches and other parts of the City, including Cronulla, the Wardens met and decided that it would be in the interest of the safety of our members and guests that we suspend services this weekend and replace them with a digital gathering.

This morning the Premier has given further information and advice. The Northern Beaches will go back into lockdown from 5pm tonight and she has asked everybody in other parts of Sydney outside the Northern Beaches, to please limit our activity. The Premier said, “We are asking you to do this in good faith. We are asking you not to undertake nonessential travel, or nonessential activity. If you are planning a night out tonight, we ask you to consider changing those plans and staying at home.”

In the interest of being good citizens and following the Premier’s advice, the Wardens and Staff consider it wise to suspend our public gatherings.

We will have digital services this weekend at the following times:

Saturday Night at 5pm.
Streamed via:
our website: soulrevivalchurch.com
Our Kirrawee Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchkirrawee

Sunday Morning at 9.30am
Streamed via:
our website: soulrevivalchurch.com
Our Yarrawarrah Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchyarrawarrah
Our Kirrawee Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchkirrawee

Sunday Night at 5pm
Streamed via:
our website: soulrevivalchurch.com
Our Woolooware Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchwoolooware
Our Kirrawee Facebook Page: soulrevivalchurchkirrawee

There will no online Kids Zoom this weekend. Our Children’s Minister, Tim would like to encourage all the children to watch and participate in the carols service with their families online.

We are hopeful at this stage that the Christmas gatherings on Thursday, Friday and on the weekend will be able to go ahead as planned. We will inform you if this changes at any stage during the week.

We apologise for the disappointment and we ask you to join with us in prayer that this outbreak will be contained and that we will be able to celebrate Christmas together next weekend.

The Wardens and Staff would especially like to thank all the teams that have worked so hard to prepare for this weekend. We are sorry for the inconvenience of calling this weekend off at the last minute. We thank you for your grace and generosity.

We are excited that even though we can’t get together physically this weekend, we will be preaching the good news about the coming of Jesus at this Christmas time and we pray that people will be blessed and trust in Jesus as he changes everything even during COVID.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Stu on 0418960226

light up the world in the name of jesus

Now that we are in December we are so close to celebrating Christmas together. What a blessing it is that some of the restrictions have eased and we can gather in larger groups and sing praises to God together.

To manage numbers we will need people to register to attend the services of their choice. Please see below a list of all the Christmas services and details about how to register for each. Spaces at each service will be reserved for people to register at the door.

Christmas Services

Carol Service: Saturday 19th December @ 5.30pm
Carol Service: Sunday 20th December @ 4.30pm

Christmas Eve Kids Service: 24th December @ 5.30pm
Christmas Eve Service: 24th December @ 7.30pm
Christmas Day: 25th December @ 9.30am

Register For Christmas Services Here

Our usual services will also be running at the following times

Saturday 26th December: 5.30pm service @ Kirrawee
Sunday 27th December: 9.30am service @ Kirrawee.

Please Note: – Yarrawarrah, Woolooware and Kirrawee Services will be combined and run on Sunday morning at Kirrawee.

Registrations are not required for the services on the 26th and 27th.