Western Australia youth in a mission state of mind
Western Australia youth in a mission state of mind
19 October 2017
The team from Morley Corps travelled eight hours to Kalgoorlie to help out the local corps.
Salvos in Western Australia know their state is big, but that doesn’t deter them from giving each other a helping hand.
Earlier this month, 16 youth and young adults from Morley Corps in Perth travelled eight hours to help out their mates at Kalgoorlie Corps. Over a weekend they painted 80 metres of fencing, led the Sunday service, and ran a community fun afternoon.
Steve Freind, the Morley Youth Pastor, said the short-term mission trip was about teaching young people to serve others in a tangible way like Jesus instructs us in Matthew 25.
“We live in a world where young people are brought up with an ‘it’s all about me mentality’, but we recognise that the Gospel isn’t about having that mentality; the Gospel’s actually about Jesus showing us how to serve others,” he said.
“We can, of course, do that at home in our own community, but we really wanted to take the group out of their comfort zone and say, ‘Hey, let’s travel eight hours in a bus and build community together and also invest and have an impact in another community’.”
The state-focused mission trip is the first of its kind for Morley Corps, which began planning the initiative after speaking to Kalgoorlie Corps Officer, Captain Mark Schatz, at Summer Carnival 2017. They felt that Kalgoorlie Corps was a good choice due to the substantial investment the corps is already making in the community.
“Of course we wanted to invest in a local Salvation Army!” Steve said. “We think that’s key, because even though we are a world movement, we are also a local and state movement. We wanted to invest in what the Salvos are already doing in communities and hopefully increase their capacity and influence there.”
You could say Morley Corps fulfilled this year’s vision with gusto. At the Family Fun Day alone, 250 members of the Kalgoorlie community joined in the corps’ festivities. It was 150 more than expected and it delighted Captains Mark and Zoe Schatz.
“The captains were saying that 50 per cent of the people the Army engaged with on that night were new connections with the church. It was really cool,” Steve said. 
And while the team from Morley won’t be around to see the long-term impact of their contribution in Kalgoorlie, they’ve already seen the dramatic change it’s had on their own group of youth and young adults.
About 50 per cent of the people who joined the mission trip were from the outreach work the corps do with students in the area.
“The young people we took were [impacted] massively,” Steve said. “We had a young guy play guitar and a 16-year-old girl sing for the first time in the worship team. We had two Indigenous girls read a Bible passage for the first time in front of a church congregation. All that stuff you just can’t teach overnight. It is a long-term process, and we wanted to start that now.”
It is not unusual for local corps to support each other in Western Australia. The breadth of the state means community is essential, and Morley’s mission trip is just one of a stream of corps-to-corps and divisional initiatives taking place across the state.
“These times of togetherness are vital as we support one another and celebrate together. These gatherings broaden our vision and help us to see that we are part of something bigger,” said Scott Ellery, Divisional Youth Secretary.
“The Morley Youth team’s initiative to take a group of young people up to Kalgoorlie as a mission experience was a wonderful example of how a city and rural corps can work together. This effective ministry experience could be replicated across any state from any group.”
Morley Corps is already planning next year’s mission trip. And while they don’t know where it will be located yet, one thing is for sure – it will take place at a Salvos in country WA.
So look out regional WA, your state just got smaller, one corps mission trip at a time.
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