Empowering the generations at Shellharbour
Empowering the generations at Shellharbour
19 September 2018
Shellharbour Corps Officer, Captain Jess Farthing (left) and corps member, Emma Bailey want to bring generations together with ‘Empower–Create’.
Shellharbour Salvos has launched its “Empower–Create”group, an extension of its Empower Women’s Ministries that combines the traditional Home League with a modern creativity group. 
The group (pictured right) consists of women who connect with the corps through Mainly Music or Empower women’s small groups, women from the corps and women from Home League for a few hours of great food, fun craft and good conversation.
Empower Create volunteer and Shellharbour Corps member Emma Bailey ran the first Empower-Create event with Maria Stevens, the leader of Home League.
“I just see the older generations and the younger generations finally having a way to adapt and a way to get together,” Emma says.
“It gives people from the generations unique and interesting ways that they can get together, enjoy each other’s company and build relationships. Women attending made bath-bombs while enjoying chatting and morning tea. It’s building community and it’s building family, that’s what we’re doing.” 
Beverly Breen (pictured right, in the centre) has been attending Shellharbour Corps Home League for 25 years. She said she was a little shocked when the idea of changing the way things are done for one Thursday every two months was introduced.
“First of all, we open up with a welcome, and then we pray, and then we sing a song and then find out what everybody’s doing in the area and invitations and all that,” she says of the usual Home League format. “Then we also have a short story from the Bible and then ‘show and tell’and then ‘your five minutes’and then somebody does a talk or we have somebody in, and then we have another song and then we have missionary collection, then prayer and then we have afternoon tea and then we go home!”
But, after attending the first Empower-Create, she says she’s excited for it continue.
“A lot of these young ones haven’t got their mum or dad or auntie or grandma around and they might associate us with them in lots of ways, and we might have some rapport there which is good!”
For Kathleen Reddacliff, relationship is what brought her to the corps and she loves the Empower-Create group. After attending The Salvation Army at Macquarie Fields in south-west Sydney as a child, Kathleen hadn’t been to a corps for many years, but when she was invited to Shellharbour it was like she’d never left the Army. 
“It was just like I never missed a day of church ever! It was really nice. We are just like a big family down here and that’s the same sort of feeling that I had when I was a child, I just loved it. I just want [my kids] to have the same experience as I did when I was a child.”
As well as the Empower Women’s Ministries, Children’s programs at Shellharbour Corps such as Mini-Music on a Friday and Kids Church on a Sunday are thriving, and there are plans in place to launch a specific ‘Kids Service’which will run after the morning meeting.
Corps Officer, Captain Jess Farthing, says while the Shellharbour Corps weekly roster can look program-heavy, it’s relationship that drives everything that happens.
“God is doing so much! I feel like we’re moving away from being programs now and more about just relationships,”she says. “I think we’re cementing what God is doing here, like speaking faith stories, if that makes sense, it’s hard to explain. It’s not so much singing songs or reciting scripture, although that is important. We’re speaking out how we see God in our everyday life.
“People are curious, people want community and they want to be connected in some way and ... we can provide that here, a connection point. The relationships speak it out and make it real [and it’s] the relationships will carry it through.”
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