Harvest Online ::: News

PAUL SCARFE / THE NEWCASTLE HERALD--Our region is about to experience an enormous community event, known as Harvest 05.

More than 25,000 people are expected to visit the Newcastle Entertainment Centre over the four night of Harvest 05 from tonight at 7:30pm until Sunday night and the Youth JAM on Saturday at 3pm.

As you drive around the city there are Harvest bumper stickers everywhere thousands of them. The notice boards of many of our citys prominent churches highlight the event, and colourful Harvest 05 banners adorn fences and flagpoles.

And surprisingly, the electronic media is awash with Harvest promos airing and displaying highlights of the previous 2003 event, with evangelist Greg Laurie and Australian and international contemporary gospel bands and entertainers.

Many wonder about the significance or long-term benefits to a city of a Christian event like this, and whether the fruit is commensurate with the level of promotion required for such events.

Having personally experienced many such events, the last being here in Newcastle in September 2003, I appreciate the outcomes and long-term fruitfulness of this endeavor.

Of course Harvest 05 is just an event. It cant be expected to cure all of mankinds ills and frailties, or in itself to transform the foundation itself to transform the foundation fabric of our society. No matter the size, the spectacle, or the wisdom and truth proclaimed, it is still just four days of public meetings among the very many cultural and spiritual happenings that constitute the life of any city.

However, few other community events aspire to permanently transform the way we think, live, and act, in the way that an event like Harvest 05 does, such that even generations later the effects are still able to be seen.

More than 200 local churches of various denominations are united in their participation in Harvest 05.

If a man or a woman is moved through the message presented by Greg Laurie towards a place of greater hope, and faith outside themselves, then they can more confidently handle the challenges and more boldly take the opportunities that life will invariably bring their way.

A vastly larger community event, the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, leaves us the heritage of some wonderful sporting heroes, and a variety of magnificent sporting and community facilities. But I venture to say there has been little fundamental change in the level of our humanity, or in the depth of compassion and care for Earths fellow travellers, or thoughtfulness with which we raise our children, or sense of hope and dignity with which we and our children can face the future.

But Harvest 05 aims to leave behind innately changed lives that significantly influence family and community for years, even generations to come.

I can speak personally about this since I, along with countless others, was a crusade convert, having been called to personal faith in God at a Leighton Ford crusade in Shepparton, Victoria in, as I remember, 1962.

Those of us, many as young people, who God reaches at Harvest-type events, thereafter follow paths quite different to those we may otherwise have walked.

Through the re-birth, we gain a potent sense of divine purpose that guides our choices and decision-making in every area of life. The love of God in which we now feel secure, prompts more caring reactions towards others, and a sense of community that overcomes the natural tendency towards self.

Genuine faith in God (Im not talking mere religion), often initially sparked at an event such as Harvest 05, helps to stabilise our society, and establishes an inherent capacity for gentleness and consideration, as the spirit and attitudes of Jesus are seen - at least in some measure - through those whom God has adopted as His own.

The outcome is individuals, households and families that display admirable qualities that strengthen community life, and help provide resilience and patience in facing, as we all have to, the challenges and opportunities that come our way.

If just 100 lives are profoundly redirected over the next few days, we will notice a difference as hundreds of families and a generation of children to follow have greater stability, and a sense of meaning and hope that so often seems to be lacking, particularly in the young.

If, as seems possible, thousands respond to the call of God upon their lives, our city will experience a profound and lasting infusion that will in significant measure add to the harmony and security of this great and blessed environment we call home.

Pastor Paul Scarfe ministers at Contemporary Christian Centre, is the Assemblies of God representative and chairman of the Hunter Heads of Churches. He is also a Lake Acquire City Councillor.

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