Is It Working In Sydney?

By Bob Mendelsohn | October 2022

The staff meets together regularly. We enjoy being with one another, and will use almost any excuse to celebrate, be it someone’s birthday or the passing of a test, the sharing of a great encounter with a Jewish person or … we really don’t need an excuse. End of the day, we actually like each other!

We strategize and we pray together. Sometimes we just pop into each other’s homes for a meal or a spot of tea. Last month we celebrated Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year) with whoever joined us at the Church in the Marketplace and were delighted with the response of so many, not only those who attended our gathering in Bondi Junction, but many who wrote us and told us they were praying with us. It was as if our team was larger than the six of us who get paid as Jews for Jesus.

After the event, I was speaking with each of the Jewish people who were not yet believers who attended. One said, “Can you have more of these gatherings? They are so special to me.” Another said, “I think I now believe in Jesus. What’s next?” (Of course that delighted our souls and she will be baptized by the time you receive this newsletter.) A third said she really appreciated the fellowship (her word!), while a fourth said, “It makes so much sense. And the songs came back to me like I’d never left [his synagogue experience].” (Of course finding faith in Jesus is not so much a leaving historic Judaism as it is leaving a life of sin and self-centeredness and becoming a man of faith and love.)

I guess what I’m saying is that your prayers for our team are making a difference in us as a community of witness AND are making a difference in Jewish people who see who and what we are in Messiah. One of the not-yet-believers told me that all “those people from all over the world (he’s speaking ethnically) made an impression on me!”

You see, public testimony works as Yeshua taught in his final prayer before the cross, “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” (John 17.21) When the believers care for one another and honestly love one another, in spirit and truth, and the not-yet-believers see that, they want to belong, they want to believe, and we welcome them. Thanks, dear friends, for your help in sharing Messiah with our people, by praying, by your kind notes of encouragement, by your finances, by your asking your pastor to host us again. In all you do, you help us. Without you, it doesn’t work; WITH YOU, IT’S WORKING!