These are just a few quick words about Carnivale, which we held in front of our church on Saturday. Dominic may write a bit more about it next week.

In life, you always have to play to your strengths. One of the "strengths" our church has is its situation at the intersection of the two most important streets in Annandale. We have absolutely perfect location. How to exploit this?

"Carnivale" is something we've developed over a couple of years, drawing together a few different ideas. The purpose is to raise the profile of the church and make contact with members of the community.

We do this by putting on a number of mini-events under the title "Carnivale". This year we had a jumping castle, a BBQ, pet rock stall, face-painting, devonshire tea, fair trade coffee (and professional baristas) and a photography exhibition in the church. We have only a tiny bit of useable real estate out front of the church, so everything is packed in.

The photos I posted below probably don't give a real sense of how busy we were. Several hundred people from the

community would have interacted with us in some way today. And several thousand would have seen us as they drove past the busy intersection.

We had about 30 people from our mission team doing various things on the day, and looking for opportunities to interact. Some of these were just friendly conversations, others touched on deeper spiritual matters. Many people were invited to church, and number indicated they would go. In addition, a number of team members were able to share the gospel in greater detail.

It really was a tremendous event - we made a real splash in Annandale today; people know we are here and we are serious. In addition, we met dozens and dozens of new people. I'm sure we'll see some good fruit flowing from the event in the coming months.

For more photos.