|PIC1|Guest speakers were Karl Faase, Director of 'Jesus. All about life' and Andrew Fisher, driver of the Jesus Ute and the Jesus Supercar and Bible Society NSW board member.
The 'Jesus. All about life' campaign is a prime time media campaign developed by Bible Society NSW that will run across the region from Good Friday, 2009 for a period of four weeks.
Major Topher Holland, Senior Pastor of The Salvation Army Eastlakes Corps at Belmont and chairman of the local organizing committee introduced Karl Faase and Andrew Fisher. Karl Faase, a Baptist pastor from Gymea, talked about the impact that churches working together in an area like the Hunter could have on their local community.
"When this campaign ran in Adelaide churches across the city hung out their 'Jesus. All about life' banners and got involved in running events and working together to raise awareness and interest in the person of Jesus," he said. "Everyone was talking about the 'Jesus' ads," he added.
Andrew Fisher spoke about how we came to have the 'Jesus. All about life' brand on his V8 Ute, which he races in the Yokohama V8 Ute series around Australia.
"I came home from a men's weekend and was challenged to be more open about my faith," he said. "I wanted to put a Christian fish symbol on my Ute or a Bible verse, but my wife said, 'why don't you put the 'Jesus. All about life' brand there instead?' I had nowhere to go, so I spoke to the Bible Society who created the campaign and the Jesus Ute was born," he said.
"What this has taught me is that if you respond to God's call on your life and put yourself out there, God will do the rest. The development of our Jesus Racing ministry into schools is enough proof. That's God saying, 'I'm engaged with this program'. I want to encourage the churches of the Hunter to sign up and get on board with the campaign," Andrew said.
Rick Prosser, Pastor from CCC Victory and member of the organizing committee, challenged the meeting to consider how they could raise the finance needed.
"We believe we can saturate the Hunter region with Jesus for a media buy $200,000," he said. "That's $1,000 for every church in the region," he said.
As the launch drew to a close, there was a sense of the unity of Spirit felt amongst the churches as they now prepare to work together toward the "Jesus. All about life" campaign.
After the breakfast, Andrew and Karl were on hand to answer questions and hand out Andrew's Jesus Racing posters.