In our local area

The NSW director of Prison Fellowship came to talk to us at college the other day. Among other things he said that the families of people in jail often don't tell anyone about it because it's so shameful. This means there could be people living in our local area who aren't getting much support.

He said that a really good way in is to get involved in Prison Fellowship's 'Angel Tree' program, which is a program where you buy Christmas presents on behalf of a person in jail and take it to their house personally. Often the wife/husband/mum/dad will invite you in for a cup of tea and you'll be the first sympathetic ear they've come across . . .

. . . which got me thinking about who our target audience should be. Aiming demographically is good because that's how people live their lives. But we also want to be counter-cultural and make church accessible to people not in our demographic. Aiming geographically is a reasonably good way of doing this.