MOCHA makes mums most welcome

Joseph Smith | 27 February 2007

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A ministry for mums and kids has had to turn away people at the door due to overwhelming demand.

In just nine months the MOCHA [Mothers. Children. Ashfield] ministry at St John’s, Ashfield has 30 mums and 30 children attending the Christian-themed discussion group and children’s program. It needs more helpers and another day of the week to satisfy the demand from people on their waiting list.

It all started in 2005, when four young mums at St John’s, including Heather Kelley, saw the need to run something reaching out to people with young children in the Ashfield community.
“There were not enough people in our church to run something at the time so we made a decision not to,” Heather says.

However, during term two last year, the four mums met together again to decide what might work best.

“We thought carefully about what we wanted to achieve. We wanted something that met the needs of the Christian mums with small children at the church. Most of them struggled to make weeknight Bible studies and lacked contact with adults during the day,” Heather says. “We also wanted something for people who hadn’t ever been to church before.”

In July last year, they formed MOCHA, which included a program for kids as well as Christian content for the mothers.

“We wanted something predominantly for mothers. We wanted opportunities for mums to get to know others in a similar situation,” Heather says.

After a playtime and songs with the children, one of the mums and a handful of university students run a children’s program, while the mums go to a separate room for discussion on a variety of topics that cover parenting and Christianity.

“We look at issues that impact family life. As we do that, we get to share what is important in our lives, the good news about Jesus,” Heather says.

After one term of MOCHA, the organisers noticed more than half the mums attending didn’t have strong enough English to participate in the discussions and so weren’t joining in.

“We asked if anyone would be interested if we ran an ESL class during MOCHA and we had a huge sign-up rate. The ESL is partly what triggered the sudden growth,” Heather says. “We would love to run MOCHA on another day of the week. We have enough people on our waiting lists. It’s been sad turning them away.”

Parish in Focus

When the Rev Andrew Katay started as rector of St John’s, Ashfield two years ago, the parish had been vacant for two years. “It had two congregations of about 20, both with the same traditional Communion service, no Sunday school, no youth ministry, no small groups, little evangelism and a small public presence,” Mr Katay says.

“We started a team to think through our mission, vision and values, and started a Sunday School, which is essential for families. We concluded that St John’s could no longer afford to be a specialist church, that is, traditionally Anglican, in a diverse area like Ashfield. We had to move to a contemporary family service, and then a young adult evening service.”

St John’s have merged the two traditional services into an 8am service, and planted 10am and 7pm services which have grown to about 55 and 35 people respectively.

There is also a Kids’ Church, a growth groups program, a youth group, annual evangelistic missions and primary school scripture teaching.

“Wonderfully faithful members kept St John’s going when other churches in the area closed. They have embraced a transition to a blended style of ministry,” Mr Katay says. “They all have kept reaching out, so that the church has nearly tripled in size in the last two years.”

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