The Doubtless Bay Christian Centre’s Op Shop Encounter project is fully operational after a four-year journey that began with prayer.
Doubtless Bay Christian Centre (DBCC) has long engaged with their community by running an op shop in a back room of their church building. This shop attracted enough visitors and contributors for its diverse range of finds to overflow out of the room. While the success of the op shop paid the wages of the youth pastor, it also invaded the kids’ church—time for the op shop to have a building of its own. So the leadership team began praying for a building, and because God can do anything, why not ask for a free building? God also grants whatever we ask in his name according to his will, so a free building DBCC got. The building was a 300m2 disused bowling clubhouse found in Kawakawa. It cost to transport the building to the DBCC site, for which the Baptist Foundation provided a $25,000 grant.
Read more about Op Shop Encounter’s beginnings in this 2019 article.
Four years on, DBCC, with the help of dedicated volunteers, have transformed a graffiti-covered, run-down bowling clubhouse into a top-notch op shop named Op Shop Encounter. Here the community can come and encounter the love of God.
Jennifer Leggatt, an elder at DBCC, shares the success of this project in the Northern Baptist Association Newsletter:
We were so blessed by your funding support for the project, and for the advice, visits, labour and encouragement provided by Stephen Parker (Baptist Foundation).
NBA's help was invaluable and the Op Shop is now blessing us and our community in ways beyond that which we could have envisaged before we began. Thank you so much for your contributions to the project.
Many hours of voluntary labour went into the project and we are grateful to everyone who helped us over the four year journey!
We have attached some photos for your interest and encourage you to visit sometime when you are passing if you haven’t already done so.
The opening hours are Fridays 9.00am to 3.00pm and Saturdays from 9.00am to 1.00pm.
