How many special ‘days’ can you name? New Year’s Day, Australia Day, Easter Day, ANZAC Day... The public holidays are the easiest to remember, but there are many less high-profile ones each year: International Women’s Day, Harmony Day, etc. And of course Mothers’ Day.

What is the point of having a special day set aside for a cause? Some would say it’s an important way of ensuring the issue gets attention each year. Others might argue that focusing the attention on a single day makes it easier to ignore for every other day of the year. Mothers’ day sees a spike in the sale of chocolate, flowers and slippers, but the statisticians tell us that women still do the lion’s share of the domestic work in our society whether or not they have jobs outside the home.

Perhaps the best approach to take to Mothers’ Day is to use it as a reminder to be appreciative and thankful to God for our mothers every day, rather than as one day into which we pour a whole year’s worth of affection, so that mothers go unappreciated till next May. It can be a re-set for us, alerting us by its contrast to what life can be like for many mothers on a ‘normal day’, and making sure we work on blessing mothers on those days too.

Churchgoing has changed. Not so long ago most Anglican services were similar – we all used the prayer book, including the evening services with youth members. We felt we belonged to the parish as a whole – to all congregations – despite having our home base. Some keener regulars would attend more than once service per Sunday. We knew the people in the other congregations, and would pray for them by name in our service.

That’s not how things look today. Our four weekend services are significantly different from each other, and noone but me typically attends them all. If you were to visit another congregation it would feel a lot like visiting another church; most of the people there would probably be strangers to you, songs would be new, and things would be done in unfamiliar ways.

This reflects the strong sense of belonging and fellowship within individual congregations, and the way they have progressively shaped the style of their services. It also reflects our size. Including children we commonly see well over 200 people in congregations each weekend, which is too many to know personally or even to fit into our building for a combined service. Those of us with longer memories may regret the shift of belonging from whole-parish to the congregation, but it reflects the continuing dynamism and growth in our congregational life as God’s people.

How can we use our weekly services to reach out to our community? As Anglicans we have inherited a pattern of church services, but if we were to invent them from scratch, what would they look like? Would we have a basic order of things, or would we toss all the pieces in the air each week? Would we bother with the formal elements such as the creed or the confession? Would we stick to a pattern or ritual, or would we try to be spontaneous? We longtime churchgoers have grown accustomed to it, but surely ritual is a barrier to reaching the young?

Perhaps not. I read an article this week by a psychiatrist reflecting on the surprisingly large and increasing support for ANZAC Day ceremonies among the young. He said, ‘Young people are grasping, whether knowingly or not, the power of old traditions and rituals and applying them in their own environment.’

There’s food for thought here. Of course rituals can be flat and uninspiring if they’re done badly or thoughtlessly and without any explanation. But spontaneity can lead to careless and superficial services with cringeworthy moments. Far from being outdated, it may be that traditional services, done sensitively and well, may have more than ever to offer those in our community seeking substance and meaning, especially the young.

Christian ministers have long complained that our society is in denial about death. This was a standard line as I was growing up – perhaps you’ve heard similar things in sermons. Maybe it used to be true, but I’m not sure it’s such a problem any more. It’s normal nowadays to hear people talk about their ‘bucket list’ or to read a book about the ‘1000 movies to see before you die’. A very small minority are keen to see the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia, so periodically the issue appears in media. Sporting teams routinely take the field with black armbands to honour the death of former greats, and so on. We know death is real, but is it the end? 

At the recent funeral of AFL champion Jim Stynes, his wife read out a sentimental poem which begins: ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow…’ Perhaps this is where the conversation is now. Despite the atheists insisting that a human death is no different from that of an animal or a plant, there is a stubborn suspicion of something more. As Christians we can sometimes feel irrelevant, but I think we live at a perfect time to be sharing the gospel of Jesus’ resurrection and promise of eternal life.

Everybody eats. The need to stop for meals is something we have in common with every other human being. The same is true of sleeping, but there’s something special about meals. Meals require preparation, and good food doesn’t just meet physical needs but brings particular pleasure and variety. Food preparation appeals to the creative side of us. Above all, meals can be shared with others.

Sharing a meal with someone is a socially significant moment of connection and fellowship. Jesus was even criticised for having meals with inappropriate people. As Christians, sharing meals with each other and with non-Christians is an important ways of showing generosity, and of strengthening connections. This is why the Telopea Congregation begins each Saturday at 5pm with a meal.

Our society has never been more preoccupied with meals. Think of the t.v. cooking shows, celebrity chefs and kitchen contests. And on Friday 27th we will be having a special ‘Better Barbecuing’ event in the St Andrews hall. A guest expert will be demonstrating different cuts of meat and cooking methods, and there will be the opportunity to share a meal. It’ll be a fantastic evening open to all. It’s a particularly brilliant chance to invite friends if you can, and to make connections. Even if your friends decline, you’re needed as part of the event - join us there!

Did you catch the story this week about the collision in Victoria? A badly-injured driver was trapped in his vehicle, and the ambulance paramedics arrived too late - they could only confirm that he was dead. SES volunteers had the distressing task of removing the body and leaving it nearby for the coroner’s department. But when the official arrived almost 2 hours after the accident, it was discovered that the man in fact had a very faint pulse. The ambulance was urgently recalled and the man was taken to hospital in a critical condition, fighting for his life.

The extraordinary story made me think of Easter. Although noone bothers nowadays, it used to be suggested by some that Jesus didn’t die, but passed out like the driver. Of course, the news story only helps disprove this. The idea that anyone could be critically injured and then be dining with friends as Jesus was a few days later is plainly nonsense.

If we are to find an Easter analogy in the crash story, we should rather see ourselves in the dying driver. We were the ones who were ‘dead in our sins’ and Jesus rescued us from death when all hope was lost. Because of Jesus’ resurrection, the miraculous death-to-life story of Easter is us.

This week I attempted to fix our washing machine guided by a 10-minute Youtube video. We live in an age when we are responsible for our own ‘upskilling’. It’s assumed that when you buy a new device you’ll have to spend time figuring out how to get the most out of it. But that doesn’t mean you’re on your own. There is an abundance of training available - friends, clips, books, websites and so on where knowledge is shared. Acknowledging and addressing our own ignorance is part of life. One best-selling series of self-training books is even called ‘The Dummies Guides’.

As Christians our great concern is the world’s ignorance of Jesus. And we recognise our God-given responsibility to help people learn the truth about Jesus. Easter is the time of year when awareness of Jesus is at its highest, and so beginning at Easter we will be having a series of sermons called ‘Jesus for Dummies’. The idea is to begin with no assumed knowledge, and answer some key questions about Jesus and his importance. Along with this we’ll be seeking to establish new ‘Simply Christianity’ groups for those who want to investigate further. Let’s pray and invite to church over the next several weeks those people in our lives who need to know the truth about Jesus.

As I was having breakfast on Monday, I half-heard a radio report of some sort of robbery, at Dundas Sports Club of all places. The next day it made the papers: ‘Elderly woman pistol-whipped during armed robbery at Dundas’ said one headline. Many of us have been to Dundas Sports Club. We’ve used it for church functions – it’s a fairly unassuming sort of place. 

The robbery was a big local talking point this week. But what exactly surprises us about it? It’s a shameful crime, of course, but we’re not amazed it happened at all, but that it happened here. We expect that things like this in rougher parts of Sydney, but Dundas doesn’t seem like that sort of place.

It’s true that it’s not a typical event around here. But I wonder whether in practice we hope to manage human wickedness by a sort of zoning; allowing areas where certain establishments, activities and types of people will be more typical, and then moving our families to nicer places. Neighbourhoods with different characters are inevitable in a city, and it is nice to live where things are peaceful, but as Christians we know that the real solution to human evil is not to relocate away from it, but the spread of the gospel of Jesus to every corner of our suburb, city and world.

At 11.30am Sunday March 25th we will be holding our Parish Annual General Meeting. I’m looking forward to it. It lasts under an hour and is pretty business-like, but it offers perspectives on our parish which we don’t always see.

Most of us tend to think of church in terms of a weekly or perhaps a termly pattern. One of the stimulating things about the AGM is that we reflect on an entire year in the life of the parish, and look towards the 12 months ahead.

Secondly, almost everyone experiences church life as the single congregation they belong to. But we now have five congregations, including the monthly Friendship service. The AGM is an opportunity to get a sense of the overall progress of the parish beyond our own congregation.

Thirdly, the important work of the wardens and parish council in making decisions about policy, the use of resources etc tends to be invisible in the normal course of parish life. Despite this, it’s not meant to be secret! The AGM is a time to receive reports and updates and ask questions of those who’ve been working on our behalf. And of course, we need to elect office bearers to serve our parish in these key roles for the year ahead. All in all, an important and eye-opening meeting. See you there!

In last weekend’s sermon I said that the true power for Christian growth doesn’t come from guilt or goal-setting, but from a deepening love for Jesus. The more precious Jesus is to us, the more we desire to live a life that glorifies him. But of course the next question is, ‘So how can I deepen my love for Jesus?’

I suggested the answer is to embrace more fully what Jesus has done for us by his death and resurrection – as we marvel at the depth of his love for us, so we deepen our love for him. The main way I do this is through Bible reading, prayer and reflection. But my experience in church at Telopea last Saturday alerted me to another way love may be increased in us: gospel singing.

As I stood in the congregation singing of God’s greatness and Jesus’ love, I found myself moved and reawakened to the reality we were singing about. It wasn’t new information, but something about the activity of singing, the beauty of the music, and the poetry of the words affected me. The songs left me with a sense of real humility and a deepened gratitude to Jesus. Do you know the experience I’m describing? No wonder the Bible encourages us to ‘sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God’!

I’m currently reading a brilliant Christian book called ‘The Mortification of Sin’. The title is a quote from an older English translation of the Bible, and the book is a guide and encouragement for getting rid of sin in the Christian life. I’ve been enormously helped by it. I’ve read it before – in fact, it’s one of my all-time favourite Christian books. I’ve no chance of meeting the author, unfortunately. It was written over 350 years ago.

One of the great resources for the Christian life is the encouragement and example of Christian people stretching back 2000 years. For me, this particularly means the writings from Christians in previous ages. Being able to read gives us access to the most wise, gifted and encouraging Christian pastors and writers from all around the world down the centuries. And books which aren’t much good don’t normally get reprinted, so you can almost guarantee that any book which is still selling 50 years after it was written is going to be quality.

Not all of us are big readers, and very old books (like the one I’m reading) can present challenges in language and style, but you don’t need to go back that far. If you’re looking for help and encouragement in the Christian life, why not seek out a classic Christian book?

Even for someone who enjoys following politics, it’s all becoming a bit much: an unpopular prime minister in a hung parliament, a foreign minister attracting attention and eventually resigning from the other side of the world, and those who were formerly his closest fellow-workers proclaiming his dangerous failings. And there’s more to come.

We’ve all heard the cliché about politics being a dirty game, but I’ve been shocked by the sense that it’s fuelled fundamentally by resentment. Resentment over the change of leadership, resentment over leaks and destabilisation, resentment over leadership style, resentment over cabinet reshuffles and so on. Apparently in the offices of government no less than in the school playground, grudges are cherished, scores wait to be settled, and revenge is worth it at any price.

In light of all this, we appreciate again the truly radical character of the Christian community, shaped by grace. Jesus and Paul knew plenty about vicious opposition. Yet Jesus famously said, ‘Turn the other cheek’ and ‘Father, forgive them’, and Paul wrote, ‘Do not take revenge, my friends’ and ‘Forgive one another just as in Christ God forgave you’. Abandoning resentment and exercising forgiveness flows from the gospel – it is not optional for us. And through the gospel we are called to live as a community shaped by Christ, in contrast to the values of power and payback.

As we heard last week, Alan Lukabyo (our senior minister) took off for Madagascar on Tuesday. He was to be part of a conference of the Madagascan bishops to discuss training Madagascan ministers and a possible partnership with the Sydney diocese. This promised to be a very significant and strategic meeting for the growth of the gospel in that country. I was praying for it, and looking forward to hearing all about it.

On Thursday evening I received an email from Al. It read 'There's been a cyclone in the capital of Madagascar which has prevented us entering the country. We've been stranded in Reunion, and have finally decided to return home…'

For many reasons, this seems like such a shame. And it got me thinking about how we should respond to disappointment when things don't go to plan- even when the plan seems so in line with God's will.

The apostle James cautions us against being too precious about our plans. 'listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city" … you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”' Our knowledge is so limited and our lives are relatively small parts of a much bigger story. We can take comfort in the fact that God runs the world, and he knows what he's doing.

And at the same time, often we are right to be disappointed, because this world is not all as it should be or as God wants it. Evil and frustration and disorder and cyclones are at large in our world. With Jesus, we long for 'God's will to be done on earth, as it is in heaven'. But this godly disappointment will give rise to Christian hope as we look to and wait for God to bring in his renewed creation which will be free from evil and suffering and disappointments.

‘On Tuesday I’m going to Madagascar.’

I’ve had 3 basic responses to this statement. Most make a joke about hip-hopping lemurs. Others thoughtfully mention a David Attenborough documentary. A final group says either, ‘Where’s that?’ or ‘What for?’

Madagascar is a large island in the Indian Ocean near Africa. It’s home to about 21 million people, and is one of the poorest and most politically unstable nations in the world. In the strange way the Anglican world map works, Madagascar is grouped with Mauritius and the Seychelles under the leadership of one archbishop. That archbishop is currently Ian Ernest, who has strong ties to Sydney Anglicans, and who visited St Andrews Dundas about 2 years ago.

Madagascar does not have a ministry training college, and Archbishop Ian has invited the Bishop Peter Tasker and me to attend a conference of the Madagascan bishops to discuss options for training ministers. The invitation came at short notice, but it is a great privilege and an opportunity to contribute to far-reaching decisions about Anglican ministry in Madagascar. It involves some inconvenience for our parish, but it is also an expression of fellowship with our Madgascan sisters and brothers in Christ.

Please pray for God’s Holy Spirit to bless and direct our discussions and the decisions to be taken. I’ll update you on the lemurs when I return in a week!

Last Monday was my first day back on duty after 7 weeks of long service leave. It’s exciting to be back! I’ve had several meetings to catch up on all that’s happened. In every case the message has basically been ‘There’s nothing much to tell you – everything’s fine.’ It reminded me of a friend of mine who returned from long service leave to find things at his large church running better than he had left them. He admitted feeling a little disappointed - perhaps he wasn’t indispensable after all!

It’s true, of course. Ministers and leaders have important parts to play in church life, but every Christian person has a role in the body of Christ, and it is ultimately God himself who oversees the progress of his church. For this he doesn’t rely on any human servant.

I had to remind myself of this as I farewelled Matt Keller after working with him here for 6 years. What will happen to the ministry? The answer is, as it is for all ministries, that God will supply the gifts and servants needed for his purposes, and he will oversee the progress of the gospel. This is our great confidence as we serve him here. We each have our part to play, but it is ultimately God’s work to bring people to new life and continual growth in Christ.

Today we farewell Matt, Emilie, Anna & Xander Keller from our church as Matt leaves the staff team to take up a new position at St. Paul’s, Castle Hill. Matt joined the ministry team in the parish fresh from studying at Moore College in January 2006 and has served us wonderfully for the last 6 years.

Matt has a particular passion for ministry to children and young people and over these years he has coordinated our youth and kids programs. At the start of 2008, Matt began coordinating the 7pm service at St Andrew’s as well. Matt loves seeing kids learn the Bible and grow in trusting Jesus. Many of our young people can testify to Matt’s key role in them being brought to faith and growth in Christ and members of the evening service have been sustained through his faithful preaching and leadership.

Emilie is a much loved member of our congregation and she, with their two kids, who both arrived during Matt and Em’s time here, will be dearly missed.

We have two opportunities to celebrate Matt’s ministry over the last 6 years, farewell the family and pray for God’s blessing on them as they start a new chapter. At 12pm tomorrow there will be a lunch following the 10am service. And there will be a farewell service and supper at 7pm tomorrow night.

The New Year has begun. This week we will celebrate Australia Day. We look back to the day when the first of our nation's British forbears, after a dangerous and arduous sea voyage, finally stepped ashore at Port Jackson. Most of them were the 'guests of the King of England'.

Soon after their arrival the Chaplain, the Rev. Richard Johnson, held the first Christian service on this country’s soil. The passage of scripture Richard Johnson chose was Psalm.116:12-14. It was a message of thanksgiving for all of God's mercy shown to them in bringing them through mountainous seas and other perils. It was also a call to commitment to every man, woman and child to respond to God's mercy and grace by renewing their promises to him.

This message from the Psalm is one we could well take for ourselves, and read and think about on Australia Day.

Soon we will be moving into the various ministries that have been suspended during the Christmas/ New Year holiday break. Home groups will begin soon, do you have a home group to attend for fellowship and the study of God's Word? There are opportunities for ministry in our local schools. Is this somewhere you could serve? The other end of the scale, Friendship Group Luncheon is in need of volunteers and also someone to step into Joy Spalding's place as co-coordinator of this ministry.

What will you offer up to the Lord for all his benefits to you?

Did you know that the last twenty years have seen a remarkable revival in bible-believing churches?  So much so that the amount of people saved across our world in the last two decades surpasses the number of those saved in the Reformation, and may even rival the spread of the gospel in the first century!  

It’s hard to imagine, for we live in a culture where Christianity is regularly rejected.  However in many countries this is not the case; gospel work is growing steadily.  For instance in 1990 there was not a single believer in Eritrea, whereas now there are over 150 bible-believing churches!

It’s helpful to be reminded that our God rules the whole earth.  He is establishing a worldwide church despite language differences and cultural diversity.  As we live in a multicultural area this is great news!  People from other countries are far more receptive to the gospel than we might think.  It’s exciting to see people from many different backgrounds gather with us each weekend, but wouldn’t it be great if there were even more?

One way we can reach more people from non-English speaking backgrounds is through our schools.  Through Scripture classes we are seeing these kids come to Christ.  As one teacher remarked “It’s a mission field in our own backyard!”  Do you want to play a part in this gospel ministry?

The month of January is named after the Roman god Janus, the two-faced god of doors, who looked backwards and forwards. In the same way, in modern times many of us spend January reflecting on the year gone by and making plans for the year before us. In this looking backwards and looking forwards many of us make New Year’s resolutions:

• Lose weight
• Spend more time with family
• Come to church more
• Read the Bible more

While most of us make these resolutions with sincere intent and conviction, by the time February comes round, work and our busy lives have resumed and our plans quickly unravel.

Whenever I hear about people’s resolutions they all seem to have something in common- personal transformation. Most of us want to be better, whether it’s morally, physically or spiritually, yet we are painfully reminded that we keep falling short- hence the need for more New Year’s resolutions- which sound awfully familiar to the previous year’s!

It would seem that deep down we want transformation. 

In John 3 Jesus says the only way we can truly be transformed is to be born again- it’s not something we do but what God does for us if we turn to him in repentance- trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So as you look backwards and forwards this January, I pray that you will reflect on the great transformation Jesus gives.

The ministry staff team joins me in wishing you all a joy filled Christmas Day as you spend it with those you love and care for.

However, already tragedy has abruptly entered into the lives of people on our highways, or through accidents of different kinds or through unexpected illness. Our world waits with a sense of uneasiness because of the changing leadership in Communist North Korea and the eruptions in the Middle East. People are still losing their lives in trying to reach our "lucky country".

It is refreshing to recall the message of Christmas, that God entered our broken and hopeless world in the baby Jesus.Before his birth he bore the name 'Jesus', Saviour.Rescuer. His name announced his purpose, he was God to the rescue of sinful humanity, and to the restoration of his creation.

He accomplished that purpose by his death on the cross and through his resurrection. He will bring it to completion when he returns, not as a baby, but as the risen enthroned King of glory. Then he will bring to an end the corrupt powers and the selfishness of humankind.

Christmas points us to Jesus - Emmanuel who is with us and who will never forsake us.

We can well sing that great hymn ' O come, O come, Emmanuel'.

As I trust you’ve heard it is with great sadness that my family and I decided we will be leaving our church.  Our last Sunday on duty will be the 22^nd January, with farewells scheduled for the 29^th.  

This of course leaves a number of ministry ‘seats’ to fill.  In the lead-up to his Long Service Leave Alan has been working at trying to fill these, and over the next few weeks I would love to continue this work.  Our desire is of course that ministry continues to grow and flourish in our parish in my absence.

To assist this we need to ensure three ministry areas are functioning well: the 7pm service, youth ministry and our work amongst children.  To date we’ve put plans in place for the first two, but there are still a number of ministry opportunities available in Kids Ministry.  Girls Brigade, Kids Art and our Telopea 5pm and Dundas 10am service programs need more leaders.  More importantly Scripture classes need more teachers and helpers.  At present we cannot staff Scripture at Dundas Public or Yates Avenue and we would love to be able to do so.  Before I leave I would love to train up more people for these important ministries, so that their future is ensured for many more years to come.  What plans can you begin to make for ministry next year?

It’s been a wet week. The experts have been analysing how long since we had a start to summer this wet, or this cold. Which brings us to the subject of our annual outdoor community carols!

Every year in the countdown to the carols evening, the team wonders and prays about the weather. Carols is our largest event of the year. It requires an enormous amount of effort and hours in planning, not to mention expense. It’s an important moment of connection with our local community. And with December being a month of very unsettled weather, in many years there comes a point when we have to decide whether to go ahead or to cancel. It’s a stressful moment. This year it came at lunchtime on Thursday, when after some agonising we decided to move the event indoors to the school hall.

Most people dislike making big decisions, especially when they think criticism might result. We prefer someone else to choose for us, or we delay. I occasionally see people do this where God is concerned. They understand that Jesus has died for their forgiveness. They know a decision to turn to him is needed in their lives. But it’s a big decision, and they delay. Is that you? What are the big decisions in your life which God might be waiting for you to make?

As far as most people in our suburb are concerned, our church does not exist. Not that they’re against us – I mean they are genuinely unaware of our existence. If they wanted to come to their nearest Anglican church, they’d be stumped. It so happens that unlike churches set on main roads or important hilltops which are local landmarks, our buildings are hidden away from passing traffic. It leaves us with a challenge – how can we make sure our church exists in the awareness of locals?

1. Have a good website.
2. Publicise yourself through local papers, letterbox drops, and doorknocking campaigns.
3. Run events in the community, not just in your buildings.
4. Invite lots of people to church.

Over the next seven days, we will be doing all these things! Our website is alive as usual, but this week helped by a team of Sydney University students we will also be running our letterbox drop/Toys ‘n Tucker campaign, directly contacting thousands of local households. We will be conducting community Christmas Carols events at Yates Avenue School on Thursday and Dundas Public School on Saturday. Finally, next Sunday morning at Dundas we will be inviting the families of kids involved in our programmes to join us at church. What a week! Let’s get praying, and I’ll see you at carols.

Like our national census it’s a bit of an inconvenience, but a very worthwhile exercise. Why? For a start, it’s the best instrument we have for getting a really accurate sense of the state of Christian churches in Australia, taken as snapshot but also compared over time so we can see trends. Secondly, when the results are processed we receive a detailed report on our own parish strengths and weaknesses, and once again it reveals where we are today, and also the trends in our parish life when compared with previous surveys.

Enjoy it! Although we don’t come to church to fill out forms, understanding ourselves and our context is enormously valuable in helping us pursue our mission as God’s people here. When the results are processed and sent out in 2012 we’ll have the opportunity to discuss and reflect on what they mean for us and our life as a fellowship.

More info: http://www.2011ncls.org.au/

I was at a conference this week discussing the importance of ‘contextualisation’ for churches. In other words, how should we adapt so that we can most effectively communicate the gospel of Jesus to our particular neighbourhood subculture? It’s an important question which Anglicans have traditionally ignored.

The Anglican approach has traditionally been to conduct essentially identical church services no matter where you are. It’s a bit like McDonalds, which has decided that it will largely ignore the surrounding culture, so you can wander into McDonalds Beijing and find that it’s basically the same as McDonalds Parramatta. That’s fine as long as people realise they’re really getting a little bit of America when they walk in, but effective gospel mission isn’t like that.

Our goal isn’t to be an alien culture in our suburb, but to be an expression of the local culture, transformed by Jesus. In fact, people won’t even hear us clearly unless we understand the local culture well enough to communicate to the hopes, priorities and assumptions of our neighbours. The good news is that as a church largely made up of locals, we already have plenty of expertise in local culture. The challenge is not simply to continue our traditions, but to let our understanding of our context shape the way we reach out with the gospel.

Imagine a young couple. They moved into a duplex in Dundas Valley four years ago, and the wife is expecting their first child. They know a few locals, and they often take an evening stroll around Curtis Oval, though they tend to socialise with old friends who don’t live in the area. They’re the sort of people we as a church would love to connect with. We have people their age, and we’re a great community to be part of. Above all, we want to share Jesus with them. But here’s the question: how would typical locals like this ever hear about our church? It’s possible for them to live nearby for years and never register that we exist.

The solution? We need to be visible and active in the community, connecting with those who won’t otherwise find us.

Christmas is the perfect season to do this, and on December 5-11 we have planned a huge week of ‘out there’ activities to connect with our community, and we need your involvement!

• Toys ‘n Tucker: including doorknocking the entire neighbourhood
• A mission team of university students will be joining us to add zeal and personnel to our programmes
• Carols in Dundas Public School Saturday December 10th
• Connect Sunday on December 11th. 

Let’s connect with the young couple – and everyone else in the area! 

I’m old enough to be sentimental about the past. I bore my children by telling them how quiet Kissing Point Rd used to be, and how I saw my first Arnold Schwarzenegger movie at the long-gone drive-in on Park Rd. But things change.

Earlier this week I was chatting with some property developers who were lodging plans for a site adjoining St Andrews Dundas. They spoke very matter-of-factly about how in a few years all of St Andrew’s Place will be taken up by apartment buildings, with the exception of the church grounds. Looking up the street as they spoke, I tried to imagine it.

I’m reluctant to accept change in a situation I have become comfortable with: this is my street, and I like having a line of modest houses as my neighbours. On the other hand, when I think of this from the perspective of mission, I’m less disappointed. New residents in an area tend to be more open to considering church involvement as they start a new chapter of their lives. Our church facilities and programmes may be more precious to flat-dwellers without backyards and the capacity for big hospitality gatherings. And it brings more people within easy walking distance of the church. So perhaps the question I should be asking is, ‘What opportunities for gospel mission do these changes create?’

These words has left me with a real feeling that we ought to be more ‘public’ as a fellowship. For us who are regulars our church gatherings might feel quite public. But most non-churchgoers wouldn’t dream of simply walking into a church service without an invitation or some sort of permission – they think it’s private. We need to be imaginative about ways of moving beyond our building so our light can shine.

Our most public event of the year is our annual carols in Dundas School. It’s coming on December 10th, and is a brilliant moment of community connection and celebration. Mark it in your diary, and bring your neighbours: we want our light to shine so that people will praise God. We’re going public!

I normally find empty seats in church disappointing. No surprises there! When there are fewer empty seats (in other words a fuller building) it means that a greater proportion of our ‘regulars’ have come to church that day, and that there are visitors or newcomers among us. Given that our purpose is to strengthen believers in their faith and to see others come to trust Jesus, fewer empty seats suggests that we’re getting on with the job. What’s more, when there are fewer empty seats the singing is better, morning tea or supper has more of a buzz, and the whole occasion has more energy. Full seats good, empty seats bad, right?

Almost! My hope is that, for a little while at least, we will see more empty seats in church. In fact, we have taken an extreme step to achieve exactly this. This weekend we begin an additional Saturday evening congregation, which will spread our current attendance numbers more thinly, and therefore lead to more empty seats. I expect our regulars will be here every week, and so creating more empty seats in this way means providing greater capacity to include visitors and outsiders.

We’ve just gone from 4 congregations to 5 – the task under God is now to set about seeing the empty seats filled!

In late 2005, we took an enormous step.

The step required prayerful hours of discussion and planning by the Parish Council. It required the goodwill of our regulars, and real sacrifice by the members of our Telopea congregations. It was a step that required real vision – an ability to look beyond the modest numbers, limited resources and ageing facilities, to a future of renewed mission, of new Telopea congregations, of an expanded staff team, and of more people coming to know Christ as Lord.

And God has been so good! There are people among us today who were strangers to Christ when that step was taken. We have increased numbers, more staff, and the addition of the Friendship congregation. We have improved our facilities. And we are ready to take the next enormous step, which we prayerfully longed for six years ago.

Next Saturday evening will be the first public gathering of the new Telopea congregation! I can barely express the wonder I feel that God has brought us to this point. Today in church we will be committing this whole project to him in prayer, and encouraging those involved. It’s a massive new step, but it reflects our unchanged commitment to play our part by prayer and proclamation in God’s work of bringing people to new life and continual growth in Christ.

Would you rather be an outsider or an insider? The answer is ‘insider’ – even without knowing what the question is about! We love to belong. And insiders naturally behave in ways which celebrate and deepen the joy of belonging. This is a real challenge for Christian fellowships, where our love of belonging must always be modified by our concern for outsiders. Christian have been inclusive of outsiders since the very earliest days. Acts describes the first Christians meeting in the temple and in homes, welcoming any who joined them.

It’s easy for us to say of our congregation or small group, ‘Everyone is welcome here!’, but in practice the strength of our connections our familiarity with what happens each week mean that only by very deliberate and concerted action can we be truly welcoming to outsiders. It’s not automatic. Embracing outsiders means inconvenience for those of us who already belong, who may not enjoy ‘welcome time’, and for whom Sunday is a precious chance to reconnect with friends rather than meet strangers. There are some important questions we should ask ourselves from time to time. There’s a difference between being friendly and being truly welcoming – which are we? Are we willing to accept the incovenience of being a church which really welcomes outsiders? What will that mean for my behaviour this week?

A couple of weeks ago I missed an interview with someone. The person said that she had emailed me a week beforehand. I was mystified: I check my emails half a dozen times a day – how could this have happened? A week later someone else rang to follow up on an email they sent which I hadn’t answered. The only problem was, I had never received it.

A bit of investigating revealed that for no apparent reason certain emails had been filtered out by my computer and sent to the bin. A number of missing messages were in there. But I have no idea how long this has been happening – the ‘bin’ automatically destroys ‘junkmail’ after 30 days! Apart from the two people who followed up, I would never have known people were being filtered out.

It started me thinking about our mission as a church. Are there segments of the community which we filter out without even noticing? Who might be filtered out at our church? Non-English speakers? Renters from local units? The underprivileged?

Today our guest is Grant Millard, the CEO of Anglicare. One of Anglicare’s vital roles is to help us see our filters and remove them, so that local churches can be equipped to reach and serve as many as possible in our society. All offertories today will go to Anglicare’s ministry.

The human brain generates explanations. When things happen, we don’t just notice them, we try to make sense of them.

I’ve been made aware of this at church lately, with so much change in the air. Whenever I fail to communicate something clearly, people are forced to make guesses or assumptions about the reason for it, sometimes correctly, sometimes not. This is my fault as the person responsible to inform and explain, and better communication is a definite ‘growth area’ for me!

But this has left me reflecting on the nature of Christian witness. Manufacturing explanations isn’t just a Christian characteristic; all humans do it. When our lives are transformed by the Holy Spirit and the hope of Jesus’ return, we may stand out for our honesty, or our joy, or our confidence. But those who notice such spiritual traits in us have to guess about the reason. Typically they’ll assume it’s just our personality, or our upbringing.

It is tragic that someone might notice the impact of the Holy Spirit, and mistake it for the effect of supportive parents! So for Christians there is ultimately no avoiding speaking about Jesus, so people know why we are the way we are. The Bible says, ‘Always be prepared to give answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that is in you.’

I was recently at a training session for ministers, where each of us was asked what sort of person we were hoping our church would produce. Initially, our answers were all pretty general: ‘Christians’, ‘people who love Jesus’, ‘people who are prayerful’ and so on. But the questioner pressed us harder – what is the particular culture of your church, and what are the distinguishing features of people who have been discipled there? Interestingly, our answers began to become more specific and different from each other. Some churches had a great emphasis on producing evangelisers, others stressed Bible knowledge, and others active involvement in social issues.

Since that meeting I’ve been reflecting on the question with Matt and Ben. This is different from the more general parish purpose, summarised in our Parish Challenge. This question is, ‘What sort of Christian are we hoping to shape through our ministry? What is the Dundas/Telopea dna?’ And the idea is that when you come up with the right answer, you can recognise it as a good fit for who we are. Here’s what we came up with.

We hope to see someone who is ‘a growing child of God, shaped by God’s word in all spheres of life, committed to other believers, welcoming of outsiders, and eager to glorify Christ in the local community’.

What do you think? Does that sound like us?

It may be second nature to many of us, but referring to God as ‘Father’ is very remarkable. If our fundamental belief is that God made and rules everything, wouldn’t it be more obvious – perhaps even more accurate – to refer to him as ‘master’ or ‘creator’? Or if God is the source ands sustainer of our life, perhaps God should be thought of as our mother? Or is he ultimately beyond any label? Should we only refer to him as ‘God’?

It was Jesus who broke from Jewish practice by teaching his disciples that God was not merely their creator, ruler and sustainer, but their father. God is the father not only of Jesus as the unique son of God, but of all who share Jesus’ sonship by trusting in him. It’s a stunning revelation about the character of God. It means that ‘Father’ is not an earthly invention we use to help us understand a heavenly reality, but that fatherhood is a heavenly reality that finds an earthly echo in human fatherhood. It’s an awe-inspiring thought, especially for dads.

This Father’s Day, let all fathers take inspiration in the task God has given them, by trusting him as their heavenly Father, and by emulating his gracious version of fatherhood.

Research has shown that church giving is largely based on perceptions and emotions. For example, people at large churches generally give less per person than people at small churches. Why? Because giving is influenced by perception of need. Although large churches are less efficient and more expensive to run, the impression created by a large auditorium, high-quality music and a big staff team is that the church doesn’t really need your money. What’s more, contrary to the long-established method of trying to shame people into giving more of their income, research also shows that people give more when they’re inspired by the vision of a ministry than when they feel guilty about their current giving.

Earlier this week I was speaking with the head of a local aid organisation, who said that Australians will give where when is plenty of tv coverage and there are Australian victims, regardless of need. The amount given to the Victorian bushfires hugely surpassed the amount given towards the catastrophic floods in Haiti. And for this reason he felt pessimistic about Australian giving towards calamitous famine currently gripping the Horn of Africa. Food for thought. (click here for details of the Anglicanaid Africa appeal).

I’ve been fascinated by the news of the riots in England. The whole thing began as community outrage following a police shooting. But since then the rioting has taken on new forms. Most astounding are the outbreaks which don’t appear to be any sort of protest against helplessness and discrimination. Far from it - these are the people capitalising on the chaos to loot luxury goods.

There have been pictures of groups seeking out shops selling designer shoes, sports gear or phones. Apart from the hoodies and the bad lighting, the scenes caught on camera look less like the protest of a desperate underclass, and more like the controlled urgency of bargain hunters on Boxing Day.

One commentator has labelled them ‘consumer society riots’. This isn’t post-catastrophe looting where desperate people plunder shops for rice and cans of food. Those arrested include university students, primary school teachers and other professionals. These are people seizing the opportunity to satisfy the craving our society instils in us for the certain luxury items. And for many this craving overwhelmed the moral impulses which normally regulate behaviour.

There’s much for Christians to reflect on here about what our world trains us to value, about the human heart, and about the gap between who we think we are and what we might actually do when the lights are turned off.

Why categorise at all? Some categories are obvious - for example we note which congregation the person usually attends. But it’s also handy to have some way of distinguishing someone who lives round the corner and leads a home group from someone who is housebound but linked with us. This is because the data informs our pastoral care: who should we expect to see each Sunday and support in their ministry, and who is unable to come to church but would benefit from regular visits? With almost 350 names on the list, we can’t leave such matters to a minister’s memory!

A particularly important category is people who have paid their first visit or two, and are still deciding whether we’re the church for them. It’s important to be aware of who newcomers are, so that we can welcome them properly and give them the information they need, even if it requires something as impersonal as noting them on a database. Everyone at our church was once a newcomer, and churches grow by caring well for those who visit.

Earlier this year our church participated in the ’40 Days of Community’ campaign. The focus was the Bible’s teaching that we are made for fellowship with one another, and expressing this in church life and beyond. One campaign element was a ‘community outreach project’ where small groups took on some opportunity to serve. Some of us struggled with this element – we weren’t used to it, and it could feel a little forced. But my experience of the past two weeks has reminded me that when the opportunity arises, our church community is not slow in loving and serving. It has embodied the New Testament teaching, ‘Carry each others burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.’ Thank you.

Last weekend Cadel Evans became the first Australian to win the Tour de France. For a sport which few Australians participate in seriously, and an event which is screened in the dead of night, the reaction has been hugely positive. We’ve been inspired. There has been speculation about a resurgence in competitive cycling in Australia. And it might have been my imagination, but when I went for a ride earlier this week, there seemed to be more people than usual pedalling around Homebush Bay. The Cadel Evans factor, perhaps?

It’s natural to be inspired by the perseverance or accomplishments of others. But it seems to me, that when it comes to Jesus, we tend not to think in this way. Perhaps it’s because we’re alert to the mistake of seeing Jesus merely as an inspiring individual rather than son of God. Jesus is above all our lord and risen saviour, but the Bible does also encourage us to look at his life and take inspiration from his courage, his love and his perseverance as a person determined to live for God’s glory. Hebrews 12, for example, tells us to ‘fix our eyes on Jesus’, and to ‘consider him who endured such opposition from sinful people, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart’. Be inspired by Jesus!

Both these special church services today raise an interesting question: ‘Is religion a private matter or a public one?’ In society generally the answer is clear: religion is private. We don’t expect to know other people’s personal religious views, any more than we want to know who they vote for or what they earn.

But Christians have always held that that our trust in Jesus, while not to be paraded to impress others, must not to be secret. Today’s services remind us of that. Baptism has been the central ceremony pointing to Christian new life and belonging since Jesus’ day, and it was conducted not only in front of other Christians, but outdoors in full view of everyone! Similarly, confirmation is not a private moment, but one where the whole church gathers to pray for those who are embarking on Christian adulthood, and to hear them re-affirm their trust in Jesus.

For Samuel and his parents and for the five confirmees today is a public occasion, and we will be their witnesses and supporters as they restate their trust in Jesus as their Lord.

In a sermon recently I suggested that the Bible is like a pile of Wikileaks documents from God. There are all sorts of materials – reports, descriptions, conversation transcripts, private reflection and more. Working through them can be hard going. Some parts make immediate sense. But some parts can initially be baffling. Many of us have little enough spare time and energy as it is – how should we feel about the challenge of reading the Bible? A few observations:

• Like the Wikileaks illustration, if we want to know all that God has revealed to us, we have to be committed to ultimately hearing the whole Bible, not just our favourite bits
• One of the great benefits of sermons is that they can take us to parts of the Bible we may not know well. (We’re just starting a new series on the books of Ezra and Nehemia!)
• We produce ‘Growth Notes’ for regular Bible reading, normally overlapping with the sermon series. Take them and use them!
• Our small groups give us a structure for reading and discussing the Bible with others, which helps motivation, understanding and application.
• The ultimate goal is not to know the Bible, but to know, love and serve God better. 

In the spring we will be starting a new congregation in Telopea, and renewing the commitment of all our congregations to reaching out with the gospel to people in our region. But who are these people? What are they like? What is their attitude towards God or religions? What is important to them? What type of approach from us will be welcomed, and what type will cause a negative reaction?

The fact is, questions such as these can actually be answered. We all have blindspots and mistaken assumptions. Knowing the answers to questions like these will enable us to communicate the gospel of Jesus far more appropriately and effectively than might otherwise be the case.

I must admit I’ve only come slowly and recently to this way of thinking, though missionaries have been aware of this since New Testament times! The textbooks call it ‘contextualisation’. We need to understand our mission field as deeply as we can, so that we can proclaim gospel in a way that makes sense to the hearers. Part of our task over the next few months will be to reflect on and even research our local area so that our mission will be well-informed and customised. We need to get to know Mr and Mrs Dundas.

In the spring we will be launching a new, missionary congregation in Telopea as a basis for renewed local outreach. It is quite unusual for a church of our size to be involved in church-planting, but I’m convinced we have the vision and the opportunity to take this step, and we are committed to sacrificially supplying the necessary resources. A thrilling new chapter in the life of our parish!

In some ways it will be a risky venture. It will draw a significant proportion of keen people out of other services, particularly 10am and 7pm. What will it mean for those congregations? As the staff and Parish Council reflected on this, we realised that it won’t be enough simply to send a team out and continue on as before. It must be a moment of renewal and revitalisation for all congregations. In a sense, we will need to launch not one new congregation, but four!

Our mission to our local area is through all our congregations. Every person, whether directly involved in the Telopea congregation or remaining at Dundas will be part of renewed congregational outreach. It’s an new and exciting project, but it reflects our longstanding belief about our calling: ‘to play our part by prayer and proclamation in God’s work of bringing people to new life and continual growth in Christ’.

How do you feel seeing this title? Perhaps you’d rather focus on positive issues where Christians can contribute to our world? I know I would! But we can’t avoid this increasingly pressing topic.

It’s not about legalising any new behaviour – gay couples are already entitled to live together in partnerships that are functionally equivalent to marriage in legal and property rights. The issue is about a change of definition of the word ‘marriage’ so that gay couples can be married, have a marriage certificate, and identify with all legal uses of the term.

I think this change would be a mistake. It’s not that I think the sky will fall in. And I believe homosexual couples should be recognised under law. But I also believe there is a fundamental difference between a lifelong, committed heterosexual marriage and its homosexual counterpart. Changing the definition of marriage won’t remove the difference, it will just make the word less useful by being less specific – it will conceal something it formerly revealed.

Despite the hype, I find it hard to see this as an issue of discrimination or human rights. It’s a bit like my nieces saying they dislike that label and asking if I will refer to them from now on as ‘daughters’. I can give in, but changing tags wouldn’t actually alter the real distinction; it would just rob me of a word to capture the specialness of the link with my biological daughters. It would erode the specialness by erasing it from the dictionary. And marriage is special.

It’s been an unusual few months for our church community. I can’t remember when we’ve had more news of serious illness, death and grief in such a short space of time. Some of this has been within our congregations, some within wider family networks, and some in our local community, but it all affects us.

The Bible speaks very directly to our experience of human frailty. Our first instinct might be to remind ourselves of the hope of eternal life, but there is even more comfort than this!

First, God is very aware of our fragility in his love for us; ‘He knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust’ as David puts it. Second, the foundation of Christian hope is the knowledge that Jesus himself lived as one of us - a fragile human being. Hebrews wonderfully points out that our saviour is not one who ‘is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but who has been tempted in every way just as we are’. Our God truly understands our experience from the inside. And finally, when Paul was struggling with physical impairment he discerned a wonderful truth – that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. So our frailty can display God’s glory and faithfulness. As people who share this confidence, let’s continue to love support each other.

‘Is church like opera?’

Let me explain. If you wandered in off the street for your first opera, it might leave you cold. Unlike the softness of your own singing, the voices seem unnaturally pure and powerful. The whole thing is in another language. The acting is over-the-top, and the casting ignores age and appearance. The people around you know how the story ends, but they’re moved to tears anyway. What on earth do they see in it? And yet opera lovers will say that the more you understand it, the more familiar you are with its ways and storylines, the more wonderful and satisfying the experience becomes. 

How about church? In a sense church could be a bit like opera - we say and do things which might puzzle the outsider. And it’s true that the more familiar you are with the songs, prayers and service patterns of our services, the more wholeheartedly you can participate. We mustn’t dumb-down everything so it becomes superficial and unsatisfying to long-termers. But unlike opera, church has a God-given mission to those who are unfamiliar with our ways. So a church service should basically make sense even to the first-time visitor without needing subtitles and a guidebook.

Too much like opera and we fail outsiders. Too over-simplified and we fail the mature believers. Have we got the balance right?

Last week Ben unveiled some of the exciting new plans for our church plant.  This begins the next step in our vision to return to the Valley.  I joined our church five years ago when we’d just formulated this vision; not that long ago for some people, but for many this was before your time!  God’s been very gracious to us over these years.  We need to remember this as we continue to prepare for our plant.  

A new congregation at another site is undoubtedly exciting.  However those of us who will remain may feel left out.  We may find ourselves asking ‘what exciting new things lie ahead for us’?  The answer is as it’s always been: we will continue to play our part in God’s work.  God has brought people in our community to new life and continual growth!  We’ve seen the fruits of this - especially recently.  Our services, kids and youth ministries are bigger than they’ve been for many years; people are discovering salvation; others report feeling great support and care through recent difficult times.  

Over the next few months we’ll hear more about our church plant.  This is as it should be, for we’re sending people off to a new work.  However in one sense this work is the same that we’ve been doing for many years, and God has blessed it!  I hope this encourages us all.

One of the best strategies for growing God’s Kingdom and reaching people with the urgent message of salvation through Jesus is to multiply local congregations. For this reason our parish is committed to the vision of seeing two centres of ministry flourish in our region. One here at Dundas and one on the other side of Kissing Point Road in the Telopea and Dundas Valley area. After a period of combining at Dundas, the time has come to start a new congregation at St. Stephen’s, Telopea.

As a church, we’ll be talking about this much more over the coming months, and I’d like to get the conversation going by letting everyone know where some of the plans for this exciting new venture are up to:

• We are working towards a launch during Term 4 of this year.
• Our new church will meet on Saturday evenings from 5pm for dinner followed by the church service!
• We are praying that God would assemble a launch team of around 25 adults, plus kids who will partner together in reaching Telopea with the gospel and getting the new congregation off the ground.

This new work must be the concern of our whole parish. It will require fervent and ongoing prayer from us all. It will require a renewed commitment to local mission from us all; those in the launch team, and those who remain at Dundas as we are faced with the challenge and opportunity of empty seats creating space for continued growth. Please pray! (And if the idea of being on the launch team excites you, I’d love to talk.)

There is a tension in our culture between oddness (and difficulty) of Jesus-like forgiveness, and our desire to keep seeing forgiveness as a virtue. We have tried to resolve this tension by redefining forgiveness so that the motive becomes self-love rather than love for enemies. Instead of the costly process of ‘releasing’ the other person from our hostility (as God does for us through Jesus), Dr Phil says, ‘Forgiveness is the choice you make to release yourself from anger, hatred & resentment.’

It may sometimes be true that forgiving lifts a weight from us, but that’s not the point. In fact, forgiveness may involve accepting the burden of the other person’s wrong against us. The Christian motive in forgiveness is selfless love, inspired by the grace of the one who reconciled us to himself, not counting our sins against us.

What does Parish Council do?

Parish Council includes the Parish Wardens and 4 councillors, 3 elected and 1 appointed by the senior minister (who is also the chairman of the Council). Parish Council governs the financial and property matters of the church. This involves setting the budget and making various policy decisions about how money and property is used to facilitate ministry, as well as considering broader issues affecting the parish. It’s a significant responsibility when you realise that this year our budget is almost $430,000 and our physical and property assets are worth over $3.5 million.

The Senior Minister is responsible for the spiritual welfare and ministries of the parish, but Parish Council needs to understand ministry initiatives and strategies in order to facilitate these things by allocating resources. The 2010 Parish Council discussed at length the idea of employing Ben Hudson for the Telopea church plant, given the significant cost implications, though a typical meeting tends to involve discussion of more mundane matters of spending policy, receiving reports etc.

To function well there must be trust and cooperation between the council and the minister, and although its role is largely in the background of parish life the council needs to keep people abreast of its more significant discussions and decisions. Above all, we need godly and capable people on the council. Which we have!

How did you feel when you heard about the death of Osama Bin Laden? While I certainly shed no tears for this man, I did feel uneasy at the scenes of unbridled celebration in America.

It’s hard to be critical of the relief and even joy those directly affected by September 11 or other deadly acts Bin Laden sponsored. He was not a soldier killing in war, but an assassin of the defenceless and unsuspecting, and on a mass scale. So why not celebrate his death? It depends on exactly what we are celebrating.

We should not rejoice spitefully in revenge. Christians refuse the temptation to be merely vengeful. Our trust in God teaches us this; Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 

And yet I believe we can be glad of this news. I assume that as a terrorist figurehead whose existence continued to inspire murderous acts by others, his death will result in lives saved. More importantly, Christians rejoice in justice, reflecting the character of God. And this may be as close as he will come in this world to meeting justice. Perhaps like me the news reminded you of Jesus’ solemn words: ‘all who draw the sword will die by the sword’.

The 40 Days of Community campaign is already feeling as though it’s a while ago, but so many precious lessons were learned that I want to be sure we don’t leave the benefits behind!

I belonged to a group of five men who met at 7 o’clock each Saturday morning during the campaign. We enjoyed our meetings, but we only had an hour each week before other commitments called, so there wasn’t much time for relaxed discussion. To make up for this we had a barbecue breakfast on Easter Saturday with no dvd and no discussion questions to finish – it was a great time!

We decided over breakfast that we would continue our early morning Saturday meetings although the campaign is over. We wanted to remain part of a small group of Christian men who commit to discussing the Bible, supporting and praying for one another.

Every small group costs a commitment of time no matter when it meets, but I encourage every single person to be part of such a group. Indicate your interest on a communication slip or via the details here, and we’ll get in touch. We are made to share our lives and be involved in each other’s spiritual growth. (And if you’re a man who’s free early on Saturdays, feel free to contact me!)

Welcome to church as we celebrate Easter, especially if you’re here as a visitor – it’s great to have you with us!

If someone who knew nothing about it asked me for a crash course in Christianity, I’d recommend that they start by going to church on Good Friday and again on Easter Day. If you understand Easter, you understand the heart of the Christian faith. The Easter weekend tells you:

• That Christianity is all about Jesus, rather than ideas or lifestyle
• That our sin matters to God, to the point of punishment by death
• That God loves us to the point of taking our place through Jesus
• That Jesus’ death in our place is the only way our sins can be forgiven
• That Jesus’ resurrection gives us our dazzling confidence of life beyond death and of a world beyond sin
• That Christian belief is grounded in real-world events, not mere wishful thinking

As a church, we run a long list of ministries and activities. One of the issues I’ve been pondering for a while is what should be the short list of things we encourage in the life of every Christian person. What would your list contain?

An item which makes almost everyone’s short list is regular Bible reading and prayer (often nicknamed the ‘Quiet Time’). It’s not surprising, really. We know in our own experience what a blessing it is in those times of our lives when we manage to maintain it as a habit. But while this practice is something we often encourage in sermons or discuss at home groups, we generally see it as part of the private life of the individual, so as a church we haven’t done very much to facilitate it on a practical level.

But now as a way of capitalising on the 40 Days of Community campaign when so many of us started the habit of regular reading, reflection and prayer, we have produced and distributed ‘Growth Notes’ – a resource for short, daily reflections on Bible passages. They’re terrific! They are organised to overlap with the sermon passages for the month, and they’re formatted to fit in the cover of your Bible. If you don’t already have a regular reading pattern for your spiritual growth, join us in using Growth Notes!

Today we mark the end of our 40 Days of Community campaign with a day of celebration! It has been a wonderful 6 weeks, beginning with our ‘U-Nite’ launch evening (which seems a very long time ago). During the campaign we’ve seen people join small groups for the first time, we’ve welcomed newcomers to our church family, we’ve had some fun variations in the way we organise our Sunday services and enjoyed a Ministry Fair. We’ve also had times of sadness during the campaign, with the separate deaths of two people close to many in the church. We’ve had daily reminders through our book readings of the love and fellowship God provides for us and calls us to. And next weekend we will participate in the Telopea Community Festival which is a collaboration with other churches in the area. And throughout it all, the key idea has been our togetherness – God doesn’t just call us to belong to him, but to belong to each other as his people.

So much of our lives are spent getting ready for the next thing, or rushing to catch up on things which are overdue. Our aim in church this Sunday is to pause and remind ourselves of all that has happened during the campaign, to thank God and to celebrate together.

Last Saturday night saw the least surprising election result in the state’s history. The consensus long before election day was that Labor could not avoid defeat. The public was disillusioned with the way they had been leading our state.

What should we expect now? As the saying goes, ‘No matter who you vote for, a politician gets in!’ For all their noble aspirations politicians are subject to the same weaknesses, temptations and vanities as the rest of us. Their task is to lead us by serving (which is why senior politicians are called ‘ministers’), though their service is always imperfect. They face particular pressures – none of us has to wake up each day knowing there’s a ‘shadow minister’ whose main job is to scrutinise and discredit us.

How should Christians respond? Although each of us was committed to a particular candidate or party in casting our vote, our vision is a larger one. Paul writes: I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone - for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. We pray for our state leaders, because we want our state as a place where the gospel is heard and Jesus is honoured, regardless of who’s in power.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you started good habits by accident? Perhaps were on an overseas holiday, and found yourself maintaining a physically active daily lifestyle. Perhaps you ran out of coffee at an inconvenient time for shopping, and found yourself not drinking caffeine for several days. Perhaps the time change for daylight saving had you waking up an hour early with time to pray before your day began. In each case the challenge is how to maintain the good habit when things returns to normal.

The end of our 40 Days of Community campaign is almost in sight. The campaign continues to be a wonderful reminder of our identity as a community of God’s people, and of our calling to love one another and the world around us. The structure of the campaign has helped us commit ourselves to maintaining our church attendance, participating in small groups, and doing daily readings.

These are all excellent Christian habits, and now that we’ve sustained them for several weeks running we need to ask ourselves how we can carry them into our lives beyond the campaign. This will require deliberate planning. We don’t want to look back on the campaign as a time when we used to maintain these habits, but as the time when they entered our lives for good!

We live with an assumption unknown in most of human history. It’s this: that we will live long, comfortable and healthy lives. This is not a bad assumption! For most of us it will probably prove true. In the past when coming down with a fever could be a life or death matter, people couldn’t ignore the fragility of life. In an age of good nutrition and medical care we’re less aware of it.

I’ve been reminded of our fragility in hearing of the tsunami catastrophe in Japan, with huge numbers of people missing and feared dead. I am reminded of it when I visit a hospital. I’m reminded of it whenever I attend a funeral, where a whole human life is summed up in one or two brief speeches.

I hope this isn’t all too gloomy – it’s precisely where the wonderful news of the gospel begins! The Son of God, became a frail and vulnerable human being precisely because in our sin and frailty we need a saviour. He went to death in our place, so that through faith we can join him in resurrection. We don’t ignore our frailty, but rejoice in the hope our faith gives us: ‘just as we have borne the image of the earthly man (Adam), so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man (the risen Jesus)’.

Most of us will have various traditions in our lives. You may have a family tradition for how you celebrate birthdays. You may have traditions which determine how you spend Australia Day, or where you go on holidays, or seating at the dining table, or which anniversaries to celebrate. Churches are sometimes described as ‘traditional’ – how should we feel about tradition? A few thoughts:

Tradition is inevitable – even ‘non-traditional’ churches develop their own new traditions!

Tradition is neutral. It can be good if it promotes deeper knowledge and love for God and neighbour, but bad if it distracts from the goal or becomes an end in itself.

Tradition shouldn’t be thoughtlessly abandoned – it’s a way of benefitting from the wisdom and practices of earlier generations.

Last Wednesday was the day Christians have traditionally called ‘Ash Wednesday’; the start of the countdown to Easter (a period known as ‘Lent’ in church tradition). Christians for centuries have used this period to reflect on the self-denying love of Jesus, and to pursue habits which will help them deepen their discipleship. It’s a perfect time for us to be practising our daily readings and weekly small group meetings in our 40 Days of Community. As Christians have done for generations, let’s use this season to refocus on our calling as God’s people.

I believe real community has never been more precious in our society than today. Lots of small changes have left us more disconnected from each other than ever. For example:

It’s easier to survive as a single parent, but this means there are far more households with only one adult member. It’s easier to work from home, but this weakens the connection between fellow-workers. More people than ever have internet access and mobile phones, so there’s less reason to meet in person. There is greater flexibility in work patterns, which has meant Australians work longer hours than ever.

In an age when ‘Friend’ means the 650 people who can access our Facebook page, we long for the chance to be truly engaged with others. We long for time with people who love us and can be trusted with the truth about us. We long for community.

At its best, this is what real Christian fellowship is. What we have to offer the world is not just information, but an experience of Christian, gospel-shaped community. During our 40 Days of Community Campaign, many of us have joined small groups for the first time. Well done! We gather to live out the difference the gospel makes in relationships, which is the very thing the world is crying out for.

Why do humans get together?

Often it’s for efficiency – there are things we can do together which we can’t accomplish alone. We get family members to help us move house. We combine our strengths. Gathering also stretches resources further – it’s more efficient for children to learn in a school than to send teachers door to door.

Sometimes gathering is for pleasure. It’s more fun watching the state of origin with a group than alone on the couch. There’s a particular pleasure in sharing meals and having experiences with others.

But why do Christians gather? It’s true that it’s more efficient than the minister visiting everyone each Sunday. It’s also a pleasure to catch up with others. But the fundamental reason is that Christians don’t exist merely as individuals. Our community is basic to our identity. The Bible describes us as brothers and sisters in a family, as bricks in a building, as parts of one body, and so one. We gather because being together expresses the truth about who we are.

For the next 40 days we’re going to be thinking deeply about this wonderful truth and how to express it more fully in our life as a church and in our local community. If you haven’t done so yet, today’s the day to register for our 40 Days of Community Campaign!

Two Sundays ago we welcomed Mike and Maddy Turner and their children Izzy and Marcus to our church. Mike is our new Sunday student minister. Mike and Maddy are almost locals, having grown up at St Dunstan’s Denistone East, and they come to us after two years at St Paul’s Castle Hill, where Mike has been involved in a ministry intern programme. Having now begun study as an Anglican ordination candidate, Mike is required to spend at least one day per week as a student minister in a parish.

Having student ministers (whom we used to call ‘catechists’) in our church is a privilege and responsibility for us. It’s easy to forget this because of the high calibre of our student ministers, but they are not a cheap way of increasing the staff team and getting things done! Student ministers are here for practical training to go with the academic training they receive at Moore College during the week. So Mike will be involved in ministries not according to our needs, but based on areas where he needs further experience.

Changing churches is a major upheaval for a family. With great timing, the Turners are arriving just in time for our 40 Days of Community campaign! Let’s welcome the Turners into our church community and keep supporting them by our prayers.

When I was growing up, whole-parish events were common. Every year there was the ‘Sunday School Picnic’. There were parish variety nights. I think I even remember a musical! There were parish weekends away (‘houseparties’). And there were parish dinners. What happened to our all-in events?

There are good reasons these things are less common today, but the single biggest challenge to the indoor events is size. With about 200 people involved in Sunday congregations, our building simply can’t fit us all for a single service or church meal. This means having an all-in event requires the extra planning, effort and expense of a different venue.

One of the exciting things about the 40 Days of Community campaign is that it is a whole-parish experience; we will all be reading the same daily materials, doing the same small group studies, and hearing the same sermons. And it’s all being launched at – wait for it - a PARISH DINNER!

This dinner event is named ‘U-Nite’, which points to the focus on our unity. As well as sharing a meal and having fun, there will be an on-screen presentation kickstarting our vision for the 40 Days of Community campaign. It’s at a great local venue (Tara School) and a very good price ($10 out of the $25 campaign rego covers the dinner evening).

See U at U-Nite!

Every Christian I know loves to hear about others choosing to follow Jesus. From time to time we interview in church someone who is a relatively new Christian, and it’s so thrilling to hear how God worked in their life to bring them to trust in Jesus. Perhaps it’s most exciting of all when it’s someone we have known for some time, and been praying for.

Ironically, despite our love of conversions, most Christians I know have a real anxiety about actually sharing their beliefs with others. In general, we just don’t do it. It’s a paradox – the stubborn gap between our desire to see people saved, and our willingness to be personally involved in speaking the gospel to others.

One reason for this gap is anxiety about what to say. I was at a pastors’ conference recently where the speaker challenged us about whether the people in our churches were equipped to share their faith. He suggested that every Christian person should be able to answer 3 questions:

What is the gospel?

What does it mean to be a Christian?

Why are you a Christian?

Pretty reasonable questions, right? Can you answer them?

The Christian life isn’t just ‘me and God’, but also ‘us and God’. This dimension is seen in Christian friendships and small groups, where we allow other people to know our spiritual struggles and joys, how our prayer life is going and so on. It’s where we support others, pray for them, remind them of Jesus’ love for them, and more.

And finally, there is the dimension where we relate to the wider community - those who are strangers to Christ. This area is overlooked if we’re too preoccupied with the personal project dimension, or even the ‘build each other up’ dimension. We live as God’s people in his world, and a clear and godly witness is part of the biblical vision for life as God’s people.

The upcoming 40 Days of Community will strengthen us in all these areas: as individuals committed to honouring Jesus, in small groups where we give and receive blessing and glorifying God in the wider community by demonstrating the character of Christ.

Sign-up starts today!

Today we welcome the Hudson family for their first Sunday with Ben in his new role as an assistant minister on our staff team. In some ways this seems a bit anticlimactic. No introductions are necessary – Ben and Laura have been with us for two years, and Ella for her whole life!

On the other hand, this is an important moment. It’s important for the Hudsons, with Ben having been a Sunday-only student minister here while studying fulltime at Moore College. From this week he becomes a fulltime assistant minister in our parish. The family is settling into their new home in Dundas Valley, and shortly Ben will be ordained an Anglican deacon. This marks a new chapter for them, and a different role for Ben among us.

It is also an important moment for us. Ben’s is a new position which has come about through long planning, prayer, and generous financial support. It expresses a commitment on our part to expand our ministries, and to work towards renewing a congregational outreach in Telopea. It’s a daunting and exciting step, which will require continued support over coming years.

Please join me in praying that God would bless the Hudson family as they get used to the many changes in their lives, and that he would cause growth through this new ministry position among us.

Sunday services are a great time of learning, praying, praising, and sharing in the Lord’s Supper, but there are limits to what we can do at church. In an era when we no longer live in small, close-knit communities small groups give us the opportunity to live out the ‘one-another’ dimension of the Christian life. In small groups we bear one another’s burdens, encourage one another, pray for one another, and share more fully than on Sundays. We open the Bible and discuss its meaning and application in a more interactive and specific way.

Humans desire to be known and to know others. At a time when people are increasingly isolated, small groups are also a place where we can really belong, not just to a whole church, but in a small fellowship which knows and loves us. A recent survey showed that 40% of Americans regularly attend some sort of small group, be it a book club, addicts support group, or religious group etc. 

Is it time you experienced the blessing and growth of small group membership?

In a month’s time, we as a church will be participating in an exciting spiritual growth campaign called ’40 Days of Community’. If you were here in 2006 you will remember that we held a campaign called ’40 Days of Purpose’, to which this is the sequel.

For 40 days, we are all going to re-focus on what is God’s calling to us as a fellowship of his people: how should we be worshiping together, serving one another, blessing our local community? This is not just a programme which will be running on Sundays. It will involve the individual and personal commitment of everyone in our church, and I want to invite and challenge you to commit yourself to this.

This will mean coming to church for every one of the Sundays during the programme, joining a weekly small group for the 40 days, and having a daily time of reading a prayer. We will have a campaign book for everyone which will include all the materials you need.

I wholeheartedly believe that committing to involvement in this campaign will be a tremendous blessing to you, regardless of what stage you are at in your Christian journey. And with the community focus of this campaign, I believe it will be a blessing to us as a whole church, and through us to our community.

Consider this: more people today can identify the golden arches of McDonalds than the Christian cross. In a survey of 7,000 people across six countries, 88 percent recognised the McDonalds logo, and only 54% the cross. Two of the countries were Japan and India, which haven’t been shaped by centuries of Western Christian tradition, but it’s a reminder that the state of things even in Western countries is very different from 40 years ago. Any Scripture teacher can tell you this. The amount of ‘assumed knowledge’ about the most basic Bible content or Christian teaching has dwindled away.

Church leaders used to fret about ‘nominal Christians’; people who saw themselves as Christians and who had some pattern of church attendance, but lacked a real faith in Jesus. That’s not the issue nowadays. Plenty of Australians know they aren’t Christians, don’t really understand the faith, and don’t feel that they need to attend church in order to be respectable.

I think it’s good that people are clearer on where they stand, but for those of us who share Jesus it means no level of understanding can be assumed. In bringing the gospel to our district, we do so as missionaries to people who know exactly what the golden arches stand for, but who know little or nothing of Christ.

But on the other hand there’s an anxiety, especially for the sake of those who only come to church at Christmas. If we only focus on the traditional things, we may misrepresent the true Christian good news, which is less about Jesus’ birth, and more about his life, teaching, and especially his death in our place and resurrection. Our salvation hangs on the Easter message more than the Christmas one. This anxiety may prompt us to overcompensate, abandoning the traditional songs and sermon topics, and almost overlooking the Christmas miracle that our creator became one of us.

Christmas is worth celebrating! The key is to remember that what makes it worth celebrating is not just the arrival of a baby, but that this particular baby lived, died and rose again. Christmas celebrates the birth of the one who now lives, forgives, and rules the world!

Welcome to church as we count down to Christmas!

I once read this tip in a church growth book: ‘Cancel your Summer Slump!’ If you’re a regular churchgoer you’ll know about the ‘summer slump’.

During January, church can be a bit… flat. Why? The main preachers are often away. The sermon series isn’t very ambitious. The normal kids’ programmes are in recess and the regular leaders are taking a break. There are fewer musos in the bands, congregation numbers are down, the church is emptier, and so on. That’s the summer slump, and it’s a fact of church life, right? But here’s something to consider.

For lots of visitors, January the perfect time to try church. Some will have been inspired after carols or Christmas services. For others, life is slower and they can finally afford the time to drop in. For Christians thinking of changing churches January is when they’re not on church rosters and can visit. So January is actually and important time for us to make every effort to welcome outsiders and give them a positive experience of church.

Of course numbers will vary, and we’re allowed to take holidays. But we shouldn’t consciously plan church to be mediocre for a whole month, especially a big month for visitors. If you’ll be here in January, let’s cancel our summer slump!

Here’s an interesting fact: in 2001, 13.2 million Americans had some form of plastic surgery. That’s a very big number! No doubt some were for significant health reasons, but a great many were people who simply felt that adjusting their appearance would make them feel better about themselves. And so they were willing to endure painful, sometimes dangerous, and always expensive procedures. And my guess is that most of them felt afterwards that the money was well-spent.

It’s easy to get carried away in our criticism of such trends, but we live in a society which judges us by our appearance to such an extent that we end up judging ourselves by appearance.

The Christian community stands in radical contrast. Our acceptance of others and even our attitude to ourselves isn’t based on appearance or wealth or respectability or any other social standard. We accept one another because Jesus has accepted us, and Jesus said, wonderfully, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick – I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners’.

As a Christian fellowship, we reflect the gospel of Jesus by accepting others without first demanding they conform to society’s standards. And the challenge is also not to do ‘surgery’ on ourselves before we come to church, but to be risk being authentic with others.

Who’s to blame for ruining everything since those good old days? Many of the radicals who have overseen the progressive transformation of our building and services still attend each Sunday – generally at 8am. I thank God that as a parish we have always been willing to adapt our buildings and approaches in order to welcome new generations who need to know Christ.

Our church runs lots of things - home groups, a craft group, kids’ programmes, men’s events, prayer meetings, and more. They’re mostly led not by staff, but by keen people with the necessary gifts. But there’s a trap in all this energetic diversity. Let me illustrate.

Imagine that you love books, and you organise a church reading group. You advertise it and hope the idea will catch on and that lots and lots people will join it. Success! But wait – what have we succeeded in doing? Running a flourishing activity, certainly, but here’s the key: running flourishing activities is not our mission.

Our mission is ‘to play our part by prayer and proclamation in God’s work of bringing people to new life and continual growth in Christ’. Everything we do must somehow serve this purpose. So your book club could be hugely popular but still be a ‘failure’ by doing nothing to help people come to Christ or grow in faith.

Our Carols in Dundas School event is on December 4th. It will be well run, and we hope for hundreds to be there. But success won’t be measured simply in numbers present. We want to invite non-Christian friends, to clearly present the Christian message, to distribute copies of Luke’s gospel, and to invite people to our Christmas services. Our deepest concerns are spiritual and eternal.

There are some things in life which you don’t believe you’re capable of – until you find yourself doing them. I think of this whenever I see a young first-time dad casually changing a nappy. We underestimate ourselves.

The same applies when it comes to volunteering for ministry involvement. We see people leading music, or giving a talk, or running a home group, and we think, ‘Not in a million years could I do that!’ It’s understandable – it is hard to imagine ourselves doing something we’ve never done before – but it’s often a case of underestimating ourselves and the ways in which God may be able to use us.

A classic example of this is teaching Scripture. The blood drains from people’s faces when they contemplate it, yet it’s a wonderful ministry; well-resourced with training and materials, often lots of fun, and it centred on demonstrating and explaining the love of Jesus to kids who often haven’t the faintest idea about it.

In 2011 we are facing a shortage of scripture teachers or assistants for Dundas Public School. It would be such a shame to pass up this opportunity to share Christ by underestimating what we might be capable of. How are you placed on Wednesday mornings? Use your imagination: can’t just see yourself as a scripture teacher? See me after church!

SRE Accreditation from Youthworks on Vimeo.

How old do you have to be, to be ‘old’? It’s definitely older than it used to be. And I’m not just saying this because I’m getting older myself. Consider this.

In 1910, the average male life expectancy in Australia was 57! In other words, many Australian men didn’t live to pension age. Today the figure is around 85, and the challenge is not whether I’ll live to get the pension, but what I’m going to do with myself in the decades beyond my retirement. 

It’s very important that churches recognise these changes, and not behave as though it’s still 1910. For example:

1. People in their 60s, 70s and beyond are a growing proportion of the population, and a real mission field. Churches mustn’t limit their outreach to the under-40’s.
2. Churches shouldn’t treat older parishioners as having been put out to pasture. They are an increasingly vital group of ministry volunteers and leaders, who will often have greater flexibility for daytime involvement than people in other stages of life.
3. Churches shouldn’t feel they can simply fob off older parishioners with a traditional service. As with other groups within the church there should be openness to specialist staffing and to a range of ministries, programmes and groups tailored to keep helping people in retirement come to new life and continual growth in Christ.

Isn’t the whole Halloween thing interesting? As I keep telling my bored children, when I was a kid, there was no such thing. ‘Trick or treating’ would pop up in the odd Disney movie, but it was as remote from Australian culture as Thanksgiving celebrations. But suddenly it seems to have sprouted here like a pumpkin vine. A few reflections:

1. Enthusiasm is originating with children rather than adults. It’s not parents promoting it. Rather, kids are coming home declaring that Sunday is trick or treat, or begging to go to a Halloween party.
2. The shops are very willing to hop on the bandwagon. Halloween lollies, costumes, or pumpkins represent a bonus at a slow time of the retail year.
3. There is something appealing about groups of children wandering happily from neighbour to neighbour in the early evening while we watch from our front lawns. It’s a bit like streets which go crazy over Christmas lights. It turns our street into a community.
4. Because it’s an artificial transplant into Australian culture, noone seems to know or care what the historical roots or spiritual overtones are. Personally I think the whole thing is a bore, but I don’t think churches need to be too anxious about it. And in my neighbourhood it all fell a bit flat anyway.

What do you think?

I’m reading a book on the self-help trend towards ‘positive thinking’, especially in America. It includes a chapter on churches. The writer isn’t a Christian, but she is particularly cynical about churches which have abandoned the traditional Christian gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and replaced it with more self-centred messages. Here’s a sample:

‘By any quantitative measure, the most successful preachers today are the positive thinkers, who no longer mention sin and usually have little to say about abortion and homosexuality. Gone is the threat of hell and the promise of salvation, along with the grim story of Jesus’ torment on the cross; in fact, the cross has been all but banished from the megachurches, which have a combined weekly attendance of nearly 4.4 million. Instead of harsh judgments and harrowing tales of suffering and redemption, the new positive theology offered at megachurches offers promises of wealth, success, and health in this life now…’

Reading this was a reminder that the ultimate goal of church is not simply getting more people into the building. There may be ways of growing a congregation which are inconsistent with the gospel entrusted to us. There’s no excuse for a lack of effort in outreach, in following up newcomers etc, but the goal is more genuine disciples for Jesus, not just a bigger crowd on Sundays.

Church leaders tend to trust their intuition in making decisions. This isn’t always bad, but it isn’t always the best way to approach major strategic decision of church life. Recently I was at a meeting where an analyst presented the results of research into the Anglican churches of Sydney. He was hoping to see firm data play a greater role in strategic church decisions.

One statistic in particular grabbed my attention. He said that in surveys there was a 92% correlation between people who felt they were growing spiritually, and people who had invited someone to church during the previous 12 months. In other words, a person who is inviting others to church is highly likely to be a person who feels they are growing spiritually.

This is an important fact for church life. If true, it means that the most effective strategy in motivating people to invite others to church is not just to advertise and run ‘guest-friendly’ services. Instead, we should promote spiritual growth among regulars – it’s growing Christians who are most likely to bring others to church.

The Parish Challenge speaks of our commitment to ‘new life and continual growth’ in Christ. This data suggests that we should never make the mistake of choosing between the two priorities. The connection between them may be even closer than we thought.

According to researchers Australians have the longest working hours in the developed world. Despite our self-image as leisure-loving people we have now overtaken the Americans and the Japanese in average hours worked.

Why is this? Not to put food on the plate - our standard of living has never been higher, houses never bigger, and disposable income never greater. Yet we find ourselves at work earlier in the morning, later at night, and more frequently at weekends. 

The bible reveals work as a gift to humans from God. Adam was a worker in the Garden of Eden even before sin entered. Work can be satisfying, even pleasurable. But it can become an idol which determines our values and decisions. We forget that we have choices and instead feel obliged to work as much as we can or are asked to.

Ministers aren’t exempt. In fact we can sometimes feel that we should be the hardest-working people in the congregation, and end up setting a harmful example of an unbalanced life organised around long work hours.

One of the ways in which Australian Christians should stand out is by a godly approach to work. This may mean a smaller house, but also a life which enjoys the blessings of rest and a balanced involvement in church, family and community life.

Christians don’t live to work.

One of the benefits of being a local Anglican church is that we enjoy a partnership with the several hundred other local anglican churches dotted around our city.

Tomorrow, the annual Synod of the Sydney Diocese will begin. Senior Ministers and elected representatives from every parish church will get together in town to discuss the running of our denomination and how best to manage our shared resources (such as Anglicare, Moore College and Youthworks College, conference centers, retirement villages and schools etc…)

For example, one item on the agenda which stands out is the creation of a new department called ‘New Churches.’ New Churches will seek to help churches like ours grow by planting and establishing new congregations. Al Stewart, who will be leading this new initiative writes of the need to plant new churches ‘The principal reason why new churches are needed is because new churches give new opportunities to reach new people.’

This sounds like a great idea and is of particular interest to us as next year we begin to make plans to reach new people by planting a new congregation in the Telopa/Dundas Valley area.

Please pray for Alan, Roger Anderson and Andrew McLachlan this week as they represent us at the synod. And pray that many new churches will flourish and reach many new people with the message of Jesus over the coming years.

Last Sunday at our 10am & 7pm services Michael Jensen tackled the topic of Christianity and politics. What he had to say was very stimulating and helpful. He pointed out that calling Jesus ‘Lord’ and declaring that we live under his authority is in itself an act of political allegiance. He also noted that the Bible, while calling on Christians to accept the authority of the government, sees ruling authorities as having quite a specific purpose in God’s world: to maintain justice, including the authority to punish if needed. Michael offered these five tips for reflection and action:

Worship and witness are our primary everyday ‘political’ actions

We should throw ourselves into being the church of worship and witness, and invite others to join us

We should pray for those in authority in our nation/community (from prime ministers to school principals)

No human authority or party is perfect; we shouldn’t be blinkered in our politics

Our ultimate confidence is in God to care for us; we can use our vote for the sake of others (especially the vulnerable), not necessarily for our own best interest.

Christians don’t have a particularly good public image. The irony is, people who actually know us generally like us. How does this work?

Last weekend at a bbq I got chatting with a woman I know slightly through the soccer club. Eventually she asked what I do. When I told her, she was plainly amazed. ‘Don’t I seem the type?’ I asked. She said that I seemed too young (she’s younger than I am).

Leaving aside the fact that this makes no sense – every Anglican minister is young at some time – it illustrates a glitch in the way people perceive Christians. People who know no Christians often assume we are old, churchy, judgemental types. But the real problem is that when they do meet a real Christian, instead of revising their image they generously assume that you’re the exception!

What’s the solution? Easy – introduce them to more Christians so they see what normal Christians are like, realise that you’re not the only nice one, and get a clearer sense of what it really looks like to follow Jesus. It’s a vital part of our witness.

As the conversation continued, we worked out she knows a couple of our regulars through school, and thinks very highly of them. More exceptions perhaps? Or perhaps her image of authentic Christianity is moving closer to the reality.

Last week on the ABC’s ‘The Gruen Transfer’ some experts were discussing religious advertising. Reflecting on the ‘Jesus All About Life’ campaign, one panellist commented: ‘If you think of Christianity as a brand, then its retail outlets are the churches. Most people would say the retail outlets are letting the brand down. You can make the advertising good, but if the shopping experience is not very good, it not going to work.’

Gathering as a church isn’t the same as running a retail outlet, but I think there’s common sense in his observation. If coming to church isn’t a positive experience, why should we expect people to do it?

This isn’t an invitation to sell out, and it doesn’t require anything beyond us - there’s more than one way church can be a positive experience. We may not have the music of Hillsong or the speakers of Katoomba Convention, but we should always strive to see that church reflects the heart of the gospel: that people are welcomed with genuineness, that our services are engaging and meaningful and marked by authenticity, that our preaching is passionate and Christ-focused, and that we go away loved, strengthened and inspired.

This is about more than just what happens on stage, and requires regular refreshing and willingness to change. What is the experience of our church like?

Which is more likely to be neglected in church life, sustaining and encouraging Christians or reaching out to non-Christians?

A while back I watched a dvd called ‘Children of Men’. It is set one generation into the future in the year 2027. Some sort of contamination has left the entire human race infertile – no child has been born for many years, and the youngest surviving human is 18 years old. The race is counting down to its own extinction.

That sort of movie may not be your cup of tea, but it left me reflecting on our life as a church. Unlike the human race, the church doesn’t grow simply by babies arriving. We grow by sharing the gospel, and as people respond to God’s love for them and are ‘born again’, as Jesus expressed it. This means we can find ourselves in a ‘Children of Men’ situation just by neglecting outreach in church life, which is depressingly easy to do! A happy, busy church which fails to lead new people to Christ is ultimately facing spiritual extinction.

In the movie, the hero discovers a young woman who has mysteriously fallen pregnant, suggesting hope for the entire planet. How is our spiritual birthrate? Our Parish Challenge speaks of ‘new life in Christ’ as well as ‘continual growth’. Both are crucial.

Were you aware that we have an excellent church website? And have you ever had a look at it? This is not just a piece of internal advertising. I raise the issue because of several conversations I’ve had over the past fortnight.

As you’re probably aware, we are in the middle of a sermon series looking at the Bible’s teaching on different family roles and situations: husbands, wives, children, parents and singles. They’re stimulating issues to think about, and the sermons so far have provoked plenty of good discussion and feedback. Several people have asked if it’s possible to get a copy of the sermons to listen to again, or to pass on to someone else, or because they missed a Sunday. When I tell them that the sermons are readily available for listening online or downloading from the church website, they seem amazed.

In fact, not only are our current sermons available on the website, so are all our sermons stretching back more than 12 months (since the site was launched), as well as news about upcoming events, general information about the church for visitors, and more!

For those who aren’t internet-savvy, we do still make cassette recordings of our morning sermons, but for everyone else I’d encourage you to check out the church website. It’s ours, after all!

How did you spend last night? Are you one of those people who invites friends over and eagerly watches the tallyroom coverage? Or were you sick of politics weeks ago, don’t care who won, and are just relieved that it’s all over and the terrible ads have stopped? According to the researchers, an increasing proportion of Australians are not only ‘swinging’ voters, many of us don’t actually decide whom to vote for until we’re standing in the booth staring at the ballot paper.

In most Anglican churches we don’t want the preacher dictating whom we should vote for, but what would it mean to take a Christian approach to casting our vote? Should we vote for a Christian candidate even if we disagree with her policies? Should we vote for an atheist if he’s promising to increase my family income?

In a month’s time on Sunday September 26th, Dr Michael Jensen will be our guest preacher at 10am and 7pm on the subject ‘Christians and Politics’. Michael teaches theology at Moore College, and has thought long and hard about these matters. But why bother now it’s all over? We actually confirmed both the subject and the speaker many months before the election was called. It’s an important and recurring issue for Australian Christians. And all’s not lost – there’s a state election in 6 months!

How is our church is understood in the local area? Many locals know we’re here because for years our carpark has been used daily by school parents, but what do they understand about who we are? My guess is, not much. I’m challenged by that thought, for two reasons.

First, the better-known we are, the more effectively we’ll be able to engage in gospel outreach. If people don’t really know anything about us other than where we are, there are some big bridges to build before we’re able to share the gospel and welcome them into fellowship with us.

Second, I wonder whether it suggests that as a church we haven’t been as active enough in serving our community. Community service is no publicity stunt; a church which serves its local community is commending the gospel. Our community has needs. I went to a Dundas Public School working bee last year. When I arrived, three women were already toiling in the gardens. For most of the morning it was just the four of us! I thought of what a difference a keen group from St Andrews would have made. Same goes for Clean Up Australia day, or any number of opportunities where volunteer helpers can serve the community. Do you have a vision for blessing our community through acts of service? What should we be doing?

A sermon illustration last Sunday morning portrayed Tony Abbott in an unfavourable light. Some of us immediately shuffled and muttered uneasily – was the preacher straying into politics? Noticing the reaction, he hastily added an unflattering anecdote about the other side of politics to balance things up!

It left me reflecting about the strange conventions we have in church about what’s off-limits. The privilege and influence of preaching must never be abused for a private agenda, but in all sorts of other areas we don’t mind the preacher sharing personal views on debatable matters. We feel comfortable disagreeing with the preacher’s views on alcohol or smacking or Harry Potter novels or housing density. We distinguish it from non-negotiable scriptural matters. But politics – an area where we might expect to benefit from the reflections and wisdom of our preachers – feels inappropriate for sermons.

I could add other examples. In confidential pastoral conversations with men I sometimes discuss very personal issues regarding relationships, behaviour and godliness. But I’ve never asked anyone to tell me how much money he gives to ministry. It’s a matter of Christian living, and you’d think it involved less self-disclosure than admitting to marital infidelity, and yet it feels off-limits.

In recent sermons we’ve been thinking about truthfulness, vulnerability and the body of Christ. Perhaps we should review some of our off-limits areas.

At the Men’s Dinner two Saturdays ago, the subject of the after-dinner speech was ‘Aligning Your Five Identities’. It was inspired by the fact that men (and women as well, of course) regularly find themselves in situations with different demands and expectations, and so end up developing five different identities, who speak, joke and act in different ways. 

1. The solo identity: when you’re all alone and not responding to anyone else
2. The family identity: relating to spouse and children
3. The church identity: who you are around others at church on Sundays
4. The professional identity: who you are at work and with colleagues
5. The social identity: who you are when relaxing with friends

Different situations require different behaviour, but we can’t let ourselves become five different people. It creates stress, embarrassment and above all falls short of the Christian blessing that we should be who God has made us to be: his beloved child and disciple of Jesus. The challenge is working out what that means in each situation, but that is our only identity – even if we have multiple roles to play.

Over the five coming Sundays, beginning next week, we will be looking at the Bible’s teaching on some of the different relational roles we occupy in life. What does the Bible say about how to be a wife? Or husband? Or how to be single? Or how to relate to parents? This is a sort of series-within-a-series as we keep reading through Ephesians, which raises these matters.

These are issues that churches should regularly teach about, because they apply one way or another to every one of us. But for that very reason, they can actually prove quite controversial. Noone wants to come to church after 27 years as a husband to be told he’s been doing it all wrong! Our own assumptions, our experiences, whether positive or negative, the pattern of the families we grew up in – all these things very strongly shape our beliefs about the rights and wrongs of different household roles.

Which leaves us with a challenge. For the next five weeks we need to see our own assumptions for what they are and try hard to understand the Bible’s teaching, whether it affirms or challenges our current behaviour. It’s always easy to hear teaching which is purely theoretical, or applies to someone else! Let’s hear what God’s word has to say to us about ourselves and our households.

Two Sundays ago we were at St Paul’s church in Port Louis – the capital of Mauritius. It’s the home church of Eric and Jacqueline Ma Fat, and we were warmly welcomed. The people of St Paul’s asked us to send you their greetings. The previous week we were at St Andrew’s in Jinja, Uganda. Both services had challenging preaching, passionate prayer, and wholehearted singing.

Even if we have no formal connections, just remembering that congregations elsewhere are pressing on to serve Jesus encourages us to persevere. This is what Peter was getting at when he wrote, ‘Resist the devil, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering’.

Last week I wrote about a Christian Hero from the 1500’s - Martin Luther. Recently I learnt about and was inspired by a local Christian Hero from a more recent age.

Robert Hammond was the minister at various inner city parishes like St. Barnabas’ Broadway between 1901-1943. Hammond saw himself as an evangelist. He was a fine preacher who spoke with passion and a commanding presence. He led many to Christian commitment. However, he saw Christian ministry as a concern for the 'whole man'.

In 1908 the first ‘Hammond Hotel’ opened in Newtown providing a place for destitute men. By the start of the great depression there were 4 such hotels providing 3,500 beds annually, 9,000 suppers and 7,000 meals, giving or mending 2,000 pairs of boots. In the days before Centerlink, ‘St Barnabas’ Employment Services’ found scores of jobs.

In response to soaring unemployment during the depression Hammond expanded these initiatives. By 1933 there were 8 ‘Hammond Hotels’ with 1,000 beds and serving 700 meals each night. Other ‘Emergency Depots’ provided facilities for men to shower, shave, wash clothing or pick up second hand clothing and furniture. Many of his social services became what we now know as ‘Anglicare’.

In his most ambitious project, with backing from business and government he acquired a large amount of unused land near Liverpool and helped struggling families to become self sufficient there on small farms. By 1939, 110 cottages had been built on a 225 acre settlement, complete with a shopping centre, post office, school and community hall. The area is known today as the suburb of ‘Hammondville’.

Those who came for food and shelter were often given a chance to hear the news about Jesus at special church services following dinner and he always sought to put people in touch with members of the church. Sydney’s famous ‘Mr. Eternity’, Arthur Stace and 4,400 like him became Christian believers through these ministries.

Martin Luther lived from 1483 to 1546 in Germany. As a Catholic monk he lived in fear of God’s wrath and sought to make himself righteous in God's sight through a life of prayer, fasting, sleepless nights, freezing cold, and even beating his own body.

But Luther was profoundly changed by studying the Psalms and the book of Romans. Luther said, "I began to understand that the righteousness of God is … a gift of God, namely by faith. Here I felt as if I were entirely born again." Luther came to see that righteousness is not a state that a sinner merits for himself. Instead, right-standing-before-God is a gift that God gives to the sinner who trusts in Jesus for salvation.

Luther became very concerned about certain church practices of the time, especially the selling of indulgences. Indulgences were certificates which could be bought from the Catholic Church to relieve oneself or a dead relative from punishment in ‘purgatory’. Luther saw this practice as being inconsistent with salvation by grace alone. He called for a public debate on this and other matters by nailing his now-legendary Ninety-Five Theses to the church door.

Because of these criticisms Luther was required to appear before the Holy Roman Emperor at Worms. Great pressure was exerted on Luther to recant his teachings, which caused him much anguish. In the end, Luther boldly said, "Unless I am convinced by the Scriptures or by plain reason, I am bound by the Scriptures and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything." Then he added, "Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen." The remainder of his life was often lived as an outlaw on the run.

Nonetheless, Luther translated the entire Bible into German, wrote great hymns including "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" and published many books and pamphlets. Luther’s courageous stand was the beginning of what we call ‘the Reformation’ when many Christians rediscovered the place of the scriptures as spiritual authority and the great truths of salvation in Christ by grace alone through faith alone.

We all know the importance of healthy eating.   A varied diet is essential to ensure we are consuming everything our body needs to stay strong.  We might prefer to eat a particular food group all the time, but we need to balance this by eating properly from all five food groups.

God’s Word also has five food groups.  If we are to have a balanced spiritual diet we need to ensure we read both the Old and New Testament.  We also need to regularly return to the Gospels to hear about the person and work of Jesus.  What’s more we have to hear God’s teaching on both what to believe and what to do.  We might prefer to only have sermons on the New Testament letters; they’re easier to understand and seem far more practical.  But we need a varied diet from God’s Word in order to stay strong.  This is why we have had such a diverse sermon series this year.  In order to stay spiritually fit we need to snack on both environmental issues as well as the implications of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  We must devour Daniel as well as Ephesians (to which we are returning today).  Of course a varied menu is essential both here at church and in our own personal bible times too.  How healthy has your spiritual diet been so far this year? 

Do you still say ‘grace’ before meals?  These days it is considered a pretty old-fashioned thing to do.  However it can be a really helpful reminder that all we have comes from God.  It reminds us, our kids and any non-Christians with whom we may share a meal that God gives graciously.

This week I was wondering how often we say ‘grace’ for the teaching we receive each week at church.  I was considering this because we have Eric and Jacqueline Ma Fat visiting our services today.  Eric was sent by his church in Mauritius to study a Diploma at Moore Theological College.  Upon completing this he will return to lead a church of several hundred.  

Jesus reminded us in Matt 4:4 that our spiritual health depends upon being regularly fed from God’s word.  When we stop and think about this God has been amazingly generous to us at our church.  We have a history of having had able bible teachers feed us.  At present we not only have a growing staff team of competent bible teachers, we also have the further blessing of able lay people who can preach, give talks and lead bible studies.  God truly does give graciously!

Have you ever thought about what a blessing it is for a Christian to be able to read? Many millions of people in our world are illiterate, including many Christians in poor nations. God has given us his word. Imagine being unable to open and read the Bible for yourself. For most of us, of course, it’s not illiteracy which prevents us reading the Bible, but everyday things like busyness, tiredness, lack of motivation or discipline.

But the potential blessings of being able to read go well beyond the Bible. Reading gives us access to the most wonderful Christian thinkers, teachers and encouragers of the past 2,000 years. I can hardly imagine my own progress in the Christian life apart from some of the books I’ve read. I still own a book I bought as a 15 year-old from the bookstall at our Parish Houseparty which changed my life as a young Christian, and it wasn’t the last book to do so.

Not everyone enjoys reading or finds it easy. Even so, I urge you to see it as a chance to learn, grow and be encouraged as a Christian. The next time you think, ‘I’d love it if we could have a sermon series on such-and-such…’, ask yourself, ‘I wonder if there’s a really good Christian book on this?’

The Bible addresses a number of issues which 21st century Australian Christians don’t face, such as how to be a Christian slave owner. On the other hand, being a thoughtful Christian in the 21st century means having to consider a whole new set of questions which didn’t exist when the books of the Bible were being written. What is a Christian view of stem cell research? Or of dating? Or fertility treatment? Or genetically-modified crops? Or cosmetic surgery? Or smoking? God hasn’t changed, and we have his word and the Holy Spirit, not to mention the gifts and insight of our whole fellowship to help us, but that doesn’t mean the answers are obvious!

In our sermons over the next three Sundays, Ben Hudson is going to be addressing the important subject of ‘Christians and the Environment’. It’s a big issue, and it’s going to remain that way for the foreseeable future. There are lots of strongly-held opinions in society about how we should respond. And whether we’ve thought deeply about it or not, each of us will have our own views or tendencies.

As Christians, let’s take this opportunity to ensure that our response to environmental concerns are based on what the Bible teaches about our world, its future, and our place as humans within it.

Finding the SRE v. Ethics issue confusing? Here’s my understanding.

Special Religious Education (SRE) is a weekly time where authorised volunteers from various religions run classes for children whose parents permit them to attend. I think it’s a good example of a partnership between schools and the community, reflecting a holistic approach to the school week. But at present children whose parents don’t choose Scripture are left doing less engaging and productive activities. This is unsatisfactory. We need a volunteer-taught course equivalent to Scripture for the non-religious.

This may be what the ethics course was intended to be, but I believe it fails. The course is not a non-religious equivalent, but is utterly unlike Scripture; comparing the two is not comparing ‘apples with apples’. (In fact, based on the little I’ve seen, ethics could be a worthwhile part of the general school programme.) So the ethics-during-scripture option forces Scripture parents into an unfair choice about what their kids will miss out on. The current system was intended to avoid the need for exactly this type of choice.

It’s unfortunate, but I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. And for the time being it’s only a trial. We do need something decent for non-Scripture kids, but I think we’re justified in letting our leaders know that this should not be it. What do you think?

What did you make of the revelations that the NSW minister and family man David Campbell has been leading a double life? How about the video of a desperate Sarah Ferguson selling access to her former husband Prince Andrew, an international trade envoy? In each case the activities were shameful and indefensible; no-one made them do it, and they have caused anguish to those closest to them. But I found myself moved with pity for both people. There was something touching in their fragile secrecy and shame. I can hardly believe it’s taken this long for them to be exposed. But it’s not just that.

One image of judgement day is a giant screen with all our actions, our words, and even thoughts projected for all to see. This isn’t the biblical picture, which is a relief, because I find it pretty chilling. Which of us could bear public broadcasts of our most vulgar or spiteful conversations, or images of our most depraved thoughts? And what of our secret schemes and actions? Whose life has no dark corners?

The stories reawakened for me what a profound blessing we have in total forgiveness through Jesus. We aren’t perfect: the dark corners are a vanishing work in progress, but by God’s grace we find repentance, real cleansing and ongoing transformation into the likeness of Jesus himself.

Consider this declaration: ‘To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. And to this I pledge you my word.’ Sounds simple enough, right?

But the wording of these wedding vows turns out to be far more relevant and precise than we might have hoped! As every couple knows, we have our ‘better’, but also our ‘worse’ in married life. But the joy and tenderness of any marriage, regardless of its current health or length, can be improved quite quickly if a couple can set aside some time to focus on the relationship.

We are hosting an all-day marriage seminar on Saturday June 19th, conducted by professional facilitators from Family Life Australia. It is an excellent programme, alternating good input with times to draw aside with your spouse to discuss your own situation. It’s not targeted at newlyweds, or marriages in difficulty or any other subset. It’s a chance for all marrieds to spend a precious whole day investing in the most significant relationship in our life.

Ruth and I are going, and I strongly recommend it. Cost is $99 per couple including lunch and materials, and time is running out to book! Click for details.

Imagine this: your 16 year-old daughter decides that instead of joining the family for dinner, she’ll eat in her room from now on. She’s not angry – she just can’t see the point of everyone eating together. This way, she gets dinner but she can still get on with other things in her life, like watching tv or doing homework. When you express your disappointment, she says, ‘I don’t see why I should eat with everyone else - there’s nothing in it for me.’ What would you say?

Recently I was chatting to one of our regulars about the tendency for busy Christians to be less consistent in church attendance. She suggested that I remind people of the benefits of going to church. It seems an obvious approach, but the problem is that focusing on ‘the benefits’ of going to church is like trying to tell your daughter what’s in it for her if she comes to dinner.

Gathering for church is like a family having dinner together. The point is not about private benefits for each family member. It’s more about expressing and celebrating our identity: reminding ourselves of who we are, and that we belong to a spiritual family. Dinner can still happen with your daughter missing, but it’s not quite the same for her or for you.

Welcome to church today, and welcome especially to mothers on this Mothers’ Day Sunday. I should confess: I’m one of those grouchy types who think that Mothers’ Day is all a bit of a con to help shops sell breadmakers. Same goes for Fathers’ Day and Valentine’s Day. (And don’t get me started on Halloween!) But lately I’ve started to soften my line. Why? Because I’m increasingly aware of our lack of gratitude to God for his blessings in our lives. We get too busy to notice, and we take for granted even the things on which our whole lives are built, like mothers. So mothers day is a reminder to thank both God and our mum.

Next Saturday afternoon, May 15th, will be our monster parish afternoon tea – a chance to enjoy fellowship together and also to hear about the vision and thinking for having Ben Hudson join our staff team in 2011. It’s one thing to feel that this sounds like a good idea, but if we are to proceed with this initiative it will require our clear understanding, wholehearted prayer, and sacrificial support. The afternoon tea will help prepare us for this. Even if, like our household, your winter Saturdays are a little hectic, I urge you to spend 3.30-5.00pm with us.

I am excited to announce that Rev. Ken Coleman is joining our parish staff team. Ken’s role will be part-time, focusing particularly on ministry among seniors. Of course, this was foreshadowed last year and included in the 2010 budget presented at our recent Annual Meeting. Parish Council took this decision in light of the expanding seniors’ ministry with our new Friendship Service, the well-known projections for an increasing population of older Australians in coming years, and the awareness that there are opportunities for further ministry among seniors which our existing staff are unable to capitalise on. His main areas of focus will include the weekly 8am service and the monthly Friendship Service.

Ken brings enormous ministry experience and wisdom with him, having served variously as a rector, missionary, Bible College lecturer, and a very great deal more in local, interstate, and overseas roles. Quite apart from his formal ministry tasks, Matt and I look forward to the blessing of working with and learning from Ken as a member of our staff team. Ken and Maureen live in Telopea, and have been occasional congregation members for some years now, as their other commitments have permitted.

Join me in praying that this addition to our staff team will see new life and continual growth in Christ come to more and more people in our district.

Almost everyone reading these words will know the general outline of the story behind Anzac day, grounded in the events of the Gallipoli landing on April 25th, 1915. After various ups and downs since it was formalised in 1927, Anzac day has is now firmly established as the most important non-religious commemorative day in our national calendar. Yet although it’s the quintessentially Australian day, I wonder whether Anzac Day actually acknowledges values which are increasingly foreign to modern Australian culture, such as sacrifice, and corporate wellbeing.

Of course ‘sacrifice’ is a word constantly used on Anzac day, and rightly so. But is self-sacrifice truly modelled and valued in modern Australia? Do we train children to value self-sacrifice? Around us, organisations which rely on volunteers are declining, as people are busier and more preoccupied with their own concerns. Moreover, in principle the Anzac forces were acting for the welfare of Australia and the Empire. But our society is becoming more individualistic. We tend to see ourselves as individual customers of our governments’ policy, concerned above all for the impact on us, rather than to have a greater priority for community or even national welfare alongside our own.

Perhaps beyond a commemoration of Australians involved in war, Anzac Day represents a genuine moral challenge to an increasingly individualistic and selfish age.

The beginning of 2011 could see a real landmark in the history of our church. I’m hoping that we will welcome Ben Hudson as our third full-time minister (along with Laura and their coming baby!).

Almost 30 years ago we took the leap of employing a second full time minister (a few of you will remember!) This required increased giving to sustain him and his family, and the major commitment of building a house in Telopea. This far-sighted and courageous decision led to expansion in our congregations, and we have had two full-time ministers ever since.

Now, as was the case back then, we see opportunities to expand gospel ministry in our district. As was the case then, we particularly long to strengthen local mission in Telopea and Dundas Valley. And coincidentally, as was the case then we have the opportunity to consider our own current student minister for the role.

At 3.30pm on Saturday May 15th, we are having a monster all-in afternoon tea to consider this vision and its funding. We’ve timed it so that as many as possible can be there. It will be enormous fun, but also a crucial gathering, and I urge you to set the time aside now. Let’s discern together whether we are approaching another major landmark as God’s people here.

Did you see the debate between Mr Rudd and Mr Abbott several weeks ago? The consensus among viewers was that the Prime Minister ‘won’. What interests me is that this wasn’t based on whether Mr Abbott’s criticisms were valid, or whether Mr Rudd’s proposals were good. It was based on strong but vague impressions. There were comments like; ‘Abbott was too negative’, or ‘Rudd seemed to be on top of things’.

There is an important lesson here for Christians involved in outreach. People don’t merely operate at the level of analysing facts and reaching scientific conclusions. Our judgements include a combination of intuition, impressions etc. This means that in reaching out with the gospel, it is not enough just to convey information about Jesus and let people join the dots.

The impression of Christianity visitors get is not only (or even primarily) shaped by the sermon or the minister, but by everything from how they are welcomed to whether the toilets are clean to whether regulars seem to be enjoying themselves. Visitors are sensitive to authenticity and sincerity, and not just whether the music is fabulous. Ironically, for the sake of outreach church can’t just be a show put on for outsiders. The gospel is clearest to visitors when church is a wholehearted gathering of God’s people to worship him and strengthen each other.

Welcome to church this Easter, especially to any visitors or newcomers. Good to have you with us!

In the last couple of decades, the word ‘denier’ has entered our language. It means a person who denies some important factual truth. ‘Holocaust deniers’ refuse to accept the mass killings of Jews during WWII, and potentially minimise the crucial lessons learned by acknowledging such wickedness. ‘Climate change deniers’ are portrayed as ignoring a looming disaster in global warming and thus frustrating urgent action, and so on.

It occurs to me that to be a Christian is to live in a world of ‘resurrection deniers’. There is nothing unusual about this; it has been so since the start. Even Thomas - one of Jesus disciples – was initially a denier! Christians base our lives on a historical event which most people reject, in lifestyle if not in words.

Easter is the time when we especially focus on this central event in Christian belief and in world history. We claim that Jesus is risen as a matter of historical fact, but also that this has direct implications for every human being as a summons to receive his forgiveness and life under his authority. Jesus is alive! And we invite everyone to consider whether what they may previously have denied could in fact be true.

Now imagine this. Declining health or an extended stay in hospital makes it impossible for you to come to church. After several weeks you feel cut off. You pray and read your Bible, and you see some friendly visitors, but you long for someone to pray with you and for you, to hear some encouragement from the Bible, to have a link with your church.

I’m excited to announce that Gwenda Williams has accepted a new honorary role of leading our ministry to those regulars unable to get to church. This is not about cups of tea, but bringing a ministry of prayer and proclamation to those cut off from congregational life. Gwenda’s ministry is not instead of the many thoughtful Christians who already visit people stuck at home or unwell, but is a formal way for our parish to extend prayer, teaching and fellowship to those people. Pray for Gwenda as she begins, that her ministry will be a blessing to many.

It’s about a fortnight until the Easter weekend, when we hope see plenty of visitors and newcomers to church. For this reason we make Easter an ‘Invitation Sunday’ – a particular opportunity to declare the central gospel message and invite people to make a response. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But there’s something we need to understand about visitors.

I was shocked to discover during our knOctoberfest doorknocking campaign last year that our neighbours don’t realise that they’re allowed to come to church. No, really! In chatting with locals, several people said things like, ‘I’ve always been curious about what your church is like, but I’m not a member, so I couldn’t just walk in’, or ‘I don’t go to church, but I was baptised Roman Catholic so I didn’t think I was allowed in an Anglican church’.

What’s the solution? Simple – we need to give people official permission to come! And the best way to do this is to invite them. In addition to your personal invitations to friends or neighbours, we have printed 2000 invitations to our Easter services which we’ll be giving you this week. Hand them to friends, drop them in your neighbours’ letterboxes, distribute them however you wish. 

It may be that the only thing keeping your neighbour from church is a lack of permission. Give them a permission note!

Feel free to download and email the invite to friends and family.

On Monday night I caught part of the ABC ‘Q & A’ programme. To my surprise, the subject was religion. The famous atheist Richard Dawkins was the star attraction, and on the panel were several Christian politicians among others. I found the discussion thoroughly depressing.

The Christians said the sorts of things you’d expect: religion is important, the Bible is a basis for morality, and so on. The problem is there are objections which can be raised against these claims, and Professsor Dawkins did precisely that. He accused them of ‘cherry-picking’ the nice bits from the Bible, and ignoring the bits about stoning to death. He pointed out that the idea that religion is a purely private matter or that all religions are compatible is nonsense, and so on. They were stumped.

Now Richard Dawkins is not an easy man to argue with, but you don’t need to be an expert to understand that the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New, or to see the fundamental incompatibility between religions, or to realise that proving things in history is different from scientific proof. The problem seemed to be that they just hadn’t thought very clearly about these issues. We shouldn’t let our discipleship be an area of our life where we don’t think deeply and solve problems. The world needs clear-thinking Christians!

Imagine this. You have a rare but treatable disease. Your GP recommends a specialist who has the best treatment record in the country. Better still, he can see you next week. Your GP remarks, ‘This guy really is a genius, even though he makes no secret of the fact that he’s only in medicine for the money!’ How would you feel about this? Would it change your mind about seeing him? (I didn’t think so.)

Now change a few details. You’re looking for a church. A friend recommends one near you because of the powerful preaching gifts of the pastor. She says, ‘He really is wonderfully gifted, even though he makes no secret of the fact that he’s only in ministry for the money!’ How would you feel about this?

Sometimes all that matters is competence. We don’t query the motives of our doctor or our mechanic as long as they can do their job. But for Christian people, motive really matters. To use our gifts with ungodly motives is to misuse them. The Bible says motive matters in everything from financial giving to how we speak to others, whether it’s a ‘ministry’ activity or not. Jesus is not glorified simply by giftedness, after all he gave us our gifts in the first place! He is glorified when people act out of love. Like him.

Lately I’ve been reading the letter of 3 John. John praises his friend, Gaius, for his hospitality to some Christian visitors who have travelled to engage in ministry. ‘Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are strangers to you.’ John says such hospitality to ministry travellers is an acknowledgement of the significance of their task. ‘It was for the sake of the Name (ie Jesus) that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans. We ought therefore to show hospitality to such men so that we may work together for the truth.’

These verses come to mind as we prepare to welcome Eric and Jacqueline Ma Fat from the Anglican Diocese of Mauritius to our church on Sunday 7th March. For the sake of Jesus, they have set aside a year of their lives and journeyed from Mauritius to Australia to train for further gospel ministry. They are far from family, friends, and their church home. Our hope for the year is to raise money towards their costs, and to warmly encourage them, ‘so that we may work together with them for the truth’

In J.I. Packer’s book ‘Rediscovering Holiness’ he presents these three stick figures:

The one on the left represents the Christian whose dominant interest is in theology, reading and basically knowing stuff – an overly intellectual approach. In the middle is the Christian whose dominant emphasis is on intense feelings and experience, who loves powerful worship songs and relies heavily on experiencing a sense of closeness to God – an overly emotion-based approach. Third is the restless activist, who feels that being Christian is more about getting on with it – volunteering, rostering, helping, doing, serving; an overly action-driven approach.

Which are you most like? Which is least like you? Everyone is different, and according to our background and personality each of us will have a tendency toward one of the three options. But all three elements have a legitimate place in the Christian life, but we can’t become like any one of the stick figures – distorted in one direction and underdeveloped in the others. As a church we try to create opportunities to express and develop all three. Which might you need to develop a little more? What’s the next step for you?

This morning we left Petra to enter the wilderness of Midian, where Moses minded his father-in-law's sheep for forty years. We careened around the desert in a jeep ... it was fun! Best though was learning how to survive in the desert. We were taught how to find water, how to wash ourselves and our clothes by finding the right plants and other helpful tips that will really come in handy if ever I have to lead God's people through a wildnerness for forty years. I find it amazing that God spent eighty years equipping his servant not only to understand both Israelite and Egyptian culture but how to care for his people and bring them safely to the Promised Land. I thought ten years of ministry training was enough!

Tomorrow we will see where John baptised Jesus before heading back to Israel to fly home. This then will be my last post. Thanks for following, and I hope you've found some things helpful. Look forward to seeing you all soon! God bless, Matt :D

I've really enjoyed the series of sermons over the last 3 weeks on Christian growth. I've been challenged to pursue Christian growth more vigorously and found the focussing question 'what's the next step?' very helpful.

As these sermons promise to set something of a tone for 2010 among our congregations, I thought it would be worth drawing attention to the online version of the series. If you missed one, it would be really worth listening to it. Or you might like bookmark them and return to them later in the year. So here's the link. Enjoy.

http://dundasanglican.com.au/resources/sermon-series/the-next-step.html

Well today was the best part of the Jordan trip. Petra is indeed an amazing city. Picture a city carved into the red, yellow and blue rocks of the desert mountain ranges. We visited tombs and monasteries, cavorted (yes, that's right!) with donkeys, camels and goats and hiked to the top of a mountain from which we could see the Negev desert (where Israel hiked for forty years; I thought one day of hiking was enough).

When I read Numbers 20 I was struck by the importance of this site. We arrived via the Kings Highway to enter the OT kingdom of Edom (descendants of Esau), saw Aaron's tomb and we're staying in the valley where Moses struck the rock. This is indeed a dry and thirsty, and it would be even worse in summer. I find I am far less critical of Israel as I understand how dire water scarcity can be, why they were so afraid and therefore why they so repeatedly grumbled against the Lord.

We're now touring the lands of the Old Testament: Ammon, Moab and the Transjordan tribes. We therefore saw the river by which Jacob wrestled God (Gen 32) and the mountain from which Moses viewed the Promised Land before he died (Deut 34). As you can see from the photo that pollution must have been a little less in those days!

After lunch we visited a number of rather unimportant Old Testament sites before stopping at the Machaerus Fortress. This is where John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded (Mark 6). Must say I am enjoying the trip less; Jordan is a third world country and seems to have less sites, of little import, but longer days getting between them. I'm assured tomorrow should be better however; we're off to Petra, the Red Rock City in which Herod grew up and Paul may have spent his formative preaching years. Sounds interesting!

Spent half the day today trying to enter Jordan. Maybe my beard does make me look like a terrorist as I've been told; maybe they just didn't like the knives I bought in Israel... either way Customs didn't seem keen to let me in! :P Hope they let me out...

The rest of the day was spent touring the Decapolis (e.g. Mark 5:20) but for a few different reasons I didn't get to see anything. But so as not to waste your time: some trivia! Ever wondered how Jesus managed to teach large crowds in tiny Middle Eastern houses? Photo 1 shows that many houses in the villages consisted of numerous rooms for the extended family around a lareg courtyard. The "window walls" in the middle ground enabled these family members to communicate despite being in different rooms. Wonder no longer!

Photo 2 answers one of Roger's questions. The Dead Sea is in fact now two separate bodies of water as it is falling by 1 metre each year. It is thought that unless something drastic is done it will have completely disappeared in twenty years time. Much easier to cross it now Moses! :D

The tour just keeps going! Today we visited the Old City. This began by visiting David's palace and tomb. We negotiated the Gihon Spring through which David's forces invaded the ancient city of Jebus (2 Sam 5:8). We then stopped at Jerusalem's most recent excavation: the Siloam Pool (John 9) is being unearthed since its discovery in 2005. We then went on to see the Holocaust museum and the National Israel Museum. I especially enjoyed the latter, home of the Aleppo and Dead Sea scrolls and a scaled model of Jerusalem (including the Old City, the city in Jesus' time and its upgrade before its eventual destruction in 70 A.D.). Finished the day by visiting the highpriest Caiaphas' house, where Jesus was imprisoned after his arrest and Peter denied Christ. Three members of our tour are heading home tonight, reminding the rest of us who are continuing to Jordan tomorrow that home is not far off! :D

Began today by taking the Jericho road; you'll all be glad to know that unlike the Good Samaritan this didn't involve getting mugged! Followed the Dead Sea to its southern end to visit Masada, last stand of the Zealots (like the Pharisees a sect of Judaism). The photo is the view from above, with the Dead Sea in the background. Visited En gedi of 1 Sam 24 fame, and then Qumran, where the Dead Sea scrolls were left by the Essenes (another sect). After lunch we went for a bob (hardly a swim!) in the Dead Sea to cool off; even in winter it's HOT in this wilderness! The day finished with touring Jericho and its surrounds. Here we met the eighty-three year-old owner of our tour group. He prayed for us and showered us with gifts. This concluded the day in a really touching way, reminding me that even in old age we should never stop showing clearly the love, hospitality and generosity that flow from the gospel of grace.

Day off today, so took it relatively easy. After a sleep-in visited the garden tomb, which offered helpful insights into ancient burial techniques. Then went to the Rockefeller Museum, which was really worthwhile. While some people would understandably have had enough by now of stones and rocks, I found its presentation of archaeological findings in biblical time periods fascinating. Seeing the development of weapons during the Canaanite occupation of the land, and domestic implements become more decorative (during the land's settlement) was intriguing. Most interesting of all has the huge amount of small houshold gods uncovered in the period of the monarchy leading up to the exile! I love it when archaeology supports the bible so obviously!

Almost every week we have visitors in church. When introducing myself I normally ask what led them to visit us; Were they invited? Do they know any of our regulars? And so on. An increasing number are answering that they found us online. In other words, they were interested in going to a church, and so they went online to find one in the right area which they thought might be a good fit for them, and they came across our church website.

Typically they checked to find out service times and clicked to see a map of where we are. Sometimes they checked what they should wear to church, or what programmes there would be for their children. Perhaps they even listened to a past sermon to get a sense of our approach to the Bible.

A church website is an increasingly important element of accessibility to visitors and the community. It’s also a great resource for regulars, giving access to recordings of past sermons, notice of upcoming events more. If you haven’t before, why not have a look at our own church website, and pass on any feedback for ways to improve or develop this element of our church life. www.dundasanglican.com.au

Busiest day yet! We seemed to walk the entire length of Jerusalem as we visited the pool of Bethesda (John 5), the temple mount, the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, the Upper Room (John 20), the high-priest's house, Pontius Pilate's court, the supposed tombs of David and Jesus and even hell itself! (This is the Valley of Gehenna, where human sacrifice and refuse where burnt so continually the valley became the background description of hell.) Best site today was Gethsemane, where carbon dating has revealed a few of the trees are around 2500 years old (first photo attached)! Worst today was negotiating the Old City; it is filthy, claustrophobic and somewhat scary (second photo). Tomorrow is a day off, and if possible I think I will avoid going back into its labyrinthine depths. Just finished dinner and looking forward to church in five minutes. Hope church this weekend was great for you all too!

This morning we left the Sea of Galilee to drive south into central Israel, known now as the West Bank. First stop was Beth Shan, known from 2 Samuel 31. Here, as the photo shows, an entire city has been excavated, including a gymnasium, theatre, temples, streets, houses, shops, public baths and latrines. As we drove on the well-irrigated lands of Galilee turned into the arid wilderness of the Bedouin tribespeople. Camels, donkeys and straggly sheep replaced the cows in the field. We followed the Jordan its entire length until we reached the Dead Sea. We are supposed to swim in it Roger, but at -3 degrees today i think it's unlikely I will! You are right too, in that it is disappearing so quickly the Dead Sea soon will be in every sense of the word!

From the Dead Sea we ascended into Jerusalem, singing psalms 120-134 as we did so. After driving through the city and checking out its major features we went to Bethlehem to have lunch and visit some sites. We spent the rest of the day avoiding hawkers. It's pretty depressing to see how people still turn holy places into places of business (John 2). No respect, and it really degrades the sites. New hotel in Jerusalem tonight; looking forward tonight to starting work on the first of the seven assignments that accompany this trip!

Yesterday we explored north of the Sea of Galilee, the region where most of Jesus' disciples came from (Capenaum, Magdala (Mary Magdalene) etc). Today we travelled around the rest of the Sea, visiting places like the Jordan tributaries, the Gadrenes (Mark 5), Chorazin and Bethsaida (Luke 8). I find places like Chorazin and Capernaum the most fascinating, as they have unearthed whole villages! Here, as the pictures show, they have excavated complete houses, cooking implements, village common areas and machinery... excellent insight into daily life in the first century.

It's really cold today... expected to snow! This is so rare in Israel a national holiday is declared. Wonder how much we'll get to see!

Started the day on the Sea of Galilee in stormy weather; surreal! then we climbed the Mount that Jesus preached his sermon from in Matthew 5-7; see photo 2 of the view of the Sea from this Mount. After this we drove to the site where Jesus explained to his disciples what it meant for him to be the Christ (Mark 8). The first photo shows he did this at a site filled with pagan temples, including one for the worship of Caesar. The cave in the background is the source of the Jordan River. Best of all was when we were leaving this site the weather changed dramatically. Once minute it was sunny and fine and the next it was snowing! This continued as we drove up Mount Hermon, the northernmost part of the land where Jesus may have been transfigured. The land around us was transfigured as the slopes and trees were laden with snow. Pretty exciting for a Sydney boy!

Because of the weather we had to abandon our plans and so we went to visit the "holy" sites around the Sea. I don't particularly enjoy these ornate churches supposedly built on sites of importance, and so befriended a stray cat (of which this land is teeming). Last night we had a team reflection time, and tonight we'll have a Masters students debrief, so I'm off to have a shower in case I picked up something from that cat!

A good night's sleep! It was much appreciated, because it's amazing how much we're fitting into each day! Yesterday we covered the western coastal plains, home of the Philistines (Now running from Tel Aviv to Haifi). Today the plan was to tour the northern region of Galilee but because of wind and rain we couldn't see as much as planned. Still saw plenty though!

The first photo shows King Solomon's stables in one of his fortified cities. Mangers are in the foreground. The second is a photo from Nazareth. This is now a thriving city, so different from the little town of which Nathaniel questioned in John 1 whether any good could come from. Yet about sixty years ago they still managed to find and excavate a cave that has been visited since the first century as the holy place where Gabriel announced to Mary she would have a child! Our final visit of the day was to a settlement where a Grecian amphitheatre exists side-by-side with a Jewish synagogue and Crusader fort. The diverse history of this land never ceases to amaze!

 It has been great to see places that I've only previously read about. Lunch in Cana, staying tonight on the banks of the Sea of Galilee... what next?! :D

Wow! It took about twenty-five hours to get here... much longer than I was expecting! Arrived in Joppa, where Jonah began his ill-fated sea journey. It is also where Peter was staying in Acts 9 when he was told to take the gospel to the Gentiles. We then visited Caearea, the place where he met with Cornelius. This was also the place where Paul was imprisoned for two years awaiting trial. Very interesting to reflect upon grace and appreciate again how great this is especially when we cannot humanly see why we may be going through particular trials.

We then visted Mount Carmel (2 Kings 19) and the Armageddon site... THAT gave us a lot to think about! The rest of the day we toured the two biggest cities in Israel and listened to talks about its curious social, religious and political mix. Looking forward to an early night in order to regain energy for tomorrow!

Is a Christian a lamp or a plant? (If you were at church last week, you’ll understand what the question means!)

A lamp only has two states: off or on. Once it’s turned on it’s doing everything it’s meant to, and as long as it stays on we don’t worry about it. We often think being Christian is like being a lamp. We love to see people put their faith in Jesus, but once they’re converted we think the job is done – they’re ‘switched on’. We only get alarmed when we fear someone could switch off.

A plant, on the other hand, doesn’t simply switch on. It grows. It doesn’t change as suddenly or dramatically as a lamp, but if it’s healthy it continues to develop, slowly and incrementally. If a young plant in our garden stopped growing we would know something was wrong, even if it was still alive.

Although becoming a Christian can be rather like a lamp switching on, being a Christian is fundamentally like being a plant. The pattern of the Christian life, for every Christian at any age, is about continuous growth. If we see no signs of growth, we should be concerned. No matter how long we’ve been Christians, our current sermons are focusing on how to make sure we keep growing.

Part of Christian discipleship is generosity. Hardly news, right? Regulars at our church are involved in giving to ministry in our own parish as well as to a range of other ministries and charities. The challenge is not to lose our sense of privilege and excitement about giving. The apostle Paul described the financial support of others as ‘fellowship in the gospel’: giving is a genuine act of ministry partnership and participation.

We sometimes adopt special appeals on top of our parish budget. Last year it was bushfire relief through the Yackandandah Community Church. This year we have been invited to support a Mauritian deacon who will be completing a one year diploma at Moore College before returning to Mauritius to oversee PTC-based training there. We have ties with Anglicans in Mauritius through my visit there, and Bishop Ian Ernest commended this project to us during his visit to our parish late last year. The student, Eric Ma Fat, with be arriving in Sydney this weekend, and will visit us on several Sundays during 2010.

I am thrilled to be among the small number of Sydney parishes involved in this. Most of us will never visit Mauritius, but through our giving we can be participants in the strengthening of gospel ministry there.

We typically talk about people as being ‘Christian’ or ‘non-Christian’. This reflects the basic truth that a person either is or isn’t a disciple of Jesus. But simply thinking of the vast majority of Australians as ‘non-Christians’ can suggest misleadingly that they all hold the same position on God and belief.

I’m reading a recent book called ‘Losing My Religion; unbelief in Australia’. The writer points out that there is a range of positions among non-Christians. There are ‘disbelievers’ – people who have made a conscious decision not to believe because they think religious belief is wrong, ‘nonbelievers’ – people who see themselves as neutral on the issue and haven’t made their mind up, and ‘unbelievers’ – people who don’t deny the reality of God for others, but feel like they can’t quite bring themselves to believe it all. All these groups may be hidden in the census category, ‘No Religion’.

What do you think of this analysis? It certainly reflects my experience. I know people who are strongly opposed to religious belief. I also have friends who happily visit church when invited, and who respect Christians for maintaining their beliefs, but who aren’t personally persuaded. There is only one gospel, but perhaps our approach in reaching out to non-Christians needs to take better account of the differences between disbelievers, nonbelievers and unbelievers.

You’ve got to love a hand-me-down. Free stuff is always good. But sometimes the system breaks down. Someone passes something on to you that they really should have tossed out, and they expect you to keep it and use it. You end up storing it in the roof and only pulling it out when they come round to visit!

It’s often noted that the Christian church is only ever one generation away from extinction. God’s solution for this has always been to entrust his church with the gospel message about Jesus and to provide his church with people who will pass it on to the next generation.

In 2 Timothy 2:2 Paul instructs Timothy like this: “What you have heard from me... commit to reliable people who will be able to teach others also.”

The gospel is a hand-me-down worth handing down. And in this way, God is growing his church and the message about Jesus spreads all over the world.

For 20 years, next generation conference (formerly KYLC) has been training young Christian men and women in this kind of gospel hand-me-down kind of leadership. It equips them with practical skills to understand and teach the bible, especially to youth and children.

In the last week Matt Keller and a number of our kids & youth ministry leaders have spent a week in Katoomba for the next generation conference. Please pray for them, and pray that God will firmly establish the next generation of his people as they play their part in this vital ministry.

Often when we read the bible we fall into the trap of thinking that it recounts mere stories.  We forget that Jesus actually walked the earth and talked with real people in real places.  We forget that these things actually occurred.  This is why we sometimes include historical background in our sermons.  Such information helpfully reminds us that what we believe is based on actual historical events. 

In February I am going on a study tour to the Bible Lands as part of a Masters in Theology course.  This subject aims to assist students in appreciating the real life events that the bible retells by going to the actual places they occurred and studying the stories historically.  I hope this trip will help me to understand the bible better so that I might help us to understand the bible better. 

Some parishioners, having done similar tours themselves, have shared with me how enlightening such a trip can be.  I hope that I will be able to share with you not only my experiences (accessible through mattsisraeltour.blogspot.com) but my desire to know the bible better.  I encourage you this year to also learn more about the bible’s “stories”.  You could do this by signing up for the PTC course, by watching a documentary like The Life of Jesus or by simply not tuning out next time a sermon gets historical!

Welcome back to church for 2010!

This is the time of year when people think about changes they want in their lives, from losing weight or dropping bad habits to changing careers. A new year gives us the sense of a fresh start and a new opportunity. Alas, most New Year’s resolutions (including mine) don’t live to see Australia Day. The reason? It’s the same old me trying to behave in new ways.

The best Christian book I read in 2009 was called ‘You Can Change’, by Tim Chester. It sounds like just another self-help book, but it’s much more. It’s written to help Christians who are determined to keep growing in godliness by working against sin in their lives. What sets it apart is its acknowledgement that this sort of change is not just about willpower and internal resources. ‘Change is God’s work’, he says. Christian transformation requires external intervention.

Our Parish Challenge speaks about ‘continual growth in Christ’. That means change. Why should I be any more hopeful about this sort of change than New Year’s resolution change? Because I have the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the encouragement and example of other Christians, and the challenge of God’s word. In 2010, lets’s draw on the external resources God gives to see the change we long for.

Why would you come to church at Christmas?

Last week I spoke with a lady whose family had just celebrated Christmas. ‘It’s all over with!’ she sighed. She reminded me of the year 12 students who have recently finished their HSC exams. For many of us the Christmas countdown is like cramming for exams – a lot of work and time running out; people for whom to buy presents or send cards, Christmas functions to attend. We have to treat both sides of the family equally, even if it means devouring two Christmas dinners and wearing two paper hats in as many days. And as if things couldn’t be any madder, we’re meant to come to church!

But in fact, Christmas is the perfect time to come to church. Why? We can guarantee it will be the one time in all the chaos when we (and our children) will be pointed to the central message of Christmas – the miraculous love of God for us in sending us a saviour. In other words, church will bring perspective and focus to our Christmas. We’ll be prayed with and read to. There’ll be a sermon and songs about Jesus. Our non-churchgoing relatives will be welcomed and accepted. And all we have to do is turn up. Thank goodness for church at Christmas!

‘What do you give the man who has everything?’ This used to be a challenge we faced occasionally when having to find a gift for someone successful who needed nothing. Times have changed. The affluence of most Australians means that we now face that question for almost everyone we buy gifts for at Christmas! As a result, our gifts have little to do with meeting genuine needs or improving life for the recipient. They are expressions of our love, but they are largely symbolic, decorative, and often utterly useless.

Australian research released this week found that 83% of us have received a gift we consider a total waste of money, and 39% say we receive such gifts most years. What happens to our useless gifts? Only 9% are kept. 41% are given to someone else as a gift, and 20% are donated to charity. 7% are simply thrown in the bin, and 10% are sold on eBay!

But how else can we show love and generosity? We could follow the trend towards giving gift cards, and let the recipient buy their own present. Or we could use systems such as the excellent Tear fund gift catalogue, which enables us to show thoughtfulness about our relative while contributing to the real needs of those who lack our wealth. Brilliant.

Welcome to church today, especially to any who are joining us for our Connect Sunday celebration as our kids’ ministries wind up for the year. It’s good to have you with us!

We’re a fairly busy church. Every week people come and go for things like Friendship Luncheon, playgroups, training meetings, kids’ ministry programmes and more. This week we’ve been drafting the calendar for 2010, which is filling up with programmes and events. Is it good to be a busy church?

This is a question ministers reflect on. Does church dominate people’s schedules so that their energy is drawn away from ‘real life’ – being Christians in their communities and building relationships? I think it’s fine to be a busy church, as long as it’s busy-ness with a purpose.

Our ministry programmes, from KidsArts to Friendship Luncheon don’t exist to keep us busy. Their purpose is to help people understand that God has shown his love for us by sending Jesus to die for our sins and rise again. This is the meaning behind all we do as a church, whether it’s a busy week or a quiet one. Our goal is not to be more or less busy, but to help people grow in their understanding of the good news, and to give their lives to Jesus.

Hands up who expected last Sunday that Tony Abbott would be leader of the Opposition by today? Don’t feel bad; even Mr Abbott said he wasn’t expecting it.

The chaos in the Coalition has raised debate about what makes a good leader. Should a leader hold strong convictions and set direction for the whole group accordingly (Mr Turnbull, perhaps)? Is it better to be consultative and to represent the group, even represent disunity if necessary (Mr Hockey)? Or is the main thing to assess the mood of the group and to promote the majority view, perhaps even if he privately has doubts about it (Mr Abbott)?

Leadership has a role in Christian fellowship. We need Home Group Leaders, Ministry leaders, Youth Group Leaders, Service Leaders and more. What is Christian leadership? The fundamental difference is that Christian leaders lead people to follow the risen Jesus as Lord. That shapes their leadership. Peter reminds pastors that they are shepherds of God’s flock, and that the ‘chief shepherd’ will one day return. They must lead according to gospel conviction, but with Christlike humility, and as an act of service to those they lead. Jesus explained his leadership by contrast with the political leaders of his day. Unlike them, he said his task was ‘not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’.

The Bible passages we will be looking at in church this week teach against greed. While it’s well known that the Bible speaks against greed, we sometimes misunderstand what is being said. The Bible is not teaching that it is a spiritual virtue to live a life of need, or that Christians should have an ambition to be poor. The Bible warns against greed because greed is dangerous and harmful. The warning against greed is a safety warning, not a threat!

In much the same way as people who initially cultivate addictive practices in their lives can eventually be described as victims of their addiction, the Bible describes people as being spiritually deceived and even destroyed by greed. In Jesus’ famous parable of the sower, the choking weeds which render the wheat plants useless are a picture of ‘the deceitfulness of wealth’. Paul speaks of people who, under the influence of greed for money, have ‘wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.’

The Christian concern with greed is not sentimentality about poverty, or about the church wanting to get its hands on our money. It is a part of the concern with anything that might entice people to place their confidence and security in something other than God himself, who made us and all things (including our money) for his glory.

Connect 09 has been going full steam in our parish, particularly in past few months. Many of us accepted the thrilling challenge of doorknocking our neighbours during knOctoberfest (and some of us are still planning to – stick with it!) The point of Connect 09 is not to run a successful one-off church programme, but to make genuine connections with the people in our neighbourhood. For our neighbours, most of whom know no Christians, these connections are vital.

Apart from knOctoberfest, we’ve launched our new-look website (visited by well over 1,000 different people so far), our new Friendship congregation and the Wednesday Playtime group for pre-schoolers. We’ve had our ‘Mythbusters’ sermons, challenging the myths which blind people to the Christian gospel. But more brilliant ‘Christmassy’ Connect opportunities are still to come!

 ‘All things that Sparkle’ women’s event is on November 28th. Don’t miss it – we need both visitors and regulars for it to be effective as a connect event. December 5th is Carols in the school – be part of the crowd at this function, and invite others. There will also be a special end-of-year kids’ ministry service, plus Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services. We’re also encouraging individuals to coordinate street parties and give away free Luke’s gospels with their cards this year. As Christmas approaches, let’s keep praying and connecting!

It’s the time of year when our Parish Council is starting to draft the budget for next year. It’s an interesting process (believe it or not!). On one hand, they could simply estimate the amount likely to be available based on previous year’s offerings, and assume there will be approximately the same to allocate in 2010. An alternative approach would be to list everything worthwhile which we would like to spend money on, and challenge us all to meet that target. Or they could break the budget into core costs plus specific projects, and invite people to support the ones they feel passionate about.

But there’s more at stake than choosing methods. Setting a budget is one of the most strategic things we ask our Parish Council to do. The best approach is to start by asking ‘What can we do to see people come to new life and continual growth in Christ?’ What changes could we make to our buildings? What should our staffing be? What programmes, resources and initiatives should be begun or continued? It’s much more of a joy to give towards an exciting vision, rather than just bills that need to be paid.

In coming Sundays we will be hearing about some of these issues, but in the meantime be sure to pray for our Parish Council in their planning.

What motivates people to be generous? There’s no single answer, of course. Perhaps the most common answer is being particularly touched and moved by some specific need. Fundraising organisations tend to rely on this, and they try to give us some sense of the need, the difference our gift could make, and so on. And we’re right to be affected by this. Last week our guest Archbishop Ian Ernest was sharing a recent conversation he had with some ministers in rural Madagascar, who admitted that they hadn’t actually been paid in 6 months. For me as a minister to hear this over a nice lunch in the Rectory was very moving and challenging.

What should motivate Christians to be generous? Compassion in the face of need, certainly, but the Bible speaks of a deeper and more consistent motive - the example of Jesus himself. ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’ (2Corinthians 8.9) In other words, Christian generosity comes from knowing personally the generosity of Jesus. The staggering self-giving of Jesus in his life and death for our sins must have a transforming effect on those who live for him as our risen Lord. The gospel is the root of Christian generosity.

It’s a great pleasure to welcome to our 10am service Archbishop Ian Ernest of Mauritius.

One of the pitfalls of local church life is that our Christian vision can become too narrow. Of course it’s right to be concerned to share the gospel with those in who live our neighbourhood. Our continuing commitment to doorknocking and Connect 09 reflects this priority. But sometimes in our passion for local outreach we can forget that God’s work is worldwide. We are reminded of this by our missionary links, and through visits such as we have this morning.

At this time last year I went to Mauritius at the Archbishop’s invitation to run a Moore College correspondence course, and his visit today is another expression of our fellowship with Anglicans in that land. Mauritius is very different from Australia, but as Archbishop Ian joins us we are reminded that Mauritian Anglican believers will be rising today and heading to church, hearing God’s word, proclaiming his praises and praying for gospel growth just as we are.

It’s a source of encouragement to remember that there are Christians the world over. Peter wrote ‘Stand firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.’ (1Peter 5.9) We are part of an international fellowship.

Read more and watch an interview with Archbishop Ian Ernest here.

The media has been reporting the enormous losses of the Sydney Anglican Diocese during the financial crisis ($160 million!). As a parish we aren’t really affected, but this week the annual Synod (parliament) of the Diocese is meeting, and the investment strategy linked with the losses has been a focus. How should the church use money? There are three M’s to consider.

Firstly, ‘Money’. Money is neutral. It’s needed to get things done, which makes it very handy, but how much a church has is neither here or there. Like most major investors, the Sydney diocese has less today than it had 18 months ago.

Secondly, ‘Motive’. This is the crucial one. Money’s capacity to give a sense of power and security means it can inflame greed and corrupt motives. Jesus warned about the disastrous consequences of the love of money, and the impossibility of serving both money and God. The motive of the diocesan investors has been to generate income for ministries (like the grant supporting Julie Darlington in her studies).

Thirdly, ‘Method’. Assuming good motives, how should you use and invest money? There’s no single answer here. Questions are rightly being asked about the strategy, competence, and accountability of diocesan investors.

How about you? Now is a good time to reflect on our own approach to money, motive and method.

After much thought and planning, we have decided to begin a new service as part of our Friendship Luncheon on the fourth Wednesday of each month (except December and January). It will be a prayer book service similar in style to our 8am service, though shorter. Like all our services, it will be open to everyone, though we have timed it to meet the needs of those who prefer a more traditional service, but for whom 8am on Sundays is an inconvenient time. It is an exciting opportunity to increase our ministry to the non churchgoing members of the Friendship luncheon, as well as to the wider community.

The launch of our ‘Friendship Service’ will be on Wednesday week, October 28th, at 11.45 am. Please pray that God would bless our newest congregation, and think of friends or neighbours for whom the timing and style of this service would be a good match.

The Archbishop of Mauritius, the Right Rev. Ian Ernest will be visiting St. Andrew's Dundas on November 1st for our morning services. He will be sharing with us during an extended interview time. A connection of Christian fellowship has been growing between our church and Mauritian churches since Alan visited Mauritius late last year to help train local pastors. We look forward to welcoming bishop Ernest and hearing from him.

In our present Myth Busters series we are attempting to answer some of the big objections people might have to the Christian faith.  I’m sure you might have heard a number of these over the years in different forms... perhaps you even came across some in your door-knocking experience this month!  You might feel that addressing such issues is beyond your experience.  But there are practical things we can do to combat such feelings!

Firstly we need to answer these questions satisfactorily for ourselves.  If you have questions about any of our topics perhaps indicate on the Communication Slip that you would like to sign up for the next Simply Christianity course.  This course reminds us of the basics while providing opportunities to ask any questions we might have.

Secondly be prepared.  Many of the myths we’re considering come from books like Timothy Keller’s The Reason For God or Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ that you might also find helpful to read.  Alternatively join the Introduction to the Bible course or consider coming to our inaugural Delve day in Term 4 (more info coming!).

Finally remember that people rarely want an airtight argument that proves them wrong.  Do your best to answer the presenting issue, but try to get behind this to the question of what’s really bothering them. Prayer and love are needed more than anything else!

You may have noticed that in the last few weeks Jesus has hit the headlines. The Jesus All About Life advertising campaign and Connect 09’s Inspiring People events have converged on September/October and the media have picked up the story. From the Sydney Morning Herald to the Australian, from Sunrise to the 7pm Project to Rove, it’s everywhere. At this moment, Jesus is a part of the public conversation in a way that is rarely seen.

Of course, its unlikely that anyone will decide to become a Christian simply by watching the ads. As Archbishop Peter Jensen explained to Mel and Kochie ‘it just gives us all an excuse to talk about Jesus’.

As a church, we have taken up the challenge of ‘knOctoberfest’. The idea is to extend a friendly welcome to church to the neighbours in our street, and to offer them a copy of Luke’s gospel as a gift. If a neighbour invited you along to church this week, we’re very glad you’ve joined us!

I can’t imagine a better opportunity to do this than right now, can you? People are talking and thinking about Jesus. The challenge for us is to make Jesus a part of our conversation in a way that we may not be used to, but that will communicate to our friends and neighbours that we’re convinced Jesus is real and worth living for.

Watch Archbishop Peter Jensen on Sunrise

Those who were in church last Sunday will be aware that the next 3 months are going to be the busiest part of our Connect 09 year. There are many different events and meetings happening, but the one I’m most excited about is ‘knOctoberfest’. During the first half of October, we are going to knock on the doors of the people in the street where we live to let them know that they’re welcome at church, and to give them a copy of Luke’s gospel and some information about upcoming events.

The surprising truth is that many people don’t realise they can simply come to church whenever they feel like it. They think they have to be an official member, or be a baptised Anglican. Some people assume that church isn’t ‘user-friendly’ – that there are complicated rituals they’re meant to know in advance, and they worry that they’ll be humiliated by not knowing what to do. Above all, most people simply don’t know any churchgoers, and have never been invited.

KnOctoberfest is a way of addressing all these barriers. The idea of knocking on doors makes most of us anxious (including me!). But we must be determined not to let our fear stand in the way of the task God has entrusted to us as a local church. Let’s get knocking!

As a church committed to welcoming visitors, we need to recognise an important change in society. Increasingly, a person’s first ‘visit’ will not be to a Sunday service or church programme, but to a church’s website. This doesn’t only apply to churches - people investigate online before choosing a gym to join, or schools for their kids. But if a church wants to be truly visitor-friendly, it must now have a good website with clear, up-to-date information about the church and its programmes.

We often speak about inviting others to church, but there are always people who may consider coming for their own reasons, such as Christians who’ve moved into the neighbourhood, or parents touched by their children’s experience of school Scripture. For such people, it’s important to be able to get a sense of who we are via a website. And those who are personally invited may still want to investigate our church online before accepting.

Thanks to much hard work from Frank Renner and Ben Hudson, we now have a revamped parish website which is brilliant both for visitors and also for our regulars to check the church calendar, download sermons, email the staff team and more. I encourage you to log on, and to use it an easy reference point for your friends or family to ‘visit’ us.

www.dundasanglican.com.au

Have you ever had acupuncture? I have. And like most acupuncture patients, I have no idea how it works. I don’t know whether it has any basis in science, and I don’t really care. The main thing is, it works. Fair enough?

This attitude is an interesting shift in our society. When I was young, few Australians would try acupuncture. Claiming it worked wasn’t enough. We wanted to know how it worked, and whether it was medically legitimate. Nowadays we’re more interested in outcomes.

This shift is evident in many areas of life, including beliefs about God. People are less interested in the truth behind questions such as whether Jesus rose from the dead, and more interested in discovering whatever beliefs will ‘work’ for them, particularly by delivering meaning, balance and happiness in life.

How should Christians respond to this shift? It’s important to see that not only are the gospel facts true, but that Jesus actually does call us to a better life. The gospel ‘works’. Humans are made to experience true forgiveness, the significance of being God’s children, acceptance and belonging through fellowship with others, and the confidence of life beyond death. This evening when our confirmees say, ‘I turn to Christ’, they are not just embracing truth, but life the way it was meant to be.

The greatest obstacle to non-Christians hearing the gospel is how rarely they know a Christian. Or to put it the other way round, the greatest barrier to Christians sharing their faith with others is how few non-Christians we know well. Our ministers may urge us to ‘invite our friends’ to church, but perhaps we’ve used up all our invite-able friends! So here’s my question: If Christians are a small minority in society, how can it be that we know so few non-Christians well enough to share Christ with? It’s not as though they’re hard to find!

The explanation is relational ‘climate change’. When a person becomes a Christian believer, their existing friends are typically non-Christians. As time passes, the ‘climate’ of their relational network changes – it becomes more Christian. Christian friendships multiply and strengthen, others weaken. After few years of relational climate change, non-Christian friends are on the verge of extinction.

As with actual climate change, the best response is to recognise it and act deliberately. It may take a self-conscious effort to ensure that our non-Christian relationships don’t just fade away, and that we remain open to making new friendships where we can share the gospel with those who need to know Christ. For the sake of our Christian witness and the salvation of others, we should take steps against climate change.

What are the 3 major concerns which dominate your life? It’s a slightly odd question of course. We don’t normally analyse our lives in that way.

I was at a conference recently where the speaker, an experienced Christian minister, spoke about preaching. He spent some time criticising boring, lecture-style sermons which go into great detail about the chosen Bible passage, but which fail to address the real issues in people’s lives. He said that generally speaking, the top 3 questions in the lives of Christian adults are:

1. How can I raise godly Christian kids without going nuts?
2. How should I love my spouse? (or) Will God give me a spouse?
3. How will I pay my mortgage and other bills?

Is he right? Do these questions strike a chord with you? Would you change one or two?

It’s important to grow in our Christian knowledge, but expertise in understanding the Bible is only part of the picture. We need to know how to live wholeheartedly for Jesus in the moment-by-moment, year-after-year demands and opportunities of families and finances. It’s true that our sermons must help us in these areas, but they’re not bad questions to raise in our home groups or personal Bible reading etc. How does this address the key concerns of my life?

As a local church, we want to spread the gospel in our neighbourhood. We try to understand the character and opportunities in our area and act on them to help people come to Christ. This is why we run events such as carols. This is why we will be doorknocking in October. This is why we teach Scripture in local schools, and so on.

Now adjust a few details. Imagine that residents of Dundas earn among the lowest average incomes in the world. How might that affect the shape of our outreach and ministry? Now imagine that two-thirds of locals are under 25. Imagine a lack of access to health care. Imagine literacy rates among the world’s lowest. Imagine Dundas has high HIV/AIDS infection rates, and that the major organised religion is Islam. In such a setting, what does gospel ministry look like?

Today our link missionary, Jenny Fallon, will be speaking in all our services. Jenny is back in Australia for good after over 21 years of ministry in Burkina Faso – the West African country of  which all the above details are true. Her ministry has embraced health care, training others in gospel ministry, and more. We look forward to her giving us a glimpse of the same gospel task as ours, in a place so different from our own.

What do Australians want? Lots of things! Financial security, a spouse, a bigger house, to lose weight… But behind all these is the same core answer: happiness. We only want these other things because we think they will make us happy. But finding happiness is trickier than it seems. The things we assume will make us happy may not work.

Think of the lottery ad vision of happiness; the winner can finally ditch the job, buy the house, and roar off in the car. But studies show that after the initial high of winning, lottery winners are no happier than the rest of us, and in fact find it harder to take pleasure in simple things they previously enjoyed, like reading. Researchers tell us happiness is not about possessions, but about what we have compared to what we want and what others have. In other words, if we can take control of our desires, expectations and comparisons with others, we will actually be happier.

From this, it’s obvious why Christians tend to be happier than the general population. Jesus didn’t die on the cross primarily so that we could feel happy, but nevertheless being a Christian has a profound effect on our priorities and desires in a way which leads to real contentment in the here and now.

Historically, Christian churches have agreed on authorised summaries of the Christian faith, called ‘creeds’, dating from the early centuries after Jesus. Roman Catholics and Protestants alike accept the creeds, though they disagree on other important issues. Saying the creed in church shows that we stand in the mainstream of historical Christian belief. (Groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons reject the creeds.)

But using the same words for centuries has dangers. Terms get dated. Take the word ‘catholic’. It might surprise you to know that this word means ‘universal’ or ‘world-wide’. By saying ‘I believe in the holy catholic church’ we’re saying we believe in the one-ness of God’s people throughout the world and down the ages. Importantly, this isn’t referring to the Roman Catholic Church, which is a particular human denomination. This is why in the creed ‘catholic’ is not spelt with a capital letter. The problem is, in normal speech ‘catholic’ means Roman Catholic, and so despite no capitals many of us wonder why each week we all say we believe in the Pope’s church!

Like an increasing number of churches therefore, I’ve decided to insert the word ‘universal’ instead of ‘catholic’ in the version of the creed we use at 10am & 7pm. We’ll stumble getting used to the change, but at least we’ll understand what we’re saying.

For a person who isn’t a churchgoer, turning up at church is an unlikely and even intimidating thing. What could make it easier? First, being personally invited - this gives a reason to come in the first place. Second, if a person is considering coming even without an invitation, it makes it less threatening if they know someone who will be there. But there’s a difficulty. Statistics indicate that most Australians do not actually know a church-going Christian person, so both these suggestions miss them.

The goal of the Connect 09 campaign is to start connecting with these people who otherwise have no contact with Christians, so that they can ultimately connect with Jesus himself. What does this mean in practise? We’ve decided, among other things, to doorknock the streets we live in. The idea is to let our neighbours know that we are Christians (which they may not be aware of), that they’re welcome at St Andrews, and that if they turn up any Sunday they’ll already know someone there. Because the personal connection is important, our initial focus will be on our own street rather than a general coverage of the district.

At our prayer meeting last Wednesday we began praying specifically for our streets in anticipation of what God might accomplish through this. It was exciting – bring on October!

Do you struggle with the gap?

For most people there is a version of ourselves which we aspire to. It’s the version which has stopped procrastinating and has started an exercise programme. It’s the version which has finally got round to joining a Home Group, or watching less TV, or having a regular time of prayer. But between that version and the real us there’s a frustrating gap. The solution is not more information – we know what we should do. It’s not more time – we’ve been putting it off for ages already. How do we close the gap?

As a minister this is an important question for me. For many of us, what we hear on a normal Sunday is not necessarily brand new information. So my challenge is to help motivate and inspire people afresh to act on what we know - to close the gap by living out the great gospel truths: resisting temptation and living more wholeheartedly for Jesus. Inspiring reminders, opportunities for recommitment, accountability, fellowship with others in getting moving – all these things help us close the gap.

At the S2S Men’s Evening last Friday, we determined to close the gap in the area of outreach involvement. In the second half of this year we will be acting on our convictions by praying, doorknocking and more. We’re closing the gap!

How often do you exceed your own expectations? If you’re typical, the answer will be ‘Not often’. We don’t often accomplish far more than we thought we would, or influence others more than we anticipated. Why not? Perhaps it’s because our expectations can actually limit us, by setting boundaries on what we aim for in the first place.

In the Christian life, limiting our expectations can be counterproductive and plain wrong. Why? Because our expectations for growth in godliness, usefulness in ministry and impact on others are not just about us, but are actually about God’s work in our lives. Low expectations in these areas are low expectations of God! Whether we realise it or not, it’s pessimism about God’s power which leads us to say, ‘I’ll never be very prayerful’ or ‘I’ll never be involved in evangelism’, or ‘We’ll never grow as a church’.

The more inspiring, energising and important question for Christians is, ‘What do we hope God will do though us?’ This is the starting point for seeking to grow, to reach out with the gospel, and to getting involved in ministry. God can use you!

This Friday I’ll be speaking to the S2S men’s seminar, seeking to motivate and inspire us to raise our expectations and get activated. If you’re a man, be there!

In society generally, I tend to hear two main views about what a church should do. First, there are those who think church should stick to private ‘religious’ behaviour: having church services, saying prayers, and doing whatever is going to help Christian people understand and express their beliefs each Sunday. On the other hand there are those who think that churches should be of more ‘practical’ use – instead of huddling together in Sunday gatherings they should be helping the poor, supporting the local community, and generally doing what a good local charity should.

What does the Bible say we should be doing? All of the above! In part, church exists to strengthen and support Christians as followers of Jesus. But beyond this the church represents Jesus by reaching out and serving those around us, including the poor. And there’s a third dimension: the church seeks to draw people to Jesus himself so that they can experience forgiveness and life through him. Jesus summed it up when he said, ‘You are the light of the world. Let your light shine so people will see your good deeds and glorify your father in heaven.

A close observer of church life made an interesting comment recently. He said churches have changed their definition of success. He said that nowadays churches feel successful if their attendances are increasing. At this point he had my attention. I take note of attendance figures, and I see it as part of our task to bring more people to faith in Christ. In fact, I couldn’t imagine what the alternative definition might be.

He went on to say that in the past churches measured success by the number of people they had sent into the mission field. (If you have a long memory you may reflect on whether this is so.) If true, it’s an interesting shift in focus. Taking pride in Sunday attendances reflects a priority on accumulating more and more people in the local church. Taking pride in sending out missionaries reflects a priority on discipling ministry-minded people and an active concern for world-wide mission.

Both have their proper place, of course. And although ‘success’ is not the right word to use for something which is ultimately the work of God’s spirit, we rejoice both when our congregations grow and also in the fact that over the years many have gone from our parish into ministry and mission. We must be careful to keep our concern for salvation both local and global.

I think that as a church we should help build and sustain good marriages. Maintaining a healthy marriage is no easy thing. Even couples in happy marriages can look back on times when the relationship struggled. As the saying goes, ‘In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce...’ Marriage is a vital part of God’s purpose for our world and should be a source of joy for the partners, and blessing and vitality in Christian fellowships.

I firmly believe that in almost every case a struggling marriage can be nurtured to health through support, encouragement and guidance. Perhaps we need to be a bit more open with each other. Part of the problem is that for most Christian couples marital unhappiness is an intensely private experience, never guessed at by the people who sit beside them in church. Yet whenever difficulties are discussed openly among couples, it’s a great relief and encouragement as others relate to our struggles and challenges.

We are starting to discuss ways that our church can encourage married couples. I welcome your suggestions (eg via the communication slips). The conclusion of the above saying is, ‘…the trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage.’ As followers of the God who invented marriage, we have abundant resources for doing exactly that.

Last week I mentioned that among visitors to our church, a large proportion come along without needing any particular contact or invitation. Fewer than you may think are actually invited by regular members. Why is this?

It may be because for various reasons we tend not to invite others to church. But it may also be because those we do invite say ‘No thanks’. There are things we can do to make it easier for visitors to accept an invitation. The first thing is to pray for them. God is the ruler of the world, and he is the one who brings people to know him. But secondly, we can introduce such people socially to church people. That way, they know that if they come to church there will be people there that they already know.

This Friday is our Men’s Ministry Wine Appreciation event at 7 Charles St Oatlands. There is no guest speaker – the whole purpose of the event is to build friendships between church men and guests which will make it easier for them to come to church when invited. It’s crucial for our men come along, and to make the effort to build these relationships.

For outsiders, church is an intimidating place. Knowing a few of our regulars in advance helps people say ‘Yes’ when invited.

Welcome to church today, especially if you’re here as a visitor or newcomer – it’s good to have you with us!

The staff team has been thinking about where newcomers come from. It’s been fascinating to consider. There are basically three sorts of new arrivals in our congregations. First, there are those who are invited by existing members, or who visit here because they know regulars. Second, there are those who come after making contact through one of our activities such as the Friendship Luncheon or Girls’ Brigade. Finally, there are those who drop in without prior contact of any sort: they know that we’re here, and visit without needing an invitation. (If you’re reading this as a newcomer, I wonder if one of these describes you!)

What surprised me on closer examination was the relatively large proportion of our newcomers who are in the third category – those who drop in without a specific contact or invitation on our part, and the relatively small proportion in the first category -  those who’ve been invited by regulars.

I think there are two challenges for us in this. First, what can we do to increase our profile so that even more people can come without invitation? And second, do we need to improve our efforts in inviting friends and neighbours to church?

‘Just because you sleep in the garage, that doesn’t make you a car!’ This was a line we used in the past to make the point that just attending church doesn’t necessarily make you a Christian. In today’s Bible reading Jeremiah warns the people of his day that external religious behaviour is in itself inadequate. He highlights the danger of assuming that religious ceremonies are the only part of life God is interested in, and that the rest of the time they can live as they please believing God is content.

But I think it’s a diminishing issue in church life. It’s increasingly likely for people to argue the flipside: that just because they don’t go to church doesn’t mean they aren’t Christian. And strictly speaking this is true also. But on it’s own it’s a misleading statement. 

Regular church attendance is the most obvious sign of spiritual health. Apart from sickness etc, it’s almost impossible to be a spiritually-healthy Christian believer and not be a regular churchgoer. There is simply no category in the Bible for the person who wholeheartedly trusts Jesus but chooses not to be part of a Christian congregation. Ministers worry about people missing church, not because of attendance figures or offertories, but because gathering for church is a basic expression of belonging to Christ.

The parish system comes from a time when communities were smaller and people couldn’t be expected to travel more than a couple of kilometres to church. In 21st century Sydney, a 15 minute car trip will take you through several parishes, and many Anglicans do precisely this each Sunday on the way to their chosen church. What’s more, often the people we want to invite to church aren’t neighbours, but social or work contacts who don’t live anywhere near our parish church. Is the parish approach still useful?

Recently I’ve been chatting with local ministers of churches without a parish system. Their Sunday regulars come from the North Shore, the south west and the Hills District. And why not? But the downside is, it’s harder for them to act consistently in local outreach – doorknocking the suburb and establishing lasting contacts with locals. Their members aren’t well-integrated with locals, involved in networks of school parents and sporting clubs life. For all its limitations, the parish approach means that we have a strong foundation for local outreach, and a specific concern for those locals who don’t know Christ.

The interesting thing is that Johns has been sacked from his job at Nine. There aren’t many jobs where you can be sacked for behaviour which isn’t at work, isn’t illegal, and may be in the past. Mine is one of them! A minister can be sacked for immorality because his position as a ‘shepherd of God’s flock’ and servant of the gospel is partly about who he is as a person, and therefore is undermined by gross hypocrisy. Similarly, if Johns were working as a plumber he wouldn’t have been sacked, but in his media role he casts a shadow across the whole league culture he represents.

Johns’ downfall is nothing to be celebrated, but it’s a rare case in which society’s normal boundaries of professional versus personal, legal versus moral are irrelevant. And for Christians, our behaviour can’t be compartmentalised into work versus home versus church. To live for Jesus is to offer our selves wholly to God as ‘living sacrifices’.

A Christian is a person who relates to the risen and living Jesus as saviour, lord, teacher and judge. Christianity is not a set of ethical principles, but personal allegiance to Jesus. But what can we know about Jesus with certainty?

Next Sunday is an Invitation Sunday, where we focus on explaining the essential Christian message and its implications with visitors in mind. At our morning services Alan will speak on ‘Jesus: a Dummies’ Guide’, addressing questions from whether Jesus really existed to why 21st century Australians should live for him. At 7pm Ben will be speaking on ‘Recognising Jesus’, considering how we know who Jesus is and why it’s important to get this right.

Many of us know people who need to clarify their understanding of Jesus and the response he demands. This week, let’s pray for Invitation Sunday and take opportunities to invite guests to hear about the real Jesus.

Here’s a challenge: How strongly do you live out the elements of Christian belief which are impractical? What I mean is this. To the outsider, some aspects of Christian discipleship make practical sense. Statistically, committed Christians enjoy happier marriages and suffer less from addictions such as gambling. They have above-average health (fewer hard drug users, heavy drinkers and smokers) and are less isolated thanks to church networks, and so on.

But Jesus does not call people to a lifestyle option. He told his followers to ‘take up their cross’. Are the impractical dimensions of trusting Jesus seen in your life? Today’s sermon focuses on the implications of the return of Jesus. If you are convinced Jesus is returning, all sorts of ‘impractical’ behaviour starts to appear in your life. An impractically large amount of money goes to kingdom-related causes. An impractical amount of time is spent in prayer and ministry. You risk embarrassment by sharing your faith with others. Opportunities are lost. Our children miss sporting opportunities or friends’ parties because church is a priority. Impractical career decisions are made reflecting personal Christlikeness and a lack of worldly ambition.

The practical things have their place. But how ‘impractical’ is your faith?