Welcome to the Pastors’ Pen, a written update for life at Southern Cross…
Is Jesus bad for you?
Is Jesus bad for the world!?
It sounds a little bit crazy to our ears and yet that seems to be a growing trend in our post-Christian, secular culture. Now, I don’t think people would say ‘Jesus is bad for you’… But they would say the stuff that Christians push around, the exclusive claims of their religion aren’t just laughable but dangerous.
It is this space that we will get a taste of at Food for Thought Sunday coming up in two weeks’ time. Phil Wheeler will be opening the Bible to John 14 and Jesus’ powerful line “I am the way and the truth and the life” and explore whether that is an astonishingly arrogant line, or whether Jesus can actually claim it!
So, as you go out for a meal with your GC or DNA, host someone in your home or chat over coffee with your friends in the lead up to Food for Thought (May 23-27) here are some questions to have floating around in your head…
Do you think faith is a good or bad thing?
Why do you believe what you believe?
Aren’t all religions the same anyway?
As you’re chatting over your meal/coffee you might like to put these questions out there and see how the conversation goes! Then, remember to invite the person to Food for Thought Sunday on May 29.
On Food for Thought Sunday we will then hear from Jesus himself on why believing in him isn’t bad, but good and actually brilliant! I pray you are really excited about Food for Thought this year. Get praying, get inviting, get ready for some people to not be interested and some of the most unexpected ones to want to get in on it.
Phil will be preaching evangelistically on May 29 across our three gatherings – SCG at 9am, 9:45am at Lismore High School and 6pm at Lismore High School. Following 9:45am at LHS, we are aiming to have a barista caravan on-site and some delicious finger food.
Is Jesus bad for you? Do faith and religion need to be squeezed out of our culture? What does faith do anyway? Is there hope beyond death?
These questions and more will be answered as we head to John 14 on Food for Thought Sunday, May 29. I’ll let Jesus have the last word:
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
John 14:6-9
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