Welcome to The Pastors’ Pen – an update for life at Southern Cross…
As you may have heard, James was successfully endorsed to fill the vacancy at SCPC at the congregational meeting last Sunday! A BiG thanks to our CoM Exec. for the extra commitments they endured, particularly last Friday, to ensure all the procedural elements were handled to guarantee we could move towards Sunday. Thank you particularly to Jon M, Scott P and Louise M for their brilliant efforts. Thanks also to Luke Mc from Ballina Presbyterian Church who chaired the meeting.
Please don’t forget to sign off with one of our three commissioners on Sunday to show your support for James – we will have clipboards available over the coming Sundays and all members are encouraged to consider signing. Even if you are not a member, you can also sign off on an alternate document to say ‘yes’ to James. If the signatures are successfully gathered, an induction service for James will be hosted by the Northern Rivers Presbytery on Friday the 3rd of February 2023. We will have a BYO picnic at LHS followed by the induction service at LHS at 6:30pm.
We are so thankful to James for serving as a pastoral assistant as part of a contingency in 2022. We continue to be blessed by his ministry this year. As you will know, James will be preaching at our Carols concert on December 18, and at our Christmas Day gathering (9:45am at Lismore High). The passage James will be preaching is from Matthew 11, where we hear Jesus’ invitation to the weary. Encourage friends and family to join us, both at the carols concert and the following Sunday on Christmas Day, to hear the fullness of Jesus’ invitation – the two talks will cover the same text but draw out the fantastic invitation in a fuller way.
I’ll try to give you a quick tour of how carols will run… Think about where to park! You might be interested in using the Dalley St entrance and parking in the car park in the Eastern part of the LHS grounds. We will aspire to open both pedestrian access gates also.
We will have the roundabout in front of the main entrance to the hall closed to enable a clear space for supper to operate and the BBQ will start serving from 5:15pm on the basketball court. Please pray we have enough BBQs and sausages, as it will be difficult to feed everyone at the same time! Please be patient and start with one sausage. James will announce when the Preschool to Year 6 children need to head to E Block to be signed into the Quiz Worx puppet show.
We expect that the transition from food to the kids heading to E Block will be complicated (more prayer needed!) but we will aim to start the carols at 6:30pm (irrespective of who is in and seated to join in singing)!!!
The carols will go for around an hour. Following the carols, we can spill into the carpark area. Hopefully it may be a little cooler then and you can reflect with friends and families over supper about the beautiful invitation we have just received from Jesus’ lips in Matthew’s gospel.
As James said last weekend, carols is such a wonderful and natural opportunity to invite your friends, family and neighbours to meet Jesus – the one who can heal broken hearts. Could I ask you one more time to pray? Pray for those that come, that they might be open to receive Jesus’ invitation!
2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Col 4:2-6
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