These events are designed specifically for our church family. They’re intended to help establish and feed robust faith in us as individuals and in us as a community. From my perspective, ‘robust faith’ is the sort of faith that’s able to withstand the challenges that come from living in a secular world and being a fallen person, as well as being a type of faith that’s prepared to thoughtfully reach those around us with the gospel.
The main way that we grow together in this sort of faith is through our Gospel Communities and Sunday gatherings, yet Equip nights enable us to drill down on a particular topic of relevance for us as a church family.
In Term 1, Danny Ford visited from Sydney to speak on missional living. This term I will be speaking on the topic of doubt. It’s something we don’t talk about much, but doubt is a real challenge for many Christians (if not all of us at some point in our Christian journey).
How should we respond when we doubt? How can we help one another with this? Come along on August 22nd, 7:30pm, at Park Avenue to explore this topic more.
It has not been an easy season over the last three and a half years has it!? The world was turned upside down with a pandemic and our city was struck to its very heart with a crippling natural disaster.
It has been somewhat of a relief to find some stability in 2023. With this restored stability, Leadership Team (LT) is interested in once again providing the opportunity to individuals, couples or families to consider a new GC home in 2024.
Historically, LT was interested in making this provision around every three years. But with all the flux of the last three years, we thought we all needed stability.
Now, however if you or your family have found you have moved into a new stage of life, or physically moved your residence or your rhythms of daily life have changed somewhat. You may find opportunities for gospel extension could happen in a new area. Even the combining of SCG in 2024 may see a little movement.
If this is something you may wish to explore, reach out to your vision coordinator. From there, LT has created a flow diagram to help us interact with both gospel communities that may be affected. We are open to this movement, but we want to champion positive, direct and open communication between all parties involved.
If there is consensus between the individual, the Vision Coordinators and LT we would aim to make allocations by Vision Sunday, Nov 26, 2023. Over the summer, parties that may be moving GC home will liaise with the new gospel community and remaining gospel community about wise ways to interact over the summer period. Then the full transition would be complete by GO Sunday Feb 4, 2024. New members would now interact with the new GC and fully participate in DNAs etc.
If you have questions about this process talk to your Vision Coordinator (they will receive updated information today) or the member of LT who oversees your Gospel Community.
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. Colossians 4:2-6
We are super thrilled to have Peter Moore with us this weekend at Southern Cross!
Peter is what they call the ‘scholar pastor’. Not easy to find! He is scholarly (which means he thinks very deeply), he is reflective and has gone on to complete a doctorate in theology. Yes, lots and lots of words about God!
But he isn’t cold, or absent or aloof, distanced or detached from reality (too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good). No, he is present, warm, interested and he listens.
It’s these beautiful and tremendous qualities that lead us to invite him to invest in our Vision Coordinators and apprentices this week. The role of a Vision Coordinator is not exactly scholarly but it is theological, by that I mean we want those who lead our Gospel Communities to be deeply attuned to the gospel, to understand why we need the gospel, why the gospel is the Bible’s grand hope and why we must, must must, share the gospel with our city. Yet, leading a Gospel Community is also thoroughly pastoral. Vision Coordinators serve as under-shepherds of our chief shepherd, Christ. To lead a Gospel Community is a weighty pastoral calling. Therefore, we desperately want to resource our Vision Coordinators. That’s why this training we do annually is so incredibly vital.
Peter is a national leader in this space. He has previously been employed by Reach Australia to coach their coaches who support Australia pastors. Not to mention that, at any one time, Peter has been known to mentor over 30 pastors! It’s mind blowing. Peter is one of the most hard-working gospel leaders I know.
Bringing a leader like Peter to Southern Cross means we should consider sharing him!
Therefore, I will chair a training afternoon for the Northern Rivers Presbytery this Saturday to help local leaders understand the life stage of their church family and what it means, under God, to grow their local church with positive, rich and biblical principles to strengthen the kingdom’s reach in the Northern Rivers. If you get a chance on Saturday afternoon, please do pray for the local churches represented at this training.
Finally, join us on Sunday as Peter opens up God’s word for us at 9am (SCG), and 9:45am and 6pm at LHS. You too can get to see a pastor scholar in action. Peter is certainly wise and worth listening to, for in spite of his significant learning he is humble, generous and a servant who is desperate to serve his Shepherd King.
Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not Lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. 1 Peter 5:2-3
Yes, yes that’s right! We wanted to let you in early on our Christmas plans for 2023…
As you will remember, our carols performances over the last three years have been high quality musicianship. We ended up down this path through the pandemic and the stop-start approach to corporate signing – you can sing, you can’t sing!! Therefore, if we all couldn’t sing, we wanted a quality of production that would at least mean we could enjoy listening to the Christmas story in song. I’m not sure if you remember, but they were amazing performances! That level of quality comes at the cost of a lot of rehearsals, most weeks in Term 4 for our music team.
So, in Term 4 this year we want to protect our music team from the level of rehearsal. As we deliberated what we could do that would achieve this we noted that Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday and have come up with the idea of a Christmas Eve Family Service – part carols, part Christmas service. Everyone, all in together, in the hall! Kids and adults, some carols, some readings from the Christmas story and a short Bible talk. We liked the sound of it, but we thought “You know what would be super great? If we could throw some of the members of Quiz Worx into the mix!!”
They said YES!
So we are thrilled to be able to share that Quiz Worx will join us Sunday, December 24, for our Christmas Eve Family Service at Lismore High School*. We will have finer details regarding timing, program and community invites in early Term 4.
Even though it’s July, it’s still worth reflecting on the fact that the God of this world came into our world to save us!
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). Matthew 1:22-23
SP
*Due to the Christmas Eve Service there will be no Christmas Day Service at 9:45am.
