This Friday night SCPC hosts the Northern Rivers youth night, YC1, at Lismore High School.

SCPC has been so critical in the successful hosting and fuelling of events like this. From leaders to logistics, SCPC fingerprints are all over an event like this and WE LOVE IT!

We love that our fantastic youth team can provide the resources and competencies to pull off a night like this. Through Ritchie and my involvement in the Northern Rivers Presbytery, we get to see the smile this puts on the faces of regional leaders. For instance, many churches have only a small number of youth in their church family. For some churches you may be able to count the number of youth they have on your hand. Therefore, these nights (while not too dissimilar to a normal week at youth for our teenagers) can be an eye-opener for others – these teenagers from smaller churches can see there are other youth on the Northern Rivers seeking to stay connected to Christ the vine.

Make no mistake, it’s not only the youth that are impacted but many of the youth leaders from the Northern Rivers look forward to a night like this – for the encouragement, the energy and the fact they don’t have to do the ‘heavy lifting’ on a night like this. Much of that ‘heavy lifting’ is done by our youth team and some of you who volunteer as parent or grandparent helpers.

So, if you are reading this as part of this Friday’s edition SCPC Life, would you consider praying for YC1. Pray that the youth of the Northern Rivers and their leaders would be spurred on by a night like this. Pray also for Cam (our brilliant Youth Coordinator) as he opens God’s word to explore the topic of redemption.

Finally, please pray for the ministry of SCPC that we would continue to make ministry to the next generation paramount in our future. The gospel is so precious we must pass it on to the next generation. So let me finish with that famous verse used by MTS to encourage us in passing on the gospel baton:
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people
who will also be qualified to teach others. 2 Timothy 2:2

SP

Over the weekend our Leadership Team [1] went ‘on the road’ to Tamworth for their annual planning weekend.

The continued success of this weekend is multifaceted: personal accountability through story-telling on our life over the last year, short- and long-term planning (1 year and 5 years), input from an experienced Christian leader [2] and the chance to visit a church family in a very different setting to our own (and to be encouraged and to steal ideas)!

The vision for our one-year planning will feed and fuel our Vision Sunday (Nov 26) – please come! For a couple of hours we spent time talking and praying about the vision for our church family over the next 12 months. Ritchie did an excellent job of chairing this meeting last Friday night.

A central theme to the discussion was this – after a season of such challenge and heartache how do we have renewed vigour? What is in our heart at SCPC? So, some questions we were trying to think through were:

• What makes Southern Cross, Southern Cross?
• What is important to us?
• What are our key priorities?
• What is our mission?

After years and years of contingencies through the pandemic and flood, we really wanted to know how do we plan with purpose? Included in this thinking was the importance of SCG combining in Feb 2023. We desperately want a united partnership with SCG.

How did we go? I think we must have come up with a dozen different phrases! Then, late on Friday night we feel like we came up with a phrase that captured these ideas. Hooray!

On Vision Sunday we will aim to present that theme through the Bible teaching and also through our Church Family News. We are excited that SCG can join on Vision Sunday as well, which will double as a mini transition day for SCG. Please pray for SCG that the real anxiety of joining a large room of people wouldn’t deter them from joining on this important day for our extended church family. For those from East Lismore, please be welcoming without being overwhelming.

We are very excited about the theme for 2024 and feel it is a very appropriate theme to guide us forward as we combine together in mission and community in 2024. Please pray for Ritchie, me, members of our staff team and LT as we prepare for Vision Sunday. Please ask our Father God that he might give us wisdom to know how to say the right amount and be clear (without trying to say too much that we lose people). It is an incredibly difficult balance.

On the way back from Tamworth we listened to Sunday’s talk from John 14:15-31. What a stunning reminder it was of the remarkable ministry of the Holy Spirit; advocate, helper, comforter, counsellor. Better still, our ultimate friend.

As a member of Leadership Team, I am so incredibly thankful for the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that we are not alone in this world. Therefore, as we go about our plans, we can be assured we will never be deserted in our challenging leadership. For, even as Scott Dunlop reminder us on Saturday, Christ is with us. Jesus will not desert us. He remains with us through the ministry of the Spirit. Therefore, may Vision Sunday achieve its goal to align with the transforming work of the Spirit; that wishes to conform all of us; kids, women and men to mirror our Lord Jesus.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for,
but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts
knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the
will of God. 28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to
the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he
predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Romans 8:26-30

SP on behalf of LT

[1] The denomination’s language for a team of elders is a churches ‘session’.
[2] Scott Dunlop, an evangelical Anglican Pastor with 20 years of experience in the Armidale diocese, shared with LT how to endure as leaders from the Apostle Paul’s last words in 2 Tim 4. It was soooo confronting, yet refreshing.

Is a dog really our best friend?
Is it because they just listen?
Is it because they don’t give us unsolicited advice?
Is it because they stand beside us in thick and thin?

Yet our four-footed friends still aren’t enough are they? They can’t explain our tears. They don’t understand our groans. A friend might though, don’t you think?

However, if I had one dollar for every time I heard someone say “I don’t have any friends” I would be very wealthy. Maybe I could afford a house on the beach!

At this point, I don’t own a house on the beach… But blokes and boys are welcome to join us at the beach next weekend for ‘Blokes Go Bacon’ (from 8am on Saturday the 4th of November).

Over breakfast we are going to have a short devotion/reflection from Les Moreman the pastor at Evans Head as he briefly invites us to explore the topic of friendship. It could strike a nerve or two, but it’s an important topic for us to consider. For all of us, not just blokes. Nonetheless, Aussie blokes are known to very much struggle with friendship and very sadly suicide also. [1]

But blokes, do come along and consider bringing a friend and makes sure your boys come too. We will have some bacon which is not much good for you! But we will also be fed from God’s word and be invited to consider a remedy to our loneliness, if you are willing to take a chance on Jesus.

I hope to see you at Evans Head – park in the car park near the kiosk on the river, as we’ll gather at the BBQs near there. The breakfast will conclude around 10am. I imagine many of the blokes or boys will be interested to say around, but fathers and carers will be responsible for any activities that boys participate in, after we finish at 10am.

So, what part of God’s word ought I to conclude with? I reckon Zacchaeus is hard to beat, as he meets a
bloke, who completely transforms his world and relationships:
19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. 7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” 8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” Luke 19:1-10

SP

[1] Research from the University of Newcastle in 2021 explored the risks to men, particular in rural communities.