Welcome to the Pastor’s Pen.

Here is a brief reflection from the interview last Sunday. As Stew suggested, we put the roles of Lead Pastor and Families Pastor from 2022 into a “blender” and see below what popped out as Stew and Ritchie lead our church family in East Lismore!

Vision, Leadership and Community Pastor:

Stew is the vision, leadership and community pastor at Southern Cross. In this role Stew leads our staff team, is the chairperson of our leadership team (elders) and our committee of management. In his role as community pastor, he aims to provide resourcing, training and mentoring particularly to our vision coordinators who lead our gospel communities. Stew has a huge passion to see the precious gospel entrusted to the next generation of Christian leaders. Following this passion, he oversees the leadership development and ministry to our young adults and provides ministry supervision to the staff at SCPC who drive our ministry to kids. 

Stew enjoys leading a Gospel Community (GC) with his wife Susan and teaching the kids in his GC the wonder of prayer and backyard cricket.  When Stew is tempted to lose heart, he realigns his vision to Jesus’ call to take up your cross daily, knowing his father God will meet all his needs in Christ. 

Regionally Stew serves on the executive of the Northern Rivers Presbytery, heading up its training and resourcing. In 2023 he will also serve as the Interim Moderator of Crossroads Presbyterian Church in Wollongbar. 

For fun Stew loves sports and will try his hand at most things, he can also be found visiting a local park run on Saturdays. Stew is married to Susan, has three fascinating kids and perhaps some chickens sometime soon. Over the last ten years Stew has been encouraged by three Tims! Tim Keller, Tim Chester and Tim Dyer from Johnmark Extension in Tasmania.

Preaching and Mission Pastor:

Ritchie leads our church’s preaching ministry and Sunday gatherings. He longs to see people grow in their love for God as they hear, and are nourished by, His word. Ritchie is also passionate about our church reaching people with the good news of Jesus, and he oversees our local and global mission strategy.

Ritchie is currently also providing oversight and support to Southern Cross Goonellabah, as well as mentoring Cameron Bryant during his ministry apprenticeship. 

The thing that helps Ritchie not lose heart in the Christian life is… Jesus. Being reminded of, and continually refocusing on, Jesus is exactly what Ritchie needs to keep him going. He also deeply treasures Christian relationships and the way that being part of a gospel community impacts his own life. 

His favourite Christian author is Michael Reeves, and he loves the way Reeves’ books have helped him genuinely know and enjoy God better. 

Ritchie is married to Jasmin and they have two young kids who are a source of much joy and fun. Ritchie likes cricket, touch footy, novels and historical documentaries on YouTube. He is also a very keen and very ordinary surfer. 

Welcome to the Pastors’ Pen – and update for life at Southern Cross…

Last Sunday at Southern Cross Goonellabah (SCG) I made an announcement regarding a next step for the church plant following Matt stepping down as their pastor. 

The announcement was that Leadership Team (LT) has decided to organise a consultation around the future of SCG. Tim Dyer, along with his assistant Luke Morgan, will travel up from Tasmania to run a consultation with the people of SCG and especially with its leaders about the church and it’s future. Tim is very experienced in running church consultations and has worked with churches in similiar life stages to SCG. He was also involved in supporting our wider church and staff team after the floods earlier this year. 

Tim and Luke will gather information through one-on-one and group interviews across the weekend of February 11-12. Afterwards, Tim will prepare a report for LT to inform them as they seek to make a wise, godly, well-considered decision about the best way forward for Goonellabah. 

For those who are a part of SCG, please take the Summer to reflect on where SCG is at the moment, on its future going forwards, and on your own energy levels and desire. We value your thoughts and your participation in the upcoming consultation.

Also, during the period from now until LT receives the report from Tim and makes a decision about the next step, I am the person appointed by LT to facilitate the consultation process. Also, along with the assistance of Ian Coutts, I will oversee an SCG Coordination group of Steve Tilley, Brent and Eliza Faulkner and Wayne and Adelle Brooks. The coordination group will facilitate SCG’s Sunday gatherings. This doesn’t mean I’ll be taking over the role of SCG pastor or that I’ll be present at SCG each week, but it does mean I’ll be involved in helping SCG move forward through this next season. 

Please be bringing SCG before our God in prayer. Pray that God would provide an abundance of his guidance and care.

James

Please pray also for Matt and Sue. This Sunday the SCG church family will be praising God together for Matt and Sue’s ministry at a special thanksgiving gathering at Invercauld House. Please ask God that the time would be a deep encouragement for all involved and that he would provide refreshment and leading for Matt and Sue going forwards. 

Above all we must remember have a God who rules in love from his heavenly throne. We entrust ourselves, Matt and Sue, SCG and everything else into his hands. 

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 3^rd 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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Welcome to The Pastors’ Pen – an update for life at Southern Cross…

We can no longer deny it, it’s December and Christmas is coming! During the week LT met
and we began our time by stopping and reflecting on how we can give thanks to our Father
God for the year 2022.

You might (understandably) be a little shocked and suggest; be thankful for what? Natural
disasters, lengthy delays on almost everything and everyone feeling, well… flat.

Yet what a wonderful moment it was as we quickly identified things we can be thankful for.
Why don’t you grab 5-10 minutes in the next week or two and see if you can come up with a
list of three things you can thank our Father God for. You might find you surprise yourself
and identify more than three, and yet even if your pen or device fails to identify anything at all
please at least make a note to join us for Carols (Dec 18) and Christmas Day as James leads
us back to Jesus’ precious words “come to me all you who are weary…”.

Now as you would know, this Sunday we will meet for our congregational meeting. We had a
helpful time last Sunday for around an hour at the preliminary information session as we outlined the
path for our meeting this Sunday. Therefore, we expect Sunday’s meeting at 11:30am will go
for around 30-40 mins. The motions from Sunday remain (regarding the call of James and
financial endorsement for Cameron for his MTS apprenticeship for 2023-24). There will
also be one more recommendation and motion to endorse three commissioners to collect
signatures towards the call, if it proceeds, in order to collect the signatures of those not
present at the meeting.

Well, December is here. You might have a rush of commitments over the next fortnight or
more, but let us not forget to be a thankful people – for through 2022 we have seen the most
unusual provision of God appear in some of the most unexpected places!

Let me leave you with the stunning hope that emerges in the pages of Lamentations:
22  Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
23  They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
24  I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”
Lamentations 3:22-24
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