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

Last weekend was ‘LT on the Road’, a rare moment for our Leadership Team (LT) to head away for planning, input, and encouragement. 

It was tremendous (but incredibly tiring) and yet so, so rewarding. My deep thanks and gratitude firstly goes to LT for being willing to jump on a bus and be taken to a new location to plan, pray and share life together! Our elders paid all the costs associated with the weekend and some took annual leave, in order to be able to attend. I have not overlooked that dedication; it was simply fantastic.

My thanks also to Dave McDonald from the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Church (FIEC) for his stunningly wise reflection on resilience that he presented for two hours on Sunday. It was therapy for the mind, body, and soul. Even more stunningly, he skillfully landed the reflection in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church.

Some of you may know building healthy team culture is actually not easy. Leadership is about bringing together different ideas, values, and personalities. Interestingly over the weekend, James encouraged us to compile a Spotify list of a song from our first music album, as a teenager. We then had to guess who was whose! They were very different, from many different decades! Over the weekend all our differences were on display; what food we eat, what music we listen to, and differences of opinion on how we move forward growing followers of Jesus.

Yet what I have observed, over my eleven and a half years in Leadership Team, is the deep trust we have for each other. Secular leadership writer Patrick Lencioni notes trust as the bedrock of any healthy, vital, and flourishing team. But core to our strong unity is an unwavering commitment to building on the foundation of Jesus. Therefore, we exhort our church family to join us on that solid ground!

10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.

12 If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13 their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.

1 Corinthians 3:10-13

Stew on behalf of LT

Welcome to the Pastors’ Pen. An update for life at Southern Cross…

The SCPC year is over! You might have heard us say before that our SCPC year runs from Celebration Sunday to Celebration Sunday. From all reports, Celebration Sunday in September was a fantastic day at East Lismore, celebrating God’s extraordinary love to us in the gift of Christ Jesus. 

Now at SCPC, for our Leadership Team and staff, we turn to planning mode! Could I ask you to pray for our elders and staff during this critical phase? Pray firstly for our elders on Leadership Team as we head away shortly for a weekend of planning in Bonny Hills (south of Port Macquarie). Leadership Team will be looking at our vision for 2023 and a five year plan from 2024-2028. We will also have input over the weekend from pastor and author* Dave McDonald. Leadership Team will also attend the Sunday Gathering of Salt Church with Dave and his wife Fiona. This is a vital, exciting and hugely positive time for our Leadership Team.

Secondarily, pray for our staff team as we confirm ministry teams for the new year and continue working on how to streamline our administration and how we organise and enact our Sunday gatherings at East Lismore. So a huge ‘shout out’ to our Ministry Coordinator and Admin Assistant for the incredible creativity they are bringing to this space. 

Finally, will you begin praying for 2023? That together, God willing, we would be clear on our vision to be growing followers of Jesus by… (can you finish that statement?)…

… Worship: Growing our love for God,
… Community: Growing our love for each other, and  
… Mission: Growing our love for the world. 

Part of doing that will be considering how we manage the rhythms of life! Could I suggest pre-ordering a copy of our SCPC 2023 calendar (we will print to order for 2023). We will try to give you a couple of weeks to order your calendar. I joked with our East Lismore staff team that we have to do everything to get this message out. I even suggested sky writing, after seeing it done recently on the Gold Coast! Staff just looked at me with that “Stew you are absolutely nuts” look! So, sadly no sky writing, but do get the word out to our church family to pre-order your 2023 calendar. 

However, as our series in Proverbs reminds us, we can’t get ahead of ourselves as we don’t know what tomorrow brings. And yet, we can rest in the providential care of our wonderful Father God, who even directs king’s hearts! 

In the Lord’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him. Proverbs 21:1

*Dave McDonald is author of Hope Beyond Cure from Matthias media. You can purchase the book here.

SP

‘All the way to WA’ was a trip that took our family for, what we heard others on the trip call, ‘the lap of Australia’, focusing, however, in WA. We started through central QLD, the Red Centre, the Top End, and into WA, returning via the Nullarbor, the Great Ocean Road, North Western Victoria, Central NSW and back into the Northern Rivers.

It was a three-month journey across our country to WA and back. Many long days of driving, early starts to pack bags and swags, and many new people met. Here are three reflections:

1. Australia is vast. It is BiG, really BiG! Many days over our trip, we would travel 700km between stops and not really see a great deal in between. This did present opportunities for reading on long straights and allowed me to finish two Australian classics: We of the Never Never and The Harp in the South, written by Jeannie Gunn and Ruth Park. Jeannie’s work was particularly pertinent as we travelled through the top end and moved through many areas she sought to capture. However, as we moved through that Northern part of Australia, we felt like we met a side of Australia that we didn’t really know existed or had ever read about in these remote outback towns. To be honest, we weren’t too sure how to understand the needs that were present or appreciate some of the societal factors at play, particularly for our Indigenous sisters and brothers. We were, however, especially encouraged by a number of Christian leaders we stayed with who have a vital work in some of these communities, which takes me to my next reflection…
   
2. Gospel ministry looks the same. We had the rare privilege to stay with many gospel partners, particularly in WA, which would often coincide with their Sunday gatherings. Some of these gatherings may have had fifteen to twenty people, others fifty or sixty and others over two hundred. Though their contexts were often very different, the same gospel message came shining through. It was exciting to know the same gospel we proclaim at Southern Cross is the same one being proclaimed across the country. I realise a trip around the country is to see many of the fascinating and rare landscapes, and yet seeing this gospel partnership was the highlight for me.
   
3. Staying calm is harder than it seems. It can get a little tense living out of a car for three months! We were eager to be inordinately patient and calm, but sadly and somewhat predictably, we struggled in this space. I even read a new book, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a changing and complex world will create a remnant of renewed Christian leaders, which I very much enjoyed but somehow, I was the most anxious presence as I harried and chided our family towards a camel ride in Uluru!! We pray that for our children’s sake, we have mentored them in: how to fight well. What I mean by that is; how to engage in the inevitable conflict that will emerge in such confined quarters. We pray that we tried to display how to remain patient, consider others’ needs and just step back and take some deep breaths. Prayer, of course, still needed and appreciated.

We certainly felt removed and remote for much of our trip, and my mind was driven by survival mode! Therefore, coming into the planning season of Southern Cross with Vision Sunday not far away, please pray for my renewed and refreshed mind, that I can now turn my thoughts with our team of brilliant elders in the Leadership Team, to plan well for the adventure that will be 2023.

As I continued in my Bible in a year journey for 2022, here is a section of the Bible that inspired me and my interactions with new campers and people we met. How cool were Paul and his companions, ‘daring’ to share the gospel? Love it!

You know, brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not without results. ² We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition. ³ For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. ⁴ On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-4

SP