The Pastors’ Pen

Posted on by Jillian Coutts

Welcome to The Pastors’ Pen—a written update for life at Southern Cross.

This week, James, Matt, Sue and I spent a couple of days at the Reach Australia conference.

It was an excellent time of Bible teaching and thoughtful seminars on how we can effectively and enthusiastically reach Australia for Christ.

A question we kept getting from Christian leaders around the country was: How is Lismore?

It’s hard to know how to answer, really, isn’t it?. It depends. Our physical city still lies broken. Many many are still without their broken homes.

So we are excited to be able to host Tim Dyer and his wife Merran this weekend as they guide us on how we respond to this brokenness and how we can continue to minister to beautiful local people whose lives are still so shattered.

So join us at Lismore High School from 2:30pm-4pm this Sunday for the seminar with Tim and Merran.

Also, please continue to pray for our ‘Food for Thought Week’ next week, that in the midst of the brokenness, people might still hear that Jesus is not bad for them!… but a stable, secure and safe place to find inconceivable hope and joy.

This is our hope both now and forever:

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. 1 Peter 1:3-4

SP

Posted in Pastors Post

Pastor’s Pen

Posted on by Peita Patch

Welcome to the Pastors’ Pen, a written update for life at Southern Cross…

Is Jesus bad for you?

Is Jesus bad for the world!?

It sounds a little bit crazy to our ears and yet that seems to be a growing trend in our post-Christian, secular culture. Now, I don’t think people would say ‘Jesus is bad for you’… But they would say the stuff that Christians push around, the exclusive claims of their religion aren’t just laughable but dangerous.

It is this space that we will get a taste of at Food for Thought Sunday coming up in two weeks’ time. Phil Wheeler will be opening the Bible to John 14 and Jesus’ powerful line “I am the way and the truth and the life” and explore whether that is an astonishingly arrogant line, or whether Jesus can actually claim it!

So, as you go out for a meal with your GC or DNA, host someone in your home or chat over coffee with your friends in the lead up to Food for Thought (May 23-27) here are some questions to have floating around in your head…

Do you think faith is a good or bad thing?

Why do you believe what you believe?

Aren’t all religions the same anyway?

As you’re chatting over your meal/coffee you might like to put these questions out there and see how the conversation goes! Then, remember to invite the person to Food for Thought Sunday on May 29.

On Food for Thought Sunday we will then hear from Jesus himself on why believing in him isn’t bad, but good and actually brilliant! I pray you are really excited about Food for Thought this year. Get praying, get inviting, get ready for some people to not be interested and some of the most unexpected ones to want to get in on it.

Phil will be preaching evangelistically on May 29 across our three gatherings – SCG at 9am, 9:45am at Lismore High School and 6pm at Lismore High School. Following 9:45am at LHS, we are aiming to have a barista caravan on-site and some delicious finger food.

Is Jesus bad for you? Do faith and religion need to be squeezed out of our culture? What does faith do anyway? Is there hope beyond death?

These questions and more will be answered as we head to John 14 on Food for Thought Sunday, May 29. I’ll let Jesus have the last word:

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

John 14:6-9

SP

Posted in General

Posted on by Peita Patch

My Shepherd 

What do you do when you feel so weak, afraid and tried? 

We have our pathways for comfort and refuge. I know my options are often not really that helpful. What about you? 

How about being shepherded through this coming term? How about allowing Psalm 23 to be a place of comfort for you in these troubled times? 

You might like to read it daily or weekly. You might like to focus on just one part. You might be interested in memorising it as a whole. However you want to feel it’s comfort, we invite you all to lack nothing under our Shepherd’s protection and care. 

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

Psalm 23

Posted in General

The Pastors’ Pen

Posted on by Peita Patch

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

I went to pen this on Wednesday afternoon this week. But I wanted to write something helpful. I just didn’t want it to be, well, ordinary!

Over the next 24 hours I was heavily rebuked. Wednesday night I began reading the SCPC book club book for this term called ‘Ordinary’ by Michael Horton. In the opening chapter he strikes at a western insistence on the ‘extraordinary’ – BiGGer, better, risky, radical movements that change the world. In contrast, he appeals to the ‘tried and tested’ ordinary works of God in the world. His word. His people. His church. 

Life has been particularly ‘ordinary’ in our city of Lismore. Even ‘ordinary’ is an understatement! Words like crushed, exhausted, empty, low and miserable better capture the mood. So praise God that he works by the ordinary means of His grace, His word, His people and His church in our broken town. May his Spirit grant us supernatural strength to survive the everyday grind and get us through 2022.

To close, it is worth noting and appropriate to give thanks for what can really only be described as ‘extraordinary’ support we have received from our Sydney-based brothers and sisters. One church on Good Friday raised $27, 618.59 for our staff team so we can continue to provide hope in our city following the extraordinary events over the past two months.

I pray you have an ordinary weekend and are encouraged by our extraordinary Father God who works powerfully in the everyday…

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.
Lamentations 3:22-23

SP

Posted in Pastors Post