The information below is what I shared at our preliminary information session last Sunday…
In 2025 I am interested in SCPC learning that Matthew 6:19-34 off by heart. Does it seem impossible?
Maybe…
At LTOTR, Leadership Team made a commitment to purchase a small book for every adult and teenager at SCPC called How to Memorize Scripture for Life: From One Verse to Entire Books.
And recently, while sitting out the front of a Maccas in Adelaide at 5:30am on a Saturday morning (it’s a long story…), I wrote the author an email about our desire to do this and to see if he could contact the publisher to tell them our story and make this desire of ours more economical for the elders. Generously, they have done that and we are in process and making payment to the USA and having them distributed to SCPC.
But why scripture memorisation and why this passage? Scripture memorisation has come onto my radar in the last 3 years through a friend of mine who is a Presbyterian minister (and currently ministers at Ann St in the city in Brisbane). He told me the story of his grandfather who served in the military. Through his adult life he retained that confronting early rising that the miliary enacts. However, through the peacetime of his adult life, this gentleman has been committing scripture to memory. His reason – he said he never knew when he may need it.
I think we will need Matthew 6:19-34 at SCPC in 2025.
Financially 2024 has been a hard year for Australians, with the rise of interest rates. How will it affect Christmas spending? I guess we will find out soon! 2024 has caused Australians to worry about money.
2025 at SCPC is causing me to worry about money…
This Sunday, at our congregational meeting, we will look to endorse the money we would be required to pay a Next Generation Pastor and also an opportunity to give some money to stimulate the establishment of MTS in Zimbabwe (and from them into other Southern Africa nations).
Could I suggest the needs for each of these roles is very evident. Take for example the Next Generation role… In 2024 we had our biggest safari youth camp EVER in our 26 year existence at SCPC! So, if we don’t have a Next Gen pastor, what do we do?…
Now, what about MTS in Southern Africa? Who has seen the benefit of MTS at SCPC over the last 26 years. If you feel comfortable, put your hand up if you have seen the blessing of MTS here at SCPC? Who wouldn’t want to see that blessing flow into Southern Africa?
As I have made know to you previously, I didn’t know the request was coming from MTS Australia to SCPC. To partner with them to establish the equivalent of MTS in Zimbabwe. Yet it did come about a week before I flew to Zimbabwe. So, while I was there in October, I took the opportunity to have coffee with the National Director of Ministry Apprentice Training in Zimbabwe, Antony. Our time together in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, was delayed by 15 minutes because while we waited for him to come, he never came in! So, in the end we had to go out to the entry of the hotel, to let him in, as he had been excluded from attending the facility because of the colour of his skin. But apart from the initial distress, it was an excellent and encouraging time. Personally, as a chairperson next week, I am not able to vote.
But, if I was a member of the Presbyterian charge of SCPC, I would enthusiastically vote yes to providing $5K over 5 years to get MTS off the ground in Zimbabwe. From my interactions with Antony here in Australia (in January at the National MTS conference where he and his family were in attendance, and now again in Harare a month ago) it is evident he is a wise and eager gospel-centred global leader.
And to be honest, I am absolutely confident that all of you here today (and the vast vast majority of our church family) would vote yes (yes, yes!) to both these initiatives don’t you think?
However, the real question many of us have is “will we have the money?” Isn’t that what it will boil down
to? Because there is absolutely no way volunteers can do the Next Gen role. No way! So, what are we going to do?
Currently we can afford to do both as we have the most money in the bank that we have just about ever have had in our 26-year history at SCPC. And yet we will budget a confronting deficit. So, what do we do? It seems madness not to employ a Next Gen Pastor, when we have more youth than we have ever had and I believe I have equally promoted our dire need to raise the profile of our preschool ministry.
But what about the money? This Sunday, at the congregational meeting, should we do a staff popularity poll and the most unpopular staff member at SCPC be released (to release the financial pressure and allow us to comfortably endorse the package for the Next Gen pastor)? I reckon I could tell you right now the answers to the staff popularity poll… Who is the most popular staff member at SCPC!?! Drum roll please… Steve Tilley. When we placed the start of his Ministry Apprenticeship on our socials in January this year, Stezz (as we know him fondly) broke the internet! Could I say that is testimony to the loyalty, comradery and Christ-like compassion he shows to people. So, who would come at the bottom of the staff popularity?! Me, as so often leaders are change agents, urging us and spurring us on. But as humans we really, really, really, struggle with change. So, I can understand why people may not find me popular (and also I’m the most expensive one of all). So, should I go? Should our administrators go? Should our Sunday logistics person go? (Just to clarify, I was speaking facetiously).
I have heard that some are confused about what our staff do, and that it can take a day like Celebration Sunday for the extended church family of SCPC to see and feel all the moving parts at SCPC. And yet, even Celebration Sunday doesn’t capture the breadth of SCPC!
In our new data base system we have over 400 live attendees and in a total of around 2600 contacts that have had connection to SCPC. So, what do we do about the fact our staff cost money? Release someone?
Personally, I don’t feel comfortable to do that, and that’s not just because I think the staff team are the best in the country (which they are)! I actually think you would be shocked if we removed a staff member for it knocks you out in places you could never predict!!! So, what do we do?
My suggestion is to find money. How do we do that? I actually don’t know. But Matthew 6 does. So I attempted to memorise Matthew 6:33 last Sunday. And so let me finish with that:
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things, will be given to you, as well.
SP
