Ministers Desk 29 July 2012

Part of Jesus’ ministry was to teach and train his followers for the ministry that they were called to.  A disciple making community places emphasis on helping people develop skills for ministry.  Our purpose (Growing Disciples who Exalt, Explore, Embody, Engage) challenges each of us to have at least one intentional relationship in which we share our faith, believing that God will lead them to faith.  At the moment we are looking at ways that we are able to develop our skills for relationship evangelism.  Over the coming weeks our morning worship services will look at the biblical principles and practices of relationship evangelism. We do this because it is invariably the practice of the church and its members, that unless we are consciously outward focussed, we will gravitationally and unconsciously turn our focus inward. 

To complement our Sunday teaching, I want to share some resources that our congregation has.

Prayer cards – cards to place in our bibles or wallets or somewhere else convenient.  Write on them the names of pre-Christians that you are praying will come to faith.  Use as a constant reminder to pray.

How to talk about Jesus without freaking out – an easy to read, practical guide to relationship evangelism.  Contains a study guide that can be used for personal or group use.

Out of the salt shaker – an easy to read book that helps the reader see relationship evangelism as a way of life, not something that we do. 

Just walk across the room – a DVD based study guide of four sessions that contains simple steps for pointing people to faith.  Best used in an Explore Group, but also good for use individually. 

Becoming a contagious Christian – a practical workshop for identifying and developing your personal style of relationship evangelism.  Best used in an Explore Group, but also good for use individually. 

These resources are kept in the library in the church foyer.  Please feel free to borrow, use and return.

A resource not listed above is prayer.  In Luke 10:2 Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”  I believe that if each day everyone of us prayed as Jesus commanded, that there would be a great change in our congregation.  Constantly praying for our pre-Christian friends and family, praying for other Christians as they share faith and praying for ourselves would raise the awareness of the importance of evangelism and would further tune us to the work of the Spirit in our lives.  So I encourage you to pray.

Ministers Desk 15th July 2012

Last Sunday Barry Jardine, Maureen Witheyman and I worshipped at Newlife Uniting Church where we met the Moderator of the Solomon Islands, Wilfred Kuripeto.  In his sermon the Moderator shared the history of the Methodist church in the Solomon Islands.  In 1902 Rev John Goldie, his wife Helena and a small group of others left southern Tasmania and travelled to the area that is now known as Munda in the Solomon Islands.  Rev Goldie was a probationer Minister in his early 20s.  Yet he heard the call of God to go and he was faithful to that call.  The Moderator preached on the Great Commission in Matthew 28, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  In reminding us of this passage he praised God that people like the Goldies, and others, in the past had gone when they had been sent.  He further encouraged us to be obedient to God’s call to go where we are sent. 

The people of the Solomon Islands still today give thanks to God for the missionaries who took the gospel to the Solomon Islands 110 years ago.  Since then the word missionary has dropped out of our vocabulary, except when talking about people from history.  Yet the importance of mission and the necessity for each of us to be a missionary continues to this day.  For many years the church saw the idea of mission as being something that we sent people overseas to do.  That no longer applies in our time.  There are probably more people in Brisbane who need to hear the message of Jesus, than there are in the Solomon Islands, and God is calling us, his church to take this message to our friends, family, workmates and neighbours.  Disciples are missionaries.  The mission of God remains for us to go and tell others of the good news of Jesus Christ.  It may be that like John and Helena Goldie we travel to another country and culture or we may stay in our own country and culture.  However, like the Goldies we are called to commit the totality of who we are to the mission of God, wherever we are placed.

Identifying ourselves as missionaries causes us to rethink how we spend our time, what we do with our church buildings and resources, what priorities we set and who we spend our time with.  Concentrating ourselves in this way causes us to have a prevailing concern of “what has God called us to do and be for others in the particular time and place?”  We therefore move ourselves out of an inward focus and toward a focus on others.

A focus on mission requires a growing faith, because mission can be costly.  The results of mission are not always immediate, so we’re required to trust the future to God.  We are often called to exert more effort than we might find comfortable, therefore we need to lean on God for strength.  We can be confronted with situations that are not familiar, we therefore need to rely on the inspiration of God to get us through the unknown.  Being involved in mission grows our faith as we see the results of lives transformed, people who find new relationships with Jesus, answers to our prayers and a reassurance that God is continually at work in our lives and the lives of others.

As disciples of Jesus we are called to go and live as missionaries.  What is your mission field?

MInisters Desk 8 July 2012

Barry Jardine, Maureen Witheyman and I have returned from our mission and service trip to our partner church, Noro in the Solomon Islands.  To say that we had an amazing, challenging and faith stretching time would be an understatement.  I won’t speak for Barry and Maureen, but during the trip I discovered new things about God, about other people and about myself. We had time to sit and talk to people, ask questions and gain some limited understanding of a different way of living.  Being exposed to another culture shines a light on our own and exposes things that we would not otherwise see, both good and bad.  These new discoveries are part of the ongoing journey of life and our growth as disciples of Jesus Christ.  Barry, Maureen and I will be sharing about our trip in the morning worship services on 15 July.  Today (8 July) we are at Newlife Uniting Church at Robina meeting the Moderator of the United Church in the Solomon Islands who is in Australia to attend the Assembly meeting.

Our partnership with Noro is important for both our church and theirs.  Whilst we were in Noro we provided training in computer skills and bookkeeping, we encouraged them through our presence and we provided a computer and bibles and some other resources.  From our position of relative wealth what we did may seem inconsequential.  Yet to our partners in Noro we have provided them with access to training and equipment that they would find extremely difficult or even impossible for them to access.  In doing this we have built their capacity to serve in the church and to gain better employment.  We have enriched their lives.  This is a key aspect of the gospel and a key calling of Christ’s disciples.  To bring freedom from the things that imprison and impoverish God’s people. 

Yet I believe, that the people of Noro have enriched me even more.  As I said above, our partnership with them gives us a different way of seeing the world.  We are shown what it means to trust in God, when the trappings of wealth and ability are absent.  We are invited to participate in worship that is vibrant, inspiring and wholehearted.  Questions of time do not matter, and a worship service can last up to four hours, but it doesn’t appear to.  We are given the opportunity to learn new ways of valuing others, displaying patience and taking time to understand meaning, rather than merely words.  In our busy and time poor society these are learnings that we often miss.  These again are important elements of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  In Christ we are called into community with him and each other.  The very nature of the Body of Christ means that we must rely upon each other and live in an ongoing giving of self for the sake of others.  Our society is developing an increasingly individualistic orientation that takes us away from our Christian principles of holy community.  In the Solomons we learn again what these principle looks like and how we can implement it in our society.

Our partnership with Noro helps us move forward with our church’s purpose of Growing Disciples who Exalt, Explore, Embody, Engage.  It challenges our assumptions about life and discipleship and helps us look at these from another angle.