2008 December » Southern Cross Presbyterian Church

Steve Cree spoke to us from 1 Corinthians 15:35-58. Adam is our past, Jesus is our future! Just as we resemble Adam as dying people now, yet we will resemble Jesus in our glorious future. So, in Jesus, death can be mocked and life redefined – working for the Lord.

Key Verse

“And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”

1 Corinthians 15:49

Bible Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:35-58

Outline:

1. dying well 15:35-57
2. living well 15:58

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Personal opportunities: It’s a really great thing to be praying for ministries that reach out to our community with the gospel. But perhaps the first thing we should be praying about regarding our local mission is the opportunities for gospel witness in our own lives and situations. Who can you be reaching out to with the gospel in your own life, and how? Pray for these opportunities.

Local

Neighbours around us

Pray for your Non-Christian neighbours that relationships may develop that present opportunities for the truth of Christ to be proclaimed
Pray that your neighbours may see Christ through your lives and your words and be inquisitive about the faith you have in Jesus.
Pray for ways to serve and love your neighbours that will promote the Gospel

Global

Thailand

Thailand is a majority Buddhist country with freedom of religion. A member of our church family, James Ritchie, has just traveled to Thailand in a team of short term missionaries for 2 months. Thailand is a land in bondage to a complex web of culture, spirit appeasement, occult practices and Buddhism, with a social cohesiveness out of which few have dared to come. For many Thai, their nationality and religion are inextricably linked. After 175years of protestant missionary work, Thai Christians are only 1.6% of the population. There’s a lack of Thai leadership in churches that has contributed to the slow growth, failures in rural churches and lack of vision.

Please pray:

For the short term team traveling over, that it would be a time of fruitfulness in sharing the gospel with Thai people, and also a time where they might consider the long term needs in Thailand they could contribute to.
Pray for A growth in the numbers and maturity of Thai leaders who will preach the Word and plant churches in culturally relevant ways. Pray that many more of those trained in theological education would step up to this vital work.
Pray for many more Thai people to be willing to let go of identities found in their religion, to find their true identity in Jesus Christ.
Pray that the tide of materialism and complacency gripping the Thai church would be be broken and replaced with passion and vision for evangelism.

Re-thinking Church for Outreach

General Comments Off

Dec 032008

I heard something incredibly encouraging at Presbytery today: a church taking radical steps to take the gospel to the lost of their area.

Presbytery is the group that oversees our church at SCPC and other Presbyterian churches in the Northern Rivers from Grafton in the South to Tweed Heads in the North and out to Casino and Kyogle. About 15 churches in all – with a minister and elder from each making up the Presbytery. It’s hard work and we face lots of challenges but this is a great story – and one really worth sharing.

We have been praying from time to time at SCPC for Tweed Heads church as they have been church planting at Terranora, a growing part of the coast. What is fantastic about their story is not only that they’ve had the vision to do that but that they’ve really thought through different ways to reach out with the gospel in order to reach this area.

The church at Terranora meets in a school. And it meets on Wednesday nights. And when it’s time for the Bible Talk, it’s the adults who get up and move to another room so the kids can continue learning! With the particular school facilities they are using it just works out better that way. The point is – it’s all radical stuff. Everything is being thought through in terms of what’s most effective for the gospel, not “what’s usually done”.

And they’re growing. 50 people including 20 kids are now gathering week by week. Not only that, but the other congregations in the parish – at Tweed Heads – they’re growing too. Because when you get focussed on outreach it changes your outlook and opens your eyes to the many other opportunities all around you (Colossians 4:5).

Let’s pray for these wonderful brothers and sisters in our Presbytery and pray also that we’ll be spurred on by their visionary example as we gear up for connect09.

Did you see the ‘smiley’ in the sky last night as Jupiter, Venus and the crescent moon made a rare line-up? Here’s our photo of it from our front balcony. Hopefully you can make out the smile, sitting above the lights of Lismore.

It made me think, for some reason, of one of my all-time favourite lyrics from any Christian hymn or song. It’s from ‘The Servant King’ by Graham Kendrick:

“hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered”

For all the awesomeness of the stars we see in the night sky, there is someone even more awesome. It is the one who flung the stars around at creation. It is the one who holds them in his hands even now. And it is the one who also submitted those hands to a cross to bring our salvation. To die for our sins.

The crucified, risen, ascended Lord Jesus: he not only looks down on the world in love – with a smile, but came down to die in love – with anguish. As we sing in another terrific song, “Love came down and rescued me… I thank you”.

I’ve had a few requests for the pictures I used on Sunday in relation to 1 Corinthians 15:34 “Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning…”. The tendency of bible verse posters to be cute and comfy rather than challenging is perhaps the picture that tells a thousand words about our comfortable Christianity. But some verses just leap out at us and need more teeth than fluffy kittens provide in responding to the greatness of Jesus. You choose which looks right: