If I could say one more thing...

It would be that it is the Word of God that changes lives and grows the church. I could tell you this because I have seen it over a long time working in a variety of congregations in four quite diverse dioceses.

But that would be anecdotal evidence. Or perhaps testimony. Notoriously unreliable some would say.

I suppose I came to this belief from two foundations a long time ago.  One foundation was my own experience of growing to know Christ. I know I grew as I read and heard the scriptures expounded.  The other foundation was the scriptures themselves. They are not merely religious history, or a kind of Christian life manual.  They tell us what God has done and said. And it is clear that a great deal of what he has done is a result of what he has said. 

By his word he created the heavens and the earth.  He spoke to Abraham and made promises which he fulfilled because he had said he would. He spoke through prophets and fulfilled those promises through his Son.

When Jesus was raised from the dead and was declared to have all authority in heaven and on earth he sent his disciples to the nations with a message of repentance and forgiveness. Amazingly this message, so despised by so many, has been the means of turning millions and millions to the Lord Jesus.

The gospel message spoken by disciples and empowered by the Spirit is what changes people and saves them. Some want short cuts. Techniques. Methods.

But the time of the greatest expansion of the message (the century after Pentecost) none of these short cuts was used. In fact they were rejected. In favour of the power of the gospel itself.

One of the reasons for the poverty and weakness of the church is its neglect and patronising of the Word of God.

There is one thing that changes lives and churches, it is God's word, taken by his Spirit into the hearts and minds of his people by their own reading, and by their being exposed to it by the equippers God has supplied.

Dale

If I could say one thing...

It would be a miracle. Preachers can rarely say just one thing. And the older they get the more they have to say and the more they repeat themselves and say the same things over again in different ways, so that you feel as though you have heard the same thing again and again – like a cracked record (do you remember cracked records?).

The one thing to say, about Christian ministry at least, is that it is all about Christ. Paul said, “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” (2 Cor 4.5).  It is easy, in the church, to highlight many things because there are many important aspects of the Christian life which we share in the church. But all of the important ones depend on Christ.  The church itself is Christ – not the organisation or the services, but the body of people who belong to Christ and who meet in his name.

Our identities are complex, but in Christ all our claims to fame fade into greyness in the light of the glory he shares with us.  My first identity is that I belong to Christ. It is Christ upon whom I depend, and Christ who I want to be like. It is Christ who brings me to his Father and Christ who sets me in the right with his Father.  It is Christ who has died and been raised and who will one day raise me with him into the presence of his Father's glory.

So it is no wonder that we Christ-followers know Christ as the centre, and foundation of  our lives. And no wonder that he is the one we preach, and talk about and want others to know.

As for preachers, pray that they will preach Christ. Christ crucified, Christ as Lord.

As for all of us, we could copy Paul's desire, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil 3.10)

For me,  to live … is Christ.  That was Paul's motto, and can be ours. 

Dale

Sex and love.

Do they go together? Is sex about love? Or is it about desire? Or something else? Is sex the natural expression of love? If you love someone should you have sex with them?

It is possible that sex is about something else altogether. Certainly desire is part of it. But to what end? The early stories about sex in the Bible are not about love or desire. They are about people being joined together. And they are about reproducing.

 In the first place (Genesis 1) sex is implied as the means of multiplying the race.  In the second place (Genesis 2) sex is the way the man and woman express their clinging to each other and form the bond that unites them as one flesh. It is hard to read that story in any other way than as a wonderful and pleasurable way for the man and woman to enjoy their union as flesh and blood humans.

Sexual relations and faithful love are two of the components of marriage. Faithful love is the cleaving, joining, clinging to each other referred to in Genesis 2. The other component is the leaving. Leaving parents, and forsaking all others who might be potential husbands or wives. Sex was given by God to be one of the set of bonds that make a marriage.

Much of the attention that sex gets in the Bible is meant to protect that marriage relationship. Prohibitions against adultery are the most obvious (see Proverbs 5). But all other sexual relationships are also prohibited for the good reason that sex is one of the crucial bonds of marriage and sexual relationships outside and apart from marriage will tend to weaken the marriage relationship. 

There is another good reason and that is that sexual relations join a couple as one flesh. But outside of marriage they do so apart from the other strengthening bonds of marriage.

This results not only in sex being driven merely by desire, but it reduces us to objects of consumption instead of enriching us as partners in a union of the male and female that God intended us to be in marriage. It tends to give the power to desire as an end in itself instead of desire energising faithful love (see Song of Solomon).

Dale

Free with the Truth

Living in the Last Days involves a lot of contact with lies and deception. Sometimes in the church itself and a lot of the time outside it. Jesus encouraged his hearers to obey what he taught. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8.31-32)

Tricking Christians is often done by other Christians. Nowadays there are many media that share deceptions about the Christian faith. The preventative, according to Paul, was the truth of the gospel shared among the believers.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ (Eph 4.14). See also Col 2.8-23.

In the face of deception, and conflicting values and influences, the sure guide of what God himself has told us keeps us safe.

We do face a difficulty when we proclaim the gospel. The enemy has blinded the eyes of unbelievers so that they cannot see Christ’s glory. We do not need, we must not, resort to human methods of manipulation or persuasion to rectify this. We need to trust God’s power in the gospel.

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. (2 Cor 4.1-6). See also 2 Tim 4.1-5

The Last Days are characterised by great deception. We guard against it by knowing the truth. We help set others free by living and proclaiming the truth. We know the truth in the gospel, in the scriptures.

Dale

A church full of mandarins

A friend once told me about their mandarin tree that only produced fruit every two years until her husband, the mandarin grower, got to it with a pruning saw and cut it right back – to almost nothing. Since then it has been fruiting with enthusiasm – as an energetic mandarin tree should.

I wonder whether that works with churches. But churches are not really like inanimate fruit trees, are they?  Although Jesus did think his bunch of disciples was like the branches of a grape vine – that is similar isn’t it?

And he talked about cutting back the vine. Although he said there were two different kinds of cutting. The branches that produced no fruit were removed by his Father and burnt in the fire. The ones that did bear fruit were pruned so they could produce more.

A bit radical. No fruit and you get chopped off and thrown into the fire (or the green bin). I wonder if people disappear from church because they have been chopped off?

But what about the branches that bear fruit?  Why prune them back? So they can produce more fruit.  Lots of other things grow on our lives as well as fruit. Often pleasant green pretty stuff. But not stuff that helps grow fruit.

The opposite actually. The pretty green things take up the life that could be flowing to the fruit.   Ah, what a choice, pretty green things or fruit. But the pruner is the Father according to Jesus. That is good news – we know he will get it right.  How does he do it?  By means of the words of Jesus.

Staying stuck in the vine who is Jesus, and paying attention to what he says is the way both to produce fruit and to get pruned. And getting pruned seems the only way to be a branch. Because fruiting is the only job a branch has. How wonderful to be a branch.

A church full of mandarins.  I wonder...  Where is the queue for pruning?

Dale

Introducing Rob & Kaye Healy

Kaye and I are both from Perth. We have been married for 38 years and have 3 adult children. 2 of our children are married and we have 2 grandchildren.

 I was a high school teacher for 15 years before hearing God’s call. After theological training I was ordained in Geraldton in 2000; serving in Karratha, and then in Dongara/ Mingenew. In mid 2006 I was appointed to Balcatta/ Hamersley before being recruited by Bush Church Aid were I served as the WA Regional Officer for 8 ½ years until the start of 2022.  I have been the Locum in the Swan Parish, and currently I am the Locum in Forrestfield. My passion is for sharing God’s Word to all ages; in groups and one on one

Kaye is a former primary teacher, but now tutors children with learning difficulties. She works mainly at home, but also sees students at the Kingsway Christian College. She has been active in MU and was President of the Perth Diocese for 6  years. She has a heart for children and family and women’s ministry.

We look forward to sharing in ministry with all of you.

May the Lord bless you all.

Revd Rob

Love in residence

God started it off. He loved us first. While we were still ignoring him. He loved us while we turned our backs. And now he has taken up residence in us. Love in residence. We know this because he keeps on breaking out of us with love.

It is a bit difficult having a resident God in us. He keeps on disturbing our life by trying to keep on loving – not just us but people we know.

It’s the way he has always worked. Taken the initiative, decided himself who needs help, and sent the help. Originally it was his own Son. He sent him to rescue us by offering his life for us. Atoning for our sin by his death.  And not content with removing our guilt, he adopted us into his family. Gave us the Spirit of his son. Made it possible for us to call him Father.

You can tell the people that know that God loves them: they are the ones who love God, who really want to do what he says – they want to be like him in fact. You can tell also because of the Spirit of God in them. Which is to say, you can tell that God has pitched his tent in their life. They have a house guest who has taken over their life. Filled it with his life.

You can tell because of the way they love. They see what really matters. They are like triage nurses who can see where the real needs are. They sometimes get abused as triage nurses often do.

But God gets abused too. People can get really annoyed when God doesn’t do what they think he should do. Just as well he stuck to his original purpose and kept on loving the humans he made.

And how wonderful that his love for the humans is still being put into action through other humans in whom he lives. Who know the story and have the experience of God loving them so much.

Dale

Evangelism

One of my favourite books about Evangelism was written by Lionel B. Fletcher, a famous Australian evangelist who ministered from before until after the Second World War. Here are some quotes. See what you think.  Dale

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The central aim of the real Church of Christ should be evangelism. It is certain that, in proportion to the absence of evangelism in any church, that church is not fulfilling the whole will of the Master. We may have had blessing in past days, built up an organisation which is now carried on by sheer weight of its own machinery, and yet that church which was once alive may now be dead.

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Prayer and power interlock. Prevailing with God comes before prevailing with men. The hardest part of spiritual development is to keep consistently to your prayer life, yet everything else depends on this, for prayer is to the spiritual man what the mainspring is to a watch.... I would plead with you above all things to become men and women of prayer.

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EM Bounds said, ’Men are looking for better methods, but God is looking for better men.’ Once a church excludes vital prayer from its life, the bell has tolled out its first note, warning the world, “This church is dead.”

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I believe with all my heart and soul that direct evangelism must be put at the forefront of the life of the Church.

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Why are so few making any impact on the unconverted world outside the Church? It seems certain that this is not what Christ meant when he said, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.’ It can be affirmed without hesitation that, if the Church in Jerusalem had been content to minister only to the first disciples and their families, as so many local churches are doing today, and had not reached out with passionate earnestness to convert the outside world, the Christian religion would have died out in fifty years or less.