Pastor’s Letter – December 18th

Hi Everyone,

For those who were around last Sunday, wasn’t it great to have a few Christmas carols to sing and to celebrate on Sunday night as we approach the end of another year and the celebrations that come with Christmas time?

Let me quickly remind you of what we’ve got going on over the next couple of weeks:

• Gift Giving: Thanks to all who made such wonderful gifts to share and distribute with our community. I hope giving out gifts this week has led to some great encouragement. You can still bring and take gifts this Sunday (we have a few left). Keep having a think – maybe there’s a few people you haven’t thought of yet who would appreciate a gift like the ones our community have made?
• Letterboxing: Thanks as well to those who have been distributing Christmas invitations in people’s letterboxes this week. We’ve got lots more cards to take and give out this Sunday. We’ll have a few more zones we might try and letterbox, but also feel free to take a bunch for your street, local area, or to give out to friends.
• Church: This week church is on at 10am as normal, and then on Christmas Day we’ll be meeting at 9am (noting – an hour earlier than other weeks!). Our Christmas service is shaping up to be really great, with great music and great all ages content (kids will stay in the whole service). It’ll be around an hour with coffee and Christmas morning tea afterwards. A great way to start your Christmas Day. Church will be back to 10am from January the 1st, as we kick off our ‘Summer of Hope’ series.

I also wanted to take this chance to say thanks for all the prayer, support and encouragement as Annika and I have been working out our plans for my employment next year. As we shared a few weeks ago I’ll be continuing to work at church next year at a 0.6 FTE level (about 3 days a week), which we’re feeling really excited about.

I can now also share that I’ve accepted a role working with AFES student ministry (in SA, known as ‘ES’) at an 0.4 FTE level. That will mean I’ll be spending 2 days a week, primarily working in at UniSA City West in the city. I’ll be working to care and support students and also helping to enhance some key events that the ministry runs through the year. I’m grateful that this opportunity has come up and excited to be spending some time working in a ministry that I have had a lot to do with in the past. It’s been encouraging talking with Simon and the leaders of the AFES ministry over the past few weeks and thinking together about how these two roles might go together. There’ll be some opportunity for some give and take between the two positions and to me it feels like a great expression of the long standing partnership our church has with AFES.

In sharing this with you Simon and I are both very keen to remind you that at Brighton, although AFES has been generally a long standing partner, we’ve particularly decided to partner with Lauren and the ministry at Flinders ES. Although I’ll be working in the same ministry at a different location, we still feel it’s appropriate to keep prioritising our partnership with Lauren. The ministry at Flinders ES is a key local ministry and a great one for our church to be hearing about, supporting and praying for. And it’s been going great guns lately so an exciting local partnership to be continuing with. Of course that doesn’t mean I won’t ever share a little about how my work at Uni SA is going, and I’ll be very happy to keep you updated on what I’m doing, but our key partnership with Lauren is one we want to continue prioritising. (If you want to get her email updates and find out how to support her, why not send her an email now?)

We’re really grateful to God for how this has come together and looking forward to this all getting underway in 2023. I’ll be taking three weeks holidays after Christmas and when I come back I’ll be getting going with this new arrangement.

Don’t be afraid to ask any questions you like about this, and you can of course chat to Simon or the Leadership team on how our plans for 2023 are looking.

—