Hello Church,
How are you feeling about God’s purposes for us?
It’s been great to spend the last five weeks seeing God’s purposes for church, and how that plays out in really practical ways in our life together. From chats after church and a couple of visits to growth groups, it sounds like there has been some really good discussion and reflection. We kicked off with the big picture of God’s purpose to glorify Jesus as we joyfully gather around him in faith. We reflected on God’s purpose to bring us together as a members of family, a flock, a building and a body. It was pretty mind blowing to consider that God is growing us towards maturity as he makes us more like Jesus, and encouraging to remember that he uses each of us to play a part in all kinds of ministry. And, as I said on Sunday, it is hard to image a better way to have wrapped up this time than in celebrating the baptism of Alison, Brayden and Cherubim! What a great day to remember God’s mission of drawing people to himself, through the ministry of his people, for the glory of his Son.
It’s worth us thinking through some of our next steps from here. For one thing, we hope that each of us has a greater clarity for the reason why we do lots of the ‘jobs’ of running church: from setup, to running the coffee cart, leading prayers, or playing in the band. We’re all playing a part in glorifying God together, building one another up, growing more like Jesus, and inviting others to know and love Jesus. It’s also been a good chance to remember that we can each contribute to this in structured and unstructured ways. There are loads of unstructured ways that we welcome one another, look out for others to encourage, pray for one another and keep in touch through the week. On the other hand, we have lots of teams that serve in structured ways, but all of that structure is still motivated and shaped by God’s purposes to love him, and each other, and the world that needs to know him. For example, our setup team serves on roster to help us make sure we’ve got a great space for church each week. And we structure it carefully so we can love both our church family and those who visit with us. So if you’d like to join the setup team, then please let us know!
On that note, it can be helpful to know where some of the areas of need are, that we might each play a part in pursuing God’s purposes for us as a church. Would you give prayerful consideration to whether you can help in some of these ways, exercising your gifts to build up the body of Christ:
- Setup and Packup: it’d be great to add another 4 members to this team. It means arriving at 8:00 for setup, with physical ability to push trolleys and lift chairs etc.
- Music: we’d love to keep expanding the team with a range of musical gifts.
- Morning tea: home baking is a great blessing, but store bought is still a lovely way to facilitate warm conversation after church
- Catering: for all kinds of things like it’s a bbq lunch after church, a Christmas event, or Taste and See.
- Welcoming: we’d love to offer a warm welcome to everyone who joins us, and especially to help the first-time visitor to feel right at home.
- Trinity Kids: God continues to grow this ministry in number and we need people who are willing to be a supportive presence as well as those who can prep and lead the session.
Don’t let this list limit your imagination though! There are plenty of other ways to serve, both on Sundays and through the week. Come and chat with Matt or me, or send us an email if you’d like to get involved.
In it all, we remember that God is so kind that he doesn’t just tell us what his purpose for us is and then hand it off to us to see how we go with it. He lives in us by his Holy Spirit to bring those wonderful purposes to pass. So it’s very timely that we’ll spend the next three weeks learning more about the person and work of the Holy Spirit!
I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.
Simon