G’day Church,
This Sunday we’re getting into the Christmas spirit as we being in Matthew’s gospel together, but we might be surprised by how Matthew helps us get ready for the birth of Jesus: A family tree that spans more than 1000 years! Fortunately we don’t need to wait that long to celebrate – Christmas is only 19 sleeps away!
What’s coming up even sooner, is our all-age, guest-friendly, pre-Christmas celebration on December 15. I know it’s easier to invite people to something when you’ve got a clear picture of what it is. Well, our plans are coming together: We’ll have the usual warm, Trinity Church welcome as people arrive for church to start at 10:00. Our service will be fun for all ages, with the kids remaining in throughout our time together. After the service there will be a number of Christmas themed activities in the gym while final lunch preparations are underway: faceprinting, Christmas ornament making, gingerbread decorating, and games like Giant Jenga and handball. And in keeping with the festive feel, the menu for lunch will be ‘party finger food’: sausage rolls and party pies, mini quiches, cheese platters, fruit platters and plenty of tasty Christmas treats like shortbread and Christmas cake. The cost of lunch is covered under our Mission budget so your guests really can be our guests. (If you’d like to make an additional Christmas gift towards our mission outreach, please feel free to use our online giving options) Most of all, please pray that God would be at work through everything from our inviting, to our singing and speaking the gospel, to our activities and lunch. We long to offer visitors the same warm welcome that God offers each one of us in Christ Jesus.
On a different note, last Sunday was a great example of how we want to be a church that wrestles with God’s word and its implications with an attitude of enquiry and honest questions. We had loads of great questions sent in ahead of Q&A with Paul Harrington (apologies if you were hoping to ask one in person on Sunday!). If you missed it, or would like to hear it again, here’s a link to the recording of the Q&A (it’s worth listening to the sermon first, if you missed that too!) And while the adults were thinking through some great questions about the Holy Spirit, the Mixers kids were asking some fantastic questions too. Here’s a sample of what they were asking:
- Why do we need the Bible?
- How do we know the Bible is true?
- Who created God? (and the related question: How long has God been alive?)
- Where do the dinosaurs fit?
- Why does God make people with the personalities they have?
- Does God have a specific gender?
As you can see, these are wide-ranging and important questions – and these are from our 6 to 13 year olds! We were only able to go into detail on a couple of them and just briefly touched on the others. But it was so encouraging to hear how much these young people are thinking through such important topics. Please ask God to grow a spirit of enquiry among our children and youth, and that he would meet these questions with a growing confidence that he has given us all that we need for life and godliness through his word, by his Spirit, in his Son (1 Peter 1:3). Please also pray for the parents amongst us and those who serve in our children’s and youth ministries, asking God to give them a similar confidence in responding to these great – but often quite challenging – questions!
So if you’re wondering why we need a genealogy to get ready for Christmas, that’s a great question that we can unpack together on Sunday! I look forward to seeing you then,
Simon