G’day Church,
Spring has finally come so my son and I dropped into Bunnings for some garden fertiliser, only to discover shelves full of Christmas lights and a whole display of massive blow up Santas! He asked the obvious question: “Why are they here Dad? It’s not Christmas yet!” I struggled to come up with a good explanation for oversized blow up Santas in September. The best I could do was that I suppose some people plan their Christmas decorations much earlier than we do!
And yet, I’m excited to be writing to you today about our plans for Christmas at church! Unlike blow up Santas, this really is worth thinking about in September because God has given us such a wonderful message of hope that it’s worth putting in the prep to share it well. This year in particular, it seems that so many of our neighbours and friends are looking for some glimmer of hope somewhere. So let’s help them see the ultimate hope that Jesus brings.
There are a few ways we can work together to share this hope with others:
- This week we kick off Operation Christmas Child as we look forward to sharing the hope of Christmas with kids in need all around the world. We’re starting early so they can go in the post at the end of October.
- In a few weeks time we’ll get the ball rolling on gift-making to share this hope with people in our relational networks, such as colleagues at work or families at school, for example. We’d love to have them ready to share before the end of the school year and in time for work Christmas parties!
- And in the lead up to Christmas we’re going to letter-box drop our neighbourhood with invitations to join us for Christmas and the new year so that people in our geographic area know who we are, where we meet, and why we’d love them to join us: to hear the message of Hope that Jesus brings.
As you can see, all of this takes a bit of lead time, so it’s worth talking about in September. But more than just talking about it, let’s start praying about it: thanking God for the hope we have because Jesus came to seek and save the lost; asking God to do his work in our neighbourhood and using us in whatever way he wants.
(And don’t worry, we’re not going to talk about Christmas every week for the next 3 months! And I don’t have any plans to get a blow up Santa either!)
Cheers,
Simon Marshman
Senior Pastor
Trinity Church Brighton
0401 387 908
simon.marshman@trinity.church
www.trinity.church/brighton