The message room 25.06.06

Core values - The message room

If you remember we are neck deep into a series on our core values. Core values are those things that propel us to act in a certain way. And they stop us from doing other things. They define who we are. There are lots of examples of core values being worked out in the Bible. There was a stand out figure in the Old Testament by the name of Nehemiah who was asked by God to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. It’s a long story but Jerusalem was in ruins without any walls or defences. Now it was a big enough job in itself to rebuild the walls. But Nehemiah’s other problem was that the surrounding cities did not want Jerusalem’s walls to be rebuilt and so they tried attempt after attempt to distract Nehemiah from his work. They were so keen on dragging him away from this task that they sent false emissaries from Nehemiah’s king (who Nehemiah didn’t realise were false) to tell him to stop and go immediately to see the king. And Nehemiah’s answer? “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down”. You see Nehemiah was clear about what he was about and what he was supposed to do. It helped him define what he should and should not do.

I am deliberately pushing core values into your face because I want us to really think about what we should and should not be doing. Who we are and what makes us tick and what sets us apart from clubs and groups that are in society.

Last week I introduced you to the house metaphor. The house is the place where we live as a community of faith. Its Gods house and living in that house defines us off from everything else that is going on around us.

Of course the house has rooms in it. Rooms that exist for different functions. Last week I talked about the family room where we relate to God and then to each other. I was encouraged to see so many people connecting with each other last Sunday night. I have wondered all through the week if anybody was brave enough to call someone else and to pray with them.

Tonight I want to talk about the next room in the house – the Message room. I know it’s a funny title but I am using that word ‘message’ deliberately. Hopefully by the time I am finished you will understand!
Like the fellowship room there are 2 core values in the message room. 2 things that we have to really wrestle with and think about and understand. Let me get on with it then!

1. We value the inspired written message from God. (the Bible)
Thirty years ago the language used might have been something like our core value is to recognise the authority of the Word of God. For many of our ancestors the written message from God – the Bible was very important. They were strong on reading it, memorising it and basing their life around it. Look back over time and see just how many people have names that come from the Bible. Whole cities and nations have been built on the teachings found in the bible. Cecily read out tonight just one story from among many of people who have given their lives because they believed this book held something important for everybody to have a chance at understanding. Many, many down through history have sacrificed their lives or their careers to translate and explain the bible.

Lately though, in the past 100 years or so, it has been somewhat put to the side, or marginalised in many ways. Even the church, if you can believe it, has raised questions of doubt over the Bible. But the thing is that the Bible keeps bouncing back. I know of no other book in the history of humanity that has undergone so much scrutiny and analysis. And yet despite all of that it still holds together, it still has its integrity.

Now the Bible is not just an amazing book because it has undergone all these tests but because of what it claims for itself. It dares to declares that its the very words of God. The inspired breath of God for us to understand who God is and in turn who we are. And it records the history of how God has been working in this world, right from the very beginning and then the prophets to Jesus and the early church. It maps out for us how God has been interacting with humanity in a saving role right down through the generations.

So let me get to the point what I want to say to you - this sacred book is significant for who we are. And its important for a whole stack of reasons. I could spend weeks working on this but let me just quickly pad them out;

It’s a core value because it tells us everything we know about Jesus. It doesn’t contain his whole life, in fact there are huge gaps in his early child hood and many things that are skipped over. But it informs us of the significant bits. Things like what he came to do and what affect that has on us. / Later on in the Bible, Jesus is called the author of life. In other words you want to live life well then copy him and the way he does things. And it also tells us that the way of salvation, now and in the time to come, is only through Jesus. So you see its important for us to grab hold of these things.

It’s a core value because it tells us how God has acted in the past. And so if God is unchanging then it’s a fair bet that’s the way he is going to act in the future. In other words how he related to the bible characters is how he relates to us. More importantly it means that God is not a complete mystery, and we are not left stumbling in the dark.

Many people understand the Bible to be a living book. That is, it has a knack of reapplying itself to its current environment. It tells us that God has not left us along nor does God forget our struggles and suffering. For years the Bible has been bringing comfort to many different people. In their times of joy or sadness or difficulty. Because of what they read between its pages.
But also it’s a core value for us because its the primary way in which God communicates with us. Over the years I have received specific guidance from simply reading the Bible. Words that I have read many times have suddenly jumped out from the page at me as if they were pop-ups. God by his Spirit continues to use this ancient book, that we treat with such casualness (nonchalance) to change the course of history today – our history. Chinese church do not put their Bibles on the floor…

But let me say this -its no good us just hearing that message. Its no good just reading the bible and marvelling at it and thinking what a great book it is.
The Jordan River runs down through Israel from the top of the country out of the sea of Galilee. It runs right down through the country and then into what is called the dead see. So this quite large river that gives so much life to hundreds of acres of fertile land runs into the dead see, right down at the bottom, and dies.
The Dead Sea has life going in but nothing going out. Over the years because there is nothing going out, the water is evaporated and what’s left behind is an incredibly salty mix. So the fresh water of the Jordan river comes into it but its quickly swamped with the highly salty waters of the Dead Sea. Because of its high salinity its actually possible to float on the waters with no problems at all. But the thing is its called the dead sea for a reason, because nothing can live in it. It gets life in only for it to die.

The point for us is that if all we do is take life in, that is we take the message of God in, the message of grace of hope of healing of good things in and don’t give it out. Then we are just like the Dead Sea.

That’s why the second of our core values from the message room is

2. An uncompromising commitment to living out the message.
I have deliberately used that word uncompromising in the sentence, although I was thinking about stubborn, or dogged, or gritty.
Let me tell you this is the hard end of the deal for tonight. If you want to have it easy then turn off your hearing aid now.

I say that because I am realising more and more just how easy we want to have life. And I am not just talking about labour saving devices. In all spectrums of life as a nation we don’t seem to want to work for anything any more. We expect it to be easy, in fact we are demanding it to be easy. We don’t want to be disciplined in what time we can shop – lets open the shops all the time! Food! I’ll eat what I want than you very much – you just go and make a slimming pill. Save energy!? What and not cool the whole house down all the time – you have got to be kidding!

You see my friends we are in the grip of something that is not easy to shake. Something that has got hold of this culture and is not going to let go without a struggle. Its called laziness and in some other circles, apathy.

The road of following the teachings of the Bible is not an easy one. Ask those among us who have been on the path for 40, 50, 60 years – they’ll tell you. It’s a constant struggle. So here-in lies the challenge – to live out the radical call of the Bible in the face of our prevailing culture. To hear the message and to not live as the message tells us is to put ourselves into the Dead Sea category.

There are several areas we should talk about in living out the message.

Living out the message is done in heaps of different ways. In one way its done by how we act. People can see who we belong to by the way we treat others, by the way we respond to circumstances and how we react in crisis moments. In Galatians 5:22 – 23 it tells us what a person who lives the message looks like. They have the fruit of the Spirit evident in their lives.

In another way it’s done by speaking. By actually share with another the message, the good news of what God has done in history and in our lives. No I know only too well that many people have been labelled bible bashers. I myself groan when the JW’s or the Mormons come to my door. But a few bad experiences must not dissuade us from speaking the truth in live. This church (us) need to discover ways of speaking about God that other people who yet don’t belong can connect with. There are many, many people who don’t understand, who have serious misconceptions, or who have not even heard about what God in Jesus has done for us. They haven’t heard about the freedom we have, about the release from guilt, about the healings that can take place by connecting with God. / Those of us who have heard, have a responsibility to share. There is a passage in the Bible, in Romans that says “How can they hear unless they have someone to tell them?”

A lot of people have a great deal of discomfort in talking about the faith and in sharing the stories of God with their friends and neighbours. They think its something of an imposition, you should not force that on people. I was talking to a dentist the other day who knowing I was a minister started ribbing me about the missionary movement (with my background he picked on the wrong little black duck, let me tell you). He was telling me how they come in and change the cultures of other places and destroy their practices and alter the way they have done things for many years. The thing was that this person was in the habit of travelling overseas to conduct dental clinics in third world nations. I wonder, did he change any practices, did he alter the way they had done things for many years. Did he destroy some of the ways that they had been operating in? of course he did!! That’s why he was going there to bring dental health into the 21st century // Why is it that we are happy to tell others where you can get a bargain, where you can get a good deal but when it comes to faith – something that has an impact on life now and in the age to come – we are silent?

My friends the lost matter to God, and if we have an unswerving commitment to his message then they matter to us.

But an uncompromising commitment to living out the message has other ramifications as well.

It means that all we do and all we have has to be examined in the light of the message. Even what we do with our time, even what we do with our careers. I will talk about this in-depth another night but some of us here tonight have gifts that are laying dormant and talents that are yet undiscovered. Each one of us here must be prepared to lay down everything in light of what God communicates through his message. And if that does not make you gulp, you’re not listening. Some of us here have practices and habits that directly go against this core value. Some of us need to carefully examine what we do in light of the message. You see the pull of these times is so strong that we do things without even knowing what we are up to.

But let me say something that has been on my heart lately - There are some people here tonight that need to set aside some time, even a couple of years, and formally study the Bible. There are some people here who God is calling to do more than attend. I suspect that God is setting apart some people. My prayer for you as it is for everyone here is that you will recognise that special call on your life.

Whoever we are and whatever stage we are at, to strive towards living out the message joins, us with the ranks of Christians who have lived through the generations. From the early apostles the William Tyndale’s to the modern church. For all of us it will take an uncompromising commitment for us to live out the message.

But you know what? If we centre ourselves on this message nothing will be able to drag us away from what we were made to do. From being the Church!

So even though I have much more to say I think maybe I should end and finish by reminding you of the core values from the message room.

1. We value the inspired written message from God.
2 An uncompromising commitment to living out the message

May God give us great wisdom in integrating these into our lives.

I was only aware of the smoke screen at the start of the evening and then the images took over. One thing that came to mind is the impact that the treatment of the chickens made! Do we find it easier to speak about horrors that affect animals rather than humans? What do others think? Sheila

Malvern@6 18.6.06 The Family Room.

I want to talk with you over the next 5 weeks about our core values. What I mean by that is what we do naturally, without thinking about it. These are the things that are at the heart of who we are.

Personally all of us have core values that govern our life. That make us react, that make us feel, that provoke you to do things. Most of us value our own lives; we value honesty, truth, hard work, justice, Port Power… those sorts of things.

Then every organisation has values that govern behaviour. More often than not they are hidden and you only discover them when you break the code. So you go to a new work place and you park in the boss’s car park, you use the wrong stationary in the printer or you buy the wrong milk for the staff fridge and you soon find out what the values of the workers are. In the same way there are things that govern corporate actions. James Hardy for instance, in the last couple of years has shown us that one of their core values is to make money and not to relinquish it. So they have refused to pay any compensation to victims of asbestos poisoning. Johnstone and Johnstone on the other hand had such an embedded core value of commitment to the health of their buyers that when they had a problem with one of their products they issued an immediate recall. Even though it was to cost them millions and millions.

Now the reason that I am talking about these values is that we need to start naming who we are, and what makes us tick. We need to think why we do or don’t do certain things. As hard as it might be. And let me tell you this is a hard task.

As you can appreciate core values go very deep. And they have the potential to dictate behaviour in the strongest way. A couple of weeks ago I outlined a vision of what I thought we were about and just who were becoming. If you missed that its on the blogspot. Malvernat6.blogspot.com. but you see the thing is its no good just for me to talk about the new us without all of us, together, dealing with the things that form our behaviour. Or the things that make us react in the same old patterns.

So, starting with tonight I want to give you five weeks worth of things that provoke you into thinking about who we are. In the hope that we might start to translate that thinking into doing. We cannot be Christians that just think and not do. Just as much as we cannot be Christians that do and not think! I am determined to aggravate us into doing things that bring honour to the name of Jesus. So, tomorrow, what I have said here tonight – well most of it – will appear on the blogspot for you to post a comment on if you feel so inclined.

Now there is one thing that I need to make clear and that is, is that we don’t have to have all these core values all sorted out. But we have to be striving towards them. They are like the place where we are going. And so there is this incredible paradox. While these are values that define us and shape us they are ideals that we are only on the way to realising.

But in all this we must never forget that we are the Church. This is something that I am going to keep on hammering. Together we make up the living breathing, moving agent of God. We make up the picture for our generation to see. We are not a fraternity, not a society, not a union, not a school, not a crowd. But the church. Something very unique.

So to help us get a handle on what sets us apart from a club or a society. Tonight I want to begin to paint an image in our minds. Its an image of a house that’s made up of five rooms. The house is Gods house and the rooms are where we live and were we call our home. It’s the place where we belong. This is who we are meant to be. And when I talk about the rooms these are the things that set us apart from a club or a social gathering. Living in these rooms is what defines just who we are and what we are about.


The family room
So the first room in the house where we live is the family room. This is the place were we relate to one another.

There is something about a family that is quite unlike anything else on the face of the earth. Now I have got to acknowledge that my experience of family has been very good and I know that not everyone has had such an experience. But lets just think about family in the best possible light that we can. Even if your picture has to come from an American soap that’s ok for today! Although probably the big brother family room image is not really helpful!!

When I was a kid we had a family room. A place where everybody would hang out and just sort of vege. On Friday nights after the obligatory trip to the library we would watch a bit of tv and more often than not make toast with butter on it – that was about the extent of the budget
But I remember the main thing about it – it was a place where you could just be you, secure in your relationships. This is very important.

The family room is a place where we value 2 particular relationships. 2 core values that I need to quickly unpack for you tonight.


1. We value a relationship with God through Jesus in the Power of the Holy Spirit.
A bit of a mouthful but this is a pretty straightforward core value. You would expect something like this in a church environment. But I want to put this out there first because it underlines a key theme; that our total allegiance is to God and to building a relationship with Him. Our whole community is built around God being in the middle of everything that we do and us being relaxed in Gods presence. We are Gods people; the Bible actually calls us the children of God. Let me again quote my favourite verse from 1 John 3:1 “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is what we are!” (NIV) And if that does not cause a stirring in your soul then maybe you should check your pulse. You see we have this unique relationship with the ultimate power behind the ultimate power. There are no words to describe just how awesome God is (and I mean that in the purest sense of the word). The Only God of the universe is our father. He calls you son, he calls you daughter.

And the reason this is so important to us, the reason its one of our core values is that is important to God. God made us for the single purpose to be in relationship with Him. Every single day of your life God is actively looking to connect with you. It has to be important to us because its important to him.

And there is another reason that this is our core value;
The alpha Church of England joke “we will miss God but we think we can get on fine without him”

This is the thing that we can get so self reliant, so resourceful, so full of self importance that we think we can do without God. But I never want to let us go there.

So our core value is to have a relationship with God. To seek a vital growing connection. One that never rests on its past success but is constantly determined to be closer and more humble and listening better to the Spirit of God. And so what this means is that we cut away anything that gets in the way of our relationship with God. This is what we seek to develop, to work on, to think about, every time we meet. This is why we come to worship. To life group. This si why we promote personal bible reading and prayer. These things are important. These are the moments when we can drag ourselves away from all that goes on around us and reengage with God.

So our first core value in the family room is that we value a relationship with God.


So, the second of our core values in the family room relates to us;
We value honest, caring relationships with one another.

If a relationship with God is one of a parent and child, then to each other we must be brothers and sisters. I wonder if that’s how you think about one and another?

In the Bible its fairly obvious that there is a special way we are meant to treat each other. And lately people have been writing about what they call “biblical community”. That is caring for each other in a way that reflects how the early church lived.

Now the reason I am putting this forward as a core value is not just because its found in the bible, its not just because this was the way God has actually made us. Its because when it all boils down to it we are family.

Of course there are clubs and social gatherings that do care for each other. But the real difference for us is that we have a common connection. Each one of us have been bought with a price. Each one of us is the recipients of Gods grace and Jesus died for all of us. That’s why it breaks my heart when people are standing alone after the service or some are ignored. What does this say about being family - That’s not who we are. So I bring before you tonight a core value of honestly valuing a relationship with one another. Of seeking ways to relate on a deeper level with one another. I don’t know exactly how to do this – but I do know it when I see it. I bet you do to.

The thing is this is not just for us as an in-house experience. The church always exists for those who do not belong. Our valuing honest and caring relationships has no boundaries of who it applies to.
Sue Gorman friday - bored with the church as a girl and left, but came back because it was a relational connection with some other young Christians. She found something there with them that was different than anything else she had ever experienced before. She became a Christian, her sister and her brother also. All three of them are Christians (one I worked with in India!) and now ministers. And the one who was speaking to us ministers yesterday is the moderator of the synod of Victoria and Tasmania. That’s the sort of influence we are about!

I wonder how we start this process of really caring for one another? I wonder how we make it happen? Of fostering real community among each other. Maybe tonight I can make one suggestion; once per week we contact someone associated with this congregation, we ask them how their week has been and then right there and then we pray for them asking God to care for them and help them this week. And if praying out loud freaks you out, to tell them that we will pray for them during the week. If we were to do something as simple as that we would thirty times our care and concern for each other.

My friends if we are not about relationships then what are we about? If we are not caring for each other as a family in the best sense of the word what are we doing here? And if we don’t embrace those who walk in these doors or we come into contact with then what are we saying?

And its not just that we have to care for each other but we have a responsibility to hold one another accountable for the way we live. To keep each other honest before the Lord. This life is a shared life, the road we walk was not meant to be done alone. But with all of us, together.


There is so much more I can say about this. However I will stop here with these last words.
God has made us to be in relationship with him and with each other on a different level than any other society. Two of our core values are found in the family room, where we truly become Gods family.

I look forward to next week were we discover more of who we are as the household of God.

IMAGES

Thanks for the comments Sheila, there were many images going on. but we especially set up the contrasting ones to provoke some thought. of course as you know the fire extinguisher was not part of the deal. i think next time we will scrap the candle nest and use something different to give another effect. did you think that the smoke machine was helping worship or detracting??

this Sunday night

Hi Members!
this sunday night we start our series on "who are we meant to be" and looking at what we are as Church. i welcome your comments on what happened last sunday night...!
Jonathan

Pentecost Sunday

I'm excited about moving out of one hour of church a week to something counter-cultural that changes the area around us and is a really radical community of people living out their faith by serving in whatever way they can.
This series is great and is going to move us forward in great ways.

refresh

refresh
Allright Jono!
At last we have a blog site for malvern@6.
Fantastic sermon sunday, a great vision of what Church is and what it can be. Its certainly something I want to be a part of.

Welcome to the new site for malvern@6 have a read, have a think and post a response! at least tell me what you think! Jonathan

sermon:Pentecost Sunday 4.6.06

Malvern@6 4.6.06
I think I might have used this story before but it bears repeating. For me it was something like an epiphany, a revelation, it was something that rocked my world and from that moment on has never let me be.

I was in my shed where I was running my joinery carpentry business and it was mid morning. Basically there was only one radio station that I could listen to and for a couple of hours each morning they took at talk back radio program hosted by the notorious John Laws. John was a pretty colourful character and was always stirring up trouble wherever he could. For some reason this particular morning he had just had a conversation with a so called Christian. One of those people who do more damage than good, you know the sort who on radio look dumb even before they open their mouth and confirm it. Anyway John had basically torn strips off this bloke who had hung up in shame.

But that wasn’t the end of the conversation, because John went on to launch a full broadside against all Christians and how they were do goodders and meddlers and prudes and miss informed right wing fundamental idiots. Now I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to criticism and these comments didn’t worry me too much. But then he launched into the church. And in doing so he raised the issue of the crusades and the witch hunts and the injustices done to scientists.

(let me just comment there I find it strange that people are very keen to bag the church for these thing – which I fully admit are true – but never is there one iota of a comment about the churches role in setting up little things like schools, universities, hospitals, mental health institutions, aged care facilities, welfare originations, equitable work places, caring for the vulnerable, orphanages, rescue missions and a couple of other similarly smallish humanitarian programs. Through evangelism and discipleship ministries the church cultivates commitments, disciplines, and virtues that promote responsible caring for self, family, and community. Numerous economists and sociologists have documented the contributions of Christianity to the creation of strong, caring communities BUT never mind all that. )

And then John Laws went on to say something like “well what’s the church good for anyway aren’t they just like rotary or some other service club.” My friends if you want to light my fuse, put fuel on my fire or any other such provocative action, start bagging out the church and start to tell me that it has no value in society whatsoever apart from a social club. I aint gonna take it.
This one comment from this very dubious man set my life in a course that I am still on. I wonder if he knew what he was starting.


Its fitting that today is Pentecost. The day when the church was given the power to do what we were made to do. In reality is our corporate birthday. The flame that has been lit has never gone out. There are a lot of us – myself included- who still don’t quite get what happened that day when Gods Spirit fell on Peter and the other disciples. When I simplify it down I come up with this one sentence “God’s energy is available for the church to do what we were meant to do.

Tonight I want to talk to you about the church. About this church. I think about us a lot. I wonder what difference we can make in this world, I wonder what our particular purpose is, I wonder why we connect with some people and then not with others.

Tonight I want to share with you what I think we are about and in the next couple of days and weeks I invite your feedback. Email me, SMS me, phone me up, send me a letter – whatever – but please think about and engage with what I am saying.

1.
First of all I want to say just who we are.

There is a common perception that this one hour on a Sunday night is church and to some extent that is true. As a church we must gather in community worship. We must do it. We must force ourselves to do it. Whatever it takes we must be here to celebrate our life together.

But being here together is not the sum total of who we are. And in fact if that is all we did for our faith, then we are in great danger of living out that great Australian accusation to the church – that we are all a bunch of hypocrites. Their belief is that we come and get our little blessing and then go out to the real world. Like John Laws comment - we are just a club, a social gathering. A group who does not make any difference to the world – only to its members.

You see the thing is that while I am the most fervent supporter of gathered worship if this on Sunday night is all we do then we are missing the point. God is not honoured by that sort of Christianity and our lives are only partly fulfilled because we are made for more. I am telling you this because the church, the true church, is always in motion. It’s never stagnant. It’s at its most dodgy when its looking inwards at itself. In fact the church dies when its looking at itself. Rather the church in the Bible is referred to as a body, something that is moving, something that has life, and is always in action.

Sure worship is a huge part of who we are. And I will do my best to make these gatherings the most inspiring and useful that they can be – but hear this really well – this is not all that we are about!

To be brutally honest with you I think we have started to look inwards too much. I think we have forgotten who we are and we have become introspective and narrow. We have been so busy looking after ourselves and dealing with our own problems that nothing else seems to matter. I intend to call us out of that, to see the bigger picture. To dream big dreams and in faith to see them fulfilled.


2.
Secondly I want to signal a shift in how we do church.

As you are hearing from what I am talking about its time we had a change in emphasis. Most importantly I want to promote the view that says we are here so that we can be recharged for ministry. (and when I say ministry I mean anything we do in the name of Jesus). Maybe it would be better if we called this gather time together something like ‘refresh’ as in the computer button. We come here to be refreshed in all sorts of ways. In our relationship with God, with one another and to be stimulated to make a difference in the world in which we live.


A famous man once described the difference between an audience and a church. He said, "An audience is a crowd. A church is a family. An audience is a gathering. A church is a fellowship. An audience is a collection. A church is an organism. An audience is a heap of stones. A church is a temple for the Holy Spirit." Do you see the difference. The church is meant to be in motion.

As well as being refreshed we gather here to hear the stories. The great stories of faith that we have which have been passed on down through time until we have them now in the Bible. Then there are the stores of people who have gone before us who have paved the way for us to be here. Then there are our stories, like what we heard from Neal Michael last week and Shelia’s story tonight. Also I want to give time to stories of how people are doing ministry.

You see the thing is that we are part of all those stories – the big story, where God has interacted with all of us. We live in this grand tradition where God is doing a great work among us. We need to hear more stories. Stories about how God is transforming people like you and me into a new people a new community in whom His saving work among us can be displayed.


3.
So thirdly I want to call us to become a living organism by thinking the right stuff.

If we really are different then we need to think different. Primarily I want to promote among us an outward focus. When I was to be accepted into the ordained ministry I offhandedly said “the church exists for those who don’t belong to it” I was nearly kicked out of the room. That’s not the prevailing view of the church hierarchy. But with all my heart I believe that statement to be true. We come here to this place for us – sure, but we are also here for those who haven’t yet had the same experience of grace that we have. So that we can be vessels to dispense that grace and the mercy of God. But we cannot do anything about it unless we know it to be true.

So my plan is to preach over the next quite a few weeks on things that I consider to be our Core values. That is the way we react without even thinking about it. A core value is an immediate response to a circumstance. So I have protection for my kids, I act on their behalf, even though it could endanger my own life, I act just because that is one of my core values.

I want to raise with you the whole topic of core beliefs that I believe we should have. What does our faith here rest upon and how do we react to it. And again as we are going through I invite your feedback.


4
But fourthly, it’s no good thinking about the right stuff without doing something. So I am clling us to become a living organism by doing the right stuff.

I have been really blessed and surprised by just how many are willing to commit to the trip to India. Now maybe we have bitten off just about the biggest of the overseas trips but I am going to go on record and say that this experience will change your life. I suppose this trip represents my philosophy in life taken from that great guru Peter Brock who says “I have always bitten off more than I could chew and then chewed like hell”. It’s my belief that the trip to India just the first of many thing that we are going to undertake. Together, working hand in hand as we are meant to, we can make such a huge difference.

Its my intention to keep this sort of idea going. So for those who could not make it to India I hope that we can do some service here in our local environment. Maybe there is a country community centre that needs a paint, maybe there is a rural library that needs a hand. Whatever, it does not matter. What matters is that we go and be the church in action. That we do something in the name of Jesus.

But I can also see that we can make a huge difference in our local area. I fully support the Big Week Out, it’s a great idea and all those of us who can should do it at least once. But there are some things that we can do as well. Some ideas that I have heard include things like forming a letter writing group aligned with Amnesty international to write and put pressure on foreign governments to let political prisoners go. Form a group to renovate furniture and give it all away to new refugee families. Help support a new refugee family as they settle into Adelaide. Maybe we could fix up a car and give it away to someone doing meals on wheels or sell it to support drug education in the schools.

You see its time we did stuff. Its time we became Christians with our arms outstretched towards God in worship and our arms outstretched towards our fellow humans. And doing this just because Jesus has done something in our lives.

I have also come to realise that not everyone has had a chance to get involved to the level that they would like. Our mission here is to get everyone involved as much as they feel they can. It’s no good being a body if one bit cannot get drawn in and is frustrated! I am going to make it my goal to facilitate each one of us being involved in a crucial ministry.

Let me also say that faith sharing is important. Actually speaking out how God has impacted our lives is core to who we are as followers of Jesus. I will say more about that in the coming weeks. But nights like what we have coming up on the davinci code will give us all the tools to answer the questions many people are asking about God. Later in the year I am planning to run a workshop to give us more skills in sharing what is most important to us.

I’d like to go on to point number 5, 6 and 7 but I think that’s enough for us for tonight but let me finish with a couple of dreams that I have and an image to hold on to.

I yearn for the time when we are a place that is totally honest about faith and life and all the goings on in between. I yearn for the time when little pockets of people are scattered around after the service praying for each other because we have been free enough to share and honest enough to reply. When we can discuss issues of faith and our struggles with following Jesus as easily as we talk about what music we listen to. I long for the day when new people enter in here and by the time they walk out they have 10 new friends. I am busting to see us radically follow the way of Jesus in a way that proves we are more than a club.

I have been fascinated by the goings on, on Everest this last week. One Australian climber left for dead but yet who is still alive. Another climber who is really dead. It was pointed out to me that among climbers there is a thing called the fellowship of the rope (yes I know, maybe this is something that Tolkien borrowed). The fellowship of the rope. It speaks to me of a connectedness to each other. You are tied together in a way that makes your destiny depend on your fellow climbers and theirs on yours. What happens to them happens to you. You are in the same line as them. You are tied to your fellow climber. The fellowship of the rope.
I think that is a really good image of the church. Maybe we should talk and think in terms of the fellowship of the rope.

My friends we are not a club. We are not even close to being an association or a union. For we are the church. Gods instrument in this world. Connected to each other, connected to God by His Spirit. Moving and growing and doing Gods stuff.