Praying for St Matthews 2

It's been encouraging to hear stories of how people are sensing God's spirit as they pray together.

We'd like to continue to encourage you to join with one or two others on a regular basis to pray for our congregation during this time of looking for a new minister.

This week we turn from thinking about where God is at work in the community around us to considering the bible stories or verses that are coming to us as we seek to understand where our community finds itself now.

What Bible story or verses come to mind/heart as you pray for St Matthews? What do you sense this might mean?

We realise that this is a deep and challenging prayer focus - and encourage you to use the next two weeks to pray and listen and then feedback.

Discipleship Bootcamp - Worship Workout

A night of thinking about why we come to worship each week and learning from Josh and Kirby some of the songs that have meaning for them.

Worship sensitizes us to the reality of the vastness of the universe, the immensity of God, the complexity of the world, the intricacy of self and the sacredness of our souls. - Kenda Cresy Dean

A night where we were challenged to think about the health warning that should come with worship -

Worship by its very nature invades our personal space. Coming into God’s presence has a way of stripping away the false veneers of self we hide behind and helping us see ourselves more honestly and truly. Christian ethicist Stanley Hauweras is fond of saying that the church’s job is not just to make us feel good. In face, quite the opposite; the church, through its liturgy and teaching, is to help us feel bad about the right things. Our God is a confronting God.

And led in very special prayers for others - thanks Teen Plus.

Praying for St Matthews 1

The Elders Council would like to encourage the congregation to meet together in twos and threes or their small groups to pray for our congregation and to listen to what God may be saying to us as we search for a new minister - we'll be having a different focus for prayer and inviting people to send their feedback to the Elders and JNC as a way of inviting the whole congregation to be involved in the discernment process which with we have tasked the JNC.

Further details can be found here.

The prayer focus for weeks beginning February 27 and March 6th

Where do you sense God at work in St Matthews? In Baulkham Hills and surrounds?

The process we are asking people to use is to spend time with one or two others or your current small group in prayer. After you have prayed take time to talk to each other about what you were hearing/sensing. If the group is in agreement, please leave your feedback as a comment to this post.

Turn It Up: NCYC Service

January 30th

What a night! We heard stories, got pegged, marvelled at the magic tricks, learnt some new songs and saw the pictures of NCYC 2011 through the eyes of the nine 6.45ers who went along.

The team who planned the service, shared their thoughts about what helped them turn it up like the submersions, the GPSs, the small groups, the new ways of praying.

They also did a fantastic job of decorating the church with bright colours which we then used to split into discussion groups to talking about TURNING IT UP in our lives.

Thanks heaps for your hard work - Chris, Lucas, Erin, Pete, Gibbo, Daniel, Alexander, Tom and Christine.

Discipleship Bootcamp - Week 2

Core Strength - Communion

Core strength is that which holds our whole body together – for us it’s not our abs – it’s communion – with God and with each other – without this core strength the body falls apart and we fall over in our discipleship.

Communion has always has been at the core of the Christian church - right from the night that Jesus started it all with his friends people have been celebrating the meal together. We’re part of something so much bigger than just ourselves – there are more muscles in our core than we can ever really imagine. The core strength of the church is communion – it’s what allows the body to do everything else it’s supposed to do - but the church being made up of fallible people means that it hasn’t always been a strength or even at the core.

Read 1 Corinthians 11:14-29 - these are words you might have heard before about communion but it seems Paul is not pleased with how the faith community at Corinth are celebrating communion. When you read the passage what do you think Paul was concerned about?

Communion was being shared in a way that isn’t respectful, rather uniting them it was highlighting the differences in social and economic status in their community. It was supposed to be a fellowship meal – we say “communion” a latin word for a greek word – koinonia. Koinonia implies sharing at its very heart so if they were behaving like that then they were breaking the sharing that was supposed to be the marker of koinonia. And when others saw them they would see it too.

When was the last time you really shared a meal? For a deeper degree of difficulty – what about with anyone other than your family or friends in a private space? Paul questioned the Corinthian’s core strength – I wonder what he’d say about ours?

Core strength doesn’t just happen – you have to work at it. Communion doesn't just come from being in the same building. It comes from daring to develop spiritual friendship with each other which will grow our core strength from community into communion. What do I mean by spiritual friendships? Well borrowing from Kenda Cresy Dean there two things we need as we walk together following Jesus – hand holders – people who will be with us in our lives and listen and finger pointers – people who will give us guidance and help when we’re searching for direction. To be comfortable we may think we just need hand holders but this is discipleship bootcamp – we’re here for growth and not for comfort! We need to take on the finger point challenge too.

Questions for this week

What are you going to do this week? (Community building question)

What are you going to do this week that is important? (Communion building question)

Who in your life is a hand holder and who is a finger pointer?

Whose hands are you holding and for whom are you prepared to point?

How might you make time to include these people in your life?

Discipleship Bootcamp 1

Spiritual Fitness Check Up

Tonight we thought about the beginning of the year and how lots of us (well a few of us) were motivated to get our eating right, to get fit, to make some goals about getting on sports teams etc and we wondered about how motivated we were to get spiritually fit this year.

During January and February we're going to be having Discipleship Bootcamp - there'll be times of input but also times in each service for you to think about how you're going in certain areas of your spiritual life or to have a go at something new.

We thought about how our spiritual lives take in many areas - its not just about turning up to church.

We borrowed some wisdom from Kenda Cresy Dean about groups of spiritual practices that will help us lead a spiritually fit life -
To give you a bit of an idea
Communion - how we're pracisting being in community life with others
Compassion - how we're practising bearing the pain of others
Teaching - how we're practising learning through Scripture and reading
Witness - how we're practising standing up for our faith through acts of evangelism and justice
Rhythm Breaking - how we're practising having space in our lives for God to break in (eg silence, retreat, prayer)
Worship - how we're practising all of life as worship as well as joining with others.

So how are you going - are there areas you feel yourself being drawn to explore in 2011, are there goals you'd like to set to help yourself get spiritual fit?

Why not take five minutes to right down where you're at and some goals for 2011.

Everyone who was in the service put their responses in an envelope which we'll add to during our Discipleship Bootcamp.