From Sunday 26th April 2009 to Sunday 17th May 2009, members of Hunter Bible Church have the opportunity to affirm the appointment of elders and advisors by filling in the form available at the Sunday meetings. The following document will help to explain what is happening, as well as give you a bit more information on each of the nominees.
As we move to this new church structure of “the 5 Ms” its helpful to keep thinking about how it all works. So far, we’ve been asking people at HBC to sign-up to one of the Ms (Magnificaiton, Mission, Membership, Maturity, Ministry). But what does it mean to be part of one of these teams?
One way of thinking about these teams is to think of them as “support teams”. That is, the people on each of these teams “support” the rest of HBC do that particular thing. The Mission Team helps all of us at HBC do our own mission-ing to our friends and family. The Magnification team help all of us at HBC to magnify God in Christ in our own lives. The Membership team helps all of us at HBC welcome and care for each other. The Ministry team helps all of us find ways of serving Jesus at church and beyond.
See, that’s what we want for our church isn’t it? Everyone to have found a way to serve (thanks to the Ministry team); Everyone growing in their knowledge and obedience of God (thanks to the Maturity team); Everyone careing for others and being cared for (thanks to the membership team); Everyone developing a deep love and joy in Christ (thanks to the Magnificatin team); and Everyone telling their friends about Jesus and seeing them saved (thanks to the Mission Team)!
See… those teams don’t do their M for us… rather they help us all do that M!
So, the big question is… What aspect of HBC do you want to help everyone at HBC do?
For a long time now we have been looking for a new venue for Hunter Bible Church City. We have really loved meeting at the Junction Public School (and in many ways it is an ideal location) but for some time now we have felt a little restricted in the small hall and it feels as though there is no room to grow.
We are hoping to move to The Alice Ferguson Community Centre in Caldwell Street, Merewether. However, we want to offer you a chance to look through the premises this Sunday. So at 4pm on Sunday the 3rd of May, we will be opening the new facility and would love you to come and check out the new venue for yourselves and let us know what you think of it.
The least favourable aspect about this venue is that it is not as visible. The Junction Public School is in a great location to be viewed by the public. This is a little harder to find. The great thing about this venue is it is available, cheap, clean and bigger. So as we make this decision we want you to know this is a temporary venue that we hope to outgrow and we will still be looking for more favourable options for the future.
Look forward to seeing you on Sunday…
This is the third post in a series of posts helping us to know and understand what WAVE Summer Festival is all about. The previous two post can be found here and here…
Why do we do it?
As a church we believe that Jesus is the most important person in the universe. It follows then that sharing Jesus with our local community through spoken words and practical works is the most important thing we can do with our time, energy, money and resources. WAVE Summer Festival is all about seeing Jesus transform the city of Newcastle.
Who do we need?
Ideas people: We need dreamers and schemers who can make things happen. We want to encourage you to work out how your particular passions, gifts, hobbies, interests etc. could be used to serve our community and/or provide an opportunity for us to speak about Jesus. But ideas without actions are just ideas.
Do-ers: Perhaps you are like me and you have never had an original thought for your entire existence on this planet. If that is the case then you may be the do-er we are looking for. The ideas people are going to struggle to make things happen and they need you to help them make someone else’s project under the umbrella of WAVE Summer Festival a roaring success.
WAVE Kids Club Team Leaders: WAVE Kids Club is one of the many events that will be put on by Hunter Bible Church over the Summer period. During the week of WAVE Kids Club we boldy preach Jesus to over 150 kids and more than 60 adults each day. But to make this happen we need team leaders who are godly and care about the Jesus being preached well to people of all ages. These are the areas where Team Leaders are needed…
WAVE Kids Club Team Partners: WAVE kids club also requires a multitude of helpers who make up the teams. Again, these people need to be godly and care enourmously about Jesus being preached without putting up unecessary barriers to people hearing the gospel.
What else do we need?
Prayer
Money
Equipment that you are willing to loan to us
The Minisitry Team (who recruits and places church members into areas of service at church) has produced the very first version of the Ministry Directory. In this directory you’ll see all the various ways of serving that are being done at HBC and hopfully even some that you’d like to jump into.
Check it out here… ministry-directory-v10
We’ve just opened a new area of the HBC website… The Members Area. If you look under “Resources and Events” at the very bottom is a link to “Members”. Once you select that, you’ll be taken to a login page, where you can register, and get access to the Members area.
Why is there? Why is it a bit hard to find? Well, for two reasons. First, we’ve decided that the primary purpose of our church website is to be a public face for our church. Its a place on the internet where people can come and get a bit of a feel about our church, find out what public events we’ve got on, and be encouraged to come along and even get involved. Second, there are some things that we want to make easily available to our church members, that might clutter up the things we really want to direct everyone to see. That is, we really want everyone (members and visitors) hearing about our Mission Week and reading the Pastor’s blogs. But we don’t necessarily want everyone being faced with things like our Budget updates, the resources for Ministry Training, and our thoughts about how we might do things at our particular church. That’s more the family business stuff. Its not that we’re want to hide those things, we just want to keep from cluttering up the main website with those more “internal-church” things.
So go and check it out.
This week marks 20 years since Hunter Bible Church started. On Sunday 9th April 1989 at 4pm about a dozen people met in lecture theatre EF02 at Newcastle University to hear from God’s word, pray, sing praise to God, and to form a church that would faithfully teach God’s word and serve Jesus in Newcastle.
The church was started under the leadership of David Miles. Our particular aim when we started was to reach out to the many students from other areas of the country and overseas who move to Newcastle to study at the university. We wanted to provide a solid foundation for the students who were Christian, and a friendly open place where non Christians could plainly hear the gospel.
Our first year was small. Very small. We averaged only 17 people at each meeting. Our small beginnings however meant that we were able to have a meal together every week after our meeting, with a different couple of people providing the food each week. We didn’t start out as “Hunter Bible Church” or even as “Unichurch” – we began under the name “Exposé” – advertising ourselves as “Exposing the scandal of Christianity, 52 Sundays a year”. For the gospel is scandalous – we trust our eternal salvation to a Jew named Jesus, dying on a cross 2000 years ago? How ridiculous, how weak, how scandalous is that? Yet it is the way God chose to save us.
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”
1 Corinthians 1:27-29
The gospel is scandalous in human terms, but God is deliberate in making it this way. We must approach God with humility, not with pride, arrogance or boasting. So this Easter as you eat the hot cross buns, stick a candle in one and sing happy birthday to Expose/Unichurch/Hunter Bible Church. But more importantly, sing praise to God who has looked after us all and made us grow in the past 20 years.
Life to the Full… Is it possible??
In our broken world it is hard to imagine that Life to the Full is anything but a pipe dream. But Jesus, and his followers, claim that Life to the Full is possible. Come along and join us for a series of casual dinners where we’ll get to have a first hand look at the fundamental message Jesus Christ taught. Here more from someone who came along last year…
Jesus: Lord, Liar, Lunatic or Legend?
Many suggest Chinese whispers shaped the Bible.Others suggest it’s full of fairy stories and inaccuracies. Is there evidence for its historical truth and can we therefore rely on it?
A God of love and a God of justice. Which is he? Is he both?
Which are we? Good, bad, or both?
What happens therefore when we die?
Of what significance is it to me?
Is he dead or alive?
How would you know?
What is a Christian?How do you become one? How is life any different?
This years Women Of Truth conference will be tops. Register by going to www.womenoftruth.info
Starting this week, we (Greg, Emma, James and Sophia) are taking six months away from Newcastle, from April through September. The first three months will be long service leave. We’re looking forward to lots of sight seeing in Victoria, investigating kids’ parks and recharging the batteries.
I will be spending the second three months reading various books by Oliver O’Donovan, an English ethicist. Ethics is basically how we work out right from wrong. In the 21st century, ethics provides many of our best opportunities to talk with non Christians about Jesus. One hundred years ago, Christians and non Christians pretty much agreed about what was right and what was wrong. So for example, both thought marriage was right and adultery was wrong.
But nowadays Christians and non Christians disagree enormously on all sorts of moral issues. This gives us a great doorway into talking about Jesus. Why are Christians for marriage and against adultery? Why are we generally against abortion or homosexuality? The answers to these questions eventually all come back to Jesus: who he is and what he has done. So spending six months reading and thinking about ethics promises to be great for my work as an evangelist with Hunter Bible Church.
