It can be daunting seeing literally dozens to hundreds of new people at church each week. Who should I talk to? Who should I welcome? What if I have nothing in common with them? Perhaps you feel like me sometimes - I can’t have meaningful conversations with hundreds of people!

I want to encourage you each each morning at Lambton, each afternoon at City church and each night at Unichurch. Meet one person. Aim to meet, welcome and have a good conversation with one person you don’t know each and every Sunday.

We don’t want to stop there, but it’s a great place to start…

photo credit: MGShelton

At UniChurch over the past couple of weeks we’ve been looking at Philippians.

As we have God has challenged us about our priorities and motives. One of the examples I used that’s caused some stir is Uni marks. Getting good grades can be something we idolize.

Rob asked a really helpful question during Question Time last night and I don’t think I answered him well. So I’ve put my thoughts down here. I’d love you to comment and tell me what you think as well.

Rob asked “Is it wrong to get HD’s? Can’t you honour God by doing well at Uni?”

No it’s definately not outright wrong to get good marks. Yes you can honour God by working hard and doing well.

However for most of us honouring God is not why we work hard. For most of us good marks are about being successful or feeling good about ourselves. We use them to make ourselves feel superior and smug.

There’s nothing wrong with getting good marks at Uni or in being good at your job, but there are some questions that you really ought  to ask yourself:

Why am I doing this?  What’s my motivation?  What else could I do with this time? Who am I honouring?

And you have to consider them in light of scripture.

Php 1:27 Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Php 2:3-5 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

How do you prioritize your time? Why? What motivates you?

Big questions. Hard questions. But worth thinking about because they’re Questions God asks us through his word.

Please leave comments below, lets get the discussion rolling.

This message came this week from the Webbs…

We just want to again pass on our thanks for the continued very generous
support of you all at HBC. We see your name on our finance statement and
well, we are thankful and we thank God for your part in the work we are
doing here!

During January we had a workshop for our translators, training some of them
to be translation consultants. It was hands-on learning with 3 different
groups of people in our building each day (one at our dining room table with
Ross!), pouring over the Scriptures, checking the accuracy and naturalness
of a particular translated passage. Much learned and over 2,000 verses of
Scripture checked (that represents a few different languages). An
encouraging start to the year. Thanks for helping to make that possible. The
New Testaments of the Merei, Nafe, Naha and Paama language are just that
much closer to completion now!!

With our thanks for your partnership,

Lyndal and Ross

Starting on Sunday Feb 21st, Greg Lee will be helping you ‘get’ Jesus… who he is and what difference he makes to you. If you’ve never really understood what the big deal is about Jesus… then come along to HBC:Unichurch and we’ll help you to get Jesus by the scruff of the neck, check him out, and see who he really is.

These will be great nights to bring friends along, or come and check out UniChurch for the first time.

The first ever Unichurch weekend away is rapidly approaching! It’s called Forge and it’s on from the 12th to 14th of March.

We’ll be looking at God’s word - the bible, eating good food, having heaps of fun, relaxing, making new friends and hanging out with old ones, singing great music together and plenty more.

Forge is going to be great at strengthening you. Strength takes solid foundations and solid commitment. Forge will give you both of these - solid foundations from the bible so you can follow Jesus, and a solid commitment to help you continue to follow Jesus whilst you’re at Unichurch.

You can register online or in person at Unichurch.

All the growth groups and all of Unichurch will be there. Make sure you register early!

For more info check out the webpage.

In just a few short days, O-Week will begin. As people pour into University for the first time, we have an amazing opportunity! We’ll meet thousands of students, and hundreds of those will come along to Unichurch.

But what does that mean for you? Well, it gives us all a fantastic chance to follow God, who tells us to:

“Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” 1 pet 4:9

Let’s delight in welcoming our brothers and sisters, whose names we don’t even know yet. Why not clear a space in your diary so that you can invite people over to your house for dinner? If you’re going to the beach with some friends, invite a new person from Unichurch along. If you met someone, call them up and grab a coffee during the week. Find out about their life. Tell them the things you like about Unichurch.

How great it would be to stand out to this world as the church that truly does love the outsider.

photo credit: greekadman

Arnie is massive. Really really massive. He has won the Mr Olympia World Body Building title 7 times and the Mr Universe title 4 times. But to get there, Arnie was always in the gym.

Check this: Arnie is our model Growth Group leader because he was always in the gym.

“For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” (1 Timothy 8-9)

Unichurch Growth Group leaders it’s time to shed that holiday flab, get in the gym and start pumping iron. It’s training time.

But not at Arnie’s gym, we’re going to get in the godliness gym. We need to do the heavy lifting in godliness, which has value for all things.

So come to:

The Gym

What: Unichurch Growth Group Leaders training night

When: Wednesday 17^th Feb

Where: Hamilton Baptist Church

Time: 7:15 for a 7:30 start

I have to admit that I was a bit nervous, sitting there for my first 1:1 catch up with Richard Sweatman my MTS trainer.

See that’s the thing with reading the Bible 1:1 with another guy. You catch up, talk about life, pray together, and it’s good. Really good. But the key time is when you suck it up, open the Bible and read a chunk together that neither of you have looked at. There’s no pre-reading, no prep, just two blokes, a bible, and my nerves.

Foolishly, this week I admitted that I didn’t know much about the minor prophets – so we went to Amos. This is what we read: (Amos 1:1-2)

‘The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa – what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel. He said:

“The Lord roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds dry up and the top of Carmel withers.”’

And the thing was, as we dug into these two verses (with the help of the Bible Dictionary and NIV study Bible notes telling us where to look up the names and places) we met God.

We saw God choose this simple shepherd from Judah to take his message to Israel. We heard God’s voice roaring and thundering from his holy city and mountain towards the mountain of Baal worship in Israel.

This is our God, powerful in judgment over false gods and all nations, the God to be feared and listened to.

And so it began, 1:1 with Sweaters. There was no need to be nervous (at least, not scared of Sweaters. But God on the other hand…). It was just two guys and the Bible, hearing the powerful voice of God.

As mentioned earlier in this blog, we’d be releasing a document that outlines some of the things we, the Building Feasibility Committee, thinks are critical for any building that HBC might consider buying or building in the near future.

Well, we have the document, but it comes with a catch… we’d like your input, comments and suggestions about what we, the BFC, should consider critical or important, or just nice to have in a church property.

So, please download the “Proposed Building Requirements” document, and after you’ve had a read through it, make a comment by either:

• emailing building.hbc@gmail.com
• leave a written comment in one of the red collection boxes at a HBC meeting
  (its important that you include your name with your comments.)

Christ the Centre of Everything

Here’s some questions to get you thinking for UniChurch on the 14th of Feb.

Phil 2:1-11

1. Who is Paul addressing?

2. What behavior is Paul urging?

Paul includes a hymn about Jesus to emphasize his point. (Phil 2:6-11)

3. How does Phil 2:6-8 emphasize the behavior Paul is urging?

4. How does Phil 2:9-11 emphasize it? Why does he include these verses?