Whether you're a long-time member, or just checking us out, this is where you'll get a good picture of what's going on at our church and what's going on in our Pastor's heads.
Feel free to comment on anything we've written. You can also check out certain categories, like "Events" and "Resources" if you're interested in a certain topic.
Enjoy!
FIEC stands for the ‘Fellowship of Independant Evangelical Churches’ ( http://www.fiec.org.au/ ) It’s a group of 10 or so churches like us who are keen to preach the gospel and are not part of a regular denomination. They are churches like Central Coast Evangelical Church and Maitland Evangelical Church. The pastors and staff of these churches pray for each other, encourage each other and wrestle together with many pressing theological and practical issues.
Hunter Bible Church is not yet formally associated with the group but our senior staff are still going to their annual conference on Aug 10-12. Last year was the first time we all went and it was really helpful. Many of the things that are going well this year at church were first suggested and discussed back then.
Although we’re happy to be ‘independant’, FIEC provides an excellent way of peer support and accountability for the staff from outside our church. Pray for us as we head along and ask us more as you see us around!
Potatoes are wonderful things. Picture a warm boiled potato, drizzled with cheese, mince, a large dollop of sour cream. Or perhaps you prefer the baked variety; crunchy, crisp, full of herbs, oozing steam.
In terms of attendance, this year has been the largest in Unichurch history. Every Sunday during semester there are between 150 and 170 people on average at Unichurch. God continues to bless us with great numerical and spiritual growth. Yet, there is much to learn from the humble potato. In fact, I think welcoming at Unichurch is like a potato, in two ways.
A half baked potato | God hasn’t finished building his kingdom. Like a half-baked potato (but only in the sense of incompleteness), God is still calling a people to himself from all nations. In the words of Paul “Behold, now is the day of salvation” 2 Cor 6:2, ESV.
There are so many people at Newcastle University who haven’t heard the good news that Jesus has been resurrected as saviour, Lord and Christ. God has blessed Unichurch with so much growth this year. Let’s pray he will continue to do this. Why not think and pray about people you can invite to Unichurch this semester?
Half a baked potato | Cut a potato in half, place the halves face down, side by side and you have the uni year. Around this time each year, uni students turn phone alarms back on, for lectures, assessments, meetings are all about to commence. For welcoming at Unichurch this means we’ve scaled one potato-half and are doing some warm up stretches before we start walking up the half-a-baked-potato that remains.
Great numbers of uni students will soon come, in search of a church or a saviour, bringing with them opportunities for hospitality, friendship and the need to welcome all. Let’s pray God will use us powerfully for his purposes. If Unichurch is your church, why not plan to meet and welcome one new person every Sunday night.
Last week my daughter was invited to a sleepover by a neighborhood friend. This girl is lovely. The parents seem fine. They want their daughter to be happy. She is allowed to do what she wants. She has seen semi-pornographic shows.
But I want to do good to my daughter. In Job 29:16, Job describes himself as a father to the needy; He has protected, provided, cared for and loved the helpless, as we heard last Sunday at church. This is the role of parents - especially fathers. We are responsible to love and protect our children. I can’t expect other children or parents to rightly decide what is good for my kids.
We want our kids to know we trust them; to slowly grow in their confidence to make godly decisions. We will give them guidelines, where they are free to make decisions between these boundary markers. We explain to them how these rules are to keep them safe. This gives our kids the freedom to say no to something because we have said no. The responsibility remains ours.
These are my thoughts about sleepovers.
1. We want to know what adults and teenagers will be there.
2. We must be confident we know these adults well.
3. We need to know what the kids will be doing in general - we don’t need a timetable
4. We need to know what they’ll watch on TV, what games they’ll play…
5. My kids are to behave and observe our rules, unless their friend’s parents have stricter rules. Then they need to obey their friend’s parents, as a sign of respect.
6. Our kids need to call us if there is a change in plans, or they are unsure what to do.
So we’ve decided no sleepovers with neighborhood kids. I know this means my children will be regarded as weird by some of their friends. A younger Christian described my attitude as ‘very strict’. This doesn’t matter. I am responsible to God for my kids.
Now this is an issue where we will wisely reach different conclusions on how this principle works itself out. What thoughts do other parents have on this vexed issue of sleepovers?
Turn on your TV this September and you’ll be sure to come across an advertisement with a difference! Coming soon to a TV and a billboard near you is the church’s biggest and sharpest media campaign since Billy Graham – ‘Jesus All About Life’ (www.jesusallaboutlife.com.au). Backed by all the major Christian denominations and the Bible Society, similar campaigns have already proven effective in Canberra, Adelaide and Tasmania.
How will it work? Over the course of about 40 days, professional and high quality advertisements aimed at different sectors of the community will promote the person of Jesus, the one who promised ‘life to the full!’ (John 10:10) and invite people to consider his claims found in Luke’s Gospel.
Enquirers who respond to a Freecall number will receive a booklet containing information on knowing Jesus and Luke’s Gospel. They will also be given details of their nearest registered ‘Jesus All About Life’ church where they can get further assistance. Churches will also be able to purchase booklets to give away to their non-Christian contacts and are encouraged to equip their congregations to make the most of conversational opportunities during the campaign, as well as being prepared to follow up enquirers.
Combining media saturation with personal invitation and local church evangelism, this is an evangelistic strategy we can be excited about! But we need to prepare to make the most of it. Here are some ways we can do that:
1. Personal connections
The noise created by the media campaign will open up opportunities to talk to people about Jesus. The ads are aimed at encouraging people to find out more, and that is where you come in. As individuals we will need to think about how we can initiate conversation using the advertising as a launching pad to move them closer to knowing him. Here are a few tips to get you started…
Pray regularly for your friends
Talk to them about the ads
Read the Essential Jesus AND give copies to your friends AND follow this up
Work at being able to explain the gospel of Jesus simply and clearly
2. Invite
As members of Hunter Bible Church its great to keep up to date with all that is going on in the Life of the Church. You can do this by either reading the Church family notices or the calendar on the website. A couple of things to invite people to:
Church - during September I will preaching on the book of Luke at Lambton and Unichurch and will be consciously encouraging people to trust in Jesus over those 4 weeks. As a congregation we will need to be prepared to welcome new people who have been prompted to consider Jesus.
Life to the Full - will be running throughout September again. This is a great place to bring people who want to investigate the claims of Jesus.
Hunter Mens Convention - whilst Hunter Mens Convention is particularly designed to encourage Christian men in their walk with Jesus this is a great place to bring unbelievers also as they will see the Christian message in action among men!
3. While church will be organising many opportunities to promote the gospel over the next couple of months, we are keen for you to tailor make your own activities. You will have ideas about how to connect with your friends, family, workmates, school friends, fellow students and so on. Inviting people to church is an easy way to build on their interest, but there is probably more you could do yourself.
We would love you to come up with the ideas and we will help you plan an event or activity, and even connect you with someone who could speak and answer questions. Each of the pastors will be able to guide you in this.
4. Pray
Above all, we need to pray that God will by His Spirit open the eyes of many to see Jesus for who He is and welcome them into life to the full! You can join with us and pray with the Renew Newcastle teams on Sundays. Check here for details…
I look forward to this exciting opportunity with you and welcome any comments or suggestions you may have.
Apparently, couples are increasingly abandoning traditional church weddings. They don’t want to pay $18000, spend time planning it, plus commit to attending pre-marriage counselling or church services. Instead, they are opting for a cheap reception, with a civil celebrant at the location of their choice. Cheap, easy and convenient.
I will bite my tongue about what I think of churches that charge hundreds, let alone thousands, for a wedding (Jesus has plenty to say in Matthew 6:24). But surely its worth putting some effort into getting ready for marriage. Weddings are over very quickly. Marriage, the joy of marriage, is for life.
We know marriage requires work, effort, planning and sacrifice. Marriage involves sacrificing my desires to do what is best for my spouse, putting aside my anger to forgive, speaking and engaging with my spouse, enduring and persisting at trying to grow in love. This is the nature of love.
This is the nature of church. Church is not meant to be easy, or cheap, or convenient, or selfish. We are to love each other deeply from the heart (1 Peter 1:22). This involves costly sacrifice; putting aside my anger to forgive, spending myself to serve others, speaking to and engaging with each other. This involves time and effort.
And we reap the joy of being loved in return by our brothers and sisters. We reap the greater joy of hearing words of praise from our heavenly Father. He delights to see us loving as his Son loves.
Surely its worth thinking about how we can love each other more. It may mean coming to church early to say hello to guests at church. It may mean staying late at church to get to know others better. It may mean initiating conversations with people we don’t know, or remembering to give someone a call during the week, praying for people at church each week, providing meals or. The opportunities to love are endless. We just need the eyes to see. So pray God will enable you to see how you can love someone this week.
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.
