I’ve gotten a few questions about where HBC is up to in thinking about a Church building. And quite a few people have noticed that the building we were interested in (60 Hudson St Hamilton) still has For Sale signs up. Well, here’s the low down…

I’ve just called the agent to confirm and he’s assured me that 60 Hudson St has a lease agreement worked out, and its just taking a long time for the group to get ready to move in. So it really is off the cards, even thogh looks may be deceiving.

What’s the next step? Well, you might recall we’ve got two things going for us. First, we’ve been approved to maintain a Tax Deductible Fund, called the Hunter Bible Church Christian Education Centre Building Fund (HBCCECBF… to long?)

That’s all been set up and ready to go. We’re not actively asking for donations towards the building yet, but if you would like to give or start a regular donation, please email finance (at) hunterbiblechurch.org

What’s the other thing? Well we’ve got a God who is amazing and can do amazing things! I hope that, like me, you’d just love God to use HBC to reach hundreds and thousands of people for Jesus in Newcastle. And if that means investing worldly treasures into a worldly item like a building in order to make an eternal difference, then that seems like a great deal.

So please pray that God would give me time put into this project, that God would give us hearts that yearn for the lost, and also material things like money and facilities to find a home we can invite people into to know Jesus.

The HBC Elders and advisors met again last night. After looking at John 13 together and praying about serving and loving like Jesus, we got to work on a couple of things.

Our treasurer Steve Elliot, took us through how we’re going as a church meeting our “gospel investment” expectations for 2010. Though giving has been a little under what we anticipated, we hope and pray that church members would consider their method and generosity of giving such that we’d still meet expectations for 2010. Steve will be emailing members about this soon. (Small plug… setting up a regular transfer is a great way to be regular and faithful in giving - see how to do it here)

We talked about some more things like; how to appropriately handle giving specifically directed towards MTS. We made some plans to write up some more detailed “appointment process” documents for staff and elders. We talked about what needs to happen to set up a “building fund”, as well as the need and potential of renting some office space in the meantime.

Please remember to pray for our elders, and for our church as we think about things like handling money and think about office space and buildings - that we’d be doing the very best thing for Jesus and HIS kingdom.

The HBC elders meet again last night! After looking at 1Thes 2:8-10 and praying together, we had a good night getting through a lot of things - many to do with the upcoming AGM and the possiblity of getting a church building.

We agreed that at the AGM we’d propose that we change the name of the official church association from “Newcastle Unichurch” to “Hunter Bible Church”. We’re also going to propose some minor constitutional changes to keep things in line with the size of our church. More details will come about this soon!

We also decided that the AGM night would be a good opportunity to talk about a building and give members the opportunity to ask questions about the building process and where we’re up to. So, we’re going to get the AGM business started at 7pm and finished as quickly as possible. Then at about 7:45pm we’ll have a kinda’ “open forum” about all things to do with buildings and HBC.

To top it all off, we also decided that Hunter Bible Church should officially take on HMP (Hope Myanmar Partnership) as a mission partner! We’re convinced they are a great organisation and making this official this just confirms that.

Please remember to pray for our elders, and for our church as we think about things like constitutions and buildings.

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.)

Earlier this year, the elders formed a committee to do some thinking about whether HBC should ever buy a building.

That committee recently produced a document which recommended that the church should really aim to buy a building sometime soon. The Elders have had a good look at it, and agree with the reasons in the report.

We haven’t formally decided when we should do this, or where it should be, or how much it’ll cost. But this is something we should all start talking about some more.

To help kick that off, it would be good to read the committee’s report (along with the Elder’s thoughts) on the member’s area of the website. Please take a look! (We’ve also got some copies printed, and will have them up the back of our Sunday congregations).