CampOne - The Best Week of My Life

 

If Camp One were to be described in one word I don't even think the word amazing would be appropriate. The prayers of church community have definitely affected the record number of people at camp as well as its outcome.

Praise God that those prayers were heard and answered!

Camp One was jam packed with great activities ranging from intense soccer matches to mind boggling riddles. There was something for everyone to enjoy and free-time sessions were a must!

The leaders of camp welcomed everyone with open arms and happily answered any questions we had. They were more than just leaders; they were people who we call friends and role models of Christ.

Damo's and Deac’s talks really helped to both introduce Christ and to grow Christians in their faith. The talks challenged us to be the light and salt of the world, to pursue reconciliation quickly, to let the gospel be our motivation for illumination, and to not worry about our lives, because God's love controls every second of it.

Camp was a time where relationships were made and strengthened. Where year groups were brought together to become a loving Christ centered community. And a time where the lost were found in Christ.

In conclusion I think it would be appropriate to share my best experience at camp, which was undoubtedly the last night. The more the night went on, the more amazing it became. 

Seeing the Year 12 version of Everything by Lifehouse, hearing Sarah's emotional testimony, Damo's amazing talk on worrying, and the extended worship where everyone embraced each other in unity as we sung praise to our awesome God.

But the moment that cut me down to tears of happiness was when a friend I held close to my heart met God and accepted Jesus as her Lord and Saviour.   This is reason why Camp One produced the best week of my entire life.

Mekael Barnes

Changing Lives - A Mother and Son Story

I asked my son if he could remember any film that reminds him of good mothering.  He immediately recollected the movie “Blind Side” starring Sandra Bullock.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0878804/

What a great choice.  What I remember most about this film was when the mother (portrayed by Sandra Bullock) was having lunch with her wealthy friends.  They were patting her on the back for helping a young man who did not have a home or an education.  Sandra Bullock‘s friends were affirming her desire to change this young man’s life.  Her response is superb “No, he’s changing mine”.

Mothering, a form of parenting, that is often referred to a choice in life that tests our endurance in unconditional and sacrificial love.  Although this is true, I think as mothers we can always thank our children for what they teach us.  Without children or family to care for, we would be endlessly selfish, believing in our core that we are the centre of the universe.  Taking care of children reminds us of how we need transformation by God’s Spirit so that we can give our children a taste of God’s love in their lives.

Mother’s Day is a wonderful day to remember our mothers and other significant caring women in our lives.  It is also a day to be thankful for our children, who remind us that we are fragile, insecure and in need of a saviour.  Praise our God that the children in our lives keep us on our knees in prayer, asking for His spirit to soften their hearts and ours as well.  What a privilege it is for our children to remind us that we are also in need of changing “inside out”.

Margaret Icke

An Insight into CampOne 2013 - Illuminate

On Tuesday April 16th, hundreds of eager campers arrived at Deer Park, keenly awaiting the start of CampOne 2013: Illuminate, excited for the days ahead of them.  At camp, the leaders were filled with enthusiasm and a passion for God’s word. They interacted with us, cared for us, and genuinely loved us. This had a deep impact on us and encouraged us to grow and learn in our faith.

Our daily schedule included exciting activities such as water-bomb fights, archery, soccer, tribal games, numerous turns on the water slide and a lot of free time.

Every night we would forward into the main auditorium on-site to worship God and hear the brilliant and moving messages both Joel and Damo had poured much of their time and effort into preparing for us. We were all challenged to examine our relationships with God, reflect, and evaluate what needed to be improved upon.

During this time, we were greatly encouraged to see a large amount of young people come to Christ, and it was also inspiring to see them being welcomed into our ‘family’ with open arms.

We are extremely thankful to God for this, and as a youth group/church, recognize that this is not only the start of a life full of trials, but also a rewarding life reflective of God’s light, love, and Christian fellowship.

Another great part of camp we were blessed to experience was the small groups. Every afternoon in groups of 5-10 people, we were presented with reflection questions - usually regarding the main talks. This provided an opportunity to really think about and apply what we had learned in the main talks.

As a result of CampOne 2013, we were united as a group and as we grew in our faith and love for one another, we bonded as a family. We grew closer, encouraging one another in brotherly and sisterly love, and supporting one another in our walks with Christ.

We are very thankful to all the leaders and YouthWorks staff for taking their time to plan and prepare all of the above, plus much more. Camp was something we will never forget, bringing us closer to God, our peers and our leaders.

It served as a brilliant reminder that even though our life on Earth may be short, there are much greater things to come for those who are in Christ.

- Daniel Wallace

Do You Choose Glitz And Glitter Or The Sun And The Moon?

Did you know that here at Menai Anglican we have only about 60% of our members [not those in our data base but those who attend] in church each weekend? And 25% of our members only come at the most once every three weeks.

Some people reckon that we’re mad to aim at having 1100 regularly in church by the end of 2016 http://www.menaianglican.org/information/vision/, but if everyone turned up we would have just under 1000 in attendance!

I’m not saying that there aren’t good reasons from time to time for missing church, but the truth is, it’s often just too much effort or other things seem more attractive.

I make that point because I think the book of Revelation does.  John paints this picture of our culture as the “Great prostitute” [Revelation 17:3-5] and it looks very attractive, but it’s a shallow beauty. This woman is the “material woman”.  She is all glitz and glitter but no substance. In fact, she is full of filth and decay [17:4]. That is our world; our culture. [1 John 2:15-16].  In contrast remember John’s description of the church in chapter 12.  He describes her as a woman clothed with the sun and with the moon under her feet and who has a crown of 12 stars on her head. There is something of real substance!

The church is the heavenly woman, and as we’ll see in chapter 19, she is the bride of Jesus. John gives us these two pictures and encourages us to compare them, and there is no comparison! Why would we align ourselves with the culture and not God’s people? Why would we not make every effort to meet with those who comprise the bride of Christ?



Bruce Dingwall

 

Boston: What we learn from tragedy

The bombings in Boston remind us that just believing passionately in something doesn't make it right. We don't yet know who carried out these bombings or why but somebody or a group of people obviously thought it was the right thing to do.  
As we've been working through the book of Revelation in our sermon series I've been struck again by the way mankind is prone to being led astray and to being intoxicated with things that are not just bad for us but plain wrong [Rev 17:2; 18:3]. We are prone to delusion.  We worship the wrong things. 

It calls for regular self-examination in the light of the what God has said. The other thing that I've been reminded of was Jesus' word about the tower that fell on a bunch of people and killed them.  He pointed out that those who were killed were no more deserving of death than the rest of us; it was not God's punishment for any particular wrong. [Luke 13:1-5] 
However, things like this should make us all think about our forwarding address when this life is over. It should drive us all to making our peace with God through repentance and faith in Jesus.

- Bruce Dingwall

Women meeting Jesus: Equip Conference 2013

Before moving to the Menai area we had lived interstate and overseas for nearly 20 years.  When we returned to Sydney in 2008, I was so thrilled to learn that there was a Women’s Conference being held at Darling Harbour.  Where we had recently lived, it was hard to attend any Christian conference unless you organised it yourself or travelled many miles.  I had never attended a conference that was purely put together so that women could teach other women.  In fact it is Biblical!  Paul writes to Titus exhorting the older women to teach the younger women and I am sure, with this in mind the organisers of the Equip Conference work hard in choosing speakers that can teach women well.  

For me there are so many distractions and worldly voices that challenge me to water down my testimony of God’s love and forgiveness or to change my views because of strong peer pressure.  I wish to live my days making Godly choices and the Equip conference offers me Bible teaching so I am able to do so.  These Bible teachers have the ability to speak to a woman’s heart and to her world.  

Come and join me and other Menai Anglican Church(MAC) women who want to hear, meet and grow in our understanding of who Jesus is.  If you are new to MAC what a wonderful opportunity for us to get to know you better.  I look forward to this day because I love our harbour and praising God with so many other women.  I hope to see you there!

- Margaret Icke, Women's Ministry Coordinator

Find out more here about registering for and attending Equip as part of a group with other women from Menai Anglican Church 

How do you read it?

TEAR Australia (Transformation, Empowerment, Advocacy, Relief) is a movement of Christians in Australia responding to the needs of poor communities around the world.

Recently TEAR invited the well known and loved international speaker, CB Samuel, to the TEAR Annual Conference, and afterwards for speaking engagements around Australia. With one spot left on his schedule, our Justice and Mercy team was contacted with an offer for CB to visit us at Menai.

CB Samuel with Matt Anslow (TEAR) and Dave Gaskell.

CB Samuel comes with a long track record of serving God as a pastor, Bible teacher, missiologist, evangelical leader, former head of a major Indian christian relief and development agency and a passionate advocate for the poor. He is also known as "the smiling assassin", we were yet to discover why.

CB chose to speak on Luke 10:25-37 - the parable of the good Samaritan - very familiar to most of us, but his focus was not on the part of the story we expected. He drew our attention to this:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus, "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law," he replied, "How do you read it?"

He went on to explain that every character in the parable knew the Law to some extent, but they all read, and acted on it, differently.

1. The priest knew the law and how to keep himself ritually pure, but allowed his own spiritual wellbeing to over-ride his obligation to the injured man. (The blessing reading)
2. The Levite also knew the law, but was only willing to do what he was required to do in his job, which didn't include ministering to an injured man. (The job description reading)
3. The robbers - knowledge of the law didn't carry through to how they lived. Their lives were in two different compartments. (The robber reading)
4. The lawyer was only interested in asking an intellectual question, but not in obedience. (The intellectual stimulation reading)
5. The Samaritan knew the law demanded to be obeyed, and acted on it. Jesus obviously approved this way of reading the Law. (The obedience reading)
6. Jesus expects more than mere obedience. In Luke 4:14-21, Jesus said his ministry was announcing the kingdom of God and bringing good news to the poor, the oppressed and the suffering. He calls us to live the same way. Thus his teachings become "the script by which we live" - more than mere obedience, but living out the kingdom. (The fulfilment reading)

So far so good - but now "the smiling assassin" was preparing for his deadly attack.

CB drew our attention to the writings of sociologist Phil Jenkins, who in the 1990s predicted the demise of christianity in the 21st century. But by 2002 had completely changed his view, writing in his book The Next Christendom that christianity was indeed alive and well, but the centre of gravity had changed from the west (Europe and the USA) to the "global south" (Asia, Africa and Latin America). A hundred years ago most of world christians could be classified as white and rich, but now 90% are coloured and poor.

In his book The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (2008) Jenkins maintains that the reason for this change and huge growth comes down to the way that they "read the Law" (the Bible).

CB Samuel continued with a story to illustrate his point:

"A Bible teaching missionary in Africa who established a church, appointed elders, and taught them the scriptures. One day a woman became sick, so the elders called the minister to join them in praying for her healing, as in James 5:14-15. He agreed, reluctantly, because he didn't expect her to get well. But surprisingly to him, she recovered, only to fall ill again.

The missionary awaited the call to pray again with some apprehension, but it never came. But a few days later, he saw the woman was in good health again. Upon asking the elders what had happened, they replied "after we prayed the first time, we looked among us for the one who had no faith in the Bible, and so we left you out."

It was then that the smiling assassin delivered his last lethal thrust, speaking to us very seriously, yet still with a smile, and challenging us with these words:

"It will depend on you christians and how you read the Bible and believe, obey and act upon it, as to whether or not the people of the west will see God."

A podcast of CB Samuel's talk is on the church website.

- Eric Hatfield, Justice and Mercy Team