Our Mission is to
Connect with people in Jesus;
Build each other up in faith; and to
Become Like Jesus.
Don’t forget Daylight Savings starts this Sunday – put your clock forward one hour!
As the gospel reading, Luke 17:5-10, is the focus text, I am going to talk about faith, and in the message I may point out: Faith is not something that you can store up and accumulate, so that the more you have, the more you can do. Faith is a relationship. Faith is a relationship with God. Faith is simply trusting God. Either you trust God, or you don’t.
That is why you read the Bible, the story of people who trust God, you see amazing things. However, often we may have forgotten that great and miraculous things have been done by trusting God alone. The problem is not that you don’t have enough faith but you aren’t using what you have. Tom Wright comments that this is not so much about having a big enough faith in God, but faith in a big enough God.
In the text we also have a teaching from Jesus on the kind of attitude we need to assume as followers of Christ. When we do what we are supposed to do we should respond, ‘we have only done what has been asked of us and nothing more. We are worthless slaves.’ This is a difficult concept for most of us in the church to understand. And here is the humbling part of our text. The lesson Jesus gives us is about our attitude as servants of the Most High. No matter how good we think we may be, we are to be humble and unassuming. IL-WOONG.
Church Council (Notification of Vacancies): Prior to the Annual General Meeting of the Congregation, elections will be held to fill nine (9) vacancies on the Church Council. The vacancies will be left by the 7 current Councillors, whose terms expire on 31 December 2019. The remaining two vacancies were created by the resignation of Jemma Smeets earlier this year and the other vacancy is carried over from the 2018 election.
The call for nominations will be open from 9.30 am Sunday 13 October 2019 until 12.00 pm Sunday 20 October 2019. Nomination forms will be available from Keith from 13 October 2019. If you are considering nominating someone for Church Council, please prayerfully consider this over the next two Sundays. Any proposed nominee must be a confirmed member or member in Association of the Uniting Church in Australia.
Voting will be conducted on Sundays 10 & 17 November 2019 and the mid-week service on Wednesday 20 November 2019. The successful Councillors will be announced at the Annual General Meeting of the Congregation on Sunday 24 November 2019. Keith McLeod. Returning Officer.
Undeceptions Every week on Undeceptions, we’ll explore some aspect of life, faith, history, culture, or ethics that is either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. With the help of people who know what they’re talking about, we’ll be trying to ‘undeceive ourselves’, and let the truth ‘out’.
Conversations with John Anderson: Featuring Jonathan Haidt (Part II), Professor of Ethical Leadership, New York University. Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He is the author of three books and over 90 academic articles. His latest book, The Coddling of the American Mind, co-authored with Greg Lukianoff, asks if we are setting up young people up for failure by overprotecting them and by preventing them from developing resilience.
Abandoned – They say love is blind. Sometimes the Father’s love doesn’t look the way we expect. Sometimes He feels distant. But does that mean He’s abandoned us?
DVD of the Week:
Breakthrough. When Joyce Smith’s (Chrissy Metz) adopted son John (Marcel Ruiz) falls through an icy Missouri lake, all hope seems lost as John lies lifeless. In the face of every bleak medical case history and dire scientific prediction, Joyce’s unwavering belief inspires her community to pray for John’s recovery. Based on the incredible true story, Breakthrough is an enthralling reminder that faith and love can create a mountain of hope, and sometimes even a miracle.
