Several weeks ago (in preparation for the 5pm Church Mission) I wrote three articles on the wonderfully rosy topic of Hell!
I said I would return to the more digestible topic of Heaven and given that we are now working our way through Revelation, this is a good time. From one of the most unpopular doctrines to one of the most!
Over the weekend, in a 5-4 ruling the US High Court ruled in favour of recognizing marriages between people of the same sex. This means that the 14 states which had not previously ruled this way would now be forced to allow same-sex marriage.
This makes me feel really sad.
One of joys and burdens of being the 5pm Church Pastor is to sit with folk whom I love and hear them tell me about how tough life is for them. There are 5pm family members who are really really struggling at the moment.
And there are many reasons that lie behind some of those struggles – unemployment, depression, grief, breakdown in relationship, childlessness, money, marriage difficulties, singleness issues, doubts of faith and more.
How I long to just snap my fingers and have the problems fixed. I don’t like to see folk walking such hard paths.
‘I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of the partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, because confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus’ (Phil 1:3-6)
So Paul begins as he writes to the church in Philippi. How encouraging. He gave thanks for the partnership in the gospel he shared with the Christians in that city.
Friends, I am not the Apostle Paul, and to be honest I could not say that I always thank God for all of you – which is both a sad indictment and a rebuke for me. I should be more concerned for praying in thanks for 5pm Church.
That said, I have been thankful in prayer for the efforts that so many have put in as part of the ‘Hello Neighbor’ mission we have just been running.
Love actually!
Walk in Love said 2 John 6 – a key theme of his ‘Little John’ letters.
But How? By walking in obedience silly! It is difficult to think of ways to be loving in disobedience. That is because truly loving someone is actually about putting them before ourselves. If they ask you to do something that you don’t want to do, then being obedient to them would mean putting their will before our own. That is a demonstration of love.
But hold on, what if they ask you to do something that is wrong? Well, doing something wrong is hardly loving?!
5 AWAY was fantastic. What a terrific encouragement.
Great Talks. Great Fellowship. Great Laughs. Great dress-ups! Great time of prayer. Great 5 AWAY. Can I commend the talks for download – they are worth a listen. [Office – please insert the hyperlink to the talks on the website]
Friends on the weekend we ‘launched’ the Hello Neighbour 5pm Church mission.
What a privilege to be a new creation in Jesus. And what an opportunity to help others know him as well.
Our mission is called ‘Hello Neighbour’ – because we all have neighbours and so we can all be involved in big or small ways with this mission. The aim: Reach to love and serve those who don’t know Jesus yet.
There are a few key areas to this mission:
I am perplexed!
The Acts of the Apostles provides us as readers with an account of the development of the early church – the first Christian church. Acts 1 sets the context following the resurrection of Jesus and then gloriously recounts his ascension to the right hand of God. Acts 2 logically follows with the coming of the Holy Spirit as the apostles led by Peter start doing what they were called to do – proclaim Jesus.
Then Chapter 3 through to 6:7 hit us, and at first, seem to be a random assortment of events stuffed all together presumable for the readers benefit. Where is the logic that we have become so accustomed to from Luke?
Dear 5pm Church Family,
What is the gospel?
This seems like a basic question to ask such a learned group that we are at 5pm Church! I ask, not because I fear that we have got it wrong, but because I fear we are a risk of putting the cart before the horse!
Acts of the Apostles
We have started this ministry year with the Acts of the Apostles. There appears to me to be four overlapping themes underpinning the first section from Chapter 1 through to 6:7 – they are:
The 5pm Church sermons over the last two weeks (and the next two) have/will touched on the sermons of the Apostle Peter – Chapter 2:14-39; 3:12-26; 4:8-12; 5:30-32. Allow me to make two quick observations.
A ‘Gospel Bite’ – a short answer to a commonly raised objection to the gospel.
The question of suffering looms large in the modern mind, particularly in light of disasters such as the 2004 tsanami in Asia, or the earthquakes in Christchurch, or the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. Many of the issues need to be dealt with philosophically (does suffering disprove God’s existence?) or theologically (is God powerless to do anything?).
A ‘Gospel Bite’ – a short answer to a commonly raised objection to the gospel.
Pluralism – the belief that all religions point to God – is one of the major challenges put to modern Christians. It appears in so many forms: ‘You Christians are so arrogant as to think you alone have the truth!’ or ‘My own view is more open: I like to think of all religions as containing their own truth’, or ‘What makes your religion so special when there are so many Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in the world?’
