Reformation 500 Sunday at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, 29 October

From St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney:

“As the world celebrates the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, St Andrew’s Cathedral marks this extraordinary day on Reformation Sunday – 29th October – the day the church marks 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door.

During our 10.30 service the Cathedral Choir of boys and men, and international soloists, Penelope Mills: soprano, Jonathan Borg, countertenor, Michael Butchard: tenor, and Christopher Richardson: bass, will join with our historical-instrument orchestra in bring JS Bach’s monumental celebration cantata no. 80: ‘A Mighty Fortress’ written for Reformation Sunday itself, with words by Martin Luther.

The sermon will be given by Australia’s foremost expert on the Reformation, the Rev. Dr Mark Thompson, Principal of Moore College, Sydney.

A feast for the heart and for the mind, and within the context of our morning service. All welcome!”

Christ amongst the crayons – reaching out through a multicultural, multigenerational kids ministry

“In September 2016 my husband and I planted a new multicultural service at Chester Hill Anglican. We started with 8 kids under 4 (not all ours!). Now we regularly have 30-40 kids on Sunday and many more at mid-week activities. Our kids come from very diverse ethnic backgrounds, many are refugees. My role in the church plant was to establish and grow this kids ministry. …”

– At The Australian Church Record, Beth Webb shares from encouraging news from the parish of Chester Hill.

Evangelistic opposition: Are we up for it?

“I am all for avoiding unhelpful gender-sex-role stereotyping, but one fact that continues to amaze me is the almost universal incapacity of men to see stationary objects in the refrigerator. We can spot moving objects with great skill—for example, a flying football, or a fish near the surface of the water far up-stream—but faced with the challenge of locating the margarine we stare blindly before in desperation seeking the assistance of the most proximate female, who simply glances inside the fridge and hands it over.

I have read the book of Acts a lot over the years, and love it—the outreach, the growth of the church, the missionary journeys. I have even done a PhD on it. But recently, perhaps because of my familiarity with it, I had stopped seeing (at least, stopped properly appreciating) something that had been staring me in the face, and which I was very much aware of in days gone by.

The truth that I have re-noticed is the fact that gospel proclamation, no matter how it is carried out, will result in opposition! …”

– At GoThereFor.com, Stephen Liggins points out the obvious. But have you missed it too?

Lisa, Bruce & Co @ Parramatta

“What does complementarian ministry look like?

We chat to Lisa Boyd & Bruce Morrison of St John’s Cathedral, Parramatta about the ins-and-outs, ups-and-downs of working as a team. …”

– new from The Australian Church Record.

There’s never been a better time to be a Christian

“What a mess our poor nation is in. There is so much conflict, so much confusion, so much pain.

We have forgotten what a human being is. We have forgotten what male and female is. Men and women have forgotten how to have sex. We have forgotten how to marry. We have forgotten how to care for the children we bear. Children are taught that boys can be girls, and girls can be boys.

Our freedom to speak is dissolving before our eyes. Pastors are called before government tribunals for teaching the Bible. And Christian doctors who speak their mind are threatened with deregistration.

All this while marriage remains as yet un-redefined in our laws.

Moreover, the Opposition Leader has promised that if marriage laws change, Christian businesses will have no protections for acting according to their conscience.

If marriage is redefined there’ll be a relentless flood of de-registrations and prosecutions.

And so there has never been a better time to be a Christian!

There are two reasons why I believe this is true. …”

– Campbell Markham spoke at the Tasmanian launch of the Coalition for Marriage.

Archbishop Glenn Davies preaches on marriage at Moore College chapel

On Friday 25 August the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Glenn Davies, preached in the Moore College chapel on the Bible’s teaching on marriage, focussing on Matthew chapter 19. Good to watch and share widely.

See it at the Moore College website.

Reformation Rally, Saturday 26th August

Be sure you don’t miss the Reformation Rally at St. Andrew’s Cathedral on Saturday.  Read more

Love says No

“It is a terrible thing when Christian love and kindness becomes so misdirected that we wound the souls of the very people that we are trying to help.

Let us not think, in a ghastly fit of blind spiritual arrogance, that we know better than Jesus, and can love better than Jesus.

Let’s humble ourselves, and trust that he knows best, and submit to him, and love people the way he loves them, and wants us to love them. …”

— Campbell Markham at Cornerstone in Hobart says Christians should vote “no” out of love for their neighbours, and for Jesus. Read it all.

Reformation Public Lecture — Graham Cole — The legacy of the Reformation through the eyes of J.C. Ryle

Dr Graham Cole spoke at Moore College on July 19th, about The legacy of the Reformation through the eyes of J.C. Ryle. Most encouraging.

Take the time to watch.

Relationship building between city and country with spirit levels and spiritual support

“For many years, Stewart Cuddy has been a Sydney lawyer attending an Anglican parish in one of Sydney’s most affluent suburbs. But this week he is a labourer, on the end of a chainsaw or power drill, working with a church in remote the remote New South Wales town of Walgett.

Mr Cuddy is part of a group of volunteers who head west every year on a grey nomad trip with a difference…”

– Story about St Peter’s Walgett and St James’ Turramurra from ABC News.

Leaving the denomination

“In 2012, the Tron Church in Glasgow City Centre, to which I belong, took the difficult decision to leave the Church of Scotland. In this short article I hope to describe something of the experience our congregation went through, and something of what it feels like five years on, in 2017.…”

– Edward Lobb writes for Anglican Mainstream.

Background:

St. George’s Tron, Glasgow, secedes from Church of Scotland, June 2012.

Walking in opposite directions (PDF), May 2011.

(Photo: Cornhill Scotland.)

Report on the Anglican Connection Conference, Dallas, 13-15 June 2017

“ ‘A dog’s breakfast’. During a recent conversation in the UK, a casual observer used that phrase to describe to me the Anglican Church in the United States of America.

The fracture in the global Anglican Communion is most acute in the States, where the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) has been set up as a parallel Anglican province, bringing together the various Anglican groups that have been forming over the last twenty years or so – such as the Nigerian based, Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). However, the gospel clarity of the 16th century English Reformers – expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1552 Prayer Book – is not yet found in North American Anglican structures. This is why the formation of the Anglican Connection is important.

Initiated by John Mason, among others, the Anglican Connection works outside the formal structures of the Anglican Church. It is an affiliation of like-minded gospel-focused ministers and church leaders who are committed to making disciples of Christ and whose ministry is grounded in the Scriptures and framed by the riches of the English Reformation. …”

– At The Australian Church Record, Stephen Tong reports on last month’s Anglican Connection Conference in Dallas.

(We understand that recordings of the talks will be available within days, and we’ll post a link when they are online.)

Compassion for the Lost

“Instead of just throwing up our hands in despair or shaking our heads sadly about what we believe are poor, short-sighted choices by many of our contemporaries, we need to ask God, through His Spirit, to make us more like Jesus in having compassion on those who have, for whatever reason, excluded God from their lives.

When Jesus saw the crowds of his day ‘he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd’ (Matthew 9:36). …”

– In the latest edition of Anglican News from the Diocese of Canberra & Goulburn, Bishop Trevor Edwards urges us to respond to the latest census figures as the Lord Jesus did to the people of his day. Read it all, on page 2 of this 2.8MB PDF file.

Also be sure to see:

Philip Jensen on Why and How Churches Must be Pragmatic – Steve Kryger at Communicate Jesus:

“Since the release of the latest Australian Census data, I’ve been troubled by how many people in my nation are yet to know Jesus, and how ineffective we (as evangelical Christians) have been at reaching them.

I discovered that since 1991, there has been a 22% drop in the number of people claiming to be Christians and in a single generation there has been an 88% decline in the number of self-declared Christians.

So my friend Dave sent me this sermon by Philip Jensen from 1988, where he pulls no punches in pleading that churches change to reach the 97% who are not in our churches each Sunday.

You should listen to the whole message, but here are 10 quotes that stood out…”

Both articles are a great encouragement and spur.

A Wee Flea for Christ: Apologetics in a Post-Truth Age

David Robertson, Minister of St. Peter’s Free Church in Dundee, has just been in Australia –

“Unlike most Western Anglicans I love the Sydney Anglicans. … The Church needs them to keep going, stand strong and continue to be salt and light as they shine like stars in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation.”

Stephen O’Doherty interviewed him for Open House on Hope 103.2 in Sydney.

Meet the new ‘twicer’: The irregular regular

“I came across an interesting expression recently: the twicer. From what I understand, ‘the twicer’ used to refer to the person who went to church twice a day (think of the days of morning and evening prayer). It then began to refer to the nominal churchgoer who would attend twice a year, the ‘Christmas and Easter’ Christian.

When I heard the phrase recently, it was used to refer to the committed churchgoer. That is, to describe a regular churchgoer—who attends church just twice a month on average. …”

– At The Australian Church Record, Mike Leite points to Biblical encouragement to meet more often then every-so-often.

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