Bathurst Diocesan Prayer Diary 2023

Posted on January 16, 2023 
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Please be encouraged to pray for the churches and people of the Diocese of Bathurst using their 2023 Prayer Diary.

Downloadable here as a PDF file.

One of the prayer requests for Day 15 –

“Please pray for the financial sustainability task force, that you would give them wisdom as they seek to lead our diocese to a better financial position. …”

A weary pilgrimage

Posted on January 15, 2023 
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“I remember going to a weekend conference some eighteen months after I was converted, and a girl there asked me if I was a Christian. I answered, ‘Yes’.

‘Tell me’ she said, ‘what I have to do to become a Christian’.

I didn’t have the faintest idea where to begin.

As I write this now, I remember well the mixed emotions that swamped me. First, joy—because more than anything else I wanted to see people converted. Second, shame—because I didn’t know what to say. Third, anger—(with myself) for allowing such a situation to arise. All these emotions muddled together produced the only possible answer: ‘I’ll take you to someone who can tell you’.

So I did that, and she was converted—but not by my words or witness.

That incident left an indelible imprint on my memory, and that day I vowed that such a situation would never happen again. In the future I would know exactly what to say.

So I set out to learn the gospel. Which I did. …”

– from John Chapman in his book Know and Tell the Gospel. Extract published by Matthias Media.

‘Save the Parish’ Chairman writes to Justin Welby concerning slavery reparations

Posted on January 13, 2023 
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“The Revd Marcus Walker writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the the announcement of £100m fund on slavery reparations. …

The announcement that the Church Commissioners are intent upon using £100 million of endowments of the Church of England for what has widely been reported as ‘reparations’ comes at a time of deep crisis for the Church. For the first time since the Dark Ages a majority of those living in England would not call themselves Christian. The number of people attending acts of worship in Anglican churches has fallen to a level never before seen, and we face a demographic cliff edge as our congregations grow older. …

– Read it all at Anglican Mainstream.

Sydney Church History — repost

Posted on January 13, 2023 
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We first posted this link in August 2020. As CMS Summer School at Katoomba concludes for 2023, here are even more reasons to give thanks to God:

“In 1965 John Stott, the Rector of All Souls Langham Place in London, visited Sydney to preach on 2 Corinthians at the CMS Summer School.

‘I heard only one of those Bible studies but I was so taken by the way he stuck to the text and stayed with it. He could show you the logic of the argument in the Scriptures, prior to that I had tended to get an idea from the passage and to leap all over the Bible supporting the idea from other parts, so that the people I taught knew the ‘idea’ but not the passage from which it came or how that passage fitted into some overall argument from the Scriptures. It is to John Stott I owe what ability I have to expound the Bible.’

Those were the words of the esteemed Sydney evangelist and preacher, the late John Chapman…”

– David Cook writes to remind us of our history, and how God works. At The Expository Preaching Trust.

(David Cook has served in parish ministry, as the Principal of SMBC, and as the Moderator-General of the Presbyterian Church of Australia.)

P&A 2023 annual conference: Lazy Complementarianism

Posted on January 12, 2023 
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Coming up at the Priscilla & Aquila Centre at Moore College.

‘Compassion…’

Posted on January 12, 2023 
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“Predictions about the global economic outlook for the new year are not encouraging. Nor is the news of the ongoing aggression by Russia in Ukraine. Given the rise of powerful despots and divisions within western democracies, is there anything that we can do?

Two and a half millennia ago the Jewish people were in exile. In 586 BC Babylonian forces had rampaged through Judah, conquering Jerusalem, razing its walls and its temple to the ground. Political obliteration seemed inevitable as the cream of the population was taken to Babylon.

Yet the extraordinary thing was this:…”

– At The Anglican Connection,  John Mason continues to remind us that our needy world waits to hear the truth about God.

Northern Hope Anglican Church joins Diocese of the Southern Cross

Posted on January 11, 2023 
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As of 8th January 2023, Northern Hope Anglican Church in Cairns is the third church to join the Diocese of the Southern Cross. Northern Hope is meeting under the pastoral leadership of the Rev. Trevor Saggers.

Please uphold these churches, and Bishop Glenn Davies, bishop of the diocese, in your prayers.

Hear the sermon by Bishop Davies, as well as interviews on local radio.

Further from GAFCON:

Northern Hope Anglican Church Launched in Queensland

After 23 years of ministry at a parish church in Cairns, Australia, the Reverend Trevor Saggers decided enough was enough, when his bishop, among other things, was unable to support the Bible’s teaching on same-sex relationships.

When a motion was put to the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia in May 2022 affirming the Bible’s teaching on marriage and declaring the blessing of same-sex marriages to be contrary to the Bible’s teaching, the Bishop of North Queensland could not vote in favour of such a statement. Sadly, he was not alone among the House of Bishops, as a majority of 12 bishops voted against the motion, thus preventing the adoption of the statement addressing the faith of the Church, despite a majority of lay and clerical members of the General Synod voting in favour.

This action precipitated, in part, the formation of the Diocese of the Southern Cross, an extra provincial diocese within Australia, as a lifeboat for faithful Anglicans to join, when they felt they could no longer serve under the jurisdiction of a bishop who did not faithfully teach the doctrine of Christ and his apostles.

On Sunday, 8th January 2023, Bishop Glenn Davies commissioned the Reverend Trevor Saggers as the pastor of Northern Hope Anglican Church and welcomed 120 people who gathered in a rented hall with their pastor to form a new Anglican congregation in Cairns, the third Member Church of the Diocese of the Southern Cross. …”

– Read it all here.

C of E setting up £100m fund to ‘address past wrongs’ of slave trade links

Posted on January 11, 2023 
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“The Church of England has committed £100m to a fund it is setting up to compensate for its historical benefit from the international slave trade. …

The church is not using the term ‘reparations’ as the scheme will not compensate individuals but will support projects ‘focused on improving opportunities for communities adversely impacted by historic slavery’. …”

– Report from The Guardian.

See also:

Church plans to spend £100m atoning for its historical slave trade links after branding it a ‘shameful and horrific sin’ – Daily Mail.

“Senior clerics have admitted that the £100million investment, to be made over the next decade, is a huge sum at a time when parishes and congregations are struggling but insisted the church had to ‘address past wrongs’.”

The Vatican Files

Posted on January 10, 2023 
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Dr. Leonardo De Chirico of The Reformanda Initiative in Rome is currently speaking at CMS Summer Conferences across Australia.

Many have found his insights extremely valuable in understanding the Roman Catholic Church so they might humbly and lovingly share the saving news of Jesus with their Roman Catholic friends.

From The Reformanda Initiative:

“The Reformanda Initiative exists to identify, unite, equip, and resource evangelical leaders to understand Roman Catholic theology and practice, to educate the evangelical Church and to communicate the Gospel.

Evangelicalism currently has an incoherent relationship with Roman Catholicism. Many evangelicals are uncertain about what Roman Catholics actually believe. Do they believe in the same Gospel, or something entirely different?

This question is important for leaders of evangelical churches and organizations and for hundreds of millions of evangelical believers around the world. …”

A key linked website is The Vatican Files where Dr De Chirico shares what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church. A recent article is entitled, “God has many ways to save.” Cardinal Cantalamessa and Roman Catholic Universalism:

“Like every Christmas season, the tradition of the ‘advent sermons,’ whereby the preacher of the Papal household addresses the Pope and the community working in the Vatican, was repeated this past December when Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, a capuchin, preached three sermons.

This preaching role is important because it is officially appointed by the reigning Pope and assigned to a priest whose task is to preach to the community working and living in the Vatican (Pope included) on special liturgical festivities. More generally, the Vatican preacher contributes to setting the standard of Roman Catholic homiletics even beyond the little community of the recipients and is looked upon as a ‘model’ for good Roman Catholic preaching.

For these reasons, it is always useful to have an eye on what he says and how he says it. …”

See also The Reformanda Initiative Podcast.

How a man reading the Bible revolutionised my Bible reading

Posted on January 9, 2023 
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“For most of the time I have been a Christian, talking about personal Bible reading has made me uneasy.

I usually regarded people who talked about their deep quiet times (often early in the morning) as spiritual skites. That was simply jealousy, because most of my attempts at quiet times could be likened to the Wright brothers’ experiments with flight. A lot of effort, airborne for a short time, then a crash.

Weirdly enough, it was a combination of the pandemic and technology that came to my rescue. …”

– Anglican Media Sydney’s Russell Powell shares some great encouragement for you.

How the Bible makes sense of modern life and culture – with Christopher Watkin

Posted on January 9, 2023 
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From Dominic Steele at The Pastor’s Heart:

“How does the Bible’s unfolding story makes sense of modern life and culture?

Christopher Watkin, who lectures in Philosophy at Monash University, has a new book out that paints a picture of a Biblical Theological worldview and interacts well along the way with all the major thinkers of the age.

Chris has done us pastors a significant service here.

One of my friends has called it the most helpful book for those of us in pastoral ministry since Don Carson’s late 1990s contribution, The Gagging of God. …”

– Watch or listen here.

‘Amazing Grace…’

Posted on January 8, 2023 
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“A close source pointed me to an article by Marylynn Rouse in Christian Heritage London, about the 250th anniversary of Amazing Grace. She comments, ‘It’s not often that a pop song in the charts can claim to have been around for 250 years. John Newton’s hymn Amazing Grace featured in hit parades all over the world in the 1960s and 70s, but was written for New Year’s Day 1773. …”

– John Mason writes at The Anglican Connection.

Before you watch Harry & Meghan

Posted on January 8, 2023 
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“The age of the internet accelerates the pace of rumour spreading from the old school gossip magazines and water coolers. Twitter and Netflix are the latest machines for globalising gossip. My secret today can be the topic of public scrutiny tomorrow.

The thing is, by watching and reading and gossiping, we’re leaping into a carefully managed trap. We’re suckers for a good juicy story about a family imploding. And what’s bigger than that family being our King and Princes? …”

– Murray Campbell has some thoughts on the story almost everyone is discussing.

Evangelism in Tough Times?

Posted on January 6, 2023 
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Here’s the talk Phillip Jensen gave to mark the 10th anniversary of John Chapman’s departure to be with Christ.

His topic: “Evangelism in Tough Times”.

Looking at our context in Australia, he argues –

  1. These are not tough times.
  2. The has been no substantial change, and
  3. The difficulty evangelism faces is seduction and persecution.

It’s a challenging talk and is very much worth your time. Good to share too.

Recorded at Moore College, 22 November 2022.

Bishop of Tasmania’s Training Event 2022

Posted on January 4, 2023 
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From the Diocese of Tasmania:

“On 17 and 24 September, over 500 Anglicans from across Tasmania gathered in Hobart and Launceston to attend the annual Bishop’s Training Event.

In its 6th year, it was our biggest year yet, and we enjoyed encouragements from Bishop Richard and Wei-Han Kuan (the State Director of CMS Victoria). We are making the videos of the keynotes available and you can watch them below.”

– Most encouraging.

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