Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 13 April, 2012
The Bible Study Guides for our next teaching series are now available in the Resources Library. 4 Myths Smart People Believe starts on April 29th, our first Sunday of 9 AM and 11 AM Church.
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 27 January, 2012
I know I’ve asked before, but I think it’s so important that I’ll keep asking; Are you getting by on little more than one Weet-Bix a week? I trust that you find the Bible teaching here at Trinity encouraging, stimulating and challenging, and there’s no question that the reading and explaining of the Scriptures is a key part of what we do when we gather. 
But is Sunday morning the only time you spend seriously reading and studying the Bible? If it is, I think you’re getting by on one Weet-Bix a week! Weet-Bix are good for you, nutritious, tasty and all of that, but if you tried to live on only one each week, you wouldn’t be very healthy and you certainly wouldn’t grow. So let’s make sure we’re not trying to live like that when it comes to our spiritual health.
Of course, reading the Bible isn’t limited to what happens in an “official” Bible Study Group. I’d encourage everyone in our community to spend time individually reading God’s Word and praying regularly, even daily, hence the Daily Reading Notes we’ve made available for the Building A Kingdom teaching series. But for almost all of us, I’m sure, reading the Bible with others, meeting regularly for that purpose and talking about what we’re learning is a great way to help us get the most out of our Bible reading, to practice good habits and to develop accountability as we live out lives as people of the Word.
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 6 July, 2011
I’m a fan of the TV series The West Wing. As with lots of other TV shows, at the beginning of each episode, one of the actors does a voice-over; “Previously on The West Wing” and then we’re shown a handful of clips from previous episodes. Of course it’s not a random collection of clips, but scenes and dialogue from earlier episodes that form part of the storyline for the episode we’re about to watch. The idea is that we get a glimpse of the issues and stories that are about to unfold.
This Sunday we start the second part of our journey through the book of Acts. Acts was our first teaching series when we started our church in 2010, so many of us weren’t here when we last looked at this book and even for those of us who were here, a lot has happened since then to cloud our memory of what went on in the first 7 chapters of the book.
It would be great if in the next week or so you can find the time to read the first 7 chapters of Acts. So much happens in that first part of the book, that it would be a shame to go into the second section without being clear on what’s happened previously. You could do it in 2 sittings; Read through to the end of chapter 3 one day, and then another time, read from 4:1 – 8:25.
We also need to remember that even Acts 1 isn’t the beginning of the story. While in our Bibles Acts is a separate book, it is really Volume two of a two volume set, with Luke’s gospel as Volume 1. Acts is Volume 2. Luke’s introduction to Acts gives a brief overview of what’s happened in the story so far.
In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.
So Acts is about Jesus’ work and teaching. He began these during his earthly ministry, and he continues to do these through the church in Acts. I hope you’re able to be with each week for this series.
Posted by: Andy Buchan
on 24 June, 2011
Does the Old Testament really have anything to teach us today? Is it simply a prologue to the real story, that we might skip over to get to the good stuff? How have I been ignoring three quarters of the bible? I’ve been grappling with these questions as I bite the bullet and properly read through it this year as part of my studies.
So far, there have been three features that have stood out for me:
1. My knowledge of God was stunted by my lack of reading it. The promises fulfilled in the New Testament, in Jesus, can only be understood in reading the promises made in the old. My desire to learn more about Jesus has to go beyond the boundaries of Matthew to Revelation to gain a fuller understanding of who Jesus is and why he came.
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 2 June, 2011
Our currents series in the book of Habakkuk has raised a question for some in our community: How do we as Christians read and understand the Old Testament? We often find it easier to make sense of the New Testament; it was written closer to our time and in the same era of salvation history as we live in – between Christ’s first coming and his second. But the Old Testament seems a bit more foreign, it was written down longer ago and in a time when people were still looking forward to Christ’s incarnation.
Below are a few things to bear in mind as we read the part of God’s Word that is the Old Testament.
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 9 March, 2011
There’s one line of dialogue in John 7 that has got some people quite perplexed!
In verses 6 - 8 Jesus tells his brothers that he’s not going to go up to Jerusalem with them for the Feast of Tabernacles, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right … You go to the Feast. I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.”
But then in verse 10 John tells us, “However, after his brothers had left for the Feast, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.”
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 17 February, 2011
Peter’s declaration about Jesus “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68) is a high point, not only in the chapter, but a high point of the whole gospel account.
So many people have so many different ideas about Jesus. So many want him to be and do different things; feed crowds, heal the sick, provide bread every day, lead the nation against their enemies, and right at the end of the chapter we hear Peter’s acknowledgment of Jesus’ true identity. He is the one whose words are “spirit and life.” He is the Holy One who has come from God.
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 3 February, 2011
We're experimenting with using Issuu as a publishing platform for our resources. The first 7 of the Encountering the Word Bible studies are available below.
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 11 August, 2010
Author John Steinbeck described his 1952 novel East of Eden as his magnum opus. He said: "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this." The novel is an extended expansion-discussion on the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. The central character is Adam, his sons are Caleb and Aron. 
One of the most striking passages of dialogue is an exchange between Adam, his neighbour Samuel and Adam’s Chinese housekeeper, Lee. Lee has poured many hours into studying Genesis 4 and is intrigued by the contrast in different Bible versions’ translation of 4:7. He observes that according to the King James Version, God says to Cain, “thou shalt rule over him (sin),” while the American Standard Version has “do thou rule over him (sin).” To Lee’s mind, the former is a promise that Cain will defeat sin, the latter is a command for Cain to defeat sin.
Which is right? Lee wonders, will we triumph over sin, or are we simply commanded to triumph over sin with no assurance that we actually will?
Lee’s conclusion is this:
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 7 July, 2010
The ancient Israelites had a rule: no one was allowed to teach Genesis chapter 1 in the assembly of God’s people unless he was over 30 years of age!
These last couple of weeks I have discovered the reason for that rule! The great 16th Century scholar and church Reformer Martin Luther commented on Genesis 1, the passage we'll be looking at this coming Sunday, “The very simple meaning of what Moses says is this: Everything that is, was created by God.” Unfortunately, that may be the simple explanation, but it’s not the whole explanation.
Genesis doesn’t tell us everything about creation, just as it doesn’t tell us everything about many other of its subjects; Noah’s Ark, The Tower of Babel or the life of Abraham to name just a few. But what I want us to be assured of as we open God’s Word together this morning is this: Genesis may not tell us everything about creation, but it tells us enough about creation.
Critical scholarship and Post-Modern skepticism keep beating away at us, saying “if we don’t know everything we can’t know anything”. But that’s a lie! Just because we don’t know everything doesn’t mean we can’t know anything!
You know that my name is Clayton. That is the truth. It’s a truth that impacts reality – if you call that name, I will respond! But you might not know that I have two middle names, or you might not know what those two middle names are, or you might not know what my family call me, or you might not know what my friends from other cultures call me. You don’t know everything about my name. But you truly do know my name.
The fact that you don’t know everything about my name doesn’t mean you don’t know my name, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you can’t use my name to refer to me, or to call me, or to ask me to do things for you.
In fact, I hope you do!
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 11 June, 2010
In 1942, Austrian doctor Viktor Frankl was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. Although the lone survivor of his family from the Holocaust, Frankl emerged from his time in various concentration camps with a strong view on the importance of meaning in life.
He went on to found what is called the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, which operates on the assumption that the major psychological problem experienced by people today is the feeling of the loss of ultimate meaning to one’s existence. Frankl called this the Existential Vacuum; people feel an absence of anything that would make life worthwhile.
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 2 June, 2010
This Sunday is the 2nd of week of our “If I Were God…” series. As we’re doing for each of the statements in our series, we’ll spend some time reflecting on our own experiences and then we’ll hear what the Bible says about, and to make sense of, those experiences.
For some though, there may be a prior question. How do we know the Bible accurately records the life and teachings of the man at its centre, Jesus Christ. And most of us are not entirely pragmatic; simply the fact that the Bible makes sense of my experiences is not enough. It’s not sufficient to know that something works, but is it true? Is the Bible reliable? Can the Bible be trusted?
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 26 May, 2010
In preparation for the Leviticus teaching series which will be starting after the current If I Were God... series, the Bible Study Guide is now available
.
The series of three studies picks up the passages from each of the three sermons in the series.
If you miss collecting a copy from the Welcome Table on a Sunday, you can download it from the Resources Library.
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 7 April, 2010
This coming Sunday we return to the book of Acts after a brief Easter detour into volume one - Luke’s Gospel. We return to find the early church facing troubles not only from outside, but also 
from within. If you’ve joined us at Trinity in the last few weeks and missed the introduction to Acts last month, here are a couple of brief reflections to help you understand where we’re up to in time for Sunday.
Although he seems to have written more of the New Testament than any other human author, Luke is mentioned by name only three times in the Bible. On each occasion, he is mentioned as accompanying the Apostle Paul. The major theme that Luke conveys in volume two of his work is that of the ongoing work of the risen and exalted Jesus, through his witnesses who are empowered by the Holy Spirit. Luke focuses especially on two of the messengers of the early church, Peter and Paul. He demonstrates how what God is doing through these two men and their fellow believers is a continuation and a fulfilment of what God has been doing for generations. In Luke’s understanding, the church is the fulfilment of God’s centuries old promises to draw people to himself, through his Messiah.
One of the potential dangers we face when reading Acts is to assume it is, in every episode, prescriptive – that is, prescribing patterns, structures and behaviour for today. But Luke did not intend for those Christians who came after him to imitate the Apostles and the other early Christians in every aspect of their life and ministry. For one thing, no one living today (or in the last nineteen hundred and something years) witnessed Jesus’ resurrection. We are therefore unable to exercise the exact ministry that the Apostles did which was to testify of their personal experience of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection (Acts 1:21 – 22). As one scholar has observed Acts is no more a blueprint for how to do missions or how to set up a church than it is for how to act when you are threatened with shipwreck.
Our ministry is a derivative ministry, an extension of the Apostles’ ministry. We have their witness and their words and we learn from these and use them to speak to others of Jesus life, death and resurrection. We have their example, we have the same Spirit of God dwelling in us and we have the very Word of God which was spoken to the church in the first century and which speaks to the church today!
Posted by: Clayton Fopp
on 17 March, 2010
“Silver and Gold I do not have…” Peter said to the crippled man, who lay begging at the Beautiful Gate of the Jerusalem temple. The rest of Peter’s sentence shows he has something even more valuable than silver or gold, faith in the powerful Lord Jesus Christ, and of this he is willing to give.
Scholars and archaeologists love to pore over excavations and historical records to identify the various locations described in the Bible. Sometimes their efforts are complicated by the fact that, as with the Beautiful Gate, no known sources other than the New Testament documents use a particular name. Nevertheless there is some scholarly consensus that the gate called “Beautiful” in Acts 3 should be identified with the Nicanor Gate, which was paid for by an extraordinarily wealthy Jewish man from Alexandria.
Unlike the other temple gates which were overlaid with silver and gold, the Nicanor gate was either constructed from, or covered with, sheets of Corinthian bronze. Items made out of Corinthian bronze were considered priceless, even more valuable than those made from silver and gold. The Roman historian Josephus recorded that the Nicanor Gate “far exceeded in value those plated in silver and set in gold.”
