God has brought many people into our church in the nearly two years that we have been together. This growing community of young and old and in between has been one of the great blessings we’ve received from God’s hand. I’m constantly hearing of people’s excitement at being part of a growing family where God is at work making himself known and drawing people to himself. A growing family also presents challenges! This year our children’s and youth ministry has grown to six separate groups at three different addresses and on Sunday mornings, the kids in our Children’s Ministry have taken over yet another room in the Molly Miels building. And as was especially evident over the holidays when the children stayed in the service, we’re heading steadily towards capacity in the gymnasium.
Since July 2011 the Leadership Team have been considering ways for us to continue to accommodate the growing number of people that God is drawing into our community, and as you will be aware, our plan is to grow to two Sunday morning gatherings, at 9 AM and 11 AM from the 29th of April.
This week I spent some time in Melbourne taking part in a church planting conference. The Geneva Push is an Australia-wide network seeking to see, under God, hundreds of churches evangelised into existence across the country and the National In The Chute conference brings together church leaders and members from all different parts of the country to hear the Bible taught and to learn from each others’ ideas and experiences.
My role in the conference was to speak about our experiences in church planting, what we’ve learned and what we’ve seen God do amongst us in the 21 months since Trinity Mount Barker began. I got to answer lots of great questions about our church and explain the ways we do different things. It was great to see so many churches and Christian people trying to work out how to take the gospel of Jesus forward in their regions.
We have so much to be thankful to God for in our first 12 months. A year ago I could not even have imagined the things that God has done among this community. So it’s good for us to pause and thank God for what he’s been doing and what we’ve been able to be a part of, and during our first birthday service this coming Sunday there’ll be an opportunity for you, if you would like to, to lead us in a prayer of thanksgiving to God.
But we mustn’t focus only on what’s happened in our life together up to this point, because we’re only part-way towards our goal. The Apostle Paul writes of his own life in Philippians 3, … I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
On 15 March 2009, a group of 15 people began meeting to plan and pray for the launch of a new church in the Mount Barker region. Preparations for Trinity Mount Barker had actually begun about 2 years prior, but this meeting on a Sunday afternoon was the first gathering of a group of people who were going to make TMB their church.
Twelve months later, and after much prayer, discussion and thoughtfulness, Trinity Mount Barker was born! Under God, this “Core Team” had transformed Trinity Mount Barker from an idea to a wonderful community of God’s people. The self-determined expiry date for the Core Team was 100 days into the life of our church and this line, we have just crossed.
If you're a Trinity Mount Barker member, then this Sunday when you arrive at the Littlehampton Primary School gymnasium, you'll receive a leaflet inviting you to consider your financial partnership with our church. As you'll discover, that document is mostly about “mechanics” – the different ways to support ministry at Trinity financially and some brief details about our budget.
Before you read that document, I’d love for you to spend a few moments considering three reasons why you should not partner with Trinity financially.
Please don’t give money to Trinity if you think that giving money to gospel ministry will somehow make God pleased with you, or more favourably disposed towards you, or if you think (even semi-consciously) that if you give money, God will somehow overlook areas of your life you know are displeasing to him. The Bible is very clear; our standing before God is determined by our response to his grace, by our identification with his Son, Jesus who died to reconcile us to God. To think that giving money to gospel ministry somehow enhances our standing before God is to suggest that either Jesus’ death was unnecessary, or that it left the task of reconciliation incomplete.
Chris Edwards, the pastor who planted Trinity Hills Church once relayed to me an anecdote he had heard which explained that starting a new church is like getting a group of people in a row boat and heading for a particular island.As long as everyone has the same vision for where the expedition should be going, things work well.But if one of the rowers thinks they should be heading for a different island or for no island at all, then everyone gets tired and frustrated and the group never arrives at their intended destination.
Our first advertisement in The Courier, "the newspaper of the Adelaide Hills since 1880" is ready to hit the presses!
Our theme for the first few months of Trinity Mount Barker is "You're Welcome" and the welcome mat features prominently in the way we're introducing ourselves to people. If you live in Mount Barker, Littlehampton, Nairne, Woodside, Oakbank or Balhannah, you will probably have already received a postcard in your letter box, and you may well have seen the posters and T-shirts around the place. The welcome mat also features in our Courier ad.
Grab your copy of The Courier on Wednesday to see it in glorious colour! Or just take a look below!
After our sending off this week from Trinity Hills, the next time we gather in the Littlehampton Primary School gymnasium will be for the launch of Trinity Mount Barker. Joining with us then will, we anticipate, be a number of people we have invited to be part of our new church community.
As we look forward to the day of our launch, can I encourage you to be doing a few things? Pray for those who will stay at Trinity Hills when we are sent. It will be easy for them to feel that all the “excitement” is at Mount Barker and that they’re missing out. That won’t be the case and we don’t want people feeling like it is! Pray that the ministry at Trinity Hills will continue to grow and that the gospel of Jesus Christ will ring out from that church over the coming years.
If you're interested in church planting, you're quite possibly aware that the Church Planting Center at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York has launched a blog.
The RCPC Blog, currently labelled as "beta," is home to reflections from Tim Keller, Scott Sauls and others from the Redeemer staff team as well as members of their church planting network.
In one of Keller's first blog posts, maybe even his first, he brings John Frame's tri-perspectivalism to bear as a tool for analysing the phenomenon that is Willow Creek Church. (Incidentally, I have Frame's The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, sitting on my desk which I've started reading about 5 times and never managed to quite get through it!) It's an interesting read, although I think that viewing tri-perspectivalism as the silver bullet with which to harmonise the various threads of broad evangelicalism is probably misguided. That said, I don't think Keller is saying it is the silver bullet, but others around the blogosphere seem to.
Still haven't made up your mind about coming to CV Conference 2009?
If you're interested in church planting, there's an extra incentive (maybe)! James Harricks and I are running an elective on Church Planting on the Saturday afternoon!
It will be everything the 2 of us know about church planting. After that 5 minutes, we'll be thinking about why get involved in a church plant, who should be thinking about church planting, and what might be some helpful next steps if you're considering that God might be leading you into either leading or being a part of a church plant.
This growing community of young and old and in between has been one of the great blessings we’ve received from God’s hand. I’m constantly hearing of people’s excitement at being part of a growing family where God is at work making himself known and drawing people to himself. A growing family also presents challenges! This year our children’s and youth ministry has grown to six separate groups at three different addresses and on Sunday mornings, the kids in our Children’s Ministry have taken over yet another room in the Molly Miels building. And as was especially evident over the holidays when the children stayed in the service, we’re heading steadily towards capacity in the gymnasium.
This week I spent some time in Melbourne taking part in a church planting conference. The Geneva Push is an Australia-wide network seeking to see, under God, hundreds of churches evangelised into existence across the country and the National In The Chute conference brings together church leaders and members from all different parts of the country to hear the Bible taught and to learn from each others’ ideas and experiences.
Chris Edwards, the pastor who planted Trinity Hills Church once relayed to me an anecdote he had heard which explained that starting a new church is like getting a group of people in a row boat and heading for a particular island.
Littlehampton Primary School gymnasium will be for the launch of Trinity Mount Barker. Joining with us then will, we anticipate, be a number of people we have invited to be part of our new church community.
In one of Keller's first blog posts, maybe even his first, he brings John Frame's tri-perspectivalism to bear as a tool for analysing the phenomenon that is Willow Creek Church. (Incidentally, I have Frame's The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, sitting on my desk which I've started reading about 5 times and never managed to quite get through it!) It's an interesting read, although I think that viewing tri-perspectivalism as the silver bullet with which to harmonise the various threads of broad evangelicalism is probably misguided. That said, I don't think Keller is saying it is the silver bullet, but others around the blogosphere seem to.
Still haven't made up your mind about coming to CV Conference 2009?
