Paul Harrington, Senior Minister of the Trinity Network, speaks about ministry challenges at the Trailblazing — Ministry with Purpose Conference in Sydney last week.
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.
Perhaps you might have caught up with the latest sports trivia – soccer player Ronaldo's price tag for transferring to Real Madrid from Manchester United (click here for the wikipedia article) of around £80 million. Then there's his pay packet...
On a seemingly unrelated note I've been studying some history lately around the New Testament time – something I thought I'd never really do actually. Something that struck me almost straight away was how similar some aspects of the Greek / Roman culture are when you compare them to our own (and Western culture generally). For instance, the obsession with the perfect human body – we too almost worship it. Great stadiums are built for entertainment and huge amounts of money is spent on them - our modern versions of arenas and gymnasiums highlight how much we seem to value the 'perfect' body. We revere sport and its athletes to sometimes an unhealthy level. When did it all become more than just a game?! Anyway – the emphasis on all that pleasure and materialism is pretty similar to our world today – worn like a badge of honour by some celebrities.
