Are you reconciled? TEAR WA Conference in Sorrento

Do you know about the great work which TEAR does? The letters stand for Transformation Empowerment Advocacy and Relief, and its motto is ‘engaging Christians in Australia in God’s work of justice and compassion.’ Amongst many thing, they support agency work for justice and mercy amongst many poor and disadvantaged people around the world.

Every two years, TEAR WA holds a conference, and the next one is coming up 18-20 September 2009 at the Ern Halliday Conference Centre in Sorrento. The theme is ‘Reconciliation’, and that’s reconciliation in its broadest sense:

2009 is the international year of reconciliation – what does it mean to be reconciled with God, neighbour, self and the land – to experience and work for what the Scriptures describe as Shalom?

These are the issues we will be exploring over the course of the weekend through speakers, workshops, discussion times and various creative mediums.

This year we are pleased to be partnering with Forge WA – an organisation that seeks to equip Christian leaders for mission in our local, Australian context. Their sessions will be running concurrently with TEAR’s on Saturday and conference delegates are welcome to attend either.

One of the organisers is our old friend and former member, Andrew Broadbent. Topics include reconciliation with the environment, with time, with family and with wealth. I (Nathan) will be presenting a paper on Reconciliation and church. I’m going to be focusing on the idea that a diverse church of different races and different classes is actually part of the good news. It is an example to the world and a taste of life in the kingdom, where all nations are brought under one king, Jesus.

You can register online and get more details – http://www.tear.org.au/education/conferences/wa/reconciliation/

- Nathan Hobby

NVC 24 Hour Prayer

NVC 24 Hour Prayer
Saturday 8.00 am to Sunday 8.00 am 8-9th August 2009

Our vision is that God would move in an transforming way in people’s lives as they press into him and for those people they “stand in the gap” for.

At it’s most simple, this is “a way of getting as many people as possible to lock themselves in a room with God for an hour and see what happens” (24-7 prayer movement). We want to encourage the corporate fellowship to seek, worship and dialogue with the Lord. We want to encourage people to grow a passion for God’s presence, encourage greater faith and answers to prayer, enrich the life of the fellowship and the relationships therein.

The prayer and worship can and does take many forms: word, thought, music, song, dance, drawing, painting, Christian meditation,” praying in tongues”, etc. It is as creative as you want and as The Lord leads.

We pray that this event will generate an appetite for this sort of intentional corporate prayer activity and fellowship, and that prayer meetings of all shapes and sizes will become a regular “feature” of our community life. Community prayer life is a strong theme in the book of Acts and in the early church to great effect .

I encourage the fellowship to sign up for a slot(s) (hourly on the hour). Please consider praying with your partners, families, life cells or groups. Of course, please feel free to do more than one slot if that is your heart’s desire.

Matthew 18:19-20: “Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

It is our intention to present whatever The Lord has given us over this period to the fellowship during the Sunday morning service on the 9th.

To sign up or futher enquires, contact:

• jerry@nvc.org.au
• Tel: 0447 447 391
• Sign up Sheet at NVC Sunday Worship Service

God Bless All with answers to prayer

Jerry J

Role playing Romans : a 13 week small group course at NVC

Have you ever wanted to understand the Bible better? To go past the familiar verses and learn the background and context? The Role Playing Romans course is thirteen weeks of stimulating immersion in the book of Romans, which will leave you with a new way of looking at the Bible and a much better understanding of Romans, both in terms of its original meaning and its application to the church today.

It’s brain-stretching and involves some reading, but it’s not dry studying. Instead, you’ll be taking on a character in a first century Roman church and have to discuss each chapter of the letter to the Romans through the eyes of your character. Some of you will be slaves, some Jewish merchants, some radical Gentile converts.

The course uses the book Roman House Churches For Today by Reta Halteman Finger. To do the whole course, you will need to buy a copy of the book ($23; we have some extra copies you can buy from us) but you can come along to the first two weeks first to decide if it’s right for you.

“This book is designed to draw learners into the biblical text and the first-century context. What was life like in Rome? for Jews? for women? for slaves? for the well-to-do? for those free but poor? for Christians in households where the head of the household was not Christian? Through action and reflection, learners become first-century persons in Rome and then step outside that world to reflect in our own time and place. Thus we hear and understand the text in and new powerful ways.”
- Linda Vogel, in the foreword to the book.

Where: Hobbys house, 25 Vincent St Nedlands
When: Starting weekly in late July; 7:30pm-9:30pm on a night to be decided

Please register your interest with Nathan or Nicole as soon as you can – nathanhobby@gmail.com / noli_jae@yahoo.com.au / 0405 097 008

Justice, beauty, evangelism: making sure our good news is really good

With our teaching and thinking at Network Vineyard focusing on mission in recent weeks, one of the things I’ve been thinking about it is how important it is that our good news really is good. What I mean by that is that our life together as a church should show that God is at work. I’m reading a book by Tom Wright which puts it like this:

But how can the church announce that God is God that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil, corruption and death itself have been defeated and that God’s new world has begun? Doesn’t this seem laughable? Well, it would be if it wasn’t happening. But if a church is working on the issues we’ve already looked at – if it’s actively involved in seeking justice in the world, both globally and locally, and if it’s cheerfully celebrating God’s good creation, and its rescue from corruption, in art and music, and if, in addition, its own internal life gives every sign that new creation is indeed happening, generating a new type of community – then suddenly the announcement makes a lot of sense.

- Tom Wright, Surprised By Hope: p. 239

Justice, beauty and evangelism – three parts of mission that as a church we should be holding together. As we stand up for justice, as we sing songs of God’s beauty, as we tell people about the new life in the kingdom, we’re doing mission.

- Nathan Hobby

News from Kiev

“Hello Everyone at Network!

Yesterday I met Katya and spent the morning with her.  I gave her the money from the love offering for Nikita…..she was so overwhlemed- she had no words, and she was crying and I was crying and she said to say thank you to you all.  She is so amazed that people from so far away woudl want to help her and her family.

She explained that she was so desperate and I was the last person she emailed for help after trying everyone else she knew- she prayed and my name came into her head….i had only met her once and she felt very awkward about asking and did not think anything would come of it.  She said that she feels afresh the love of God for her family even though Nikita has been worse lately as treatment had stopped.

Thank you for enabling me to have this amazing experience of sharing God’s love with her….in the end, with extra money coming in, God provided the entire $2000US they needed so it is wonderful for them.  Thanks to everyone who helped to make this happen.

Please pray this week as our team heads to Novograd Volynski which is one of the orphanages we work in….it is a difficult place to be and we need your prayers!

Love to you all

Kirrily

Pentecostal, Fundamentalist, Evangelical : labels and why they matter

Last night I was watching a secular documentary called Jesus Camp. It’s an interesting and rather disturbing look at a ‘Bible boot camp’ run by a Pentecostal children’s pastor in the USA. (The disturbing part was the black and white view of the world these kids were getting, and the pro-George Bush, anti-climate change, anti-the rest of the world attitude. But that’s all a different story.) What struck me was that on the back cover blurb, the terms ‘Pentecostal’ ‘Evangelical’ and ‘Fundamentalist’ are used interchangeably, as if they all mean the same thing.

They don’t mean the same thing, and mixing them up causes a lot of confusion. I get the feeling that most Christians wouldn’t be able to distinguish them clearly either, so I thought I’d give a quick guide.  I’ve simplified things a lot here, and I’m just going off the top of my head, so please take this as a starting point, rather than a definitive guide.

‘Fundamentalism’ started early in the 20th century as a reaction against a group of theologians called ‘Modernists’ (or liberals). The Modernists were very taken with the findings of science and rationalism and were interepreting the Bible and theological doctrines in the light of science. (That’s not altogether wrong; but they were certainly taking things too far.) In reaction to this, a group who became known as the ‘Fundamentalists’ issued a series of booklets on the ‘fundamentals’ of faith – doctrines they saw as absolute foundations which were non-negotiable.

The movement – or the label at least – became more and more conservative and reactionary. Fundamentalists became those who shut themselves off from the findings of scholarship and theology; who read the Bible in rigid, literal, unnatural ways and who had a real fortress mentality – ‘them and us’. Today, fundamentalism is also associated with political conservatism and religious fanaticism.

‘Evangelicalism’ in its twentieth century form started as a reaction against fundamentalism. They were Christians who believed the Bible and traditional doctrines of faith but felt that they could still engage with scholarship in science and theology. The movement that grew out of this would tend to be seen as emphasising the trustworthiness of the Bible, the need for a personal commitment to following Jesus, and the importance of evangelism.

Confusingly, fundamentalists would believe these three things too, and the line can be hard to draw. It’s often in the mode of engagement with the world – Evangelicals are willing to dialogue with cultural trends in the world, to make their faith culturally relevant without compromising it, and to politely debate liberals and fundamentalists.

My concern is that if ‘evangelical’ and ‘fundamentalist’ are used interchangeably, the word ‘evangelical’ will be tainted beyond usefulness or redemption – if it hasn’t happened already.

‘Pentecostalism’ grew out of the Azusa Street Revival in the USA in 1904, when the Holy Spirit came upon a congregation and there were manifestations of spiritual gifts. The movement came to generally emphasise the need for a ’second blessing’ or baptism of the Spirit, evidenced by speaking in tongues. Besides the emphasis on the Spirit, the movement was often quite similar to the fundamentalists in tone.

If this was the ‘first wave’ of the Holy Spirit, the second wave came in the 1960s through the mainline (Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran) churches and people affected by this were called ‘Charismatic’. Many of these people stayed in their traditional churches, so you can see why there was a big difference between ‘pentecostal’ and ‘charismatic’.

The ‘third wave’ of the Holy Spirit is where Vineyard fits in. It’s associated with John Wimber and the Vineyard movement starting in the 1980s, and emphasising a basically evangelical outlook with Holy Spirit empowerment, most often shown not in tongues but healing.

Network Vineyard is an interesting mix of backgrounds. From talking to people, many have come from an evangelical background, but then others are from a pentecostal or non-church background. The danger with labels is that they can be used to judge too quickly and shortcut really understanding people. But the benefit of them is that they give us an understanding of what tradition, what strand of Christianity a person comes from.

- Nathan Hobby

Men – If you are brave…watch this message

http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/trial/marriage-and-men

By Mark Driscoll

Thanks from Kiev!

Hello dear Kirilly!

When I had read your email I started crying and thanked God that He is faithful to those who love Him. The news is just amazing!!!! I even can’t express how happy I am!!!

For me this money is God’s answer to our prayers! I even couldn’t imagine that for Nikita’s rehabilitation course God would provide money from the opposite part of the world!!! This is a real miracle for all our family and opportunity for Nikita to go to rehabilitation centre. We had to come there April 23, but because of no money we stayed home. After receiving your email, Kirrily I phoned to this centre and they proved our coming to the rehabilitation course June 17-June 29.

I want to thank you, the pastor of your church and every person from your church, Kirrily, for their big loving hearts to people, who they even don’t know, but wanted to help. I can’t find words to express all feelings inside of me: thankfulness, joy, hope… Your help and care is like a new weapon to our daily battle with Nikita’s disease.

We are very weak in our situation with Nikita: we are often lack of time, financial and moral support, the ignorance of our Government of the problems of children with CP and rejection of children with CP by healthy kids and their parents. But God is always strong, when we are weak. God is the only hope in the life of our family, and only God gives us strength to make the next step and not to give up.

Dear friends from Australia! We were waiting for help from God and He answered through you! You gave us an opportunity to make a new step in Nikita’s treatment. May God bless you abundantly and give you and your children good health and may He bless your church with every blessing He is having.
We will remember you in our prayers.

Katya, Kostya (my husband who doesn’t speak English but is the biggest optimist of our family), Nikita (who is sleeping nearby) and Veronika (who is interrupting my thoughts constantly by playing with the computer)

Kirrily, We’ll be waiting you back in Kiev. If we can help you somehow here in Kiev it will be a great privilege for us.

The Two SW’s in J City

We are having a really profitable time here in “J City”. It is amazing to be seeing the Lord bring us together with people who have such a similar heart and style of ministry as us at Network.

Yesterday we visited the school run by Eddy and Febry and it was an truly remarkable to see the level of discipleship that is happening with the 13 children in the school. Yes it is small in numbers and there are a couple of practical blcoks to growth but an amazing job is being done, with a vision to see a new generation of leaders rise up in the nation.

Today, spent the day with leaders from Eddy and Febry’s church. They were ready for us to teach but in reality they have so much to teach us. We met in a Dunkin Donuts store and just did our thing with people around. In fact, all of their church meetings happen in public places and when they notice others watching they just invite them to join in!

Tomorrow we are off to preach at their church, again in a public cafe and then tomorrow afternoon we head off to visit Michael P for the remainder of our trip. We will be going out with him in his street ministry as well as meeting with the partners of Opportunity International to connect them with the garbage slum we have visited.

Pray for us that the Lord’s favour will be upon us as we establish these relationships and plan our future partnerships with one another.

Stuart and Steve

A Poem With a Challenge

This came from an article written by James Ryle, a Pastor who had a big impact on Carolyn and me when we were at the Vineyard Ranch back in 1990.

“How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep?” (Proverbs 6:9).

It is possible to sleep though Life’s greatest moments; to hit the snooze button one too many times and, through no one’s fault but our own, miss out on that which was ours all along — if only we had wanted it enough to get up and go for it.

Perhaps this little poem, relatively unknown and dwarfed by it’s “brother’s” widespread fame, might be all the incentive you need to get with the program.

One night I had a wondrous dream,
one set of footprints there was seen.
The footprints of the Lord they were,
but mine were not upon the shore.

Then some stranger prints appeared,
and I asked, “What have we here?”
These prints were large and round and neat,
much too big to be my feet.

“My child,” He said in tender tone,
“For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
but you refused a step to take.

“You would not learn, you would not grow;
the way of faith you would not know.
So, though I love you oh so dear,
I stopped and dropped you on your rear!”

You see, in Life there comes a time
when one must try, and one must climb;
when one must rise and take a stand,
Or leave their butt prints in the sand!

Hey, isn’t it time you got with the program? No more slumbering around with indefinite mind, waffling here and there, yawning away the epic days in which you are placed by God. Wake up from your sleep, and shake off the slumber from your life. Your presence is needed now more than ever!”

Well that was a challenge to me anyway!

Stuart