Hi church family.
We have a special guest speaker with us this Sunday. Pastor Dave Groenenboom from Gateway Community Church will be visiting us and preaching. He has recently been appointed to a role at IJM (International Justice Mission) and will be relocating to Sydney later this year. It’ll be a blessing to have him minister at our church before wrapping up his time here in W.A. Alex Thompson, our Youth Coordinator, will be traveling down to Gateway to preach at the church of Pastor Dave – so basically we are doing a pulpit swap. Let’s pray for both of these men as they prepare for Sunday.
Please remember our ‘church wide training day’ scheduled for Sunday 9th September. It’ll be at most an hour after the morning service – from 11.30am to 12.30pm. We are still sorting out where all the different groups will. It seems the best plan would be to finalise the ‘meeting points’ the week of the 9th Sep’ so we can see what the weather is doing. If the forecast that week is for good weather we can use the outdoor places around church as well – so saving on the cost of renting lots of meeting rooms.
Why is this ‘training day’ so important? In our recent NCD survey – the one theme that kept on repeating through the results is that our members indicated they ‘are not being trained/equipped for their task at church.’ While we know that informal training was being done as needed, our leaders also agreed that we need to be more purposeful about training/equipping our teams. This church wide training day is simply a first step in the right direction. In a way we are starting the conversation within our teams to asses how we are doing, what can we improve, and how are we going to improve. It’ll also help us connect with one another and “consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” Hebrew 10:24
This ‘training day’ is not a compulsory event, but I would love for all of us to be a part of this initiative. If you are not yet in any of our “specialised” ministries – then consider coming along to hear what they are doing and asking question, so consider becoming involved. Also – check out the new small group starting with details listed on p4 of the newsletter.
Lastly – we are looking for someone who could help us with ordering printed T-shirts for some of our ministries. If you are good with something like this – please let me know. We need you to champion this project.
God bless you all
Pastor Joe