ST JUDE'S ARTICLES

Looking around the congregation on Sunday, the statistics tell me that in a congregation of 50 people, 10 people will be struggling with mental health challenges. Throughout October, if you watch ABC TV or spend any time on social media, you’re going to know about Mental Health Month. Unfortunately, being a Christian, and going to church, doesn’t make us immune from issues with mental health.

I am yet to meet someone who has Chronicles as their favourite book in the Bible. If that’s you, come and say ‘hello’! In fact, many lifelong Christians have never read the book, and even fewer have heard a sermon series on Chronicles.

On the way up to Sydney, there’s a billboard that says Read your Bible! I don’t think I’m alone in saying that it doesn’t excite me to go and read my Bible. I just feel like I’m being berated. This might surprise you, but not many of us are great Bible readers.

A few months ago in our monthly Newsletter, I wrote about what it means that at the heart of our identity at St Jude’s we are “Evangelical, Reformed, and Anglican”. In this article I want to add to that description that we are also Pentecostal, Charismatic and Spirit-Filled.

Our culture is changing radically, and the speed of that change seems to only be intensifying. Living the Christian life and speaking up for Jesus today might seem a little bit like you are all of sudden driving on the wrong side of the road. We have not changed, but it seems that the cultural flow of our society has changed so that we are now living more and more against the direction of our society.

I often speak to people who find the ideas and values of Christianity appealing, but who struggle with the events of Christianity. Their preference would be to extract those values, see them taught and modeled in schools, the wider community, and in public life, but to leave the question of historical truth aside. However, the events of Easter remind us that this is not possible.

It was a Friday night of my HSC year when I snapped my cruciate ligament in my left knee while youth group leading. I won’t explain the game, but it was called “Ball of Death” and involved a medicine ball filled with rocks and about 3 meters of rope. Recovery to near full mobility was at least ten months, two operations, and enough time to perfect some balancing tricks with crutches. Living without your body’s full capacity is complicated and difficult.

At a fundamental level the church of Christ around the world is united to him by an unbreakable spiritual bond. All those who submit to Jesus as Lord and Saviour are part of his church. Yet at the level of the local church we need to put in place structures and procedures to organise our life together. We need rules and policies to help the local church operate smoothly and safely, and we need legal and administrative arrangements to organise fellowship between local churches.

Clearly, there are many different types of churches and denominations of churches. In the light of Jesus’ call to unity, in some ways it is right to be saddened by this reality. The divisions between churches are often over minor matters that ought not to create such separation. Although some of those divisions are simply the result of different histories or patterns of immigration and healthy fellowship continues between Christians across those denominations (as we certainly have in the Highlands).