myer's park clean up

This past Saturday a work team from City Presbyterian Church gathered for about 4 hours to help re-beautify and restore a part of our city. About 12 of us went about the task of clearing rubbish from Myer's Park. To my mind this was a profoundly spiritual activity. The Bible says that humans are to be stewards and caretakers of creation. It also says that the people of God are to seek the good of the places we dwell and seek to be a presence of good and blessing in the midst of the city. While there's much more we can, should, and hopefully will be doing; our time in Myer's Park was a good start to our church being what we should be in our community.

house church

So... I've been pretty crap about posting lately. No excuses really, I've just gotten out of the habit I suppose. I'm not even sure if anyone reads this any more.

Whatever the case may be on that front, I realised that I haven't really said much on the blog about what's been happening with our work here in Auckland. In a nutshell, things are progressing slowly but steadily. Most of you probably know that we named the church plant last year. The church is called City Presbyterian Church and the main thing that's been happening with CPC is our weekly house church gathering.

House church happens on Sunday evenings and is basically a hybrid between a small group meeting and a worship service that meets in a house (duh). We meet each week at 6PM and share a meal together. After the meal we move into a more formal time of worship. No music or communion yet, but lot's of prayer, responsive readings, corporate confession and assurance of grace, and a time of teaching and discussion. We're currently studying the "Sermon on the Mount." We've had between 15-22 people attending, both Christians and those investigating the faith. Every fourth Sunday (or thereabouts) we have our normal meal and then a time of open discussion where the goal is to seek to give honest answers to honest questions. This is a no holds barred time where no question or objection about Christianity is off limits.

One of our supporting churches in the States asked us to put a video together for them to show to people to give a picture of what house church is. I've posted it below for those of you who are interested. It's definitely not professional (particularly the audio) but you'll get the gist of it. Unfortunately the night we recorded stuff was one of our low attendance evening. The lounge is usually a bit more full. Anyway, hope this helps the three or so of you still reading get a better picture of what's happening here.

easter 2010

“Sometimes people approach me and say, ‘I really struggle with this aspect of Christian teaching. I like this part of Christian belie, but I don’t think I can accept that part.’ I usually respond: ‘If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” That is how the first hearers felt who heard the reports of the resurrection. They knew that if it was true it meant we can’t live our lives any way we want. It also meant we don’t have to be afraid of anything, not Roman swords, not cancer, nothing. If Jesus rose from the dead, it changes everything.” – Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, 202.

“Proposing that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead was just as controversial nineteen hundred years ago as it is today. The discovery that dead people stayed dead was not first made by the philosophers of the Enlightenment…

“The early Christians did not invent the empty tomb and the ‘meetings’ or ‘sightings’ of the risen Jesus in order to explain a faith they already had. They developed that faith because of the occurrence, and convergence, of these two phenomena. Nobody was expecting this kind of thing; no kind of conversion-experience would have generated such ideas; nobody would have invented it, no matter how guilty (or forgiven) they felt, no matter how many hours they pored over the scriptures. To suggest otherwise is to stop doing history and to enter into a fantasy world of our own….” – N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 16, 707.

“The biblical authors were committed to the historicity of the events they related. They knew that faith without real world, historical fact, is not faith but mere superstition…

“It is possible that people can refuse to believe [the Bible’s] testimony, functioning as if Jesus’ tomb has a No Vacancy sign hanging outside it. It is also possible that we verbally affirm the resurrection and still fail to be changed by it. The Spirit’s work is essential. But when he works… the resurrection radically transforms our lives. The resurrection, the key to understanding the biblical story, becomes the key to our story as well, the key to a new way of understanding and living in the world.” – Michael D. Williams, Far As the Curse is Found, 12, 19.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! May you find joy and peace in the historical, physical, real resurrection of our historical, physical, real Saviour this day.