Emerging Pastor

This was a rather large weekend for me. I started off on Friday night where I spoke to a local youth group about, well me. It's been a while since I've just given a flat out testimony of God's work in my life and I found myself sketching out the time from my conversion in my late teens to now and once again marveling at just how good God has been to me.

The results were good, I lifted a little bit of material from my Sunday sermon and challenged them about where they were heading in life (I guess that's standard fare for teenage talks) and specifically challenged them in their Spiritual ambition.

Afterwards I was talking one on one with some of the kids. One girl pulled me aside and asked me the question "How do you hear from God". It was great to be streched by the question. She didn't want a prepacked answer but a reflection of my life with God based on what she heard in the talk. Who said kids today dont listen :)

The questions continued on Sunday when one of the youth leaders passed on questions from their Sunday morning get together. Things like "Why is my school Calvanist, they keep saying everybody has a choice to be saved" which I thought was quite insightful!

I preached Sunday morning and even used some illustrations that I blogged about last week :) I spoke about identity theft and based it loosely around 1 Peter 2:4-10. It was well recieved and made people think which is my number 2 goal in preaching (number 1 being that what I say are words of hope).

The big idea I was trying to hammer home is that are Spiritual Identities are in being God's holy priest. We have been created with a plan in mind and work to do in the world.

I'm going to post the full text later in the week after I format it up.

(Source)

God has been teaching me a big lesson lately and it's not one I think I'm ready to learn. It's all about time.

A few weeks ago our preaching pastor and I were talking about his workload. He is about to finish up his work with our church and has ramped up his ministry in other areas. At the moment there is an overlap and he asked me the question "How do you fit it all in". I stood their and answered him honestly, "You take the time you would devote to your number 1 priority and divide it over all the lower priorities". By that I meant you steal time from your family and spend it on the other jobs we must do.

Doing this is ok in for a short time because there will be times when we must simply finish a task or put food on the table. Doing this for the long haul is not ok, and I've being doing it for the long haul.

These past few weeks, since answering that question honestly I have been physically, mentally and Spiritually exhausted. I need to take a break but every time I find time something else pops up to fill the newly created gap.

I guess I'm asking you quazi-anonymous people to pray for me. For strength, for wisdom and for endurance.

When I was worship leading this Sunday morning it was a real struggle to do it. There was a mini-revolt from some singers because they didn't like the songs, others were pressuring me to make changes. I prayed for God to lead me as I lead the church but midway during the service I lost my grip on Him and never quite recovered.

I feel empty inside, the tank is dry.

At the moment there are two things keeping me going. The love of my wife and Jesus' promise that the well of living water he has caused to spring up inside me doesn't not diminish but rather overflows from me into the lives of others.

The truth is, I'm still seeing that overflow into other peoples lives. I still see God effectively ministering through me to those who He brings across my path even though I am broken and empty inside.

I am a cracked pot still leaking out his love.

In my last post I mentioned that I was a very busy boy last weekend. We had a Christmas in July where a lot of people from the soup kitchen we run came along.

We were blessed to have many of them visit with us the next Sunday morning, this happend to be a day that I was preaching.

It was a great privellege to have these people who have never darkend the door of a church before to come come and hear me speak about God and the wonderful gift of life he has for us all, and as promised I have published the text of the sermon on the website for you to read and critique.

The message is The Holy Spirit, God within us.

My prayer for it was that it would be words of hope and words of life for those who need it.

Appreciate your feedback.

As I've said before, my church has seriously beefed up it's commitment to the disenfranchised in our community. We run an outreach to prostitutes on the Great Western Highway as well as a soup kitchen to a group of housing commission flats down the road along with various other ministries that offer practical help to people.

I'm not directly involved in either of the major ministry focuses although I do have a great deal of ancillary contact with the ones that have started visiting or attending our church.

This weekend we invited a whole heap of them over to our place to have lunch with us, Christmas in July. Most of these people had never darkened the door of our church before so it was an important time for us and one I was asked to be involved in.

The close contact I was blessed to have with these people from our local community has changed forever my perceptions of the expectations of the needy in our community.

The people I met and had lunch with this Saturday are hungry for hope.