Love and respect

Following up our talk on Husbands and wives, we highly recommend Love and Respect By Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. A Focus on the Family Publication

The book takes further our discussion of the Ephesians 5:22-33 passage applying God's blueprint for marriage to real life situations. It explores how married men and women ought to live and is practical in applying good biblical teaching to the reality of marriage in the real world.

A wife longs to feel loved, A husband longs to be respected

"The road to a lasting love and respect marriage is a lifelong one, and there is no way you can travel it in your own strength. The task is overwhelming, and you need the help from your heavenly Father, who knows your heart. if you want to do your marriage as unto Christ, you must ask Christ for help. Remember, Jesus said apart from me you can do nothing...."

Ten AM move to Rosalie Update

You might be wondering where we are at with TenAM’s proposed move to Rosalie. We have been waiting for a number of issues to fall into place at the School side of things. At the School Council Meeting last Thursday, Principal Mike Lasscock confirmed three things:

1. The P& C will build a storage shed funded by them, but with space for 300 chairs for our Sunday use. (We plan to buy the chairs to share with the School)

2. St. Matt’s is welcome to use the undercover area on a Sunday for TenAM. An appropriate written agreement is being drafted.

3. Projects to upgrade the undercover area will be approved by School Council on a project by project basis. We are investigating all purpose carpeting and sealing for weather.

This means our expected financial commitment will be significantly lower than the initial proposal of a jointly funded bricked storage area. December looks the most likely start date when school finishes, which would give us Christmas Holidays to leave the chairs up in the undercover area and settle in.

From our point of view this moves us to phase 2 where we need formalise and finalise our logistics, and more importantly we need to plan our deliberate outreach to the community from this new platform.
A more detailed timetable will be distributed in the next couple of weeks.

We invite you to a planning meeting for TenAM outreach Sunday 14th September 2:00pm-4:00pm.

Please See Gavin or Kanishka or Khim for any questions

Gavin

Workshops for Blokes

We are preaching on marriage and families in the next couple of weeks.

We are having complimentary workshops to follow up the topics for topic and application:

1. How to Love your wife 7:45 pm to 9:30pmish Thursday, 4th September.

2. How to lead your kids 7:45 pm to 9:30pmish Wednesday, 24th September.

RSVP Church office 9381 2640

St Matthew's office@stmattsshentonpark.org.au

Caring for Your Missionary #1 Prayer

We are all members together of the ‘household of Christ’; co-workers and partners in the gospel. “As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts to grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” (Ephesians 4:16, NLT). We therefore bear the obligations to care for each other as we are interdependent on each other. The St Matthew’s Missions Working Group hopes that by now you have chosen a missionary from the board in the foyer to ‘adopt’.

As a sending church we have the privilege of being able to care for our missionaries in partnership with their mission agency and their receiving church. We should take our responsibility seriously and ensure that we support the people we send.

How can we do this? The most important thing we can do is to pray for your missionary. As well as praying for your missionary on your own, you can help by bringing your missionary’s prayer needs before other people.

Here are some prayer ideas:

Include a prayer for your missionary in your family prayer & Bible study.
Distribute their prayer points and newsletters to members of your congregation and small groups.
Pass on prayer points to the Kid’s Church leaders. CMS missionary Sue Jaggar recently received drawings from Sunday School children, and was delighted to know a six year old was praying for her.
Collect email addresses so that the mission agency can email your adopted missionaries’ prayer points directly to individual people.
Join a missions prayer group or start one of your own. St Matthew’s currently has mission prayer groups that meet on a Monday night and every Thursday morning.
Encourage people to take part in mission events, eg CMS’s annual Missionary Awareness Conference.

Check up on recent prayer points on your missionary’s blog or the mission agency’s website. Most agencies offer regular prayer point updates through email subscriptions or RSS feeds. Let missionaries know about your prayers—Russell and Kay Clark, missionaries in Tanzania, said “the best thing is to hear that we are being prayed for”.
Khim Harris

Postcard from Groote:The Anindilyakwa Bible

Dear Gavin

I was so excited to be able to give away this copy of the
Anindilyakwa mini-Bible on behalf of you and the CMS-WA group.
Veronica came around to my place to have some fellowship, supported shyly by her husband who stayed well and truly in the background. We did some practice reading in Kriol and English, because Veronica is a Kriol speaker from Numbulwar. Then she thought she might have a go at Anindilyakwa, but it was very obvious that her language skills were not up to it, and gradually her husband came closer and closer, because he grew up at Angurugu, thought they live over on Bickerton Island now. He could recognise and understand easily, and he started to support her efforts.

I was able to have a talk with him, sensed he was interested in reading more, and decided this was the right time to give away mini- bible no 1.

Since then he has joined the baptism class. Wonderful, huh?

Gavin, I am audaciously asking for help for Linguistics. The Gospel of John has been translated and revised. There are no copies left for the GE Christians to buy. Before I left for holidays I was only able to photocopy some of the Gospel of John in Anindilyakwa, and I really wanted to get that all finished. Do you think there are people in your church who could take what I have done, plus the rest of the masters, and complete the books?? I could get the Linguistics workers to post it all down to you and then you could post all the completed ones back in installments, or lots of them could wait until someone was travelling north. What do you think??


Many blessings

Elizabeth


GP: Let me know if you can help me put some John's Gospels together for the Groote Aboriginals!

Missions – the Ultimate Goal?

Today you can make a simple decision that could have a Kingdom impact. The St Matthew’s Missions Working Group is inviting you to join in God’s mission and ours by adopting a missionary. This is an easy, three step process:
1. Decide who you are going to adopt by checking out the pictures on the walls or reading their biographies at www.stmattsshentonpark.org.au
2. See someone at the Global Gospel Focus Adoption Desk in the foyer today
3. Read the next four editions of the church bulletin to learn how you can care for your adopted missionary including by:
• praying for them;
• keeping in touch with them;
• treating them; and
• looking after their financial needs.

During this month of Global Gospel Focus the St Matthew’s Missions Working Group is on a mission for missions! However, the most crucial issue in missions is the centrality of God in the life of the church. Our main goal is the worship of God. Mission exists because worship doesn’t. Well-known author John Piper puts it this way:

Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.

Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. “The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad; let the distant shores rejoice!” (Psalm 97:1). “May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy!” (Psalm 67:3–4).

But worship is also the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. Missionaries will never call out, “Let the nations be glad!” who cannot say from the heart, “I rejoice in the Lord…I will be glad and exult in you, I will sing praise to your name, O Most High” (Psalm 104:34; 9:2). Missions begins and ends in worship.

We need to be centred on the exultation of the majesty and beauty of God in order to have a desire to “declare his glory among all the nations” (Psalm 96:3). Let us make the worship of God our main focus. Only then will we start to have a global gospel focus. (John Piper, Let the Nations be Glad! Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003, p. 17),

Khim Harris

Pop Quiz for Shenton Christian Council

Shenton Chrisitian Council invites you to

POP Quiz (Not your average Quiz Night...)

Hi Everyone! It's time to get together a table for the annual QUIZ NIGHT in support of ... well, Shane & Myself ! (School Chaplains).
It is also a fun night to relax together and enjoy a bit of rivalry ... (Wed. Week 7)
Either get a team of 8 together (including partners) or just let Steve know you're keen to come and we'll form a team of 'rogue' individuals.

This year promises to be a much more interactive/stimulating POP QUIZ

with Funky QuizMaster Gav - Video & Music challenges! :)
Try and RSVP by the end of next week if you can ...

Steve Ritchie 0421 478 507

Laurel Collin 9381 8095

Cheers Steve Ritchie

Postcard from Dongara

Hi prayer partners,

Thanks again for your partnership in prayer for the Lord’s work in Dongara and Mingenew.
We’re back from holidays and straight into all sorts of opportunities to love Jesus and our community. A few things we’re looking forward to in 2008 include:

• the birth of our third child in July (Tyler and Penny’s second due
in May)
• HOLIDAYFEST mission in April school holidays
(a team from St. Matt’s 5pm service will be helping us)
• beginning a refined ALPHA course after mission

If you want to catch up on more Malcolm family life happenings then check out our blog site at:

malcolmsindongara.blogspot.com

Yours in Christ,

Matt and Corinne Malcolm (and Kate and Sam!)

Give thanks and praise:

• For Corinne and Penny’s pregnancies
• For the new couples, families and other faithful folk at Dongara church – who continue to be a great encouragement in their desire to grow in Christ
• For the faithful few at Mingenew church (services now twice a month)
• For Tyler, Penny and Elijah Swartzentruber – who continue to be a great support and encouragement to us
• For Corinne and Penny making great contacts with young mums through
playgroup
• For Mark’s enthusiasm to get to know and understand Jesus in the
Bible (meeting with Matt each week to read the Bible)
• That family life is lots of fun in the Malcolm household (mainly due
to kid’s sleeping well)

Please ask God:

• That we might be faithful to Jesus and to his gospel truth
• That the little ones forming in Corinne and Penny’s wombs would be
healthy and safe – and that they might know the Lord Jesus and as they grow up
• For help by God’s Spirit to share our lives and his gospel with our community
• For Mark – that he might come to know Jesus as Lord and Saviour
• For HOLIDAYFEST – that many would come and be interested enough to join APLHA
• For the ALPHA course (running on Tues nights in term 2) that people
might become Christian – from in the church and outside it
• For good habits of Bible reading and prayer together as a family and
individually for Matt and Corinne – that Kate and Sam might grow up to know and love Jesus
• For perseverance with the faithful few at Mingenew church
• That the new couples and families at Dongara church might be regular
in attendance and might grow in the truth of the Lord Jesus
• For wisdom and faithfulness as Matt visits the elderly and those with pastoral issues
• For help in our continued meeting of people from the community, that we might be a light among the darkness
• For strength and faithfulness in Tyler as he continues to serve at Geraldton Grammar School
• For faithfulness and perseverance as Matt teaches SRE (Scripture) at Dongara and Mingenew Primary Schools

Matt, Corinne, Kate and Sam Malcolm
Parish of Dongara/Mingenew
PO Box 126
Dongara WA 6525
Wk/Hm - 9927 2107 Fax - 9927 2807
Mobile - 0429 888 984

Postcard from Groote Eylandt

Thank you all so much for upholding us in prayer. We praise God for his gracious love to us. Mike appears to be recovering well, although the chemo has taken its toll. We greatly appreciate your partnership with us in the gospel, especially as we enter this new phase of ministry back at Nungalinya College in Darwin.

Give thanks to God with us for:
Good results for our son Mike thus far. He will have another bone marrow biopsy in about 4 to 6 weeks to get a final clearance.
Renewed interest in becoming followers of Christ from folk in Angurugu and Milyakburra with quite a number asking for baptism.
Chance for a a two week holiday at the beginning of September before leaving Groote.
The Umbakumba church want to take us for a camp at a special place we all love with a final communion service to which both Alyangula, and Angurugu churches have been invited.
A renewed enthusiasm by the deacons at Angurugu as a result of the post ordination training week in June in Darwin. The Alyangula Bible Study group continues to grow and their enthusiasm to study God’s word and pray for their community.
Pray with us for:
Colleen Mamarika, deacon from Umbakumba. She has been having some significant health issues and is back in hospital in Darwin.
Housing at Umbakumba for Kerry McLean and in turn housing for ourselves in Darwin.
Mike and Elisa, Rebekah, Isaac and Hannah, as they adjust to having Mike home from hospital and as he recovers from the chemotherapy. Please pray that his blood levels will continue to increase in the ways they should.
For those families preparing for baptism. That they will understand deeply what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
For two couples to apply to CMS to work on Groote Eylandt, one to work with the Bible translation team and the other to do youth work.
For the Alyangula church without a minister from 26th September. Please pray for a young minister and family to come and work in the Alyangula Parish.
For Derrick Scanlan, new Shire Services Manager at Umbakumba. He is a Christian man and has many difficult issues to deal with as he takes up this new role.

Thank you for your fellowship in the gospel with us. We pray that our loving God will provide all that you need at this time as you seek to serve Him.

With love
Rob and Leanna Haynes
Rob & Leanna HaynesPO Box 723ALYANGULA NT 0885Tel: 08 8987 6421Rob Mob: 0428 811 280Leanna Mob: 0428 912 404Email: rlhaynes@cms.org.au

A Prayer for the Olympics

Prayer for the Olympics:

Everlasting God, giver of joy and source of abundant life, we pray for all who are involved in the Beijing Olympic Games, : We pray for their safe-keeping and well-being; and as we celebrate the skill and resolve of those who compete we pray that, throughout the Games, there would be a striving for excellence, a spirit of humility and fair play, and a respect for others, and that all who wait on you may find their strength renewed in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Dr Who? No it's our Dr Dan

And now for something completely different....from the sublime to the ridiculous

Our own Dr. Dan Claughton is competing for Perth's most dreamy Doctor in a tongue in cheek competition with Em & Wippa at 92.9 FM

Click here to vote for him ...you will notice Dr. Alex Fergie too!

Click here to vote for Dan

Go Dr. Dan!

A call to pray for Aboriginal churches

Australian Christians have been called on to intervene – in prayer – as a crisis faces Aboriginal churches. The call coincides with the launch of One Land, One Saviour, a new book on ministry among Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land. The book is a collection of essays by 13 contributors, who between them represent more than 300 years service among Aboriginal people.
Its release comes at a significant time as recent developments have put Aboriginal issues back on the political agenda, and back in the public consciousness. “Part of the solution is a four-letter word – jobs” says co-editor Steve Etherington who has 30 years of experience in the Top End.
Mr Etherington says the drift of Aboriginal people to urban settings is accelerating and without employable skills, more demeaning dependency is the prospect....

Click here for full article

The Groote Eylandt Report

The Groote Eylandt Report

Following our Groote Eylandt Debrief, We are making available a PDF version of our report for your information, prayers, and action.

Click here for PDF version

Please pray for CMS involvement in Aboriginal missions in the top end

Gavin, Ian, Margaret, Wendy

Lambeth 2008: Success, Failure, or Mexican Standoff

The Lambeth 2008 Conference

It is a bit hard to tell how Lambeth 2008 went from the media commentary surrounding it. Some call it a success with the Archbishop of Canterbury calling for a moratorium on inappropriate practices in the Communion (especially directed to North America on one hand, and inappropriate intervention and oversight by conservatives on the other). Some call it a failure suggesting real difficulties and divisions where not seriously addressed. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. It seems more like a 'Mexican stand-0ff'. Conservative Anglican bishops will be more reluctant to accept the rhetoric because of what happened after Lambeth 1998. It seems hard to see revisionist Anglicans being deflected from their agendas.

Click here for a scan of different responses

We will have to wait and see what happens next in "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of Anglican politics.

GP

When too much Sport is barely enough

The 2008 Smith Lecture

The Smith Lecture is a pre-evangelistic opportunity to move your slightly sceptical friends toward giving the gospel a fair hearing. The lecture can provide a topic for further discussion between you and your guests. Consider going out to dinner together afterwards to talk with them further.

The Topic
"I love my sport. Australians love sport. Many of us live for sport-to watch, play and win-because sport seems to promise such great things. The question is how much does it deliver on the dream?" Dr David Rowbottom.

Our Speaker
Dr David Rowbottom has a doctorate in human movement and has worked with some of Australia's elite sports men and women. He is currently the senior pastor of Curtin Community Church.

Details

Thursday 21st August
Time: 5:30pm food & drinks
6:30-7:30pm lecture
Venue: Central Park Building Foyer & Theatrette
Cost: $25 (this doesn't appear on the invitation, so you have the option of paying for your guests).

RSVP: Monday 18th August

The Groote Eylandt Report!

Hello St.Matts friends,
This is a quick reminder that as part of the Global Gospel Focus
We are reporting on the Groote Eylandt Trip and opportunities that St. Matt's may have to partner with aboriginal ministries.

Monday 4th 7:45pm at Church

Here is the rough program:

7:45 Arrive
8:00 CMS 100 years of topend ministry
8:05 Ministry opportunities amongst top-end Aboriginals: Gavin
8:20 Challenges with God's Word and many languages: Ian
8:35 Reflections of the Groote Trip: Wendy
8:40 How can we partner in this ministry?
8:45 Question Time
8:55 Prayer time

Ian Malcolm, Wendy Morris, And Gavin Parsons will be sharing
See you there !
Gavin