It is time for the World's most useful Catalogue !

It’s here! TEAR Australia’s Arguably, the World’s Most Useful Gift Catalogue is online now at http://www.usefulgifts.org/

With more ethical, unusual and useful gifts than ever before - plus new Green Gifts. Green Gifts are gifts that benefit our planet and help fight poverty. They feature the Green Gift symbol on their gift card or e-card. A number of gifts in this year’s catalogue are identified with the Green Gift symbol, including Tree Seedlings, Fuel-Efficient Stove, Organic Vegetable Garden and Disaster Relief & Preparedness.

How it works:
Every gift is part of a larger community development program run by one of TEAR’s Christian partners overseas. All projects are designed to help poor and marginalised people solve their own problems.

What you receive:
For every item you purchase, TEAR Australia will send you either a traditional printed card or an e-card as a token of your gift. All gifts are tax-deductible. You can start browsing online now at http://www.usefulgifts.org/ or you can order by phone on (toll free) 1800 244 986.

Carol Elias will be setting us up at 10am for the Tear fund Catalogue.

Kids Church are wanting to rasie enough money to set up Bee-keeping for a couple of villages

Think about how you might use this gift at Christmas!

Stay tuned

Gavin

An update from the Seccombes

Reading David and Lorraine Seccombe's letter was much like going on a lightning world trip. Maybe Kanishka and his family may have felt a little like that after their month-long whizz around. I was left feeling exhausted after reading his 4-page epistle. But I was also left feeling how important it is that we as a Church continue to pray for David and support the work of George Whitefield College in Capetown, South Africa. He is clearly a visionary with a truly global perspective.

His letter highlighted the special way God is at work among the Chinese people and also the fact that the Korean churches are sending huge numbers of missionaries to every corner of the globe. He speaks of the resistance to the Gospel among Thai Buddhists but the hope expressed by Thai Christian pastors that there would be a Christian congregation in every village by 2010. I happen to know how far that is from being realised in this year of 2007.

He speaks of the sea change in missions when missionaries are not just going from the West to the East, but increasingly from the East to the West where the church has so often lost its first love. He also speaks of the thrill of meeting in Frankfurt, Germany the principals of 105 evangelical theological college in the emerging world, coming as they did from Eastern Europe, the Indian Sub-continent, South America and Asia.

When the focus of his letter settled on GWC he has asked us to pray for the development of the College. Despite carefully prepared submissions to the Minister of Eduation they only were granted 'provisional' registration as a Private Higher Education Institution. So we need to pray specifically that full registration will be granted when further submissions are made.

Then there is the pressing need for more Africans on the faculty. This is David's great longing and matches the increasing demands in South African society. But the right people have to be found and that is not easy. Let us join with him in prayer for that. David praises the Lord for gifts that have made it possible to deal with some, but not all, of the Colleges debts. The Education Department of South Africa is very interested to see that the College is financially stable.

GWC is a vital and strategic insitution to help the Church in Africa towards maturity. Let us pray for it and the Seccombe family . Three of David and Lorraine's children are now wanting to base in Perth and David and Lorraine will be here for some months next year when they take leave from the College . So we hope to see a lot more of them if their plans develop as they hope.

Let us pray for them and the College at which they are making such a key contribution.

Blodwyn

Pray for workers in the harvest

Matthew's Gospel records:

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." Matthew 9:36-38

Our missions focus this post is on the urgent need for more missionaries to take the Gospel to neglected frontiers. We are all so aware of the need all around us in Australia, that it it is harder to be aware of the large groups of people who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ even once.

Recently the International Director of OMF has put out an appeal for 900 new workers for East Asia by the year 2011. He asks us to consider the 10 million Hui people in China where there is no church at all. And what about the 23 million people in North Korea still closed to the Gospel but open for professional Australian Christians to work there. He points out that in modern Japan there are 628 towns and villagesw without a church, including 64 towns or cities with a population of more than 20,000. There are 15 million working class people in Taiwan who are the backbone of their highly industrialised society but are unreached with the Gospel.

Then there are the one million ethnic Khmers in NE Thailand and the 1.9 million Rakhine people in Myanmar. And I have not completed the list because I fear you will be overwhelmed by the figures. But it seems so wrong that there are so many of us who know and enjoy our relationship with our Saviour Jesus Christ and yet there are so many in other parts of the world who have never been able to make that choice - because they have never heard.

Let us pray, as the Lord indeed instructed us to pray, that more workers would step up to the plate and go and tell the Gospel to the people in the neglected frontiers. OMF is praying for 900, other mission agencies are praying likewise for more workers. Let us join with them in this prayer and Go!

Blodwyn

Godly voting

Sandy's 5 tips (not in order) to help Christian vote Christianly

1. The importance of character
The privacy of politicians should be respected. But the Bible says a leader’s character and beliefs, including religious beliefs, will effect how he or she acts. If a political leader breaks a promise to his wife, why would we expect him to keep a promise to the electorate? Ditto for drunkenness or the physically and verbally aggressive. And where will a defiant atheist get his or her values from? The public-private split cannot be total.

2. The importance of an attitude of glad tax-paying
See Romans 13; Luke 20:20-26 etc. Christians shouldn't just vote for whomever will reduce taxes most or otherwise give them the biggest electoral bribe. If we want good services (health, education, police, roads etc.) we should be willing to pay. Self-interest, though everywhere present, is a bad way to determine what is right and good and helpful for a nation.

3. The importance of the dignity of all human life

The Bible notes the crucial importance for a nation’s leaders to act with justice and compassion and especially to defend the defenceless (widows, orphans, the unborn, elderly, disabled, refugees, detainees, etc.)! This has implications for abortion and euthanasia debates, but also for foreign aid and immigration policies. I suspect that we must even defend the rights of those with whom we disagree or feel threatened by (e.g. terrorist suspects), if those same rights are to mean anything for ourselves in the long run.

4. The importance of Christian (& other religious) liberties

1 Timothy 2:1-6 urges our prayers for leaders, but also indicates the advantage of a society which is ordered so as to enable Christians to lead quiet and peaceful lives in all godliness, rather than in a climate of hostility or persecution. This part of the Bible seems to imply that there are consequent advantages in an orderly society for the spread of God’s life-giving gospel, which Christians believe will benefit society.

5. The importance of family friendly policies

This operates both at a morality level (e.g. Christians will not wish to see gay marriage or adoption; and prefer policies that make reconciliation in troubled marriages more likely than divorce). But it also operates at an economic level, e.g. by making it easier for mothers (or fathers) to stay home rather than having to work for a second income; also easier for single parents.

This is an extract from Sandy Grant's full Article "Why we must vote christianly..."

http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/indepth/articles/why_we_must_vote_christianly_and_not_just_for_the_cdp/

39 Articles on the Value of God's Word

Article VI, Of the sufficiency of the Holy Scripture for Salvation, immediately establishes Holy Scripture as the final authority in matters of salvation. The article sets forth:

Holy Scripture contained all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation… .

Earlier Cranmer wrote in the preface to the Great Bible of 1540, the Holy Scriptures were “the fat pastures of the soul,” and the “most holy relic that remain upon the earth.” The 1553 Ordinal, as a particular ceremony of the church, further captures this aspect of the doctrine of Scripture articulated by The Articles:

The Bishoppe: Be you perswaded that the holy Scriptures contein sufficiently al doctrine required of necessitie for eternal salvacion, throughe faith in Jesu Christe? And are you determined with the saied scriptures, to enstructe the people committed to your charge, and to teache nothyng, as required of necessitie, to eternal salvacion, but that you shalbe perswaded may be concluded, and proved by the scripture?

Aunswere: I am so perswaded, and have so determyned by Gods grace.

How does this change the way we read the Holy Scriptures?

Gavin

Your King Comes: Zechariah 9-14

11/11 Study 1 Your King Comes
Zechariah 9:1-17


18/11 Study 2 The cornerstone, the peg, & the bow
Zech 10:1-11:3

25/11 Study 3 The Good Shepherd
Zechariah 11: 4-17

2/12 Study 4 Gaze upon the pierced One
Zech 12:1-14

9/12 Study 5 Strike the Shepherd
Zechariah 13:1-9

16/12 Study 6 Our God Reigns
Zechariah 14:1-21

Stay Tuned For this Talk Series, It will also be accompanied by a brief study Book to help you think things through. We will be looking at how the Prophecies of Zechariah Speak of Jesus and apply to us !

Gavin