CHURCH FAMILY NEWS (postings in date order)
These bits n pieces (up to two-years on file) are gleaned from our in-house bulletin - to give a public idea of what lies at the heart of our church life - ie. that we are built on a relational model of Christian community, rather than performance model. Theologically, this is about sonship preceding servanthood... We do get to the doing stuff, yes - but the essence of our worth to God and one another is in the fact we are born of one and the same Spirit, and are equally valued by our heavenly Father, BEFORE we are differentiated by our God-given grace giftings. This deals a lot with the competitive spirit innate to our fallen nature.
October 2008 - It was a great day of cooking and feasting on Saturday 18th when 20 women met together to form cooking teams creating beef koftas, chilli corn fritters, sweet chicken nuggets, deep fried camembert, grilled coconut wings with satay sauce, ricotta and spinach scrolls, fresh spring rolls and California sushi.
September 2008 - 17 of our youth and leaders headed up to Budgewoi on the Central Coast for a camp on the last weekend of September. Here's a report from Jessica (one of the youth who attended): To learn something new, To have LOADS of fun, To learn how to make time for God, To make more time for Christ, To strengthen your walk with Christ, To pray and enjoy it, To eat a lot and not have to tell your parents how much junk food you actually did eat over the weekend, To have absolutely TOO much fun, To hold people down and have someone wax their legs or at least a small fraction of one, To swim in the beach, To be stupid and forget to put sunscreen on, To stay up late and be REALLY tired the next day, To befriend someone new, PLUS MORE! All these things took their place in our youth camp. An amazing weekend packed with lots of fun and laughs. Terri, Megan, James and Kefy, our youth leaders took us up to Budgewoi for a camp that changed my perspective on how I spend my time and how I should spend my time. ‘Do we have time?’ was the overall topic for the weekend. You may be wondering what it is that this question is really asking ‘do we have time?’ for what? For God. When James spoke on the Sunday afternoon, I learned that we do have time. Throughout the day we can be praying in our heads. God is our heavenly father, and just like our earthly father he loves us to be able to talk to him about anything and everything. But along with that, we still need to make time for reading the bible and praying aloud, just like we have to make time for everything else in our lives. Sometimes that even means we have to give something up, but when James said that he didn’t mean give up school to spend time with God. He meant to spend less time on the computer, spend less time on the phone. Spending time with God is essential.
August 2008 - Our Annual Women's Winter Weekend took place again at Lake Munmorrah. This year the theme was JOY and Maureen, Samantha & Kayleen shared on what they've learnt about the topic. On the Saturday night we had fun pampering each other with manicures and Janelle's home made facials.
July 2008 - It's winter - and that means a Concert! Wow! This one was really well-rehearsed and showcased some actually talented people - young and not-so-young! Go here for a photographic record of an excellent night (you'll need broadband coz the photos are all around 100kb and not thumb-nailed.
June 2008 - Hilary and Dharsh Williams were this years guests speakers at our annual church camp at Mount Victoria. We braved the cold weather outside and bathed in Hilary's teaching on the Book of Ephesians. Some of the men conquered the mountain side on their bikes (or did the mountain side conquer them?)
May 2008 - Our church hosted a "Building Safer Families" Workshop on a Saturday morning. Those who attended were equipped with information and tools to help build great families and prevent child abuse.
April
2008 - God
really blessed us with some perfect autumn weather on the weekend, with 19
dad’s, kid’s & others making the most of the opportunity to enjoy bush
walking, swimming, rock climbing and roughing it at the Upper Colo River
Reserve. Special achievement awards went to Jordan Burns for walking most of the
8k bushwalk, Chris Muscat for the best Monkey impression, Abigail & Samuel
for tree climbing, Mitchell Pavy for winning the fire lighting competition and
managing to worm his way out of washing up for the whole weekend. Special thanks
to Des for bringing his bar-b-q, Philip for all the fire wood, Ben Wright for
the lesson in treating snake bites and David DiIenno for managing to include a
boxing demonstration in our Sunday morning devotions (ask Philip how his ribs
are). The
February
2008 -
HNLC
hosted a men’s camp at a terrific venue on the shores of
January
2008 - 34 campers from our church and Mt Druitt Anglican joined
together for our annual Kangaroo Valley Camp at the free Bendeela picnic
grounds. This year the theme was "Living with Christ" for our
devotionals and "Who cares wins" for our challengers. Each day people
were nominated for their caring actions and one winner got the wear the
ceremonial necklace and eat chocolate. Ben Wright caught a six foot diamond
python which ?happily? posed for photos.
On Australia Day we picnic-ed at Chipping Norton Lakes. Lots
of people mingled under the cool gum trees. A group of keen cyclists, including
Micah, Samuel, Keziah and Abigail were led by Brian from Bristol St to the park,
and then on two separate rides around the park after lunch. Des, Tim and
Christopher slung mud at each other while the kids frolicked in the lake!
December 2007 - On Saturday 8th December we had a lovely combined churches end of year Christmas dinner and service at the Fellowship of Christ facility in Girraween. On December 27th a number of us met for a picnic at Parsley Bay in Vaucluse. A few of our men biked all the way there from Merrylands while the rest of resting under the trees and waited for them. Ten minutes of rain saw the park clear out but our youth kept playing soccer through it all!
November
2007 - Our 4th annual Women's Christmas Dinner was on Saturday
24th November. The theme for this year was 'Literature' and
the women dressed up as a book character - amongst them was Miss Marple, Poirot,
Pippi Longstocking, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Lucille Ball, Jane
Austen and Mr Chips. There was much frivolity with charades and book balancing.
Elizabeth Rensford started her talk on the value of literacy with a sign saying
"If you can read this, thank your teacher".
Also this month the LOUD Young Adults auctioned themselves off in pairs and
triplets to raise $650 for the Sparrow's Nest Orphanage in Mozambique.
October 2007 - Brian Rensford journeyed to Zimbabwe and Mozambique for the second time this year. Ben Wright joined him at the eleventh hour. They had a great time of ministry and were able to distribute much needed literature resources.
September 2007 - The band "One Debt Owing" joined us for a church concert where both the serious and the silly sides of our church life were on display. Brian - aka Ben, and Gavin - aka James, fought it out Rocky style!
August 2007 - Many of the Women of our church retreated to Lake Munmorah to reflect on the theme of JOY. Here is a poem constructed by them:
On the shores of Lake Munmorah on a special winters day,
The ladies’ from our New Life Church have come to stay and pray.
We all arrive in stages and chat and sew all night,
Our conversation is contagious until out goes the light. Well maybe!
We’ve chosen JOY to be our theme and learnt that it’s our choice to make,
There are times in life we want to scream, the choice of JOY is what’s at stake.
We all help in the kitchen and then we take a break,
While others go and get their crafts and sit down by the lake. Total bliss!
And then at night we come alive except for those who flake,
We get a message here and there; it’s from the Word we take.
Then someone says a funny thing and we laugh until we’re hoarse,
Then as the blessing start to flow it’s time to go on our departing course. Praise God!
June 2007 - John and Yvonne Walton, ministers from Palmerston North New Life Church in New Zealand, were the guest speakers at our annual church camp. They shared some wonderfully encouraging words about evangelism, discipleship and living in God's blessing. This year we camped at Eltham Park in Mt Victoria - although we saw no snow we were not short on for rain on the very wet weekend.
April 2007 - Brian and Elizabeth Rensford, along with Gavin Watts, left for six weeks ministry in Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
March 2007 - Lucas and Kylie Glover dedicated their daughter Rebekah Grace - her name means bound to God by grace.
February 2007 - We fondly farewelled the Hudson family as they transferred over to Hornsby Community Church. Paul and Carol each joined our church as single young people over 20 years ago. They married in 1987 and have since had 7 children: Jemimah, Thomas, Susannah, Luke, Nathaniel, Andrew and Mahalia. They were presented with the gift of a tray along with our warmest blessings.
January 2007 - A number of our youth, along with a few leaders, joined up with several from Mt Druitt Anglican for five days of camping at the Bendeela Picnic Ground near Kangaroo Valley. The intense heat was hard to escape as the river was only knee level deep at the campsite. We made daily trips into town to swim under the Hampden Bridge or at the township pools. Despite a small fireball we managed to avoid setting the valley alight. The theme for this years devotions was "Who is Jesus?".
November 2006 - Over 30 women attended our annual Women's Christmas Dinner - this year with an Islander Theme. Keziah, Janelle, Abigail and Jan McElroy vied for the longest hula-hoop but the prize was won by Laura Bradford. Clare Baldwin took home the best-dressed prized with her cute grass skirt and lei. All the women learnt some Hawaiian words and hula moves before partaking in a delicious feast. It was great to hear from Colleen Scott, visiting from New Zealand, who shared on her travels and ministry times in China.
October
2006 -
CAVING
REPORT: A party of 18 spent the October long weekend at Bungonia.
With the excellent bathroom and kitchen facilities it could hardly be
called camping. The days were glorious with the first night being
unbelievably cold. Fat possums visited during the night; Peter
spotted a dingo; spotlighting kangaroos; helicopter rescuing a lady from
Bungonia Gorge ; hot pancakes for breakfast - nothing like the smell of
cooking in the open air; bush walk to Bungonia Lookdown, with spectacular
views; and the kids played and played and played - tired vegemites! It
was all put to song around the campfire accompanied by Des on the guitar.
But the most exciting part was the caving. Armed with helmets and lights,
we followed our fearless leaders underground. Required such a lot of
trust! "What greater love has a man that he would lay down his
life" - came to mind, as Philip Doughty stretched his torso across a chasm
for the little children to crawl across his back to the other side, accompanied
by cries of "hey, get off me head!" THE BLOKES hit the hard
caves later and got themselves lost! There's something raw about devotions
in the bush. Ask
Kefas for a firsthand account of his intro to wild life Australia (as in feral
Des and Wombat Peter)…
August 2006 - We welcome Kefasi Makava, who has arrived from Zimbabwe on a Religious Workers Visa. He is here to concentrate on ministry to primary aged children and youth.
August 2006 - Many of the females went to the Women's Winter Weekend. Elizabeth Rensford gives the following report. Kathy Watts opened the Saturday session by handing out a ‘personal history’ sheet to each one of us to help us get to know each other better. We shared our history sheets over the weekend. Congratulations also go to Kathy who won the Spelling Bee ‘by a country mile’. Michelle Burns shared on ‘Passion, Intimacy, Abandonment and Romance with God’, Michele Bradford shared on ‘Raising Godly Children’, Joy Doughty on ‘The Bible is my handbook’ and Leone Devrell closed the Sunday afternoon session on ‘Where we live in God’ based on the scripture Psalm 103:7 “He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel”.
June 2006 - Our youth went to Lake Macquarie for the Big 6 Combined Youth Camp.
May 2006 - Ben Wright and Kayleen Pavy have announced their engagement. They plan to wed later this year. Jeremy and Linda Rensford have relocated to Shepparton, VIC, after Jeremy had served in Sydney for nine years. They are taking over responsibility for Jeremy's parents' church's youth. There was a great party on their last Sunday.
Easter 2006 - Sam Abalo was the speaker at out annual church family camp at Grace Lodge, Yarramundi. It was a time of great blessing, as Sam simply, but powerfully, communicated the heartbeat of God for our church and for us as individuals. Sam's wife, Enid, his children, Christopher, Christobel and Kenneth, and his mother-in-law were also a blessing as they mixed in and encouraged.