the junction

Steve continued his exploration of emerging questions at our July Gathering.

Acts 2 talks about communication, prayer, the Word and fellowship. The outcome of this was to make disciples.

What is making disciples supposed to do? What does a disciple look like? Could be called a student, trainee, apprentice - you are learning how to be a disciple.

In Acts, believers met together, there was a deep sense of awe. Is there that same sense when we meet? Can you still have it amid the laughter, eating and sharing that is the Junction?

Steve Swain continued on with some of the thoughts from the April Gathering.

At one extreme are the Traditional Answers and the other are Emerging Questions. Crossing them on the other plane are Practice and Theory. The sorts of questions being asked are:

• What is church?

• What is mission?

• What does faith look like in the 21st century?

• What is leadership?

• What is ministry?

• What is the difference between ministry and mission?

Traditional is the living faith of the dead.

At the last gathering, Jeff shared his dream for his ministry at the school. Here’s my notes.

Four years ago he felt the call to the local community. So in turn, he offered his services as a youth worker to the local secondary school in Noble Park. It was for three days, no pay and was accepted by the school - despite concerns about religion, which were worked through to the satisfaction of both sides.

Yesterday morning I took Maddy down to the Anzac Day service. In a sense we took the easy route and went to Berwick whose service was at 11am, rather than Narre Warren’s dawn service, although I plan to go to one there in future.

I can’t say I enjoyed it, although in a way I did, because of the things it made me think about.

Community: I am lousy at estimating crowd numbers, but I would guess that there was at least a thousand people there yesterday and that was apart from all those who participated in the march itself. And it was all about community.

What is the Junction about?

The Junction began as a group of people wanting to be Christians without the overactive church activities. Wanted to be Aussies in chuch loving God, but also Christian outside of church.

The Junction’s core values are Mission, Community, Disciplines and Mentoring with Love overarching it all.

In some ways, we are still working out who we are. We don’t have to do something, we can be something.

It was interesting to discover that on this Good Friday that the leaders of Australia’s main denominational churches had the theme of being alone in the services today.

It got me thinking as I was out with the company of our dog and my own thoughts. I am never truly alone. Even when I am by myself, I always have the presence of God with me. That presence resides in my spirit and was evident during my walk, through the wind in the trees and the flight of a butterfly, which flittered across my path for a time.

But this has only been made possible through the sacrifice that Jesus made.

Just a quick reminder, that due to the Labour Day holiday being at the end of the first weekend, our March Gathering has been scheduled later. It will be the following weekend - Sunday 14th March.

We’re back for 2010 with our first Big Gathering to be held this Sunday at our meeting place of choice - Doveton Neighbourhood Learning Centre.

Starting time is 10.30am as usual, more details will follow by email.

This year some of our Gatherings will not be held on the first Sunday as usual, due to clashing with school holidays or long weekends.

Some sad and challenging news about Carter our 7 year old.

For those who haven’t heard, Carter our 7 year old, has been diagnosed yesterday with “ALL” Leukaemia, he’s in the University of Chicago Hospital-children’s ward. He is receiving world class care, Community-our church has been outstanding in loving and helping us,

Carter is being very brave & in good spirits despite having had a blood transfusion and several serious procedures.

They’ve been gone over a month, but its still easy to not realise they aren’t around somewhere. After all, the Junction only gets together as a big group once a month and we always have a break in January, with many people taking holidays.

But the Hammonds have arrived and settled into their new home in Chicago and are settling in well from what I can tell.

How can I tell?