Gathering - Sunday 11th April - Steve Swain

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. On the otherhand, we need to do some things too.

There are emerging questions in the church that come with traditional answers, like “we have always done it like that”. The Junction has many of its own to consider.

Is there a problem with asking the questions? What about faith? Doesn’t doubt undermine faith?

Doubt is not a lack of faith. Even after Jesus rose from the dead, some doubted him and he didn’t berate them.

There is two types of each: reasonable and unreasonable. Reasonable in both faith and doubt is asking questions, prayer, reading, listening and being open. Unreasonable is not being open, not subject to considering new evidence.

Rev. Maksymilian Kolbe was a Christian who was imprisoned in Auschwitz. He made deliberate choices which led him to be there.

At Auschwitz, if anyone tried to escape, they randomly selected 10 prisoners for execution. Franciszek Gajowniczek, a Polish army sergeant was chosen but pleaded for his life on the basis of having a family.

Kolbe did three things that were unheard of in Auschwitz. He stepped out of line, he walked down to face the commandant who had called the names of those to die and he offered to take Gajowniczek’s place.

The commandant didn’t care and let the men exchange places.

The punishment was death by starvation. The ten condemned were put in a cage, where Kolbe ministered to them constantly until they died. Finally, when only a few were left, they were injected with acid to finish the job.

Franciszek Gajowniczek was a changed man after that. He was alive because someone had died for him, so from then on he lived a different life, trying to live worthy of the man who had died for him.

It is the same for us. We don’t want to just do stuff, we we want to be and to do also. We want to honour God in all we do, how we treat people, in our faith and in our doubt.

The Junction is a group of people who want to live the kind of life that honours Him who died for us. Its not about church numbers, it about this.