All posts by Mark Edwards

God’s Party goes off

A great sunday, with a number of visitors and friends who came along. My wife, who is the Ministry Team Leader for Children, worked out we had to buy 47 books for all the kids and babies in our church. Thats fantastic. We also gave out a few extras to some visiting kids.

What was most encouraging was the breathroughs we made in what we did. There was no formal message, just a few devotional thoughts centred around some party games. For instance we played pass the parcel with the whole church. As each person unwrapped the ‘present’ they found a letter inside. When they were all assembled up front it spelt out ‘at God’s party’ “everyone’s invited”, complete with apostrophe of owndership in the right place. It was a lot of fun. Hopefully the brief and clear point, that knowing God is fantastic, and we want everyone to feel welcome, was made.

Adultery, fraud and Pastors


I should be a sub editor at the West with a byline like that.
But I am glad I dont live in the good old US with Pastors like there two as contemporaries.

Exhibit one

First Congregational Church has been on Main Street in the middle of the town of Ripon for almost 90 years. But what no one in the congregation knew was that the church had been sold for $500,000, and more than $450,000 was sent to a fraudulent bank account, according to authorities.

The Rev. Randy Radic was arrested and faces charges of embezzlement and forgery.

“He was pastor there for 10 years. He gained their trust. They said he was a good pastor. They got a lot out of his sermons. And it was just a complete shock,” said Ripon Police Department spokesman Danny Sauer

MSNBC Story

Exhibit Two

Today the 78-year-old pastor faces what could be the most difficult test of his career. A former parishioner, Mona Brewer, has alleged in a lawsuit filed in August that Paulk forced her to have sex with him and others—including visiting charismatic preachers

Charisma Online

Pastors are called to a higher account, in my opinion. You cant be a spiritual leader, and abuse your position and authority in such a wicked way. We are all sinful, and pastors have feet of clay like anyone else. So pray for your pastor!

Sold, lets get out of Ur


Well we have sold our house. It took 13 days, and we got a pretty good price for it, at least we think so.
Two good friends of ours have offered us a house to rent for a while, but now we are cashed up we hope to find something to move into closer or actually right in our mission field. We feel like Abraham, having left Ur, we are heading off to a place He WILL show us. Trust, faith hope and a sincere sense of conviction. Thats why God is good. Not because He makes the circumstances secure, but because He makes us feel secure despite the circumstances. We believe that He has done, and is continuing to do something awesome in our Community, through our Church. This is why we are moving.

God is good, and has been good to us. In feels somewhat strange, because we really do think we are moving for His Kingdom sake. But we are grateful, really thankful.
Just as I got this good news, I got some sad news from another good friend. Hoping she finds what she needs pretty soon, God will provide!

Can I just be indulged with a reccomendation? If you need a great, honest hard working real estate agent, you could do far worse than use the one we used. If you want to know his name and details, send me an email.
ps. if you need a garage door company, and dont mind waiting a long time to get what you asked for, so God can teach you patience and restraint, then I can reccomend one of those too!

God’s Party


Church is going to be a party this Sunday AM, with God being the Guest of Honour. It is our KFC Celebration service, or in old Baptist speak, our Sunday School Anniversary. God’s Party

Michael Bullard gave me an excellent script for this service, and I am really grateful. Mike has helped me out in the past with some creative ideas for themes and services.

The idea is that we will basically play some party games with the kids and the people that turn up. These games will have a point. If you are coming on Sunday, you are going to have to wait to find out what we are doing, but there is every chance there might be chocolate, musical chairs and sausages involved!
Today I have spent some of my time planning kids games, should be fun.

2 Gether, Bapos and Chocos Unite


Today, along with some other things, I had a meeting with the Choco’s about our annual Pastors Conference. I enjoy working with these guys.
This year, at our conference just gone, we had as our speaker Terry Walling. He was fantastic. His style of teaching involved a lot of group work, sharing with others. Very EC of him, and I really enjoyed it. There was a general consensus that for such an occaision, being the first time Bapos and Chocos met together or the annual Pastors conference, he really helped us network and grow together.
Another interesting point he made was the priority of his cafe outreach over day to day church activities. His church runs a cafe. Actually he would say the cafe owned by the church, happens to have a church attached. A seemingly subtle change, but it confronts who is served first. As Borden and Walling would say, the non churched gets served first. Or as I would say, “the church is not for you, you are the church. The Church is for the unchurched”.
It made me wonder about NCD and their emphasis on the 8 signs of a healthy church. While I like these, it seems to me the problem is that evangelism, mission, reaching out, call it whatever you like, is far too important to just include with seven other attributes. Even Warrens 5 purposes suffer a little from this. If seeing people come to Christ is not THE Key Performance Indicator in our church, then I think we have a problem. Now some will come back and say, if your church is healthy it will be seeing people come to Christ. True, but if your church does not have mission as its first priority, I dont think its healthy.

Pilgrim


Went to a thoughtprovoking and inspiring mini conference today with Scott Pilgrim from Crossover Aust. and Kevin Keegan from Dural Baptist Church in Sydney. They spoke of the challenges facing Pastors trying to move congregations from maitenance mode to mission mode.
Scott also entered into the ‘attractional vs incarnational’ debate. What he had to say was informed and interesting. Scott stated this, “Missional churches are incarnational by nature… and yet authentically attractional in building faith community.” In other words it is not one or the other, but both. As I interact with some from the emerging church context, it seems to me that really we are talking about what we are doing, rather than why. And this to me seems to be a question of balance. I like what Scott was saying, we need to be incarnational, and our programs and services need to be attractive.

Waiting for roses


Melinda and I are in the throes of maintaining our house in showroom condition as we try to sell it. It has been 7 days that it has been on the market. We are selling because we feel like missionaries going into the area God has called us to minister too.
One of the stresses we have had has been over our garage door. The door has been fitted, but when it was, they did not fit the roses into the little windows like we ordered. After numerous phone calls, not all of them very nice, we have finally had the roses fitted. Its only a little touch, but they do look nice. Life is never easy, and when people just dont really care about service, it makes life difficult. Now I wont tell you which company fitted our door. But what I will say is that you should never buy products endorsed by former West Coast Eagles players, you may find the same hassles we have!