PASTORAL MESSAGES (Page 106)

By Not Known A recent article declared that the virtual church is the way of the future. This ‘church‘ has no building and does not meet together. Instead, it is a cyber- community where members log on from home to download a service of their choice and then make their offering by electronic fund transfer. Does this sound bizarre? Virtual churches do have some…

By Not Known Recent years have seen what many call the ‘Worship Wars‘. Churches have been divided over issues related to worship styles, especially with regard to music (lyrics and instrumentation), prayer styles, degrees of informality and such like. New churches have been formed in which the defining feature, power of attraction, is just in worship style.…

By Not Known Life without purpose Around us we see people who live life without purpose. They have no centre to give inner and outer poise and are easily unbalanced. Many of these live for the experience of the moment – with no sense of past or future. It is not surprising that many of these…

By Not Known At the start of Easter week we are conscious of Jesus’ death. The Cross that hung over him since birth is now a looming shadow that will soon blot out all light in the darkness of that Friday afternoon. A classic interpretation of Jesus’ death is found in Rom. 3:21-26. It can be summarised in terms of our problem, God’s solution and our…

By Not Known Easter is soon here and it is timely to think about the Passion of Jesus. The Passion has central place in each of the four Gospels. This is so much so that someone describes them as ‘Passion stories with introductions’. For example, nine of the 21 chapters in John are concerned with the last few days of Jesus’ life that lasted for about 33…

By Not Known In today’s world, a wealthy person is someone who can choose what to eat, what to wear, where to live, and who has savings. That makes just about all of us wealthy. We live in a wealthy country and the Christian population tends to come from the better-educated and better-paid section of society. Our wealth is both a trap and opportunity. Material…

By Not Known Missions is the work of communicating the message about Jesus and challenging people to believe in him. The reason for missions is simple: God plans to save a vast number of people from every branch of humanity and uses his church to tell about Jesus and gather those people (Rev. 7:9- 10; Mt 28: 19- 20; Eph 3:7- 11) Missions cannot ever be an optional…