Fr. Jacob's September 2014 Newsletter Message

"Let us love one another"

The most probable earthly explanation for the extraordinary growth of the church in the centuries after Christ is surprising. It's that Christians tended to have larger families than the surrounding culture and such children followed their parents into the life of discipleship. In a world where life was brutally cheap, and tiny children could be abandoned on trash heaps outside cities, Christians nourished their loved little ones and helped them to become part of the community of faith.

Shepherding our infinitely precious children into the community of faith and helping them to come to a living relationship with the Lord Jesus, ought to be central to the mission of the church. Each Christian household first of all, and the church as a whole, are maternity wards for faith.

The alternative to nurturing, to explicitly teaching and shaping, to encouraging and inviting, is that other values, other communities and ultimately other lords, will teach and shape, invite loyalty and ultimately demand worship.

As the school year begins again my heart turns to the families and children who belong to our church. I beg you, please support our families. Parents bear the chief responsibility in the teaching and shaping of their children's faith - please reach out in friendship, prayer and support to them. The most precious gift of life and the yet more precious gift of new life in Jesus Christ, demand your joy, your love.

Sunday School registration will be at 9:15am on Sunday 7 September. Sign up your loved ones so that they may learn about the love of the Most Holy Trinity.

Secondly, our wonderful Sunday School leaders invite you to a meeting at 11:30am on that day. They are hoping to share with you their exciting plans for Sunday School this year and to invite you to consider whether the Lord is calling you to minister as a nursery or Sunday School leader or helper.

Sunday School itself will begin at 9:15am on Sunday 14 September. Please put that date in your diary. Please remember it in your prayers. Our Sunday School leaders are fantastic and would love to welcome young people and children, both old and new.

We are continuing to encourage young people to worship with their families whether at the 8:00am or 10:15am service. Worship is what the church, young and old, does on the Lord's day. Scripture teaches us this (Hebrews 10:25). So to say, it takes a church. I beg you to consider that it is worth the effort. The Lord repays many times over.

I know many of you like seeing the children. So I have invited the Sunday School from the end of October to be part of the notice section at the end of church during the 10:15am service and share with the rest of the church what they have done earlier in Sunday School.

Finally, we are joining again with St. Luke's in a shared youth group. It makes sense for us to collaborate. Janie Koch, the wonderful St. Luke's youth worker, will be leading the group from 7:00pm - 8:00pm on Wednesday 17 September, and Wednesdays thereafter. Your teens will love her. Why not give them a chance of being blessed by her ministry?

Please surround all of this with your support, love and most importantly prayer.

As Scripture teaches, "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God". (1 John 4:7)

With my love,

Fr. Jacob