NorthPoint - August, 2008

What the Pope Forgot to Say

World youth day brought a great amount of good will into the Australian community toward the Christian church. This is a good thing. In a country that increasingly despises organized religion, secular Australians were given a real shake up by these young enthusiastic Roman Catholic pilgrims joyously practicing their faith in public. As a Seventh-day Adventist Christian I whole heartedly support their God given right to practice their faith according to their convictions.

But for all the joy and celebration, one important thing was left out. The Gospel! Missing was the Biblical doctrine that teaches ‘man is saved by grace alone’; the message that is called ‘good news’ in the New Testament; the message that says no matter how far I have fallen Jesus can pick me up where I am.

At the Council of Trent the Roman Catholic Church explicitly rejected the Biblical Gospel of ‘salvation by grace alone’. Since that time the gap between Roman Catholic theology and Biblical teaching has actually grown wider. It should disturb everyone of us that the Bible’s clear witness on who God is and how He saves us from sin, has been

overrun by the mysticism and falsehood of the Dark Ages. This is not biblical Christianity. But wait! Before I throw any more stones in my righteous indignation, before I condemn such a false witness to Jesus, I need to ask a few questions. How am I doing with this gospel? How does my church rate on its witness to this gospel? A recent Newspoll survey re-

vealed that 54% of Australians know next to nothing about Seventh-day Adventists. That is over half the country! Another 42% know a little, and a whopping 4% know a lot. If they don’t know us, they sure don’t know what we teach and preach.

Paul says in Romans 1:16 the gospel is God’s power to save all who believe. Let us fall on

our knees and ask God fill us with His passion for a lost world. Let us rise up from our knees and share the wonderful news of Jesus with all who will listen.

Pastor Justin Lawman Evangelism Coordinator, NNSW Conference

Evangelism in Celtic Country

Moving to Glen Innes, the Celtic Capital of Australia, inspired me to look into the history of Christianity in Celtic lands. It was exciting to discover that Celtic Christians from the dawn of Christianity held many beliefs parallel to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Patrick and the missionaries who followed

him such as Columba and Aidan were Sabbath keepers who believed in the soon return of Christ, practised baptism by immersion and observed communion with foot washing.

What is surprising is that our method of evangelism in the Adventist Church resembles the

Roman model more than the Celtic way.

Roman Model:

1. Presentation

2. Decision

3. Fellowship

Celtic Model:

1. Fellowship

2. Ministry & Conversations

3. Belief, Invitation to Commitment

The Celts established communities that welcomed strangers and were strategically placed to be accessible to significant populations of people. Within the experience of communal life Christianity was both caught and taught. Celtic Christians were driven by a passionate love for God, and were fuelled by the power of prayer that embraced every aspect of life as being sacred. We are endeavouring in Glen Innes to move toward the Celtic model by

making prayer our first priority, by extending our Sabbath experience to include a fellowship meal every Sabbath and by celebrating communion every month on a Friday evening with Celtic Prayer and Praise.

Glen Innes hosts the annual National Celtic Festival in May. This year our church was invited to organise children’s activities for the festival. Our Celtic Children’s Corner proved to be very popular with the making of model Coracles. Coracles were primitive boats made from willow branches and animal skins. Celtic missionaries from Ireland and Iona sailed in these fragile boats as far as Scandinavia, and Europe to share the Gospel with whomever they met wherever they would land.

Glen Innes Seventh-day Adventist, a Celtic country church, is embracing many aspects of the Celtic Christian pathway with the exception of Coracle sea voyages! At present about a third of our church population are people from Glen Innes community enjoying the fellowship and moving towards belief and commitment.

Anyone wanting to experience Celtic Worship are welcome to visit us any first weekend of each month.

Pastor Keith Jackson, Minister Glen Innes & Tenterfield Churches

Church Evangelism News

Taree Outreach

Taree Adventist Church recently hosted an Evangelistic Program that is being sponsored and run by Eastwood Missionary College.

Common Beliefs Challenged

On Sunday 6 July, the last session of the New Revelation Seminar was conducted at Hamilton Seventh-day Adventist Church. The 20 session semi-

nar journeyed through the book of Revelation from the perspective of a trip through the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement. As each article of furniture was visited in the Holy and Most Holy place, various aspects of Christ’s ministry to bring about a conclusion to the great conflict between himself and Satan were considered.

Pastor Kevin Amos, pastor at Hamilton Church, says that when the book of Revelation is allowed to unfold its own message it becomes a powerful tool in revealing what God considers to be important and necessary as we come to the end of time.

Over 10 community people were in attendance for each session. “Our community friends found the content of the program both fascinating and

Church Growth Experiment

Take two churches in the same demographic location and ask, “How can we best grow these churches?” That was the start of an experiment in Macksville and Nambucca Headschurches.

After consultation and evaluation Macksville Church developed a three year model based on meeting community needs for two years and then running a reaping program.

Nambucca Heads Church developed a three year model based on running Bible based programs each year.

To help evaluate what would work best both churches used the same budget with the same quality advertising distributed through the same avenues to the same target population.

Community Needs Model Results

Macksville Church has an average attendance of 90 people each week. They had 42 regis-

trations for their community needs program. Thirty-three people attended the first night including 18 from the community and 15 from the church. Average attendance over 7 nights was 29. None of the people who attended these programs have begun attending church. There are 3 or 4 people who want follow up seminars. However, the church was able to develop positive relationships with a number of people from the community.

The community needs based model was a good ‘seed-sower’ and a necessary part of the command of Jesus ‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me’ (Matt 25:40 NIV).

Bible Based Model Results

Nambucca Heads Church has an average attendance of 26 people each week. They had 37 registrations for the Bible based program. Thirty-one attended the program on the first night, including 16 from the commu-

challenging as a number of commonly held Christian teachings were found to be false and had been accepted by them without a Biblical basis,” said Pastor Amos.

The seminar was organised and run with the help of theology students from Avondale College who were completing a segment of their training in evangelism.

Amazing Discoveries

Pr Joseph Maticic at Port Macquarie Church conducted a 10 part series called Amazing Discoveries that concluded last month. Five non-Adventists attended the program and thoroughly enjoyed it. Those who attended said to the pastor,

“We hope it is okay for us to attend even though we are not from your church." A follow-up series starting soon will look deeper into Bible teachings.

nity and 15 from the church. Average attendance over 26 nights was 19. From that program there are six new people attending church. Ten people have requested follow up seminars.

Pastor Colin Dunn says while soft evangelism programs increase the worth of the church in the community and are valuable for church and community members, Biblical programs reap the best rewards. They cause worshipping congrega-

tions and the Kingdom of God to grow.

“I have run side by side in the same church both soft evangelism programs and Biblical programs with the same outcome we have seen here. Church and Kingdom growth has for me always come from Biblicalbased programs,” said Pastor Dunn.

Pastor Colin Dunn is Minister of Macksville & Nambucca Heads Churches

Operation Nineveh: Newcastle Our Greatest Challenge

It is no secret that Newcastle has been one of our greatest challenges as a Conference. It isthelargest city in the North NSW Conference and the largest non-capital city in Australia.

In the Lower Hunter region there are about half a million people and of those about 1000 attend Adventist churches each Sabbath. That means that one in every 500 people in the Lower Hunter is an Adventist. In Papua New Guinea the ratio is about 1:26. That makes the Hunter region a real mission field! What are we going to do about it?

Pray

We are going to pray! God’s desire to save the people of the Hunter is far greater than ours. His presence and power in our witness is the only thing that makes it effective. Let this be a call to prayer. God is waiting for the invitation to pour His Spirit out in full measure. Let’s ask for it like

we need it!

Plant

We are going to plant! The Adventist church is a church planting movement, or should I say that it was a church planting movement. How did all the churches in our Conference get there originally? Pastors ran mission programs and started churches. We have relegated too many of our pastors to the maintenance of dying churches. It is our intention to have a pastoral team in place by 2009 dedicated entirely to planting a new congregation in Newcastle. Children’s ministry will play a big role in the growth of this plant.

Preach

We are going to preach! The pastoral team of the Hunter has just agreed to invite Pastor Leo Schreven to conduct a series of meetings in 2009 and 2010. Pastor Schreven uses a unique approach with his ‘All Power Seminar’. This seminar is used as a platform to build

Reach Fourfold Purpose

relationships with people who will then be invited the following year to a Bible-based program conducted by Pastor Schreven. We hope to use a venue that will allow a children’s ministries event to run simultaneously.

What can you do? Pray morning and night that God will do a mighty work. Support with any means that God has placed at your disposal, whether it be time, talent or money. We need it all!

Pastor Justin Lawman Evangelism Coordinator, NNSW Conference

Did You Know?

Newcastle’s median age is 37.

Newcastle’s main export is coal. Newcastle is the largest coal exporter in the world.

Newcastle’s median individual weekly income is $409.00.

Newcastle’s weekly median rent is $195.00.

Newcastle’s main industry sector is Health Care and Social Assistance.

12.5 percent of people in Newcastle are divorced.

26 percent of people in Newcastle are Catholic.

16.3 percent of people in Newcastle claim they have no religion.

Newcastle’s first Adventist Church was Hamilton Church, dedicated on 2 Sept 1899, with the dedicatory sermon being preached by Ellen White.

All statistics taken from Australian Census 2006 <http://www.abs.gov.au/>

Pastor Leo Schreven, Director/Speaker, All Power Ministries