DAY EIGHT: SUNDAY MARCH 27TH PERTH

Today we spent our time in ministry at South Perth Church of Christ. John and Julie Bond have been in this church for about fifteen years. When they came the church was in considerable debt and some decline. They are seen the church grow significantly and they have a great facility next to a beautifully groomed private school property in Como. They are on a large block of land and will soon be developing a new community centre and a number of other projects. Sunshine FM, Perth’s local Christian radio station, will be building on their block as well.

It’s a bit hard to tell, but the church seems about 500-600 people in size. They have two morning services and an evening service and I was down to preach at all three. John had asked me to preach in the morning on the Monday Church theme (now officially “Building Church Where You Are”) so I gave my best effort on something that has become part of my blood type and genetic makeup. I broke the matter up into two sections and did the first half in the first service and the second half in the second.

While we were waiting for the 8:30 service to begin there were a number of older people sitting variously in the building so I decided I would get to know a few of them. I targeted a couple sitting in the back row. No sooner had I asked them how long they had been in the church they proceeded to tell me about the big issues for them as members of the church. The building didn’t look like a church; they didn’t sing enough hymns and so on. I decided to see whether there was anything at all they liked about belonging and no matter what aspects of basic church life we traversed, it was to no avail. What I did find out that they had turned up at church faithfully every week for some large number of years without missing a beat. It made me think that if they were a couple of people in their late teens or even twenties, they would probably have been to three or four different churches if not more, and they would probably have only attended every few weeks. There has definitely been a culture shift hasn’t there? It reminded me of a radio interview I heard a week or so ago where some psychologist was trying to prove that people were the same whether they were baby boomers, gen Xers and Y’s or whatever. He was a business management consultant talking about how management should relate to older and younger people. That made me think of something Nola has often said: that there is clearly a difference in attitude when you employ someone under thirty and another person over forty five. It has to do with what this couple sitting in the back of the church represented. There was something inviting about their faithfulness regardless of the fact that we weren’t able to find too much to celebrate about the way church was being done.

The preaching on “Building Church Where You Are” resonated strongly with a whole bunch of people and the guys in the team were generous in their support.


We were dropped back to town by about 1:30 pm and wandered around the Hay St. Mall until we found a feed bag or three and had a very pleasant lunch. I love these guys. If we were to slightly amend the verse from the Bible that says, “Pray without ceasing” to “Talk without ceasing” I think we would represent a perfect fulfillment of such a (sadly non-existent) verse. We do pray and we do talk a lot. Its been great to filter and refine thinking on a whole range of matters. There is an honestly and openness here the measure of which I have rarely known among peer Christian leaders. It allows frank disagreement without competition and open heartedness that is without fear.

In the evening we returned to South Perth for the evening service. I preached about the way Jesus made himself nothing in order to fulfill the purpose of his Father and used the Henri Nouwen article from Philip Yancey about his time with L’Arche and the young man he used to look after Adam. Stacks of young people responded to the appeal to follow Jesus in this way and we prayed for all of them.
I had been up since before 3:00 am this morning, so by the time we hung around and then got a ride back to the hotel, I was whacked. The 3:00 am thing wasn’t so much a matter of piety as it was a matter of body clock time I think. Sleep usually overtakes me quickly. I have this shut down system and works at a moment’s notice and it was working well once more……in fact…..zzzzz…. oh, where was I……zzzzzz……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz !!!!!!