DAY ELEVEN WEDNESDAY MARCH 29TH DARWIN

Our first official engagement was a lunch gathering with the pastors and leaders from the Darwin area. Paula and I lodged ourselves in a coffee shop and talked our way through a number of cups and the odd small non-health food delight.

We were taking two of the women elders from the Bagot Church to the pastors meeting and arrived in time despite a few of the customary diversions along the way. Joy and Noela are delightful people and love Jesus passionately, but in the midst of very dysfunctional community circumstances. There were no other indigenous pastors or leaders there and I was afraid our two would be swamped by the table full of white guys. I was also afraid the white guys might not rise to the occasion and include them. My fears were unfounded on both counts. The meeting began with pastors introducing themselves and sharing their heart for the work of the kingdom of God. There was a broad spread of leaders there: Salvation Army, Baptist, Uniting, Pentecostal, Anglican, Independent and a mate of mine who runs a ministry to service personnel at Robertson Barracks (Army Base near Darwin). Ian and I both had some input and there was some terrific sharing. We are touching on some powerful crunch issues here and as we saw in other places, pastors and others began to gain faith for forward momentum.

Among other things that we have been sharing is the basic kind of church assumed by the New Testament. There are churches denoted by households and one by a small region in Asia Minor (Galatia) but the overwhelming assumption is that all of the apostles and Jesus himself refer to church by the name of a city. That church can only emerge as those people (leaders especially) who see it begin to give it expression by their attitudes, intentions and actions. It will only take the shape that they collectively give it. The task therefore is not to go off in some kind of idealistic fantasyland adventure, but to start with whoever believes that and allow that to be like yeast in the flour of the other congregations. Jesus said he would give this church authority to bash down stronghold gates (and only this church) (Matt. 16) and that he would give this church the keys that would establish the kingdom of God.

We have also been sharing the idea that the various expressions of the body of Christ are in their best sense, remainders of prophetic words that God has spoken to the church at some period of the history of Christianity: Lutheran, Methodist, Roman, Orthodox, Puritan, Pietist, Anabaptist and Pentecostal alike represent something that God was doing. The prophetic foundations of that church need to be rediscovered as the leaders come together and honour what God originally did through those prophetic movements. We need what was the original seed in all of them to bear fruit and give expression to the fullness of Christ in a city. Many of those churches have lost their prophetic call like the churches did when Jesus wrote to them in the book of Revelation (2,3). If we help re-dig these wells of revival, each time we do so we will gain something of the expression of the fullness of Christ.

After the lunch time meeting I stayed on and talked with Allan Pipes who is a Crosslink guy working at the Robertson Base. He and his wife Brooke are a great hearted family who have a single desire and that is to see servicemen and women come to Christ and be discipled. He began to get a fresh idea of building the body of Christ on the Base. They are experiencing some really challenging times at present and need our support in prayer. I know God will use them greatly.

In the evening Paula and I went for a meal with Katrina Poysner and Stuart Anderson. Katrina is from Grace, Canberra and works with the Australian Bureau of Statistics in Darwin, but has also become part of the Bagot Indigenous Victory Church. Stuart is a great young guy who was a friend of Paula’s. She met him through her rock climbing group and he became a Christian about a year or so ago. He and Katrina will be married at the Bagot Church on June 3rd this year. It is a very exciting prospect, not just for them but for the whole church community. You many not know that a formal wedding ceremony is not part of traditional Aboriginal culture, but the members of the church are excited at the prospect of making the church (a roof over a cement slab) look great for the wedding. We talked till ten thirty or so and then Paula and I returned home to get to bed for an early start for the airport at 4:30 in the morning for the trip to Townsville. It was quite a bit later by the time I got to bed.