SUNDAY APRIL 9TH BRISBANE PEACE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, REDCLIFF

The Redcliff peninsula has seen some quite startling Christian developments in the not too distant past. Chris Gabritt (spelling may be wonky) and his wife Gail were pastors of the Christian Outreach Centre here and developed a ministry related to Bill Hamon in the United States built around the prophetic. It wasn’t quite the Kansas City Fellowship/Mike Bickle thing that happened in the eighties, but it was significant by Australian standards. They developed a prophetic school here that saw about 8,000 students involved over the years. The church grew and grew and they built an auditorium that would seat around a thousand people and filled it often.

This large ministry in the relatively small peninsula city didn’t just cause a stir, it tended to throw the church (Christian congregations on the peninsula) into the usual disarray. This wasn’t just the fault of the COC. As always it was contributed to by everyone who made an unrighteous response. The COC became an island all by itself. It would be like an island with its own airport where overseas ministries flew in and out and where a whole industry built around the “tourist trade” of people visiting. There was the usual pride in the COC leaders and the usual jealousy and fear in the pastors of other churches, especially those whose people left to join the larger more prominent ministry.

The prophetic school saw hundreds of people trained with “prophetic” credentials but without a credible portfolio. It’s a bit like other large Bible Colleges that have large front doors but very small back doors. People flock to the college, but when they finish they have no where to hang their shingle and the church that runs the college has no exit policy. Churches around the nation began aligning with the church here and feeding conferences with their people.

I am not suggesting that all of this was bad, or even that most of it was bad. Most of it was good and the fruit of it was good. In the end the management was bad and finally the leadership fell into some sin and the usual thing happened. The leaders were almost beyond proper relational accountability and there was no adequate restoration plan. A lot of people got hurt and the local COC was decimated. A lot of the leaders of local congregations looked on either in horror or in judgment. People began to find other congregations to belong to but carried the hurt with them. The prophetic was dragged into the usual ecclesiastical mud and everyone headed for a cave to allow their wounds to heal at best and try and bury their shame at worst.

Mark Setch has been part of the healing presence of Jesus in this city. Even though he spoke today about the fact that he had pulled back from the prophetic just because of the experiences on the peninsula, he has a mantle of leadership in this city that is acknowledged and valued. Interestingly he felt led to lay that leadership down when he left the local Uniting Church and formed Peace Christian Church. For him it was just a matter of not wanting to draw any more attention to the separation than he could help. The decision he and many of the people made following the famous “Resolution 84” (decision by the Assembly of the Uniting Church to allow practicing homosexuals to be ordained) was reported in the local newspaper. Not harshly, but without any attempt to understand. You know what the press is like. The press “vultures” have a keen eye for anything that might potentially divide the community and they have an interest in creating a sensation. The bottom line is selling more newspapers which in turn means selling more advertising.

So Mark has kept a comparatively low profile. He has maintained strong contact with other pastors and there is a good set of core relationships. He has recently been asked to come back into leadership. In one way this is a great testimony to his God given role, in another he doesn’t want to see something remain that will get in the way of the greater thing God might want to do.

All that to say this: Today Peace Christian Church (approx 150 members) and the Peninsula Full Gospel Church (approx. 30 plus members) had their first service as a combined group. John and Julie have been interim pastors of this small group for years as I have written about before. We had a great meeting this morning. There was so much of a sense there that God was doing a new thing. It had very little to do with the fact that Peace needed a building to worship in and Full Gospel had a building they couldn’t anywhere near fill up. This was a symbol of the church in the peninsula being formatted by the Spirit to rise up and take the land. That may sound overly dramatic, but I hasten to point out that most invasions are dramatic. Even the gathering and training of the invasion armies is a dramatic process. What we saw was what the hearts of people were giving testimony to: the oneness of the Triune God being embraced by faith filled ordinary people.

I was going to preach a very safe sermon about staying on track, but the Holy Spirit took me to Haggai and I spoke about the former and latter glory of the house. It was a wonderful time and the heart of the people was a bit like I would have imagined the people in Haggai’s day when it says, “they came and began to work on the house of the Lord Almighty, their God.” (1:14)

We didn’t get back to Mark and Kerri’s till after 1:00 pm and ate a very relaxed lunch till about 3:00. Rob was going to be preaching this evening. Graeme was preaching in Ipswich so we haven’t seen him since Friday evening. I got back to my digs and decided to go for a long walk. I have been listening to Jeremiah in order to become closer friends with the Lord through what is revealed of him in that book. It has been profound. I find myself walking along with my MP3 praying and almost involuntarily weeping at the hard heartedness of the people of God. I pray for us. We are like that people. This nation is like that nation. I pray that the people of God will not fail him and allow some “Babylonian force” to overrun the church and the nation.

I just kept on walking and didn’t realize how far I had come from home, so I had to step up the pace to get back in time to get ready for the evening meeting. Rob was preaching so all I had on my mind was the remnants of Jeremiah and a desire to pray for the people coming to the meeting and for the other leaders and Rob himself.

It was a significant meeting for a number of reasons: a. Rob was preaching in the city where a major prophetic ministry had first been opposed from within its own movement and then became ensnared in a whirlpool created by overstaffing, financial pressures and finally moral failure. He preached about the need for prophetic integrity. It was a foundational word. New foundation that is. It happened that there were six people at that meeting who had been part of the core team when that ministry was flourishing. One person openly challenged Rob on the issue of his statement of the need for prophetic integrity on the issue of the middle east and demonstrated that there were some unresolved issues and probably some theological differences at stake. At the end of the meeting we stood together and asked God that the pioneering work that had been done, and had foundered, would be rebuilt, not from the basis of a sectarian church with a deficient understanding of Biblical leadership, but through a church that Jesus himself would build in the peninsula. It was a powerful time.

Others were heading for the Coffee Club after church, but I asked Mark to drop me off at home. I was tired and also looking forward to getting on a plane home in the morning. As it turned out I began to mull over the three weeks I had just spent in all parts of the country and didn’t run out of steam till much later than I had intended.

Graeme had been preaching at a Crosslink church in Ipswich. He was using his brother in law’s car so he drove all the way to the Coffee Club in Redcliffe/Scarborough to connect with Rob, Mark and Kerrie and then drove back to Wayville Heights to sleep and return the vehicle. He has much more stamina for that sort of stuff than I have I must admit. Good on him for doing it. I won’t be catching up with him till we get together at the airport tomorrow morning.