Your Forever Family New Series

Good afternoon church!

Your Forever Family

We have just started our new series wherein we revisit some of the privileges and benefits of being part of God’s family. In a world starved of healthy community the family of God becomes an environment wherein we find a sense of worth and of value. It is through fellowship as a body that we grow spiritually and find maturity. We also find it to be a place where we can give and receive empathy. The wonderful adventure of preparing for eternity is also part of this unique and beautiful family.

This coming weekend we are going to be facilitating communion during our online experiences! Please prepare your preferred communion elements (eg. grape juice and bread) and where possible partake as a household. We are looking forward to it!

Worship recording by-in

The worship team are currently recording “Here as in Heaven" for the Weekend Service of the 26/27th of September. The lyrics of this song tie beautifully with our Mission: to be His Presence in every Place. 

Overflow in this place
Fill our hearts with Your love
Your love surrounds us
You're the reason we came

We often think of this lyric in a corporate, gathered sense, but how amazing are those lyrics as a church scattered. To see Him overflow in the places we go, for Him to be the reason we came to those places.

To add impact to this worship video, we would like to incorporate clips of places people want to see His presence overflow. For example, clips taken as people walk down their street as a part of their daily exercise.
Imagine if we all sent in 10-20 second video clip of a place near us where we would love to see God’s presence overflowing. The song would become not just an act of worship but a prayer and prophetic declaration for God to be at work in our city.

Here is how you can be involved.

• Choose a location you can walk to where you would like to see His Presence overflow.
• Pray for His Presence to come.
• Then record a 10-20 second video on your best mobile phone camera in your home. Please use landscape mode (not the upright position, but horizontal).
• Once happy with your recording…send it to us by 1pm on 22 September to our dropbox here

Food Pantry process

We are very excited about the continuing influence we can have in the lives of those who are doing it tough. The past few weeks there has been discussions on how the churches in Casey can take hands within the Police to collaborate in taking food parcels to the neediest in our city. This is a huge Vision Victory as it will bring Jesus’ presence in three very important spaces:

• The relationship between the community and the police,
• the needy in our city who have no means of getting to our food pantry and
• The fostering of unity amongst the churches in our city!

Please keep on praying for our purpose to be fulfilled in this city, as it is those prayers that prepares the spiritual environment for miracles like these. Can you believe it…state departments see the church as a solution and not as a problem! YES, I CAN BELIEVE IT!!!!

The Roadmap factors

There is still so many variables playing into the process of determining the pace and scale of our reopening for services. If you haven’t read last week’s newsletter please do so before progressing further with this one. It will help you manage expectations. We have many discussions about this and I would like to highlight four factors that will determine our pace and scale of opening up:

1. Covid safety – We would want to have complete confidence in our Covid-safe plan that relates to the unique nature of our gatherings and premises.
2. Serving capacity – A church is a place wherein everyone has a part to play and we will assess which services we can deliver at which level (e.g. Kids ministry, Worship Team, Welcome team etc.) This will determine the size and nature of our gatherings.
3. Level of restrictions – We will at all times adhere to what government guidelines expect of us. We are guided well by CCVT (Churches of Christ Victoria and Tasmania) in this regard.
4. Group size dynamics – The bigger a group of people gathering the more diverse its needs and the more complex set of solutions it needs. We love solving these problems…but nor at the cost of your spiritual, mental, physical and social well-being. Therefore, this will also play a role.Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have the need to speak to me.

New website

Please make use of our newwebsite. The more we use it the more we can improve it to serve our purpose. We also welcome your feedback in order to consistently improve it. Do not hesitate to send us your feedback. We discuss its improvement weekly and we would love for you to be part of this ever-improving part of our church communication.

Pastor's health update

Pastor Michael had a stent removed last week and we are grateful to report that the procedure went well. He is currently in the process of re-engaging with his role at church starting off at one day per week. His capacity will be monitored in order to assess his ability to escalate his involvement as set out in his Back To Work schedule.

Pastor Ken will go in for a small operation next week to fix a hernia that has become a concern to the specialist. He has requested that Ken go in as a private patient in order to fast track the situation. Ken will be taking some time off to fully recover and also take a well needed break.

We miss you and can’t wait to see you again!

Braam Botha

Senior Pastor

Being His Presence In Every Place