||Pastoral Passage|| The answers to this question find many parallels when it is asked regarding church gatherings
church community
||Article|| Christians (and others) who ultimately refuse to get vaccinated and acquire a vaccine-passport face being made maligned and marginalised members of New Zealand for the foreseeable future. Whatever their rationale, they will not be doing it lightly, and it is not the role of vaccinated Christians to make life harder for them.
New Zealand appears to have dodged a bullet and gotten off lightly in this pandemic, yet many Christians are berating the government because we cannot gather as churches under Lockdown Level 2. But there is a high cost which I doubt we are counting.
||Short Article|| Live-streamed video conferencing is not too far from the ‘face to face’ of 2 John 12, but it cannot make up the full experience of gathered fellowship. The time will come when we may reopen the doors of our churches and sit again on each other’s couches.
Last weekend four of our young men were baptised at our church camp. What follows are the questions that were asked, with some comments the significance they carry.
It can be hard to really appreciate how challenging it is for some people to continue as Christians, and just how easy and attractive it is to simply tap out. Are we equipping people to process and understand these struggles well? Are we providing the support for them to hang in there while they do?
Truth isn’t affected by popularity, or a lack of it.
Experience will teach us that although Christian hope should give us gladness, it does not remove but only blunts the varied griefs we suffer and does not fill the hole left in the lives of those left behind.
Community is built into Christianity, much like smartphones are made to be hooked into the internet.
Perhaps our experience of church has not been as rich as we would hope, or maybe we just don’t even know what Christian community could be.
Chris Northcott 