Tomorrow morning an intrepid group of mgpc folk will climb on a coach and travel to Adelaide so we can attend worship at Para Hills Presbyterian church on Sunday morning. (And a dinner on Saturday night)
Then we’ll climb on a coach and come home.
Why?
Because we believe that a healthy local church invests in the growth of other local churches, nationally and internationally.
That’s why we send teams overseas to places like East Timor and Zimbabwe.
And it’s also why a country church is visiting a city church 450kms away.
We share a conviction that Adelaide should have viable Presbyterian congregations carrying out ministry and mission in the fifth largest city in Australia.
It grieves us that for a long time now that our relating churches in that place have struggled for viability.
I think that if the concept of the Presbyterian Church of Australia means anything, that well resourced churches in other places would be seeking to aid church growth in Adelaide.
MGPC is.
We’re not that large, we’re not that well resourced.
We are supporting Para Hills, and we plan to keep doing so.
Our visit will seek to foster relationships, give us a better idea of the challenges our friends face, and give them as tangible an experience of friendship and encouragement as we can muster.
But I can’t stress too much that this is not a special effort.
This is not something that a local church does when it reaches a certain stage or size.
One of the negative effects of the fragmenting of denominational connections is local churches who focus all their energies on their own growth.
It’s almost like they seem themselves as reservoirs into which blessing flows and needs to be stored.
We see ourselves as a river.
God’s blessing runs through this place, outward toward others, locally, nationally and internationally.
Our experience is that the more we send out, more comes through.
I believe that it is simply a sign of health.
More and more we’ve been asking ourselves how we can do these sorts of activities rather than asking ourselves why we can’t.
That’s lead to a lot more mission and ministry.
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