I find myself sitting here at Auckland Airport awaiting my flight back to Taranaki after a chaotic week and it hits me, “oh, I forgot to do my blurb for the newsletter”. Reflecting on the week gone by I could be draw to talk about the busyness of life, or the need to keep God central in all our activities. Instead I find myself thinking about “The Mission of God”. 

There is a wonderful quote which I’m not sure who to credit, but it goes like this: “It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, ra-ther it is the God of mission that has churches in the world.” 

At our Church meeting following the celebration service this week we will be talking about some pretty big stuff. First there is the whole issue of identity: affirming the vision and values of the church that we have dis-covered together over the past couple of years; then there is the ques-tion of “making room for God to move” in a physical sense; and finally the need for us to “make room for God to move” in the way we do things (ie. In terms of leadership and structure). 

It would be easy for us to get stuck into the ins and out, the specifics and details of what is being considered. However the over-riding emphasis needed at this meeting is deeper than all that. There needs to be a filter (a metanarrative so to speak) that echoes in all of our hearts. We need to really understand that we are not simply making pragmatic and practi-cal decisions, but that in fact we are partnering with God Himself in His mission in the world. 

As we come to talk about these important things I urge you to remember this big picture and to come ready to embrace the next stage God is tak-ing us on and to remember that: “it is the God of mission that has HBC (among others) here in Hawera”. 

Blessings, Pastor David Auty 

This week Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that their 2010 printed edition will be the final one after 244 years of publication. Instead, they will focus on their online version with all its multimedia and new technology. This leaves World Book as the only large scale Encyclopedia publisher left. 

This move marks the end of an era! I don't know about you, but I have very strong memories of Encyclopaedia sets when I was a kid. My mum and dad purchased a set of World Book Encyclopedias back in the 1980s for our family. It was such a huge investment for them that it took them years to pay it off (but I think paid off in terms of our education etc.). Britannica, having peaked at 120,000 copies back in 1990 only published a few thousand in 2010 and sales have been very slow. This is the end of an era alright! 

Instead, millions of people are looking to online solutions. Many people subscribe to the online version of Britannica because of its perceived accuracy. However, the vast majority of people with access to internet, use free sites like Wikipedia for their Encyclopaedic knowledge. I don't want to get into a debate about the pros and cons, simply to state the trend. 

Our world is changing at a rate of knots. The way we access and share information is changing all the time. This is an issue that the church (global) needs to keep grappling with. How far do we go? Can we do too much? Should we be rejecting some changes? Should we be coming up with a different approach? 

These questions won't go away and I think that we are already engaging in the conversation quite well here at Hawera Baptist. What do you think? I'd love to have a conversation with you about it some day. 

Blessings to all. 

Pastor David Auty. 

The storm bomb: Well, what can I say…that was a bit freaky wasn’t it! Hannah came into our room that night and I was so concerned about the exposed nature of our room that I got Helen and her to sleep in Hannah’s bed and I spent much of the night on the floor in the hallway. Most of us got away with little damage and loss, but not everyone was so fortunate. We need to remain mindful of these people (farmers STILL without power; residents who have lost roofs and have water damage etc.). We also need to be prayerful about our own response to such events. What has God equip us with to help people in the future with events like this? 

Togetherness: The camp was a great place to experience togetherness, but I sometimes wonder “how do we cultivate togetherness week-in and week-out?”. I guess you could call it fellowship...I wonder whether we need to be more intentional as a Church in en-couraging and giving opportunity for people to be involved in small groups of various kinds. Whether it be a life group, a bible study, a prayer group, or a social gathering— there is nothing that beats the togetherness of spending time with one another. Let’s keep nurturing this part of our Church life. 

Webb-Ellis: From 3-5pm on Monday, Hawera was the centre of the Rugby World… and nobody much seemed to notice. We parked 10m away and walked straight up to the “REAL” Webb-Ellis Cup...as well as the Bledisloe Cup; Ranfurly Sheild and many others. As a Rugby fan that is just too awesome! I’m not sure about the promotion of the event though, surely more people would have gone along if they knew about it… I’ve talked to people who were gutted that they missed out because they didn’t know. It reminds me of some-thing Paul says in Romans 10:14, “But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?”. Worth thinking about aye. 

Building Bridges: In the Church life survey we took last year almost half responded that they find it difficult to share their faith with others. That’s significant! My hope is that at least half of us will make the effort to be at the Bridge Builders course which will give us great tools to make a significant step forward in addressing this. We’ve got skilled trainers here to spend time with us on building bridges into the others lives, it would be so sad if we missed out simply because we didn’t see it as a priority. 

Before camp you probably got sick of me saying how awesome Church camps are...well last weekend did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. In fact it was the best camp I have been to for years! As one person put it: "it felt as though God's blessing was on us all weekend". Another used the word "perfect". Before we pat ourselves on the back too much though, before we slip camp into a "nice memory" basket in the recesses of our minds, let's reflect a little about what was so good. 

The food (YES!); the "family" feel; the fun activities; the engagement with new people in the church; the great administration; the generational links; the opportunity for pressing into God; the opportunity for reaching outside ourselves... So many aspects... 

First, let's look at the "stated intentions" of camp itself. We had a theme which was in line with our Vision Statement "Living faith from the inside out". This gave us a platform to explore deeper into what we have already been discovering and uncovering for the past 18 months. We started the camp in prayer and worship, looking at and experiencing different forms of worship that challenges our "normal ways". We then talked about how we might "practice the presence of God" and we heard some wonderful wisdom from people of all ages - young, old and everything in between! 

The second half of the camp had more of an outward focus with several invited guests joining us. There were around 15 people who took on this invitation in various ways and that was encouraging to see. All in all we had over 70 people participate in the weekend in some way, with 63 staying over night on the Saturday - and more kids than adults!! 

Just considering these things above and you would have to say that the camp was a great suc-cess! However when you add to that all the wonderful "togetherness" that was apparent throughout the camp; when you consider the depth of inter-generational relating and the pro-found conversations and prayer that was happening spontaneously etc. then you can see a whole new layer of awesomeness to the camp. 

Basically God turned up and that is always cool! The challenge for us now is to continue with the momentum that God has injected into the life of our church. We need to keep our ears open to what God is saying, we need to listen for his guidance and make decisive moves for-ward for his glory. Are we up for it? Well, I think God believes that we are as he continues to do exciting things among us. Let's keep on keeping on...oh, and who's up for organising Church Camp 2013? Let's get the ball rolling! 

Blessings, Pastor David Auty