Westview Baptist Church is a covenant community of faith in Jesus Christ seeking to live in covenant agreement to love and support each other in our endeavours to bring glory to God as a community of faith in western Sydney. It has been our practice, practically since our church was established 38 years ago, to covenant as a community to support those people from our community who we set aside for full time ministry. Over the years this has included Bob and Jocelyn Stock and Tony and Wendy Calman. As this exciting year of evaluation and change has unfolded we now have JJ and Soona Bomford, called by God and with the encouragement of the whole church community, serving our church in full time ministry and so we want to support them in their roles, by the grace of God, as we have done with others in the past. Likewise, as Tony and Wendy look to undertake new roles in a broader ministry with other churches, it is appropriate that we review their current covenant arrangements to ensure that they continue to be loved and cared for by our church community.
And so, based on principles founded on the scriptures and good practices over many years, the elders and deacons ask you to prayerfully consider the covenant documents that have been circulated to the church, seek your comments, concerns and any changes you think necessary with a view to having these covenants affirmed at the next WRAP meeting (October 9th, 2016) and then enacted at a subsequent Sunday morning meeting. We ask that your input to this matter be addressed to either Lee, Kath or Steve, not to Tony, Wendy, JJ or Soona directly. Paper copy can be found on the back table or viewed online at https://goo.gl/zRlEju A Target Group was formed as requested by the last WRAP meeting to consider Tony and Lynne Kenning's recognition as a deacon. The report can be found here.
The recommendation as it stands is: The Target Group will meet again in 6-7 weeks time to allow the church to respond to these findings. We as a group can see nothing in Tony and Lynne’s character or faith which would preclude them from being recognised as Deacons. We are asking the church to affirm this finding or raise any concerns they might have with this recommendation. If you would like to give some feedback online, please go to this link. Of course, feedback can be given to any of the members of this Target Group. The Elders and Deacons wish to present the church with another opportunity to gather as a church family, to gather as a community of faith, reflecting what we read in Acts 2:42 “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer”, and to promote further our first vision statement “people wholly dependent on God in prayer”.
The ultimate desire for such a gathering would be to devote time to prayer. On a Sunday we gather to devote ourselves to “the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” with a priority focused on hearing the Word of God. The proposed mid week meeting would be another opportunity to devote ourselves to “the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer”, with a priority focus on prayer. We are suggesting the following pattern on a Thursday evening: 6.30pm Gather together with a “pot luck” dinner to share with others. 7.15pm Commence a time of song and praise. 7.30pm A short bible reading and reflection. 7.45pm Prayer 8.15pm Conclude and clean up 8.30pm Home Such a program will give time to prayer, fellowship, fun and encouragement. It is a good opportunity to invite new people who come to our church to gather with us so that we could get to know them better and them us. We are asking the church family to do all that they can to attend this time together. We recognise that it will be impossible for some to be there each week, but we are asking that it be made a high priority. We are planning for this to commence after our Church Anniversary on 7th August, which is our Vision Sunday. To see a short 1 minute video clip on this, please click here. For convenience links referred to in our Bulletin will be posted on this page
|
Elder'sBulletin references will be posted on this page ArchivesCategories
All
|