What Does It Look Like To Serve Our City? by Bryan Henderson

Gospel Communities are the heart of Anchor Church as we share our lives together throughout the week. In this post, Bryan Henderson explores what it looks like to serve our city as a family of missionaries.

As we seek to live as a family of missionaries, it is essential to have clarity about who we are reaching out to. We need gospel vision to see the opportunities God has put before us.

To help us identify this, we have asked each of our Gospel Communities to ask two questions.

1. Who are the people that God has placed before us?
God has already put people in our lives—friends, family, coworkers, that are part of the everyday rhythms of our lives.

How can we be more intentional in these relationships to move people from friends to disciples?

One way is by serving them. As we practically bless our friends, we demonstrate the love of God and live such phenomenal lives that it demands an explanation.

2. What are the needs of our local community?
When God sent Israel into exile in Babylon, he instructed them to seek the welfare of that city, because in its welfare they too would find their own welfare (Jeremiah 29:7).

As we bless the local communities that God has placed us in, we are displaying the same generous, reckless love that God first showed to us. We are praying that people will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven (1 Peter 2:12).

Serving in Summer Hill
Last year, the Summer Hill Gospel Community asked shoppers entering IGA to consider buying a few extra items to bless refugees through our partnership with Simple Love. These groceries were then taken to the local asylum seeker centre to provide for the basic necessities of refugees who are unable to work and provide for themselves.

This is just one example from many of a living church that is seeking the welfare of our city!

Pray for Sydney
As we serve our city, we must continue to pray! A gospel awakening can only happen in Sydney by God’s power. Jesus promises to build his church and offers us the privilege of co-labouring with our God to this end!

Lord revive. Lord restore. Lord awaken our hearts and the hearts of people in our city to see the beauty of the gospel!

You Are His Mission by Daniel Williams

YOU ARE HIS MISSION

The work of church planting is a crazy, exhilarating, draining, rewarding and faith-filled ride. It’s a different life than you lived before in many ways. Many of us left our homes and communities and immersed ourselves in a new place with new people and new surroundings. We’ve seen God provide for our families and our churches in miraculous ways. We’ve been moved to tears when we see a person drawn to Jesus for the first time. It’s often hard, but we wouldn’t choose anything else because God has called us to it and He is leading us faithfully! And yet, in this extraordinary work that God is doing in and through us, it becomes easy for us to forget that God’s love for US is what has compelled us to serve in these unusual ways in the first place.

GOD LOVES YOU, THE WORKER, NOT JUST THE WORK.

It has been said that God calls some to pastor (or to marry a pastor) just to keep that person that much closer to Him. God’s calling on your life is not merely to accomplish a mission through you. You are His mission as well! Have you seen God change you through this journey you’re on? I know that through our church planting journey, my relationship with Jesus has become more real and more a part of who I am than at any other time in my life. God knew this when He called me and when He called you. Never forget that it was His love for YOU that changed you and led you to this place in your life. It is his kindness to YOU that caused you to listen when He called you to plant a church.

REMEMBER YOUR FIRST LOVE

Don’t lose sight of this. Church plant or not. Pastor or not. Leader or not. God loves you. Let this simple message wash you today and reassure you. He doesn’t love you for what you do or how you may or may not see yourself or your ministry. Even if nobody else comes to your Sunday service, God is there to teach YOU. His mercies for YOU are new every morning. So, whatever your day or week looks like, be refreshed in the truth that Jesus is with you and will accomplish what He began in you from the very beginning. Your Saviour, your God. Remember Him and His love for you today.

Be blessed,

Daniel Williams