Today (March 21st) marks the last day that Graham Crew is SWAC’s Senior Pastor.
I don’t plan to repeat much of the many words of thanks (to God and to Graham & Jane) that have been said at the numerous farewells, but I do want to encourage FNC members to pause and reflect on a couple of important things:

• Many members of FNC are too young to have known as an adult, any Senior Pastor other than Graham. But perhaps some of you have travelled enough to understand a little what an absolute blessing it is to have had a Senior Pastor as completely committed to the authority of Scripture as Graham has been.
  It is the difference between truths and lies, black and white, salvation and damnation. The leader of a church sets the agenda for that church, and if that agenda is not defined and directed by Scripture, then that church is in very serious trouble indeed.
  While it can be easy for us to take that for granted in Sydney Anglican circles, we have been extraordinarily blessed to have had Graham’s total commitment to the Word of God.
• The other feature of Graham’s ministry we need to be grateful for is his boldness. In particular, to encourage very different styles of church meetings to coexist alongside each other as part of a strategy to reach our community. Perhaps that was most clearly seen back in the days of the ‘Church in the Club’, but the principle still exists and we continue to benefit from it directly or indirectly.  There are some of you reading this who came to know Jesus because of this and the previous point!
  Sometimes in our ‘church shopping’ moments it’s easy to forget that not many churches enjoy that range of styles and expressions of the same biblical Christianity.

So as Graham and Jane move on to Gymea, we at FNC need to focus clearly on maintaining the high level of commitment to Biblical teaching (‘going deep into the Word‘), keep on seeking to grow as a gospel community, while looking for opportunities for creative service. We must never take those things for granted, and we must pray earnestly that God would be at work through our Nominators to bring a man with equal commitment to the Bible, with the same passion for reaching the lost, but with whatever set of gifts and abilities God would use to take SWAC and FNC on into the future.

Despite some of the uncertainties, it’s a privilege to be pushed into trusting God for the future!

LiVE is going gang-busters as a vehicle for promoting gospel growth amongst FNC members aged between 17-30 years.
I’m hugely grateful to God and those who drive it for the blessing it is.

But FNC is more than 17-30 year olds, and for a while I’ve been concerned about feeding/encouraging/motivating/mobilising our FNC Seniors/Elders (maybe to be known collectively as ‘Staying aLiVE).
So today we had a gathering of a number of that group of people to begin the process of talking through those issues.
I was hugely encouraged by the turn out and the quality discussion, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes under God.

Some things that emerged:

• A fair number of those present are in a Growth Group and really happy there.
• A fair number of those present are NOT in a Growth Group – some would like to be, some feel they are too busy, some want to explore other options.
• Our Growth Groups are poorly promoted and advertised.
• There is real interest in building mentoring style relationships with young FNC people – reading the Bible, praying with them.
• We have a plan to establish a ‘Care and Communication Team’ of 12+ FNC people of mixed ages to help with pastoral care of members and visitors.
• People really enjoyed doing the meeting today on a Sunday morning over coffee and croissants (and tea, fruit, muffins, etc). Future versions could also be Sunday Arvo Tea
• Need to do welcoming better at FNC. -[Edit:VB] Current welcoming teams do a fine job, but would be good to have a better spread of FNC ages in the teams, and perhaps work on ways to ‘value add’ to our current welcoming strategy
• There was a mixed response to doing church around tables – what are some acceptable alternatives to further relationship building at church?
• [edit: DT] Men’s Ministry – we have some men’s events at a SWAC-wide level, but a strategic, consistent men’s ministry is totally absent. This can be seen as a major missing link in encouraging/mentoring of younger men. What ministry there is for men has a strong focus on ‘blokiness’ (sport/car/beer/meat) – what about men with different tastes/pastimes? Katoomba Men’s Convention poorly promoted and attended from SWAC/FNC
• We really valued the serving of Brad, Sam and Sam this morning!

There was a lot more than that we was discussed, and more will be added to this post in due course.
Likewise, as some suggested solutions and ways forward are developed, they will be posted here too…

Stay tuned…