Updated Saturday 21/06/25
- Kate Returns: not like Jesus returns, but awaited just as eagerly, by me at least. Having been away now days, driving south as far as Tamworth to see her daughter, and Brisbane for a school reunion, I'm looking forward to seeing her again later today. She has don e a lot of driving and is looking forward to coming home.
- Wednesday Study: 10.00am at our place for the mid-week study. We have had some people request an evening meeting but we haven't seen them for some time so we will think about that when we have more interest. We're happy to start an evening mid-week meeting whenever the time is right. Church is always on at 9.30am every Sunday.
- Hervey Bay Community Notice Board and Instagram: We've joined the Hervey Bay Community Notice Board FB page as Pathway Church at last. Also connected to Instagram so posts will go to both places from now on. We prefer to have the subscription to the HB Community page separate for church posts. This week I needed to post personally about finding a local Trike riding club (which I did), and Nelo (our cat) went missing, which garnered amazing responses both. Nelo found his way home 24 hours later and is now in the doghouse, so to speak. I realised it is better not to mix church promotion with personal stuff on FB. Saves confusion.
Updated Friday 06/06/25
- Pentecost Combined Churches meeting: A combined churches meeting at Hervey Bay Baptist Church on Sunday evening was a great success. It looked like hundreds of people had come from a wide variety of Christian churches. Hervey Bay is unusual in its unity of support and purpose when it comes to leaders gathering together regularly, and it seem the people support this judging from what was an unexpectedly awesome meeting to celebrate Pentecost Sunday. Not being someone who has ever followed the traditional church calendar it was my first actual Pentecost Sunday meeting and the organisers and support workers did an amazing job. There was a definite presence of the Holy Spirit infusing the whole evening with the theme of the evening being "Reaching The Next Generation". Pastor Tim Eyschen from the Fraser Coast Baptist Church, who gave the keynote message, ended his thoughts with the statement "We Are Better Together", and that, for me, was the real theme of the evening.
BUILDING A NEW CHURCH
This is not really a website update item, but it is something I'd like to share. Since the beginning of this New Year there has hardly been a week go by when we have not met someone new or had an inquiry about Church. Not everyone has joined us, and not everyone comes every week, but this is in stark contrast what was happening when we were ploughing the ground faithfully for several months yet seeing little in the way of positive returns last year. At Christmas we remained small in number but knowing God had called us here for this purpose we have never really been disheartened, and we did have some faithful people join us who have locked into our Pathway Church vision with us. Growing a new church from scratch is not a sprint, but a marathon, and not for the faint hearted as anyone who has taken on this challenge can testify. But after all is said and done it is God who plants a vision in our hearts, God has a purpose when determining the birth of a new church, and God ultimately gives the growth (1 Cor 3:5-9). There is no greater privilege than to serve a vision God has planted in our heart, and persevere until it reaches maturity (Heb 10:36).
