Archives For Churchlands Christian Fellowship

Church of Perth Highlights

February 29, 2012 — Leave a comment

As you know, we have spent 7 months “shopping” for a new church. It’s actually a long time to be “homeless”; in a way, we felt like Abraham, setting out from the familiar places into unknown territory.

Until 7 months ago, we had never really visited churches except for when we were overseas. Having now visited a number of churches in Perth, I am encouraged to see what God is doing amongst the congregations in this city. I have discovered that different churches have different strengths too and I wonder how much more each church would be blessed if they were able to learn from each other.

So here are some of the churches we visited during this transitional period and some of the characteristics we really loved:

  1. CCC Crawley (or C4). This church is positioned deep in the Western Suburbs in Dalkeith, where every fourth car parked around the church was a Porsche. When I visited this church, I found out that Phil Pringle was considered to be in the top 10 of Australian artists and to generate curiosity, they were going to make the front of the church into a Phil Pringle Art Gallery. What a clever way to outreach!
  2. First Light. We loved the warmth of fellowship, the intensity of the worship and the awesome grace-based preaching. In fact, of all the churches we visited, we lingered in First Light’s visitor’s lounge the longest.
  3. Victory Life. This is the church we would have settled in if we were 60 years old. The older generation here were so vibrant and full of life that they would put the young people to shame. And they have this crazy vision to build a massive prayer tower.
  4. SouthCity. I have some good mates here but again was drawn to this church by its warmth. The preaching was short and punchy, but impactful. After only a service lasting 1 hour and 15 minutes, we still came out feeling full.
  5. Sonlife. We enjoyed this church because of the great preaching and the passion of its people in worshipping God. The congregation easily drowns out the worship team. I also had the privilege of co-leading worship there one Sunday and it was so easy to lead which means someone has taught the congregation well how to worship.
  6. Faith Community Church. This is a church with a great vision for the community and the body of Christ as a whole. Of course, Pastor Benny Ho’s preaching is probably one of the best around (I’m not trying to suck up here, but that really is an honest assessment) and the worship is vibrant.
  7. Metrochurch. The service culture in this church is phenomenal. The Senior Pastor Geoff Woodward (also one of the best preachers around in my opinion), in the middle of his sermon, mentions that it would be nice to have a cup of coffee and before you know it, an offsider shows up at the side of the stage with… you guessed it … a cup of coffee. And even cooler is the fact that Geoff Woodward then spends 2 minutes on stage slowly savouring every drop of the coffee. Geoff’s jokes are great too including my favourite “dad joke” that goes like this: “I couldn’t believe it when my neighbour started knocking on my front door at 3 am in the morning! Good thing I was still up playing my bagpipes”.
  8. Riverview. This is Perth’s flagship seeker friendly church. The creative display is awe-inspiring. Whilst the worship was going on, a guy was painting what looked like a mountain scene at the side of the stage, only to turn it on its side to reveal the face of Jesus.
  9. Churchlands. This is a church which in my view resembles Bethel Church in spiritual orientation: supernaturally focussed with a hunger for God’s presence reflected during their worship time.
  10. JoyCity. I heard an amazingly fresh sermon from a young friend of mine, Nick Chan, entitled “The Church is Full of Hypocrites”. He got my attention! And he delivered. Brilliant worship as well from a worship leader I used to serve with and whom I deeply respect.
  11. Mighty Livingwaters. A church which has a strong prophetic gifting. We missed out on Pastor Rajan, but heard his mentor preach instead.
  12. Influencers. This church has a culture that thinks big and looks big. Even though (I think) they have about 100 people, they are set up with three plasma screens. They also have a thriving international student’s ministry.

So there are some highlights of some of the churches we visited. In a sense, it was a shame we couldn’t visit more, but our time of wandering had to come to an end.

Even though we are now committed to settle down in a church however we intend to take a week off every couple of months just to visit another church and to keep on the pulse of what God is doing in the city.

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Keeping It in the Family

February 26, 2012 — Leave a comment

Today, we see another phase of our journey closing off as Ling and I visited one last church before settling in to our new church. And what a great way to end this chapter!

We visited Churchlands Christian Fellowship and were really impressed by the worship: very Spirit-led and engaging with a “mosh pit” full of older people expressing their praise to God. It was simple, yet we sensed the reality of God’s presence in that place. And we were blessed to hear a message by Ned Davies who had returned to Perth (after 20 years in Sydney including at Hillsong) to lead the worship ministry at Churchlands. Ned Davies wrote the song “Awesome in this Place”, amongst others.

But that’s an aside. Over this week, I want to round off with some thoughts about our journey to find a new church home before announcing which church we’ll be joining from the first week of March.

One of the things I want to explore is the concept of the local church as family. This was something we grappled with as early as three years ago leading up to the time we left our church at the end of July last year. When we first canvassed the thought of leaving all that time ago, one of the things which people said to me was: “you can’t leave the church. The church is your family”. (No wonder people argue so much and get into conflict: because the church is a family!)

But what our counsellors were really saying was that we were so intertwined with our local church, to leave it was tantamount to breaking familial bonds which will never form again anywhere else. It was kind of like divorcing your wife or emancipating from your parents. The local church, in effect, was your family for life and you couldn’t go anywhere else.

I used to think this too, but I now see some problems with that line of thinking. For example:

  • What happens when you relocate interstate? Why is it that you can go to another church and belong to a new family then?
  • What about if God calls you to simply move to another church in your city?
  • What if you no longer feel like you are growing? Or what if the church you attend doesn’t have a particular ministry you feel called to serve in?
  • When do you ever get to choose your church? If there is a permanence to being part of a local church family, why don’t they tack an extra bit to the end of the sinner’s prayer to warn you, such as “now that you’ve received Jesus, you’d better think carefully whether you will attend this church because you will be stuck with us for life”.

I think this concept of church as family is a major hindrance to the purposes of God in a city because it actually makes it harder for the local churches to be unified in the city. It leads to pastors becoming extremely protective of their flock so that people movement between churches is seen as taboo and therefore to be discouraged. It creates tensions between churches. And yet, when you think about it, there is absolutely no net loss to the kingdom of God! In fact, there is just the same number of Christians around except that instead of fellowshipping in one place, they have moved to a different place.

Now, I definitely believe that to be effective in the Kingdom of God, Christlike character is best formed in community, particularly in a local church. However, that shouldn’t make that one church a life sentence.

We should really look at the local churches in the city as one church, comprising of many congregations. Then we don’t really have to worry which local church people move to, as long as they remain vitally connected to God and the body of believers and keep serving Him.

So by all means the local church is a family, but only in the sense that we share in community with fellow believers; we encourage one another; we speak into one another’s lives; we admonish one another; we correct and reprove one another; we build each other up.

If we are able to see the church in the city as one big family, then the possibilities are limitless. Imagine local churches reaching across institutional/organisational boundaries to share resources; imagine the churches in a local area partnering together to deliver meals to the poor; imagine their standing side by side to host worship events or evangelistic crusades; imagine their transforming their communities together, rather than on their own. There would be synergy.

God was concerned about wicked people being united in the common cause of the Tower of Babel. In Genesis 11:6, God says “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them”. But now, imagine righteous people, speaking the same language of brotherly love, executing a common God-given vision. Would it be impossible for them to transform their communities?

In the last 7 months, I have learnt that the family of God is so much bigger than any one local church. In fact, we have connected with people in the different churches we have visited; we have friends both in our old church and those who have moved on to other churches who continue to speak into our lives and (we hope) us into theirs. We have served together with people from other churches to advance the Kingdom of God. And we have come to see that we have lots of family, located in different congregations, all over this city.

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