Hi there, please see below the latest update from our Eldership, we are sorry for any inconvenience.
If you have any questions please get in contact via email or the blue speech bubble in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Our Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a ban on all indoor gatherings over 100 people. Our hope was to continue meeting together for at least another week, but in light of this news we will be moving up our timeline.

As of now, we will move to temporarily have our gatherings in homes, in smaller groups of 20 people. We now have a chance to love our city, ironically, through our absence in large gatherings and presence in smaller spaces.

While we don’t know how long this will be our new rhythm, we do know it will only be temporary, as we look to return to our usual Sunday gatherings at some time in the near future. In the meantime, we’re committed to doing what we can to help reduce the burden on our medical infrastructure and reduce the risk to those most vulnerable among us. Here’s how this will look for us moving forward.

Sundays. Each week, we will be sending out a video link that contains a pre-recorded message from one of our pastors. This is pre-recorded so that you can gather with your HC at any time, be it morning or afternoon to worship together. We will also provide a list of some recommended worship songs, so that we can still, although separate physically, sing in unity. For those with larger families, this may mean gathering some Sundays with just yourselves or with one other family. For those with smaller families or who are single, this may be with your whole House Church on a Sunday morning or afternoon. We will sing together, come under God’s Word together, share a meal together, and worship in homes just like God’s people have done across the last two millennia.

Midweek. We will continue to gather in our normal House Church rhythms for discussion, prayer, care, food, etc. Several of our larger House Churches are planning to multiply out new HC’s over the coming weeks, so that we can have more-and-smaller HC’s, rather than fewer-but-larger HC’s.

If you are presently not connected to one of our House Churches across the city, please reach out to Luke, get the details off a friend who is part of one, or send us an email to Luke@gospellife.com.au and we will get you in touch with a HC near you. We want to care for you well during this season.

 While it will be important — for the sake of those more susceptible to the virus — that we practice good hygiene and healthy social distancing, we want to ensure that we don’t mistake ‘social-distance’ for ‘relational-distance.’ Now more than ever, we need one another. If you are unwell, please take advantage of technology and consider using Facetime or Skype to join in with your group while you can’t be present. And let them know what you need and how they can serve you! Now is the time for us to care for each other well, pray for each other regularly, and be a non-anxious presence in smaller gatherings across our city. While we long to be the ‘church-gathered’ and all together again, we are still the church, even when we are the ‘church-scattered.’ So let’s lean in and love well.

Finally, let’s allow this time to love those who surround us. We are indeed those who have been affected by this glorious gospel. Our hope is in the eternal and this is a real test for us all. In closing I would like to leave with you Martin Luther’s very poignant quote from his letter to a fellow Christian during the black plague:

“Very well, by God’s decree, the enemy has sent us poison and deadly offal. Therefore, I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine, and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance infect and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbour needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person, but will go freely.”

Something to think about as this situation progresses.

 We will also be looking at different ways to keep in contact as a community during this time. If anything changes we will notify you via email, Facebook and our Instagram page. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything.  

We love you and are here for you.