Pastor Ben and I are very excited for the coming year. Here is a brief preview of what we’ll be looking at in the Bible for 2014:

• We will continue our current series ‘The Twelve’ as we plumb the depths of the Minor Prophets and their message for us today. I’ve been personally very challenged and encouraged by the messages so far—I hope and pray you have as well!
• Following on from ‘The Twelve’ will be a short series through the New Testament books of 2 John, 3 John and Jude. The title of the series is ‘Call of Duty’ as the series will take a look at how John encourages Christians to reject false teaching, respond to faithful teaching, and hear from Jude as he encourages Christians to contend for their faith.
• The theme of 2014 will be explored after this: ‘As you go…’ The theme is based on Matthew 28 as we would love to see SLE Church really grow our focus on missions and each of our parts to play. To that end…
• Our first series in the ‘As you go…’ theme will be in Philippians. This personal and tender letter from Paul to the church in Philippi contains a lot of what it means to be a ‘partner in the gospel’ – what it means to love, care and financially support a missionary.
• Following Philippians will be a six week series Bible overview. The aim of this series is to understand how every part of scripture plugs into the big picture of God’s mission in this world: the redemption of a people to the praise of His glory. I’m personally very excited about this sermon series!
• From the big overall picture of scripture we come down and look at the early church: Acts 1-15 as we unravel God’s ‘Mission Unstoppable’ in establishing and building his church!
• We’ll pause Acts there as we consider what Jesus teaches in Matthew 8-10, as a follow up from our Sermon on the Mount series at the beginning of 2013.  In Matthew 8-10 ‘Jesus Confronts The World’ with his message and it promises to be a very challenging series of sermons from Pastor Ben.
• Concurrently with the ‘Jesus Confronts The World’ series I, Pastor Steven, will be running a Two Ways to Live training course for those interested in being equipped to better share the gospel with friends and family. This will hopefully lead into a Mission Week in which we are hoping to partner with a team of students from Queensland Theological College at the end of September.
• We then finish the year by considering the Gospel in Genesis 12-50, and the Saviour Songs from Luke leading up to Christmas.

Even recounting all of this makes me super excited to be digging into God’s Word!

As with every New Year there are plenty of resolutions to make and break. Here’s one resolution that you could make and that we could all encourage you to keep: commit to a fellowship group this year. It’s a great way to meet new people, grow your faith, and encourage others in the same. The start of 2014 is probably the best time for this!