Reach Australia Highlights: Day 1
Today, I’ve convoyed with the Hope Staff team (those without COVID) to Erina on the Central Coast for the Reach Australia Conference. If you look at their website, you’ll see that “Reach Australia is a church network of over 260+ churches and church plants working together to see Australia reached with the gospel.“
At the conference, there are around 1300 delegates. Pretty encouraging to see this many people committed to seeing Australia reached with the gospel, all in one room.
After day one, I’m pretty pooped, physically and intellectually. Lots of content to wrap my brain around. But, not too tired to share some highlights.
1. Glory
This year, God’s glory is the theme of the conference.
In the opening address, Gary Millar spoke on John 17:1-5, and Jesus’ prayer for glory. And I’ve got to say, it truly is a magnificent passage. Imagine that you’re about to be crucified. What am you praying for? Protection? Deliverance? Probably. What does Jesus pray for?
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.”
John 17:2
Not the kind of prayer I’m likely to pray for myself. The point was made that this can only really be the Lord’s prayer.
I appreciated that he attempted to define glory and glorify. They’re such common Bible words, but so often left undefined.
Glory was defined as “magnificence; limitless power; unfathomable mercy; inexpressible greatness; blinding holiness,” and a few other well-worded phrases that I failed to jot down!
Glorify was defined as “putting all that on display, to announce it and proclaim it.“
This piqued my interest. Recently, at Hope Youth, we’ve been trying to define these words for our youth, as I painstakingly remind the youth what we’re on about every Sunday morning: God’s glory and glorifying him.
We try and define “glory” with an acronym—God’s:
Goodness
Love
’Oliness (I know … the cringe …)
Righteousness
Yeah, all that kind of stuff in one giant bundle.
We’ve then tried to define “glorify” as “to point to that stuff”.
I preferred Gary’s definitions to ours. But I feel like ours still works if you’re an eleven-year-old boy.
I was also struck by the fact that Jesus is praying out loud. Why? Millar reminded us that Jesus prays aloud to invite us to come to him and gasp. To see and savour his beauty. To experience the tender gaze of his love. To be filled by the man who can fill our hearts to breaking point. Big stuff.
I was challenged to ask myself some big and confronting questions.
Am I making the most of His magnificence?
Am I actually delighting in Him?
Am I raving about him?
Can I really say that he’s the blazing centre of our world?
I will need to reflect on these questions over the rest of the week, especially as Hope Youth approaches on Friday night. We’ll be exploring 1 Corinthians 10, and, in particular, verse 31 (NIV):
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
(We’ve been singing it to the tune of Land Down Under, the new remix.)
I encourage you to think about these questions, too.
2. Love
Over the next few sessions, we heard from Andrew Heard, Murray Capill and Ray Galea. In their own way, they each asked this question: do we love God?
Do I love God? Really?
This is such an important question to ask myself as a pastor. Andrew Heard commented:
“It’s possible to build a big church, but have it full of people who don’t actually love God.”
Then he added:
“What we are as pastors shapes what our congregations will be.”
I want those whom I lead to love God. If this second quote is true, I need to keep checking myself. Do I really love God?
Murray Capill asked similar questions in his session.
“Do you still love Jesus?”
“Does love for Jesus drive all of your ministry for Jesus?”
“Which arteries are blocked?”
You can’t be a Christian if the answer to question 1 is “no”. You’ll be a pretty lousy pastor if the answer to question 2 is “no”.
As for the third question, Capill suggested that one of the remedies to blocked arteries involves asking the right questions as we read Scripture:
What’s convicting me?
What’s moving me?
What challenges me?
What confronts me?
What exposes me?
What’s beautiful?
What’s exciting?
At the moment, I’m realising that I need to work harder with application in my sermons. I suspect that these questions will be pretty helpful.
In the day's final session with Ray Galea, I was challenged by the story of a pastor/theologian out walking his dogs. As he left the house, Psalm 18:1 popped into his mind:
“I love you, LORD, my strength.”
This man thought, ”I don’t think I ever say to God that I love him.” And so he repented, telling God how much he loves him for the rest of his walk.
How often do I tell God that I love him? How often do you?
3. Friendship
Finally, catching up with old friends was a big highlight. I enjoyed lunch and dinner with friends from my Moore College year group. I bumped into one of my old youth leaders. I saw one of my old pastors. I saw a few former colleagues. I caught up with an old friend with whom I used to attend youth group and met her two children. I got to check in with two of my old youth group kids. I even ended up being roped into being filmed in a video by a friend from my uni days.
Just saying—it’s nice to catch up with friends.
A few weeks ago, I got to preach through the opening verses in Philippians 1. In verses 4 and 5, Paul writes:
“In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”
This evening, I’ve prayed for these friends, thanking God for their partnership in the gospel over the years. Gotta say—I felt the joy.
