Dear BPCWA worshipper, Members in good standing will be voting for the Session of BPCWA in our Triennial Elections after the worship service today. It has been my prayer, and I hope yours too, that the vote of members will reflect those whom God intends to be serving in our Session. To prepare the Session members to serve BPCWA together for the next 3 years, I have planned for a Session retreat next week, on the King’s Birthday public holiday. The Session retreat will be held in church and is a full-day working session for the new Session. I thought it would be good to have worshippers understand why we are planning for this, and what we will cover during
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, Next week will be our Annual Congregational Meeting. Together with this meeting will be our elections. I have written the past few pastorals to update and provide you with the necessary information for the elections. With all this information, how should you vote? Understand why you are voting. Although we are not a congregational church, we do incorporate elections into our process for the appointment of church officeholders. The primary reason for having elections is for the protection of the church. Having an election once every 3 years is the way members exercise their responsibility to protect the church by ensuring that errant Session members are not voted in and will be removed from office at the
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, After having written about the Session and deacons, I will discuss the offices in the Board of Elders this week. As you have seen in last week’s candidate testimonies, the Board has nominated Dn Eugene to stand for the office of elder in the upcoming election. Since we do not currently have another elder in BPCWA and this office may be relatively unfamiliar to many of you, I will elaborate more on the Board of Elders today. Please read the pastoral on 13 August for more details on how the BOE functions in a Presbyterian church. Joint oversight of the church. Elders in the BOE are jointly responsible for the care of the church. It is obvious
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, Worshippers will find together with the bulletin today a booklet with the details of the candidates who have been nominated by the Board of Elders to be put up for election into the Session at the upcoming ACM next month. All members should ensure that they have a copy of this booklet before they leave the church today. This is a long pastoral because there is much to explain, and it is needful for us to understand in detail the assessment process and evaluation criteria that led us to these final candidates for elections. As members and worshippers in BPCWA, you must be interested to read through these. The process before final nominations. Although we are only
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, The office of deacon may vary depending upon the understanding between churches since the duties and roles of deacons are different in different denominations. To bring everyone to the same page, I will explain our practice and the qualifications for deacons in BPCWA i.e., in a Bible-Presbyterian denomination. This will help everyone view these offices properly. Moreover, understanding the Biblical qualifications will also enable members to vote correctly. What is not expected of deacons. Deacons are not “elders in waiting” i.e., they will definitely be an elder in a matter of time. Neither are they “miniature elders”, functioning almost like elders. Some have the mistaken idea that deacons must be good teachers of the Word. But God,
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, We will have our Annual Congregational Meeting in September. This also marks the year when our Triennial Elections to Session will be held. Though the BP government may be familiar to many, new people joining us and even some existing members may not be very clear about this subject. For this purpose, I conducted a church study series last year on “The Bible-Presbyterian Church Government”. The videos for this series are available online on our YouTube channel at bpcwa.org.au/youtube. However, as we have our elections this year, I will briefly summarise relevant points in today’s pastoral as a refresher to everyone, as well as explain a little more about BPCWA’s Session. Requirements for every Session member. Every
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, In this final pastoral of the series, I will summarise the last 2 sermons of our camp thematic message based on our theme verse from Eph 6:18 “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints”. The Determination in Prayer. God instructs us to pray “with all perseverance”. This means that we must continue in persistence without discouragement or disheartenment. We need to persevere in watching and persist in both praying and supplication. We have an example of such importunate prayer in Lk 18:1-8. The widow tires the judge out. She displayed urgency and was undoubtedly passionate about her request. Cold prayers have no place
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, Having covered the first three sermons in last week’s pastoral, I will continue to summarise the next three, based on our theme verse from Eph 6:18 “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints”. I do hope these recapitulations will cause you to be reminded and stirred to maintain a life of prayer. The Kinds of Prayer. What are the kinds of prayer? 1) Adoration. We must spend time in adoration of God, where our hearts are lifted to magnify and glorify God as we stand in amazement of Him. Only if we do this will we change how we approach God and view
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, I will recapture the first 3 thematic messages here. My great burden for each worshipper in BPCWA is that we have a life of prayer that is real and consistent. Many of you are studying the Word consistently. But that is only half of what is needed for our walk with the Lord. From now onwards, each of us needs to have the same emphasis, effort, and endurance in prayer as we are already putting in the study of the Word. Only then will we be safe and not fail God. I pray that this summary will stir afresh in us the importance of prayer, the prerequisites of prayer, and a desire to develop a life of
Read moreDear BPCWA worshipper, We thank God for a time of spiritual learning of His eternal truths at the camp. In this pastoral, I will summarise the morning devotion messages preached via video sermons by Preacher Joshua Yong. While we currently have a strong foundation on the Word of God by God’s grace, BPCWA and other sound churches must be warned against departing from it when the baton is passed on to the next generation. Hence, I asked him to preach on the theme “Walk in the Old Paths” from Jeremiah 6:16 “Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find
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