Welcome Joel Fletcher

A Happy New Year to you all and I hope that you are prayerfully preparing yourself for a new calendar year. I wanted to take a moment to let you know of an exciting announcement for us as a church: we will be taking on a 'Student Minister' named Joel Fletcher, a student at Moore Theological College in Sydney. 

You may remember Joel and Sam as they visited with us a couple of months ago. He is completing his theological studies at Moore and as part of his studies he needs to undertake a ministry placement and we are glad to accomodate he, Sam and their son Jonathan! 

Training up future pastors is not optional but a perennial responsibiliity of elders and local churches and it is our joy to be a part of the journey. Paul makes this clear in 2 Tim 2:1-2.

 "You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also."

We came to meet Joel through our other Joel! Joel Fletcher began to be interested in continuationism, one of our 7 shared values, and went looking for resources and asked people who knew of continuationist churches, one of friends at College was friends with Joel Seric and made the connection, who then made the connection with me. 

Its been fun getting to know Joel F over phone calls, catch ups and interviews. He is thoughtful, loves Christ, determined and is doing the risky thing of setting apart his life to serve the Lord. He comes with a great review from his home church, The Lakes EV in the Central Coast, and his previous Student Ministry position at Wenty Anglican. 

The role of a Student Minister is different to a Pastoral Intern. His focus is his studies at Moore and to help give him exposure and experience he will be involved in various serving activities including preaching and assisting in SG Kids coordinating. So this will be a new experience for us all.

His first Sunday will be Australia Day, 26 Jan where I have given him the easy, warm up job of preaching! Nothing like a good sermon to ease your way in! 

As we take this new step froward, please do what you do so well...warmly welcome Joel, Sam and Jonathan into our church family. We don't know what the future will hold but I trust that God has led them to us for our blessing and hopefully theirs too!