What is “The Big Church Day”?
It is our opportunity to meet as one Cathedral congregation to celebrate what God is doing amongst us, to hear his word together, to pray for each other, and to plan for the future.
St Andrew’s has five separate public congregations meeting every Sunday (six on some Sunday’s) and another five congregations meeting mid-week. This is not counting the many other ministries involving hundreds of people in Bible Study and evangelism that we conduct each week.
But we have not made time previously to gather everybody together and share the wonderful things are happening.
The big weekends like Easter and Christmas are more marked by visitors attending than by our congregations sharing with each other.
The one time of the year that we have programmed as an opportunity of being together is the Annual General Meeting. But the agenda of that meeting is about business rather than the gospel. So our fellowship at that meeting tends to be secular rather than spiritual.
We need time to get together. So we need to move out of our normal routine of separate specialist congregations and meet as one big Cathedral community around God’s word. We need to be refreshed by hearing about God’s work in other parts of the Cathedral family and to be encouraged to press on in our own evangelisation of the city.
Such a change in routine involves that precious commodity of life – time. It involves making time for what we consider as important. It means taking enough time that we can hear from each other and pray for each other. It means everybody has to be a little inconvenienced by coming at a different time than usual.
So next Sunday is our first “Big Church Day”. We will meet from 10am till 3pm. This will include half an hour for morning tea and an hour for lunch. Both will be served on the premises. The times of refreshment are an important part of the fellowship, so we are providing both out of Cathedral funds.
There will be three ‘meetings’ during the day, two in the morning and one straight after lunch. In each of these meetings we will be hearing from God and from each other as we sing the praises of our Lord and Saviour and pray to our heavenly Father. In one meeting we will be celebrating the Lord’s Supper, for the Lord’s death is the very basis of our communion or fellowship.
During the course of the day we will conduct all the regulatory requirements of the Annual General Meeting. The Cathedral Chapter discussed and approved all the details of how this would be achieved at its last meeting.
This promises to be a great day. We are looking to all partners and members of the Cathedral community to make attending this day a priority in their diary.
For catering purposes please indicate that you are coming. I am sure that you will understand that we do not want to be short of food nor to waste money by providing too much.
I look forward to seeing you all next week.
