St Johns Lutheran Church, Bundaberg. in Bundaberg, Queensland | Religious centre

St Johns Lutheran Church, Bundaberg.

Locality: Bundaberg, Queensland

Phone: +61 7 4152 5900

Address: 30 George Street 4670 Bundaberg, QLD, Australia

Website: http://www.stjohnsbundy.org.au

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25.01.2022 Here's this week's devotion from Bishop Paul Smith: Come Lord Jesus, come, into this weary world Have you seen the amazing array of Advent Calendars in the stores? Year by year there have been more and more of these Calendars on sale in the supermarkets. Now, Advent Calendars have become as marketable as Halloween gear. They are sold as a count down for the 25 days of December and usually include lollies or chocolates or other mystery surprises for children.... I believe this marketing change is a great opportunity for the witness of God’s people to the world. Historically, Advent has barely had a mention in our wider Australian culture. When my children were little, the only Advent calendars for sale were to be found in the Christian bookshops and they usually had the characters in the Nativity. Each week, through the four Sundays of Advent leading up to Christmas, you would slowly make up the full picture of the nativity, with baby Jesus appearing last. (You can still buy Nativity Advent Calendars but you have to search for them. You might consider getting one and giving it as an Advent gift to family or friends.) Why do I believe this change in our culture, to put Advent Calendars on sale in supermarkets everywhere, is such a great opportunity for Christian witness? Advent is about crying out to God. Advent teaches us familiar words of lament for the Church. Lord come and help us. Lord come and save us. Lord have mercy on us. These also are familiar cries for people who have travelled through COVID19 in 2020. The people around us as well as the people of the Church know this common yearning as we have travelled together, through this difficult year of pandemic: Come Lord Jesus, come into this weary world. O how we long for you to come Lord, come. (LHS 731) The Advent Calendar links this yearning to the promise fulfilled in the nativity, where Angels and Shepherds will unite in praise to God for the thing which the Lord has made known to us in the birth of the Christ Child. This is the Gospel. God has not abandoned us to suffer in loneliness. God comes amongst us, born in a box in Bethlehem, to bring peace on earth. God bless your witness through this coming Advent and Christmas time, that the people around us would be ushered into the hope-filled light that is Christ Jesus, our Lord. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. (Malachi 4:2) In Christ, Paul

24.01.2022 The video of the sermon for this Sunday is now available on Youtube and the St John's website. God bless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDc_y3Fgf4Q

19.01.2022 The video for this Sunday's sermon is now on youtube and the website. God Bless.

19.01.2022 The sermon for today is now on youtube & the St John's website. God bless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca7110enyYw

17.01.2022 The sermon for this Sunday is now available on youtube or the St John's website. Today we celebrate Reformation Sunday. God Bless.

16.01.2022 The sermon for this Sunday is now on Youtube & the St John's website. We are continuing with the story of the Samaritan woman at the well from John 4. God bless. (There was no video for last week, please see the website for a print copy of the sermon if you missed it.)

16.01.2022 Devotion from Bishop Paul Smith The King who rules the Servant Kingdom You may have never heard of Thanos. He is an imaginary character in the modern Avengers movie series of the Marvel Movies. This character is portrayed as a mighty war lord of the galaxies, who has plans to bring order to the universe by killing off half of all living things, people included. In the final movie of the series, Thanos has to be brutally attacked and conquered by force to stop his evil pla...Continue reading

14.01.2022 Please come and join us as we celebrate the birth of Christ the King this Christmas season.

12.01.2022 Voting to the Glory of God by Bishop Paul Smith It is time for our Queensland State Elections again. How do you know who to vote for? I recently saw a news broadcast that revealed that the Google search words, Who do I vote for? always spikes high on election day.... The simple answer for a Christian is to vote for the leader who you believe will best represent God’s good and gracious will for the world. .... (click link to read the rest of Bishop Paul's message)

11.01.2022 Article from "Growing Faith" - Equipping + energising parents and carers

10.01.2022 The sermon for this Sunday is now on youtube & the website. God bless.

05.01.2022 Devotion from Assistant Bishop Mark Vainikka Let us Sing the Psalms Together Last Friday, our pastors gathered together for this year’s Queensland District pastors’ conference. It has been a year of ‘firsts’ and for the first time we had pastors’ conference online. We gathered under the theme ‘Then, I will praise you,’ which comes from our conference Scripture passage, Psalm 43:3-5.... Many of you may know that I love Psalms. I particularly love singing Psalms, for Psalms were written to be sung. Psalms are great prayers, because they cover the broad scope of our feelings. Often our prayers to God are prayers we think God wants to hear, rather what we truly feel. It’s like we try to hide the truth from God. This is where the Psalms help. Psalms help us to be honest with God and to be honest with ourselves. As Ronald Rolheiser writes, sometimes we feel good and our impulse is to speak words of gratitude and the Psalms give us that voice. But our lives also have times when disappointment and bitterness spontaneously boil under the surface. Again, the Psalms give us an honest voice and we can open up all those angry feelings to God. Other times, we are filled with the sense of our own inadequacy, with the fact that we cannot measure up to the trust and love that is given to us. The Psalms again give us a voice for this. Luther found great solace in the Psalms. He understood the Psalter as a Christ-centred book and he used the Psalms as a model for Christian prayer. He repeatedly turned to the Psalms for solace and strength. During the pandemic of their time, the Black Plague, he found great comfort in the words of his favourite Psalm, Psalm 46. This ancient song provided the inspiration for Luther’s famous Reformation hymn, A Mighty Fortress. In a couple of weeks, Lutheran Churches throughout the world, will resound once again with the singing of that famous Reformation hymn, based on Psalm 46. Many times, when discouraged, Luther would turn to Philip Melanchthon and say, ‘Come, Philip, let us sing the 46th Psalm together.’ And together, they would sing: A sure stronghold our God is He, A timely shield and weapon; Our helper He will be and set us free From every ill can happen. What would Luther say to us in the midst of our own pandemic in 2020? I think he would turn to us and say: ‘Come, dear brothers and sisters in Queensland, let us sing the 46th Psalm together.’ In Christ, Mark

02.01.2022 Devotion from Bishop Paul Smith for this week. Let everything that breathes praise the Lord. (Psalm 150) On one side of my desk I have a little statue of an elephant with its hands pressed together. It has been designed as a praying elephant and it is my daily reminder of the beautiful message of a psalm verse, Let everything that breathes praise the Lord.... Christians celebrate that each of us is a beloved creature of a loving Creator. Christians also celebrate the witness in the Old Testament book of Genesis, that God saw all his creation as very good. God looks lovingly on all of creation, people, trees, rocks and rivers, insects, kangaroos and elephants. So the psalmist rightly calls on all creation to respond to God’s loving care for all our world with praise, Let everything that breathes praise the Lord. God has not set this world into motion then slipped off into distant heaven. God is present and active with this creation. God is with every breath, busy and active, painting sensational sunsets, sculpting mountains and valleys, colouring the faces of each new born person. On the other side of my desk is the symbol that we know as God’s signature for all of God’s work in our world. Signatures are significant because they identify who the actual artist is. God gives us the sign of the cross, to declare his hand is at work. The cross of Jesus Christ tells us what we need to know about who God really is. The cross tells about God’s heart. The cross tells us that God has worked to deal with sin and death that we could have life and salvation and the forgiveness of sin through all that Christ Jesus had done for us in his life and death and resurrection. Dr Martin Luther once suggested that we could start and end each day, making the sign of the cross over our own chest and saying, Under God’s care, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Across our Lutheran communities in Queensland, the cross stands out as the dominant symbol most commonly used amongst us. This is our witness to the certainty of God’s love that is at work despite what others might say, or despite whatever crises might come our way. We know that we are wonderfully created by a gracious Lord and that we are and lovingly shown mercy by God, however great our sin. We know that because of the cross. Let everything that breathes praise the Lord, for the work of the cross. Amen. In Christ, Paul