Good morning! I hope you have an uncomfortable week. Not all the time, because we need phases of comfort and ease and rest, but sufficiently uncomfortable for learning and growth to take place.
I was talking with some people last week about discipleship and considering how Jesus did the work of discipling. It must have been intensely uncomfortable for those who were on the receiving end of his discipling techniques! If he had just given them information, explained things, answered their questions, that might have been challenging enough, but he kept insisting that they went to places, met people, did things that must have been acutely uncomfortable. Imagine getting to the border of Samaria, and instead of taking a detour to avoid the sort of place their mothers had brought them up to stay well away from, Jesus plunges right in. And then finding your respected teacher in a potentially compromising heart-to-heart with the sort of person decent people wouldn’t want to be seen with. Check it out in John ch. 4. Or to be confronted with a massive challenge way beyond their capacity to do anything about, thousands of hungry people and no catering organized, and hear Jesus say to them, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Find that one in John ch. 6.
The thing is that a disciple is a learner, and we learn and grow when we’re uncomfortable. Learning can be reinforced in comfort, but new learning only happens in discomfort. New relationships require the discomfort of the encounter with the unknown; new understanding comes through the discomfort of existing understandings being dismantled; new skills only grow in the discomfort of being stretched beyond our present capacity.
A disciple is more than a student, she is an apprentice. The goal – and Jesus’ goal for us – is not only that we gather more and more knowledge but that we become more and more fruitful as participants in the work of his kingdom. May this be an uncomfortable week for all of us, as we embrace the challenge of situations we don’t like, people we find difficult, ideas we’d rather not grapple with, as an act of trust in Jesus the Teacher, who invites us to learn from him.
9 May 2011 Semester 1
TUESDAY 10th
Community Worship 11:15am-12pm
Facilitated by Intermission
Speaker: Sam KIlpatrick Phil 1:27-30
After Dinner Mints @ lunch
Rod Thompson: is the Principal of Laidlaw College. Prior to this, Rod served as the Head of School of Theology from February 2008 to June 2010.
WEDNESDAY 11th
Prayer for our hurting world
12:40-1:00pm
Come and join us as we intercede for our hurting world over the next 6 weeks.
May 11 The Sick
May 18 War
May 25 Mission Week
June 1 The Persecuted Church
June 8 The Displaced
UPCOMING EVENTS
Conversations around Love Wins, Rob Bell’s latest book
May 19 @ 7pm
Overseas Missions Week
23 -27 May
PRAYER for our Hurting World
We begin a series of interceding for our hurting world. Come along on Wednesdays at 12.40 at the Chapel as we pray together. All are welcome!
BREAKING FREE – IN STEP WITH THE SPIRIT
In association with Auckland Baptist Women’s Ministries & NZ Baptist Women’s Ministries.This is happening on the 28 May 2011 at 3pm. $25 per person (including Dinner)
Northcote Baptist Church 67 Eban Avenue. Highlights include Amelia Gavidi, President of Fijian Baptist Women, Lyn Campbell, Julie Belding, Ruby Duncan
Email: leejohnb@xtra.co.nz or abmaccarthy@xtra.co.nz
(Edited by George Wieland - original submission Monday, 9 May 2011, 09:53 AM)