“DEATH AND RESURRECTION EVENTS”

Easter is a time when we commemorate death and resurrection. The second part of this we like but going through the first is the challenge. Reflecting on our lives, we recall death and resurrection events.

I’ve been attached to various churches during my journey and they have undergone such events. I started Sunday School at Rose Park Methodist Sunday School, SA in 1944. Last time I heard it was a combined Uniting Church-Churches of Christ congregation. I returned to Eudunda where the Methodist Church (built in 1888) was my spiritual HQ. Recently, I heard the building was past safe use so the Uniting congregation now meets in the local Health Centre.

My next church was the big old Wallaroo Methodist Church from 1951-1952. After church union, the buildings of the old churches fell into disuse but somehow somewhere a Uniting congregation still meets, I believe. My middle high school years were spent at Tusmore Methodist Church. After I left, a new building was constructed but recently a number of Uniting congregations have formed a more central congregation.

To cut a long story short, I was confirmed in 1958 in the Bagot Road Methodist Church in Subiaco, WA. Several churches in the area combined years later, and a few years ago a Coffee Shop venture replaced the buildings. My first appointment in 1961 was Midland Junction Methodist Church with Greenmount further up the hill. The Midland venue in time became a car park for Woolworths while the wooden Greenmount building was eventually transported and the surviving congregations now meet together in the newer suburb of Swan View.

My first post-training place was Mullewa now an outstation of Geraldton, as is probably Mingenew whose brick fence outside the bee-infested wooden building was stronger than the building. Brookton/Beverley doesn’t have its own minister now. Regional resource ministry is alive and well in rural WA. My Gosnells congregation (1978-1982) later moved to the former Salvation Army property.

I re-visited Dubbo in February where I was one of 2 & 3/7 ministers from 1987-1989 working out of 3 buildings. Now it is down to one building with a regional minister working out of Wellington. There you are, death and resurrection of congregations within three States during my lifetime… and it is still going on as we travel on new and risky paths.

Most of us have come to North Ryde Community Church from previous places to pool our experiences and resources, remembering the death and resurrection events that have led us to this present moment. We follow Jesus who had the death and resurrection experience to outdo us all.

None of us know what the future will hold for us, individually or as a congregation, although as a congregation we are better placed than so many we know of. Years ago, I met a visitor who came from Salonika in Greece, formerly Thessalonica of New Testament fame. As I suspected he belonged to a church named St Paul’s (why should we not be surprised), probably one of the longest serving churches in existence.

We cannot strive to repeat that kind of history. Our churches are more mobile than we know. Faith has come to us from many lands through centuries of death and resurrection. First has come the death of Jesus and his resurrection through his first disciples who became the Body of the Risen Christ. These disciples died but the Spirit of Christ within and among them has been continuously resurrected throughout each generation from then to now, and hopefully continues to those coming after us.

The sun sets and it is night but it always rises again to begin a new morn.