 No matter what walk of life you have come from or what your own history is, there is a place and a purpose which God has for you. It is a purpose that begins with knowing Jesus - because all of God’s purposes begin and end with Jesus. And it is a purpose that will continue for you with Jesus in this life and beyond. At St. John’s we meet to encourage one another as we find our common purpose in Jesus Christ. We learn from the Bible how to find life with Christ and how to live so we can please him. St. John’s Cathedral encompasses an extraordinary diversity of community life. Across every age group and across the cultures that make our city – our goal is to know Christ and to make him known. We would love you to join us and we want to invite you to be part of our community and purpose. There are lots of opportunities to serve both within St. John’s and in our community programs. Listen to St. John's services broadcast on FM103.2. Tune in with us Sundays at 7.00pm.
Our Senior Minister Bruce Morrison writes Dear family and friends of St. John’s, We are living in a world of change. The sentence is such an understatement that it is trite. There has always been change, but we are living in an age of extreme and rapid change. Did you know that… Today’s kindergarteners will live in a world where less than 10% of the population will be white and the most common name for their global peers will be Mohammed. India has more English speakers than the UK and the US combined. China will be the world’s biggest economy by 2040. In the next 10 years huge advances are expected in computing, biotechnology and nanotechnology (the science of the small). But more than that, the problems which, in the past, would have meant the end of an empire or a culture today threaten us on a global scale. By 2050 the world’s population will have grown from 6 billion to 9 billion, increasing at a rate of 220,000 births per day but… every day 35,000 people die of starvation and 26,000 of these are children (the equivalent of 100 fully loaded 747’s crashing daily). In addition, already 11 out of the world’s 15 main fishing grounds are badly depleted, world per capita grain production is falling and 1 species disappears from our planet every 20 minutes. We dump more garbage in the sea than weight of fish brought out of the sea. How are we to respond to all this. To be honest – I don’t know. Do any of us? The temptation is to find refuge in a ghetto mentality, circle the wagons and shut out the problems and live off a heritage from the past. The temptation is to preserve and defend our traditional culture, even if it is a shrinking part of the real world around us. Of course the result is that we inevitably marginalize ourselves. And by marginalizing ourselves we ensure that we will not be listened to. Our influence dwindles and with the rate of change in our world we will be extinct in a generation. The alternative is to find ways to engage with the culture and the world, to read and understand what is really going on, to challenge where it is corrupt and immoral, to affirm the truth and challenge the error. The alternative is to recognise that, whilst we will not be able to solve the world’s problems, we can love and rescue individuals by whatever means we have available to us. The alternative is to be open to new ideas and their potential for communicating with our world. The alternative is to be respectful of differences while we hold out the gospel truth in peace. The alternative is to move beyond self interest and love as Christ loved, radically and sacrificially. No one who does this will ever be marginalized. They will grow to influence and change the world. Bruce Morrison |
