With One Accord

Pentecost Sunday

31st May 2020

Welcome to The Nambucca Baptist Church for our Sunday online service. As you can see it is Pentecost today and we sense that this year Pentecost has special meaning for the church as we find the enforced isolation regulations gradually easing. We ask ourselves the question, what will church be like when we are able to resume normal services? What are normal services going to look like anyway in this new environment? Today I seek to offer one path for our congregation, that of unity of heart mind and passion as we gather together with one accord in the way that Luke describes the church in Acts.

As usual, we have Meryl to welcome us to church and lead us in prayer. Anne does the Bible readings for us. David is behind the camera and making sure that all the technology works as best as possible during the recording session. This morning is also our regular communion service. If you wish to join us with one accord you might like to prepare the elements at home and join with us as we celebrate Holy Communion directly after the sermon.

We hope that you enjoyed our service this morning. We certainly enjoyed being able to meet in our church and record it for you. hopefully, it won’t be too long before we can all gather together and celebrate being the family of God here at Nambucca baptist Church. You may have heard that the government is relaxing the regulations for churches, allowing up to fifty people to gather in the church, provided that social distancing and all the other rules are maintained. At this stage, the regulations prevent us from worshiping as we would like and as a consequence, we will not be resuming our meetings in the church for the time being. However, Monday Morning Prayer is at the manse at 10.00 AM and we are certainly free to gather there for prayer. We will also continue to video link up with those who are unable to be there in person. If you wish to participate by video link and you have not been a part of our Facebook messenger group please contact Peter who will try to assist you.

I would love to have shown you a clip of the Upper Room in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, when we got into the room it was clearly not a first-century room. It is in fact a thirteenth-century mosque, it’s only significance lies in the fact that it is in roughly the right place and it is a large upstairs room. As a consolation prize, here are a couple of pictures of Gethsemane showing some of the ancient Olive trees that still bear fruit every year. The oil pressed from these Olives is sent directly to the pope.