Browns Bay Presbyterian Church

Welcome to Browns Bay Presbyterian

Sunday Morning
Online & COVID REQUIREMENTS AT BBP

Services are held here at Anzac Rd* with Zoom and YouTube as options.

Please follow good hygiene and ventilation. Wearing masks is a personal choice.

If you are unwell or cant attend.
Here is the Link for
ZOOM https://us02web.zoom.us...
Or
Here is the Link for YouTube
News Live

*Subject to Covid rules on the day

PASTORAL SUPPORT

For counselling and support or other church enquiries contact Robin Palmer.

Prayer requests can be sent to office for the church prayer groups to pray for you.

We will continue to pray that all in our community will cope with this new way of life, and be able to find new ways of being a faith community. We can do this!

Every blessing,

Robin
(Pastor)

We're glad you're here! We hope you will find all you need to know about Browns Bay Presbyterian.
With Gods help we can get through this.

Weather Inconvenience

Dear All,

Our Church building and Family Centre suffered flood damage in yesterday's storm. We are unable to meet at 45 Anzac Road tomorrow, so please use the links on the side panel to connect to our Zoom service or YouTube at 10.00am.

We will update soon.

We are a community church comprised of people of all ages and various cultures. Our desire is to help people find and follow Jesus. This means we are discovering what it means to love God, love one another and love the community around about us.

You'll find more information about us from the links on the menu on the left.

From the Pastor’s pen:

Welcome to BBP Family Church’s weekly newsletter.
Prayer is available daily through the prayer chain and email list.

If you click on Readings and Vids for each week’s readings are in English or Korean/English parallel when you click on the Reference, Footnotes link.

BBP CHURCH EMAIL LIST - JOIN IF YOU HAVE NOT YET DONE SO
Newsletters are sent out by email. To get these and other news you can send your email address to: estellejseaman@gmail.com. We’d love you to stay connected.

29 January 2023

CELEBRATING NEW YEAR IN MANY WAYS
Happy new year to those of you I haven’t seen - for the Gregorian new year and the lunar one you may be celebrating.
新年好 and 새해 복 많이 받으세요 to you all. It’s been a busy start. I hope you enjoyed the combined services that you attended. Apart from those, Sheilagh and I shared a new year service with the Uniting Church in Paihia. We also did a long road trip and enjoyed four days of worship, ministry and teaching with a range of overseas and local speakers at the New Wine Festival in Masterton (with 800 people of all ages.) The teachings included some helpful ways to develop and grow in our devotional lives. We also sang a new song which has a chorus that goes like this: “You turn mourning to dancing; You give beauty for ashes; You turn shame into glory; You're the only one who can. You turn graves into garden; You turn bones into armies; You turn seas into highways; You're the only one who can.” It brings Isaiah 43:18-19 and Isaiah 61:3 to mind (see today’s verses overpage). I look forward to a new year of spiritual growth and opportunity in all our lives here. Despite the many challenges, I am still hopeful. Blessings,

Robin

Recorded Services and Resources are here on our website.

On the menu on the left side of the screen you can click on
Readings & Vids to find each week's readings in English or Korean/English parallel. Previous services and readings are also found there. There are pages with each week’s newsletter, rosters and various other resources On the Browns Bay Presbyterian website. See https://bbpsermons.wordpress.com/ for written sermon texts.

Moderator's Message

MODERATOR'S 2022

ADVENT MESSAGE

Is Jesus the
help we are
looking for?

There is a poignant segment in the Advent readings for this year that finds John the Baptist languishing in Herod’s dungeon and doubting whether Jesus is the promised Messiah. Despite his earlier calls to prepare the way for the Messiah, events have turned for the worse. So, he sends his disciples to ask whether Jesus really is the promised Messiah, or should we look elsewhere (see Matthew 11: 2-3).

I am sure that there are many in the world today who share the doubt! Ukrainian Orthodox families experiencing Christmas this year in cramped refugee conditions so far away from home, or worse still, in areas of Ukraine where fear of missile strikes will dominate their ‘festive’ season! And, in a similar vein, homeless families in our country, crammed into temporary accommodation of motel units, struggling to meet rising food costs.

The story of hardship, anguish and suffering is repeated many times over in our world as we approach Christmas this year.

So where are you Jesus, in this world with so much suffering? With John the Baptist we may be justified in asking the question, Are you the hope we are looking for? Or should we look elsewhere?

Part of the answer comes for me in asking this question, Where would Jesus be born in 2022? In 2008, the UK Churches Advertising Network asked that question and came up with this answer: a freezing bus shelter. They then made a poster depicting this and had it displayed in over 1,000 bus shelters across the UK.

This was a message of hope: God incarnated help that comes into the places of poverty and despair. Originally it was a baby born in the middle of a winter night, out where the animals were kept. This speaks a message of God’s presence in the most unlikely and despairing places.

In the bus stop posters, some of the bystanders see what is happening and respond with worshipful devotion, while others are too busy checking the bus timetable.

May our churches help people to stop and notice the hope that the birth of Jesus brings to our needy world this year.

Right Reverend Hamish Galloway
Moderator
Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa NZ

‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth’ (1:14)