Keith's Messages

Here we are in 2024, Happy New Year! Today we are going to begin to introduce the refreshed vision for ANCC. It’s not a radical change, but is aimed at taking what is good and moving it forward to what is great. Story: About 350 years ago a shipload of travellers landed on the northeast coast of America. The first year they established a town site.  The next year they elected a town government.  The third year the town government planned to build a road five miles westward into the wilderness. In the fourth year the people tried to impeach their town government because they thought it was a waste of public funds to build a road five miles westward into a wilderness. Who needed to go there anyway? Here were people who had the vision to see three thousand miles across an ocean and overcome great hardships to get there. But in just a few years they were not able to see even five miles out of town. They had lost their pioneering vision. With a clear vision of what we can be...

Last week I explained a bit of the journey that the ministry leaders, elders, and pastors had been on is discovering our priorities and vision for the next phase of development for ANCC. We talked about: Mission: Reaching out with the Good News, both home and away. Discipleship: Teaching and equipping people to become more like Jesus. Worship: Facilitating authentic worship where everyone is invited to encounter the presence of God. Legacy: Nurturing and investing in our children, teenagers and young adults - the future church today. We wrapped this into a vision statement: Making Jesus known to everyone, everywhere. Today, I want us to focus a little be on one aspect of how this will be achieved.  You Can’t Fly With Broken Wings God organised the NT church is a specific way. The people met together in the main gathering and small groups. Acts 2:42-47: They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was fi...

Lost and Found Have you ever lost something? Where’s my keys? video clip.  Lost Meaning of Christmas! I’ve lost things loads of times! I wonder too if we have lost something of the meaning of Christmas. I love Christmas I love it so much I live everyday as Christmas Day. It’s not about the presents or the size of the gifts, it’s about the joy that comes with it.  People will talk about Christmas spirit - what we mean is being nice to each other, based on the biblical phrase: Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.” Maybe there’s a bit of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in our meaning of Christmas spirit too: Narrator: Every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some by-gone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board… had a kinder word for one another on that day than on any day in the year… To be honest, so...