what's on
Sunday 14 December - Christmas carols (5:00pm)
Wednesday 24 December - Christmas Eve (7:30pm service)
Thursday 25 December - Christmas Day (9:30am service with Holy Communion)
Sunday 28 December - Bible Study (after the 9:00am service)
Wednesday 24 December - Christmas Eve (7:30pm service)
Thursday 25 December - Christmas Day (9:30am service with Holy Communion)
Sunday 28 December - Bible Study (after the 9:00am service)
second sunday of Advent (7 december)
We spend December sprinting through shopping centres, enduring the silly season's hustle, all while nursing a quiet ache for something we can’t quite buy. Isaiah calls this spiritual exile, a deep sense of dislocation where we feel out of sync in our own skin, knowing deep down that things aren't as they should be. We exhaust ourselves chasing approval and temporary comforts, spending our labour on what the prophet bluntly calls “bread which does not satisfy”. We are all, in a sense, far from home, trying to manufacture a peace that constantly slips through our fingers.
But the Christmas story isn't about us climbing a moral ladder to get back in God's good books; it is the shocking reality that God left His home to join us in our homelessness. He didn't send a map or a rulebook; He arrived in the mud and blood of a cold stable, fully entering the “stump” of our broken humanity. Jesus came to shoulder the weight of our exile and our dysfunction, becoming the very path that leads us out of the darkness and back to the Father.
This Advent, the invitation is to stop striving and start feasting. We are offered a seat at a table where the wine and milk are without price because the Host has already picked up the tab with His own life. In a world where everything eventually decays and every party must end, Christ establishes a Kingdom that actually grows—a home where justice is finally done, every tear is accounted for, and our relationships are destined for full restoration.
So, whether your family gathering this year is a scene of perfect harmony or painful tension, know that your true citizenship is secure. You belong to a Kingdom that will not fade when the decorations come down or the leftovers run out. Here is the promise: No matter how far you have wandered or how deep your exile feels, the door is wide open, the feast is ready, and in Christ, you are already home.
We Pray For:
† The church as it prepares for the celebration of the birth of Christ.
† Those who hear the gospel would repent and believe.
† That we may prepare the way for the gospel by pursuing justice in our society.
† God to create his peace among the nations of the world.
† Those who are caught up in the material preparations for Christmas.
† Safe travel for those going on holidays.
† Adoption agencies, orphanages, and those who take care of children.
But the Christmas story isn't about us climbing a moral ladder to get back in God's good books; it is the shocking reality that God left His home to join us in our homelessness. He didn't send a map or a rulebook; He arrived in the mud and blood of a cold stable, fully entering the “stump” of our broken humanity. Jesus came to shoulder the weight of our exile and our dysfunction, becoming the very path that leads us out of the darkness and back to the Father.
This Advent, the invitation is to stop striving and start feasting. We are offered a seat at a table where the wine and milk are without price because the Host has already picked up the tab with His own life. In a world where everything eventually decays and every party must end, Christ establishes a Kingdom that actually grows—a home where justice is finally done, every tear is accounted for, and our relationships are destined for full restoration.
So, whether your family gathering this year is a scene of perfect harmony or painful tension, know that your true citizenship is secure. You belong to a Kingdom that will not fade when the decorations come down or the leftovers run out. Here is the promise: No matter how far you have wandered or how deep your exile feels, the door is wide open, the feast is ready, and in Christ, you are already home.
We Pray For:
† The church as it prepares for the celebration of the birth of Christ.
† Those who hear the gospel would repent and believe.
† That we may prepare the way for the gospel by pursuing justice in our society.
† God to create his peace among the nations of the world.
† Those who are caught up in the material preparations for Christmas.
† Safe travel for those going on holidays.
† Adoption agencies, orphanages, and those who take care of children.
fourth sunday of advent (20 December)
On this Fourth Sunday in Advent, we meet Joseph, a righteous man caught in an impossible bind. His betrothed is pregnant, and the child is not his. The law screams disgrace; his careful plan is to send Mary away quietly, preserving what dignity he can. Like us, Joseph knows the weight of the law: it accuses, it shames, it demands we separate ourselves from anything unclean. We too craft quiet plans to manage our shame, minimising sin, redefining marriage, or simply hiding, yet the law never makes us righteous; it only exposes our unrighteousness.
Then the angel breaks in: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.” Do not be afraid, the first whisper of gospel in a story thick with fear. The child is from the Holy Spirit, not from Joseph’s seed or human effort. Every plan of the law collapses. Joseph is called not to provide the Saviour but to receive Him, to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins. Righteousness arrives not through obedience to the law, but through the promise spoken to a man who had nothing left to offer.
This is Emmanuel, God with us, not against us. In the child born under the law yet holy apart from it, God draws near to pull us out of accusation and into life. So take heart: the Saviour who disrupted Joseph’s world comes to disrupt ours with grace. He is with you, for you, forgiving you, naming you His own. That is the promise that carries us into Christmas.
Then the angel breaks in: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.” Do not be afraid, the first whisper of gospel in a story thick with fear. The child is from the Holy Spirit, not from Joseph’s seed or human effort. Every plan of the law collapses. Joseph is called not to provide the Saviour but to receive Him, to name Him Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins. Righteousness arrives not through obedience to the law, but through the promise spoken to a man who had nothing left to offer.
This is Emmanuel, God with us, not against us. In the child born under the law yet holy apart from it, God draws near to pull us out of accusation and into life. So take heart: the Saviour who disrupted Joseph’s world comes to disrupt ours with grace. He is with you, for you, forgiving you, naming you His own. That is the promise that carries us into Christmas.
christmas
In the beginning was the Word, not a word of demand, not a word that measures our worth, but the Word who is God himself, full of grace and truth. John’s Gospel crashes into our Christmas with a shock: the eternal Son did not come to slum it among us or simply to understand our mess. He came to take our sin and death into his own flesh so that our dying bodies might be lifted into eternal life.
We are used to words that accuse, words that tell us we’re not enough, words that leave us scrambling to prove our value. But on this day the Word became flesh, not to judge us, but to bear our darkness, to die our death, and to rise so that we too might rise. The manger is not a sentimental scene; it is the place where God invades our flesh to rescue it.
So stop measuring yourself by the law that always ends in death. Look instead to the child in the manger, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is not waiting for you to get your life together. He has already come for you — exactly as you are.
This Christmas, hear the promise: because the Word became flesh, your flesh will not end in the grave. You are forgiven, you are raised, you are God’s own child — forever. Rest in that. He has done it all.
We are used to words that accuse, words that tell us we’re not enough, words that leave us scrambling to prove our value. But on this day the Word became flesh, not to judge us, but to bear our darkness, to die our death, and to rise so that we too might rise. The manger is not a sentimental scene; it is the place where God invades our flesh to rescue it.
So stop measuring yourself by the law that always ends in death. Look instead to the child in the manger, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is not waiting for you to get your life together. He has already come for you — exactly as you are.
This Christmas, hear the promise: because the Word became flesh, your flesh will not end in the grave. You are forgiven, you are raised, you are God’s own child — forever. Rest in that. He has done it all.
first sunday after christmas (28 decembeR)
The Sunday after Christmas often feels quiet, many of us are still basking in the glow of carols and family gatherings. Yet the lectionary confronts us with Matthew 2: the flight into Egypt and Herod’s massacre of the innocents. This is no gentle postscript to the manger scene. It is raw, confronting, and uncomfortably real: the arrival of the Prince of Peace provokes terror and bloodshed. The world does not welcome its Saviour; it tries to kill him.
Herod embodies the old order, power preserved by violence, law wielded as a sword. When the true King appears, the throne shakes, and the powerful strike first at the vulnerable. The crying of Rachel for her children echoes through history whenever innocence is crushed by fear and ambition. We recoil from this story because we recognise its pattern: the gospel always threatens the kingdoms we build on control and self-justification.
But notice what God does. He preserves his Son, not yet for the cross, but for the appointed hour, sending the holy family fleeing into Egypt, echoing old Joseph’s journey. The child who escapes Herod’s blade will one day willingly climb another hill. The law’s fury spends itself on the innocent; yet God refuses to abandon the world to that fury. He enters it fully, bearing its worst, so that death itself might die.
Here is the promise that carries us: Jesus, called out of Egypt, has come not to rule by terror but by tender mercy. He turns his face toward you, toward your guilt, your grief, your fear, and speaks forgiveness. In him, God’s steadfast love triumphs. The slaughtered innocents are not forgotten; they are gathered into the arms of the One who conquers by dying and rising. This King reigns by absolving you, today and forever. Amen.
Herod embodies the old order, power preserved by violence, law wielded as a sword. When the true King appears, the throne shakes, and the powerful strike first at the vulnerable. The crying of Rachel for her children echoes through history whenever innocence is crushed by fear and ambition. We recoil from this story because we recognise its pattern: the gospel always threatens the kingdoms we build on control and self-justification.
But notice what God does. He preserves his Son, not yet for the cross, but for the appointed hour, sending the holy family fleeing into Egypt, echoing old Joseph’s journey. The child who escapes Herod’s blade will one day willingly climb another hill. The law’s fury spends itself on the innocent; yet God refuses to abandon the world to that fury. He enters it fully, bearing its worst, so that death itself might die.
Here is the promise that carries us: Jesus, called out of Egypt, has come not to rule by terror but by tender mercy. He turns his face toward you, toward your guilt, your grief, your fear, and speaks forgiveness. In him, God’s steadfast love triumphs. The slaughtered innocents are not forgotten; they are gathered into the arms of the One who conquers by dying and rising. This King reigns by absolving you, today and forever. Amen.