Exile on Main Street

Introduction

Story of my Baptism

Jeremiah’s message

How do we live in a culture that no longer cares about the Gospel, and can even be hostile towards Christianity?

Many of find ourselves wrestling with the same question the captive Jews in Babylon wrestled with. “How do we sing the Lord’s Song in a strange land?” How can we genuinely express our faith when all the

Challenge

Jeremiah had a hard time because no one wanted to hear his message.

They wanted to go back to the good old days when Jerusalem was secure, wealthy and powerful. They definitely didn’t want to admit defeat and go into exile. Of course it didn’t matter what they wanted. In the end, it was God’s will that all the priests and prophets, and all the skilled workers, and all the wealthy leaders, were captured and resettled in an alien culture to serve the Babylonians.

In almost every church community I’ve been part of the same story gets told. “Forty years ago Church was full and we had a Sunday School with lots and lots of children.”

When I was sent to Ashburton an an assistant priest I was introduced to elderly man named John Braithwaite. He’d been the Anglican minister in Ashburton for almost 30 years. He stayed in Ashburton after he retired and spent the next 30 years watching his church dissappear. The service record book tells a story of its own. More than 200 people used to attend the Sunday Evening Services in the 1960s. The first massive decline in congregation happened when The Wonderful World of Disney first went to air on New Zealand Television. Micky Mouse

When we met he greeted me with the words, “You’re a brave man to be entering the ministry at a time like this.”

Truth

It was about then that I began to read Jeremiah for wisdom.

It was all God’s doing.

Application

Inspiration

Invitation