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This week

What an amazing church Eastside is! We had a very exciting response to the Missions Faith-Promise pledges and offering last Sunday, and we can’t wait to tell everyone all about it this Sunday! Here’s just a few great events happening in the next week at Eastside…

COUTURE – This Thurs 25^th March, 7pm

It’s on again! Featuring a Panel of our own incredible women sharing practical wisdom on Living Life Well, plus scrumptious desserts, and a hot word from Ps Alana. Child minding is provided. Like an oasis in your calendar, Couture is a perfect place of refreshing for women of all ages and their girlfriends.

RELENTLESS – This Fri 26^th March, 7pm

Our Youth Ministry has taken off this year with our young people living hot for God and seeing their friends discover Jesus every weekend. This Friday Ps Alana will be bringing a great life-building message, and the place will be pumping with young people starting a revolution in youth culture in our city!

WELCOME TO CHURCH PARTY – This Sunday!!

Have you joined Eastside since the start of 2010? You are invited to our first Welcome to Church Party after the 9.30am service this Sunday, 28^th March. Come and meet other newcomers and some of our ministry team on The Deck for great food and to build great friendships. RSVP to Emily Morrow on 9720 2099 or emily@eastsidecc.net.au by Friday.

(If you’ve been at Eastside since before 2010, you’ll have a great time too at our new, weekly After Party straight after church.)

GOD IN THE MOVIES – This Sunday, 6pm

Discover life-changing truths as Ps Artie unpacks Disney Pixar’s hit animated movie “Monsters Inc.” Weaving clips of the movie in with practical application, this will be a great night for anyone! Kids program is provided, although your Primary School aged kids may want to sit in on this one.

EASTER SUNDAY – Sunday 4^th April, 9.30am

Featuring an impacting production by our Creative Team, plus toasty, fresh, hot cross buns after the service. This is one time of year many people will visit church who wouldn’t normally – who will you invite and bring?

We can’t wait to see you at one of these great events – why not bring a friend?

Love,

Artie and Alana Shepherd

PS: Voltage Kids is the coolest place to be every Sunday, even during school holidays!
Check out everything you need to know at www.itsyourchurch.com

STOP PRESS!! New Letter to Eastside!

What an amazing weekend we’ve had at Eastside!

The girls had a brilliant night at Couture; Relentless Youth was off the charts; the Working Bee made a massive difference to our building; and Eastside930 was our best Sunday morning service yet!

After some circumstances out of our control we have had to make a few quick changes to some plans. So here’s the latest update for you so you don’t miss out on anything!

1. FIRST FYI NIGHT EVER! – TUESDAY 2ND MARCH

FYI (For Your Inspiration) will be held monthly on Tuesday nights for the next few months. This is for anyone and everyone! FYI is where we talk vision and leadership, and celebrate good things happening in the lives of people across the church. 7pm-8.30pm with child minding provided.

2. MAGNIFICENT MARCH – EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT IN MARCH AT 6PM. INC FREE DINNER FOR UNI STUDENTS AFTER THE SERVICES. Invites for your friends out soon.

A. WATER BAPTISM THIS SUNDAY NIGHT 6PM! – SUNDAY 7TH MARCH
Water Baptism Parties are a highlight for any church. Don’t miss this Sunday night as we celebrate this public declaration of faith. It’s also a great night to bring your friends and family. 6pm-7.30pm with child minding provided. IF YOU HAVE NOT YET BEEN BAPTISED (by your own choosing…not as an infant!) why not make this your time to follow the command of Jesus? Call or email the church office by Thursday if you want to be baptised. So far at least 11 people have registered!

B. DAVE GILPIN FROM HOPECITY CHURCH, UK – SUNDAY 14TH MARCH
Dave is hilarious and out of the box! This will be fun! See www.davegilpin.com to get a glimpse of who he is.

C. LINDSAY & JULIE CLARKE – SUNDAY 21ST MARCH
Julie will talk about keys to overcoming grief and loss from the personal tragedy of the death of their young daughter. Then Lindsay will share his personal story of how he found faith in Jesus – you’ll be laughing, crying and breathless all at once!

D. CHURCH AT THE MOVIES – SUNDAY 28TH MARCH
Stay tuned…this will be a great night!

3. CHURCH PICNIC – POSTPONED
Because of Magnificent March, the church family picnic will be held at another time to be advised. In the meantime keep connecting with friends anyway!

4. CLASSIC SERVICE – SUNDAY 7TH MARCH 4PM
It’s on again! Great, old time songs and an inspiring word. Then stay on for the Water Baptism Party!

5. ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING – SUNDAY 14TH MARCH
Everyone is invited to the AGM straight after the 9.30am service to do all the legal stuff we need to do as an Incorporation. Shouldn’t be longer than 30 minutes!

6. STOP PRESS!! MISSIONS LAUNCH NOW ON 19-21 MARCH
As you know, our Missions Launch was set for the first weekend of March, but being from Queensland we didn’t realise that is the Labour Day Long Weekend in Victoria! While we don’t particularly want to bow down to the Victorian God of the Long Weekend and Other Assorted Holidays :), a long weekend isn’t the ideal time to hold a special event.

We will now launch Missions on Sunday 21st March. Lindsay and Julie Clarke of Metamorphic International will be our special guests that weekend. Metamorphic has directly planted over 10,000 self-supporting churches across Asia and Africa in the last 10 years! Lindsay will also speak at Relentless Youth on Friday 19th.

7. DADS’N’DUDES F1 ADVENTURE – SATURDAY 27TH MARCH
Full details coming soon…but it involves blokes of all ages, fast cars, and the sweet, sweet smell of high octane fuel and burnt rubber!

8. WELCOME TO CHURCH PARTY – TUESDAY 30TH MARCH
Invites will be out shortly for everyone who has joined Eastside this year. Come and party and meet some of the team!

Phew! That’s just a few things happening that we’re sure you’ll want to be part of!

Eastside, we love you! Let’s change a city together!

Artie and Alana

What a Wonderful Church!

Here is an excerpt of an email I received last week. I read it out to our church to brag on them this morning!

The email goes:
“I attended your wonderful church for just the second time on Sunday morning having been…one of a very large congegation at (deleted!). I was searching for a church which truly made me feel welcome. It seems I have found what I was looking for. Your message was just great …. and the notes to enable me follow up in my reading have been so helpful. I’m a relatively old bloke (62) and I notice that there are many of us on Sunday together with a vibrant youth representation which gives your church a wonderful future.
I loved your message and the passion and humour with which you delivered it. Your message to reach out to others I have heard so many times but you managed to move me significantly to do more.
Your lovely wife’s words also were so refreshing and so sincere and welcoming. After the service at least three lovely people came up to me independently to introduce themselves and to make me feel welcome. It’s so warming to feel part of a people church.
Thank you both for enabling me to draw closer to God.
Your church was so welcoming; something I have not experienced before.
I will see you next Sunday and who knows perhaps I can persuade someone to come along.”

What a great church to be part of!!

Be My Valent…I mean Volunteer

As you know this Sunday is Valentine’s Day (or Singleness Awareness Day as I heard some of our girls call it!) – but at Eastside it’s also Volunteer Sunday. So in the spirit of Love, we’ll be asking everyone at Eastside to show their love for the church and respond to Eastside’s Valentines Card to them.

Off and racing

God is so good! We have been blessed with an amazing start to 2010 – it is well and truly off and racing!

Very soon we will be enjoying our 4th Sunday service at Eastside (aarrgghh! only 48 to go this year!!). The first 3 of the year have been so exciting – record attendances, people saying Yes to Jesus every week, and lots of new people choosing to make Eastside their church. We are intent on leading a church which spans every generations and demographic – from kids to youth to adults to seniors, “it’s your church!”

Our focus for January has been INFLUENCE (Significant in Influence), FAITH (Steadfast in Faith), HOPE (Unswerving in Hope) and LOVE (Extravagant in Love). You can order the CD’s through Eastside or download from this site shortly. We have been so encouraged by the response of people. Having new Senior Pastors after 26 years of leadership by one great couple (Chris and Jasmine Sutton) is no small change, yet the church has warmly embraced us, the new team members who have come with us, and our new style and vision.

There are many good churches in Melbourne but still we are surrounded by the most amazing opportunity to influence our world with faith, hope and love – there are approx 700,000 people just within a 20 minute drive from Eastside!  We are believing to be used by God to see a city literally changed by His grace.

I can’t wait to get back to church in the morning and see what God has in store for us this week! This is already proving to be an exciting adventure, although the best is yet to come!

Free mp3 downloads of “A New Season”

As promised, you can now download the sessions Alana and I did recently with Eastside Christian Church leaders as we prepare for a new season together. (Just go to FREE STUFF and enter your details to receive a link for the mp3. You need to enter your email address for each message – haven’t yet worked out how to simplify that!)

I preached on A NEW SEASON, and what is required of all of us to lay hold of it. Alana gave a broad picture of what we see for the future. At the end of the night there was a great buzz of excitement and faith in the building.

If you are a part of Eastside and weren’t able to be there on the night you MUST listen to these messages. If you’re not part of Eastside you’ll love these message and be able to apply them to your world as well!

You can also read the notes of my message on my previous Blog entry here.

As for those other promised free downloads of excerpts of my books…they’re coming but you’ll just have to wait a bit longer!

A New Season

This is an excerpt of a message I preached last week to the leaders at Eastside Christian Church in Melbourne, where we have been appointed as new Senior Pastors from January 2010. The CD of this message is being made available to anyone at Eastside who wasn’t able to attend the Leadership Night, and I will also be posting a free MP3 download of it in the FREE STUFF section of this site very soon.

I absolutely believe that this is a new season in my family, marriage, ministry, leadership, and for Eastside corporately and as individual people. I believe that a new season in a church also flows over into a new season in the lives of its people. I shared some thoughts on what is required of all of us in a new season, and Alana outlined a broad picture of what we see for the future of our new church. We are so thankful for the past 26 years of faith-filled history at Eastside, but we are also so expectant for what God wants to do in the new season before us.

Historically and Biblically, significant new seasons for a person or community of people are hallmarked by:

New Leaders
New Vision
New Promises
New Sound
New Names
New Opposition
New Trials
New Tests
New Devils
New Revelations
New Breakthroughs
New Blessings

In Genesis 12:1-9 God begins to speak to Abram about a new season in his life. There are some great keys in this passage on what a new season requires us to do:

1. AWAKEN – “Wake Up!” – New Possibilities

• Gen 12:1-3 Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
• Amos 9:13 Things are going to happen so fast your head will swim, one thing fast on the heels of the other. You won’t be able to keep up. Everything will be happening at once – and everywhere you look, BLESSINGS!
• A new season is a new day – with brand new opportunities and potential
• Requires an awakening from the semi-comatose state many people live their life in – drifting from day to day, meandering in the mindless maze of meaningless mediocrity!
• Proverbs says a wise son makes the most of harvest time, a foolish son sleeps through the day of opportunity
• The possibilities before us are staggering. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him…BUT He has revealed it to us by His Spirit.
• We just need to wake up and be aware of what God is saying

2. ARISE – “Get Up!” – New Positioning

• Gen 12:4 So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him,
• Don’t roll over and go back to sleep!
• Don’t hit SNOOZE on your new season!
• New seasons require a commitment to learn new things and new ways of doing them, see new things, receive new revelation, grow into new levels of leadership and authority
• It requires a refusal to stay at the same level we have been living at for the past 12 months or even 12 weeks
• Num 13 and Josh 3 says it was harvest season both times the Israelites were brought to the Promised Land. First time they chose their current season of wilderness wandering over God’s purpose of possessing a new day. They bowed to their fears instead of arising into a new positioning in God

3. ATTACH – “Join Up!” – New Personnel

• Gen 12:4, 5 and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Then Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they departed to go to the land of Canaan. So they came to the land of Canaan
• A new season requires new personnel to join up to the work of sowing or reaping or tending or plowing
• Some people will continue to flourish doing exactly what they have been doing
• Others may be repositioned for greater effectiveness in a new season
• Our prayer and expectation is that every person in Eastside will attach themselves to this new season and be part of the team for this next stage of the journey
• Very quickly others will join us and attach to the vision as well
• Already spoken to people in Melbourne who have decided they will be joining us here because they are excited by the potential of a new season
• We are so blessed to have half a dozen people packing up their lives in Queensland to come with us to serve in any way they can. There are still others in various parts of the country who are praying about joining us for a great adventure of faith

4. AROUSE – “Go Up!” – New Pursuits

• Gen 12:6-9 Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, as far as the terebinth tree of Moreh. And the Canaanites were then in the land. ⁷Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” And there he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. ⁸And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. ⁹So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South.
• You’ve woken up, gotten up, even joined up – now it’s time to actually do something!
• The Psalmist cried “Arouse yourself – stir up your zeal like a mighty man…”
• We can be awake to a new season, and be willing to lay hold of a new season, and even attach ourselves to a new season
• But until we actually get into action nothing really changes, and a new season passes us by
• There are many great churches in Melbourne, but there are 3 million people with no active Christian faith – 1 million young people who are heading for a lost eternity
• In the new year we will be sharing in detail some of the new pursuits which God is speaking to us about, so that together we can influence this city for Jesus
• We know that God has a significant, divine purpose for this house.
• A new season of faith, miracles, soul winning and kingdom expansion beckons
• Let’s GO UP together!

How to Have an A+ Life

I was blessed to fit well in the mould of traditional schooling – I think in straight lines, I like things ordered and structured, I like bullet point notes, I love book-learning. Others are more creative, unstructured, free-spirited, love mind-mapping and hands-on learning (I have to admit, mind-mapping seems to me like the crazed and disturbed scribblings of someone who has lost their mind!).

I loved report card day – as I knew it would be glowing with nice comments from teachers, and plenty of A+ marks! I know others who dreaded the same day – often simply because they didn’t fit the typical schooling methods (I am glad that there is now a greater tailoring of education to the various ways in which people learn).

Maybe you were one of those who consistently received A+ grades…or maybe you tended to score much further along the alphabet. Either way, here’s some thoughts on how you can consistently live an A+ Life every day: (thanks to Steve Penny for providing the catalyst to this thought process in staff meeting yesterday – credit where credit’s due!)

TO LIVE AN “A+” LIFE:

1. AWAKE – “Wake Up!” – New Vision
Every day is a brand new day – the old has gone, the new has come.
His mercies are new every morning!
An A+ Life awakens from the semi-comatose state many people live their life in – drifting from day to day, meandering in the maze of meaningless mediocrity!
Come on, jolt yourself awake – there is a big world out there full of amazing possibilities and opportunities, and you have been created for significance.
Proverbs says a wise son makes the most of harvest time, a foolish son sleeps through the day of opportunity
Q: What do you need to wake up in?

Plus…

2. ARISE – “Get Up!” – New Position
An A+ Life continually seeks to learn new things, see new things, receive new revelation, grow into new levels of leadership and authority
An A+ Life refuses to stay at the same level it has been living for the past 12 years or even 12 months
Arise Shine!
If you trip over or make a mistake…Get up again!
Q: What do you need to get up and reposition yourself in?

Plus…

3. AROUSE – “Have a Go!” – New Actions
You’ve woken up, gotten up – now it’s time to actually do something!
The Psalmist cried “Arouse yourself – stir up your zeal like a mighty man…”
You can be awake to new opportunities, and be willing to lay hold of new opportunities, but until you actually get into action nothing really changes.
Action relies on the arousing of passion and desire – otherwise you will easily back down when the going gets a little tough.
What actions do you need to change? What new actions do you need to try?
It’s been often said, “If you do the same as you’ve always done, you’ll get the same as you’ve always got.”
Q: What do you need to arouse and stir yourself to action in?

Bride or Broncos? Power of Perspective

I love talk-back radio. It offers an insight into the kaleidescope of mindsets and convictions held by people in the world we are called to reach.

This morning’s program on a particular station discussed whether or not people with genetically transferrable illnesses should choose to have children or not. Callers ranged from those with early-onset Alzheimers, bi-polar, genetic disorders causing death in children, and more. Interestingly, the vast majority of callers felt that the potential for life far outweighed the possibility of sickness.

In the midst of a quite moving and emotional discussion, a caller from the Gold Coast came on air with his own pressing dilemma. He was in a quandry and did not know what decision to make. His problem was causing great stress and could have dire consequences for his marriage. The off-air gasp of anticipation from thousands of listeners was almost audible! What could be so urgent to detour us from issues of life and death?

He was a Brisbane Broncos season ticket holder and was there when Brisbane triumphed in the start of the finals over Gold Coast Titans on Saturday night. Well because of this win now they’re playing again at home. But our caller had already booked a holiday with his wife on the Sunshine Coast! Alas, what should he do?! Give up the chance to see his beloved Broncos in action to spend quality time with his beloved Bride? Or risk her ire and hostility by ducking back down to Brisbane for another great game, leaving her…alone…stranded…and plotting her revenge?

My first thought was “O ye of little faith! Why would you book a holiday at finals time when you are a season ticket holder!” Alana’s comment was “Go to the footy, book her into a day spa and you’ll both be happy!”

Neither of us could believe such an intense, emotional, heart-wrenching topic had been hijacked by a man so consumed by his own little problem, and so unable to make a wise decision that he needed to go on national radio for help!

Shows the power of perspective – the most important issue/need/problem to most people is THEIR issue/need/problem. As leaders we are always calling people to a higher level of life and to a greater cause. It’s helpful to remember the power of perspective – start where the person is at first, touch a nerve which means something to them, and use it as a catalyst to lead them into a bigger world.