https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM0z-JwqpsI&feature=youtu.be

Westcity Church

Love God | Love People | Follow Jesus

WE ARE A GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ALL ABOUT JESUS

(Well, what did you expect from a church?)

We are old people and young, artists, people with disabilities, lawyers and plumbers, activists and accountants who have been captured by, and caught up in God’s Dream for the world and God’s purpose for our lives, that we see revealed in this Jesus.

Maybe we are a church for those who don’t like ‘church’. A church for those who don’t want to play religious games or be entertained but on a good day, desire to live the love that God has shown us.

UPDATE (April 1): To all members and visitors of the Westcity community

We have seen change in response to the Covid-19 virus move quickly in the wider community over the last week and for most of us, we find ourselves in the unusual position of physical isolation with our immediate families – and physical separation from extended family and friends, workplaces and social contact. It is quite hard to believe that this is to be our reality for weeks or months.

So, how are we to respond? Last Sunday, on our Livestream Sunday program, Jon shared some thoughts from John 12 that helps us rethink and potentially reframe our reflections. We are trusting that every week you will be refreshed and encouraged as you watch and listen to the various speakers and ministers.

Join us online on any of the following options, on Sundays at 10am (or anytime that suits you to watch any of our previous livestream services):

1. Scroll down on this homepage of our website to find the Livestream video section and press play.
2. On Youtube.com or the Youtube app on your phone – search for ‘Westcity Church’ and press play on the Livestream video.
3. On facebook.com or the Facebook app – search for the ‘Westcity Church’ page and press play on the Livestream video.

(PS: We have pre-recorded our programming for the coming month so, please understand we are not meeting in the church to bring the service live).

Benediction

We love the Westcity benediction. It is the way we close every service. It is the reminder that we come together to grow, be challenged, to worship and then ‘To Go’. It is indeed the call to show and share Christ in our homes, with our friends and across our neighbourhoods. In this time, our benediction is going to serve us by connecting us with one another. We are asking each Westcity home to record themselves reciting the benediction (see link below). Some of you may get a little creative. Others are terrified that we made reference to such an idea. But whoever you are, however you roll, say these words, even learn these words and record them in a video. We wouldn’t be surprised at what happens inside of each of us as we allow their challenge to echo in our hearts and minds.

Here is the link to upload benediction videos to:

https://www.dropbox.com/request/6jtXhfWthCfOkBz3XoVE

And here is the link to a written copy of the benediction: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rEaP8i8mSqYUcRdwD2BDEHWpJbUihmmp/view?usp=sharing

Easter Services

And now we come to Easter. How is it that this extraordinary time of the Christian calendar finds us in our homes and unable to meet at one physical location as the community of faith? No special items, productions or promotions and advertising campaigns. Instead, a simple call to remember the act that changed history. An opportunity to consider without fanfare the significance of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. His impact on time and men across the ages – but more importantly, His impact on each of us. On me.

Let’s give the Easter weekend and its events a new chance to re-form each of us around the things that truly matter: His love, grace and forgiveness. To lay down our lives that we might truly live.
Good Friday: 10am
Easter Sunday: 10am

Please see the three Livestream options listed above for how to join us for our Easter services live, or watch afterwards at a time that suits you.

Home Study Notes, Pastoral Thought and Community Care Team

Below we have included our weekly Pastoral Thought and Home Study Notes (from our latest Sunday sermon) for you and your loved ones. We have also given details on our Community Care Response Team, set up to help those in need during Covid-19.

Let us walk towards Him and one another

I am always amazed at how much there is to share with our church community each week and at the opportunities for connection. It seems that in this season, the doors of the church are flung open. That the call to grace and community and Christ himself is louder and wider than ever before. So, let us step forward. Let us walk towards Him and one another that we might be comforted and more importantly, that we might become like Him.

Warm regards and every blessing

Phil and Westcity Team

SUNDAY SERVICE

10am @ 63 Nanson St Wembley, Perth, Western Australia

Our desire as the Westcity community is to find God’s story in our stories and our stories in God’s story. Each week, we explore scripture so that it might capture our imaginations that we would be open to the Holy Spirit’s transforming work and be equipped to live God’s love. We often give a gentle opportunity for those who haven’t said yes to God’s love to do that and to explore baptism.

FIND OUT MORE

CURRENT SERMON SERIES

The Unvarnished Jesus: Lent 2020

"And so Jesus invites us to follow him, not in a march to greatness, but in the cross-carrying way of self-denial. This and this alone is the way of true discipleship. It’s also the way to abundant life." (Brian Zahnd, The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey)

Lent and Holy Week are the six weeks leading to Easter week (Holy Week), including Good Friday and resurrection Sunday. The importance of this period for followers of Jesus can’t be exaggerated. There is simply nothing more central to Christian faith than the cross of Jesus and the cross-shaped life that springs from it.

Easter is the culmination of human history, the story that shapes all other stories, of living and dying and living again. During lent we journey with Jesus, as together we reflect on what it means to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. There is celebration and deep sadness, temptation and transformation, dire warnings and complete forgiveness.

Most of all, and finally, there is resurrection.

Life, life and more life.

Journeying together through Lent:

We want to journey towards that life together as a community this Easter season.

To help us all to do that we are taking our lead from Brian Zahnd’s, The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey. We are inviting everyone to take time each day, beginning on Ash Wednesday (Feb 26) and ending on Holy Saturday (April 11), to follow A Lenten Journey, as we are led through the Easter season. The Sunday messages will follow the same pattern.

The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey is available on Kindle for $8 and we will have hard copies available for $15 after March 2nd, at church.

This series aims to:
· Invite people into thinking deeply about following in Jesus’ footsteps.
· Share in the Easter journey as a community.
· Highlight how we can respond honestly to the challenge that the message has invited us into.
· Motivate listeners to memorise scriptures that speak into their everyday experience.
· Encourage the Westcity community that everyone following Jesus has the promise of abundant life.
· Be a sacred space in which to encounter the presence of Christ.

PODCAST

RESOURCES

Home Study Notes – 29 March 2020

The Unvarnished Jesus | Jon Bergmann | Livestream Sunday Sermon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kmCYNoyqlM

As we are no longer gathering as Home Churches, I am sending out my notes and questions from Sunday. Why? To provide a resource that may be helpful to you and to those to whom you are connected.

Richard Kerridge (Home Churches & Building Healthy Communities)

Review

Throughout history people have wanted to know when the “end of the world” would come, or when “the hour” would come, or “the day of the Lord” would arrive to set everything right. Jesus was far more interested in shifting people’s focus to the “hour” of his death and burial. This was because He knew that when He died on the cross things would be set right.

In John 12:20-23
The outsiders are wanting to see Jesus. Now is the time for the Son of Man to be glorified. It is connected to Jesus death on the cross.

John 12:20-23:
There were a number of foreigners from among the nations who were worshipers at the feast. They went to Philip (who came from the village of Bethsaida in Galilee) and they asked him, “Would you take us to see Jesus? We want to see him.” So, Philip went to find Andrew, and then they both went to inform Jesus. He replied to them, “Now is the time for the Son of Man to be glorified. Let me make this clear: A single grain of wheat will never be more than a single grain of wheat unless it drops into the ground and dies. Because then it sprouts and produces a great harvest of wheat—all because one grain died.”

In crises times, like now, people seem to have apocalyptic mindsets. They are looking for a miraculous deliverance to happen that will fix the problem.
As in those days, we should be pointing them to Jesus love and the victory He gained at Calvary.

We can reveal God’s love by reaching out with His love, power and wisdom to those around us. We can also pray for people to receive the comfort, peace, hope and strength.

Questions

How can we, during this time of home-isolation, reveal God’s love, power, peace and courage to those outside our homes?
How do Jesus’ words in John 12:20-23 speak to you?

Pastoral Thought – 1 April 2020

Good news is catching

“Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top.
Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.”
Philippians 2: 3-4 (The Message)

I have been listening to parts of the media reporting on people’s bad behaviour, and I find it frustrating. The penchant for bad news is not helpful – particularly when the majority of citizens are being kind, courteous and respectful in the midst of our shared challenge. Now, I am not by nature an over-the-top optimist but I am convinced that now is the time to focus on the positives that bring hope rather than the outliers behaving badly.

I find the best place to generate that kind of response is in scripture and heartily agree with John Stott when he encourages Christians not to unthinkingly follow “the dark pessimism of the cynic”. Or for that matter the “easy optimism of the humanist”. Rather he advocates, embracing “the radical realism of the Bible”.

I think Philippians 2:3-4 in The Message is just such a scripture. Verse 3 is brilliant advice for the 21st Century Christian shopping at Woolworths! And verse 4 is the gospel message for all followers of Jesus in the Covid19 crisis.

If the Westcity community is to be known for anything over the next weeks and months, let it be a radically real faith that focuses on the needs we see and hear – and even those we don’t! A kind of faith that is ready to smile and support our neighbours, especially if they are worriedly walking the supermarket aisle!

Our response to need, and even anger, could unleash grace and freedom and will counter the bad news with the good news (pun intended) of Christ.

Chiz (Neil Chisholm, Teaching Pastor – Spiritual Formation & Discipleship)

Are you or someone you know in need?

The Westcity Church ‘Common Purse’ is a common fund sourced from within the Westcity community, via an annual offering.

These funds are redistributed in two ways:

1. Locally – to support those within the Westcity community, and their neighbours, who are in a financial crisis. We provide urgent and temporary provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering from crisis.

2. Globally – Financial and prayer support is provided to projects that Kingdom build through practical, capacity building ways. We primarily focus on long-term relationships with development organisations providing reconstruction and development for communities living in poverty or extreme need.

Visit our giving page for more information

https://westcitychurch.com.au/?page_id=531

Community Care Response Team (CCRT) During Covid-19

As a church leadership group, we have been working hard to make sure we are able to stand with you if you’re personally struggling, as well as being able to help those you know to be in need. To do this we have established a ‘Community Care Response Team’ (CCRT) made up of staff and volunteers.

Please get in touch if you or someone you know needs help.

https://westcitychurch.com.au/?page_id=535

We will endeavour to give you relevant advice on possible support from Westcity sources, local community agencies or Government provisions. Please understand we are a Church, trying to respond with love and care, but we will not be able to meet every need. However, you can be sure we’ll give it our best shot to help wherever we can.

CONNECT

Whether you're young or old, Christian or non-Christian, we welcome you at our church and we have a place for you to connect, be loved and in turn learn how to love God, love people, and follow Jesus.