One great way to ensure that the next generation hears about the GLORIOUS deeds of the LORD, is through SRE (Special Religious Education or “teaching Scripture”).

Every Thursday afternoon during term time, a team of loving and dedicated servants from our church invest in the kids next door at Jamberoo Public School by teaching them about God through SRE. It’s a fantastic opportunity to walk alongside these young ones, pointing them to WHO God is, WHAT he’s done, and WHY that matters for us.

Given that the school is quite small, we teach the students in stage groups

• Kindy is taught by Elise & Paula
• Year 1-2 has been taught by Jodie, and is being taken over by Lesley
• Year 3-4 is taught by Rach
• Year 5-6 is taught by Deb

My role is to coordinate the team, liaise with the school, oversee the admin and to fill in when one of the other teachers can’t make it (which turns out to be pretty often!)

We’d really love for you to pray for us each week as we teach these energetic young ones about God from the Bible. The team has asked if you can please pray:

• That we would have love and compassion for the students
• We would have creativity to convey the love of Christ in language and actions that will touch their hearts and minds. 
• God would help us pitch the lesson at a level the children can understand.
• That the Holy Spirit would go ahead of us each week.
• For the recruitment and training of more SRE teachers from our church to take over some of the classes in 2025

If you’d like to know more about SRE or would like to talk about how you can support us, please get in contact!

Matt Bartlett

Church is my Spiritual Home.

A home where I am nurtured, loved, grown as a Christian & encouraged to serve my fellow family members. I have experienced this in abundance here at Jamberoo Anglican and I thank you for this.

In a family we all have something to contribute. Don’t hold back, find your gift and use it. Serve and be served. Be an active family member. This has been so evident in our church over the last few months of Graham’s illness.

Thank you so much for all the practical things people are doing for me.
Things like meals, taking shower screens off so Graham can be showered, dashing to hospital late at night because I needed something. Others are feeding me. Many of you are praying for me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 ^“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

We here at Jamberoo Anglican are truly “one body”.
Each and every part doing its bit to help our body function in a spiritually healthy way. We are family.
Many members, different ages, different jobs, but all working together & supporting each other as one body.

Family members move on. Graham has moved on to his eternal home. We are sad. We are bereft. But know we will see him again when we too leave this earthly life and join all the saints in Heaven who have gone before us.

Jodie and Mandy are moving on, taking Jesus’ command in Mark 16:15 “Go into all the world and preach the gospel” literally.
We will miss them greatly, their leadership, their friendship, their love of us and the gospel but we know God is sending them out and when God sends, you go.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
In the name of Christ. AMEN.

LESLEY ERRINGTON

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care? Precious Saviour, still our refuge—take it to the Lord in prayer!

These words come from the famous hymn, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus,’ and they bring us great hope as we feel the burden of life.

The words come from Jesus’ famous ‘comfortable’ words from Matthew chapter 11, verse 28 where he says:

Matt. 11:28    Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

These words bring hope to the hopeless and help us in our helplessness, for they speak to all of us who find it impossibly hard to deal with our sins and failures.

But originally, Jesus was speaking to the lost sheep of Israel, who were overcome with the burdens of keeping hundreds of rules, regulations and traditions.

They carried the burden of keeping the law… but today we carry the burden of performance anxiety.

By nature, we all feel we need to perform well to impress God, so that we will survive judgement day.

It’s a burden that will crush us, and so Jesus offers ‘rest’.

He offers rest that is about peace with God, and we get this ‘rest’ as a gift from Jesus.

As we follow Jesus, we find rest for our souls that brings us relief from the burden of our sins.

And this is the greatest relief we could ask for from the heavy burden of guilt and sin.

JODIE McNEILL

One night a little girl was woken by a storm. “Mummy, Mummy” she cried out. The rain beating against the window frightened her, the lightning and thunder terrified her. “Mummy, where are you?”
Her mother hurried into the room. She sat in the side of the bed and held her daughter tightly to comfort her, “Honey, when you are frightened like this you know that God is with you and loves you.”
“Yes Mummy, I know that” she sobbed. “But I need love with skin on.”

Jesus said, ‘A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another as I have loved you’.
We all need ‘love with skin on’ from time to time and so we need to be ‘love with skin on’ for one another.

Sometimes, pastoral care is seen as an optional extra, however, caring for one another is fundamental to our lives as Christians.
We all have different personalities, abilities and gifts, and therefore, we show our love in diverse ways.
However, at its foundation pastoral care involves caring for God’s people and walking alongside them in their Christian formation.

Pastoral care is gospel shaped, Bible nourished and prayer dependent. It is God’s love in action.

At Jamberoo Anglican, we work toward providing a ministry of support, hope and caring for one another’s – Spiritual, Emotional, Relational and Physical Wellbeing.

Our growth groups are a natural place to provide care for one another. They are the place where we develop relationships and support one another.

If you are not part of a growth group, then I would encourage you to join one of our existing groups.

Given that not everyone can be a part of a growth group, let’s each consider how we can show God’s love and care to someone different this week.

Every four years the people of our planet gather together to celebrate God’s remarkable creation, as the Olympics showcase how people are able to go faster, higher, and stronger than before.

However, as they do so, they usually celebrate humanity, rather than God.

In what could easily be an opportunity to praise the remarkable creation of God, instead his creatures worship themselves as they pursue an atheistic celebration of the breaking of the records that once confined and defined humankind.

It’s a fine line between idolatry and doxology—between worshipping humanity and giving glory to the God who made us—and at each Olympics the gap seems to grow wider.

This year the opening ceremony created controversy with the appropriation of Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ by a drag queen DJ in the place of Christ.

Yet, the most offensive aspect of the Games must be the lack of worship of the one who fearfully and wonderfully made the men and women who perform and compete at the myriad of events.

As we witness the extraordinary feats of the athletes, our appropriate response should  be to glorify the God who made us and who has given the remarkable gifts that enable the athletic feats splashed across screens throughout the world.

When we glorify humanity we show a contempt for the creator who made every human in his image, and who created us to glorify him as our loving Lord and Saviour.

The distortion of ‘The Last Supper’ seemed to target those who revere Jesus, and yet it is the natural ignorance of God’s hand in creating everything we see that is the most offensive act that happens almost every medal ceremony.

As we marvel at creation, let us glorify the creator, who is worthy of all our praise.

JODIE McNEILL