Happy Mother’s Day! I pray you would be encouraged by our special service today. We are honouring mums and all women today, and invite you to stay after the service to enjoy a cuppa, cupcake and conversation.

Serving alongside Anita, Jill and Janelle in our Flourish Women’s Ministry has been a blessing, as I have witnessed God’s love for women and for His ministry. When we first gathered as a team in 2022 to discuss the women’s ministry, God gave us two key verses which have led this ministry.

The Lord will guide you continually, giving you water when you are

dry and restoring your strength. You will be like a well-watered garden, like

an ever-flowing spring  (Isaiah 58:11).

She is more precious than rubies (Proverbs 3:15).

God made us all in his image. Totally unique, unconditionally loved and precious to him. He also made us to live in community, expressed through love, encouragement and care for one another. This is really the heart of Flourish. It’s an opportunity to invite others to come together, where we encourage one another, form deep friendships through which love and care are given and received.

I think something we learnt from last year is that we really needed a balance of coming together to grow in friendship, but also to grow in faith. We believe God wants to gather us for more than social catch ups. He wants us to experience his presence, fill us afresh with his life, and speak words of encouragement and wisdom to us. It's the combination of these things that will form a community of women who are flourishing – both in friendship and faith.

This year we are holding four events; two have a friendship focus and two have a faith focus.

On the info table are some beautifully designed postcards which have all the dates for Flourish events for the remainder of 2024. I encourage you to pop these dates in your calendar, so you can save the dates and invite others along.

My prayer for all women this Mother’s day is that you may personally know the love of God, your creator - the one who knitted you in your mother’s womb, the one who knows you intimately, who says you’re precious to me, the one who made you uniquely with a purpose and plan, the one who comforts and the one who loves you immeasurably more than you could ever imagine.

God bless,

Mel

Flourish Women’s Ministry Leader

We had the most wonderful two days at the QB conference as a staff team. I can’t remember there ever being a greater expectation of what the Lord will do in Queensland, than among the leaders and churches at the multiply conference. Many stories were being shared of how people are being awakened to Jesus, and sometimes just arriving at church wanting to know God. We have experienced this at The Grove, and I can think of people straight away who arrived at our front door having experienced some kind of awakening.  

We celebrated the fact that in 2023, QLD Baptist churches reported the most baptisms in our history. There are also more Alpha courses being run, and churches preparing to reap the coming harvest. Preceding this has also been an increased commitment to prayer in our movement. In the last few years QB churches have set aside time to pray for Revival, and it’s making a difference. It makes sense, because there has never been a movement of God that didn’t start with people praying. We can think of all the spiritual battles we face, but what the devil works hardest to stop, is people coming together in prayer, because prayer is how we win over darkness.    

It’s great to have Dan Lyons preaching the third message in our Jonah series. It’s a remarkable story of how a whole city was revived by a short sermon that Jonah preached. It’s clear enough that this was a powerful work of God, the only explanation for such a godless and barbaric people to fall on their knees in repentance to Israel’s God, Yahweh. It’s a story that can fill us with hope for our neighbourhood and city. It’s really not about how skilled or impressive we are, simply about how available we are. Jonah finally obeyed God’s call, and what a reward for his obedience. We need to get our eyes off what God’s call costs us, and onto the life it brings to those we are sent to share his message and love with.  

Over the next couple of weeks, maybe you have someone you could invite to church, or into a conversation about Jesus. Mother’s Day is a good opportunity to invite family to come. The week after is Pentecost Sunday, where we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. Join us as we pray into that day, asking the Holy Spirit to heal our land, and revive our city. This week we pray particularly for the children in our church and neighbourhood.  

Let’s pray and obey God, and see what amazing things he will do.

Marty   

I have things to be thankful for, and things to look forward to. 

I am so thankful for the Alpha dinner this week. Around twenty attended, and it was wonderful to meet the friends, family and neighbours who came because people at The Grove invited them. Thank you also to the Hill’s and the Hockey’s families for cooking and serving the meal. There was an obvious sense of God’s love and presence among us throughout the evening. Let’s pray Jesus really blesses lives through this Alpha series. 

I am also thankful for Scott and Sandy McClintock who have started eight weeks well deserved leave. Scott and Sandy work as honorarium staff members and have poured out their lives to bless The Grove over a number of years now. I still remember after Scott sold a couple of IT businesses, that he starting volunteering part time during the week for the church. Then the pandemic hit and the building project was in full flight. Scott’s skills and availability were God’s provision to lead us in building our technical infrastructure, and mobilizing our live stream services. Sandy has also been a faithful support to our office and ministry needs thorough many acts of service behind the scenes, serving with a generous and loving heart. We praise God for this amazing couple and pray they have a deeply refreshing holiday. 

There are also three things I am looking forward to this week. 

The first is my wife Leanne is flying home this Thursday after six weeks! I have missed her so much, but am glad she had the opportunity to spend time with our daughter Christie, who works as a Midwife in the UAE. The second is our eldest daughter Gemma is due to give birth to their third child sometime this week. We give thanks to the Lord for this wonderful blessing and the joy of being grandparents again! 

The third thing I am looking forward to is the QB conference on the Gold Coast. Henry and I are going on Tuesday and Wednesday, and it will be a great opportunity to not only hear some excellent speakers, but to network with other QLD Baptist church leaders. The conference is called Multiply, and we pray God would speak to us and reveal his wisdom for our lives, leadership and the church. There is a growing expectation across our movement that the Holy Spirit will multiply his work in QLD churches through making disciples, sending workers into the harvest field and planting new churches. 

Please pray for us, and the QB movement as a whole. 

Thankful and expectant, Marty  

I was talking to Skip from Alpha after the brilliant training night he led for us on Tuesday. Skip told me that he was blown away by the heart of The Grove. He has led many training nights at churches, but said he doesn’t always see the leaning in and hunger to be part of what God is doing that he witnessed among those gathered from The Grove. Now I don’t pass that on to pat ourselves on the back, or be prideful. Rather, because I agree with Skip that I constantly see this growing heart to follow Jesus and reach the world with the good news. It's like a shift is happening in many lives, that is totally from the Holy Spirit. 

Now saying this isn’t minimizing the pain of hardships we face, or that struggling emotions due to circumstances are a lack of faith. We only need to read the bible to see the ups and downs of life and faith, even in our most loved bible characters. However, what I am seeing is a special nearness of God and perhaps an increase of his power in his church. Little by little, more people are coming alive, and faith is growing. It’s making me feel so expectant about what’s coming.  

The key to being caught up in a movement from God is a little like being swept along in a current. Standing on the banks of a river won’t take us anywhere, it's only as we dive in. Practically speaking, it’s making ourselves available to God. I pray we would all be caught up in this movement of the Holy Spirit among us. To move from observing what God is doing, to being totally part of it. 

Let’s consider what God is calling us to dive into. Maybe it's inviting someone to the Alpha Dinner or joining a Connect Group. Perhaps it’s being baptised or serving in a ministry. It could be that God is calling us to stop running away like Jonah, and be fully engaged with his people and mission again. Whatever it is, we probably recognise God’s call in our hearts. 

Grove family, I really believe the Lord is working among us and inviting us to be caught up in something marvellous. However, we need to leave the safe shores and shallow waters to really see what God can do through our lives and church. It’s getting late, the world is dark, but the movement of the church and the gospel is growing in brilliance and power. Maybe the lyrics of the old Mercy Me song, Caught Up In The Middle, is an appropriate response. 

I believe Your Spirit is alive and on the move, Oh I want to be caught up in the middle of You.
I want to be a part of what I know You're going to do, Oh I want to be caught up in the middle of You.

God bless, 

Marty.

I am very thankful to the Lord for the opportunities we had to honour Jesus to hundreds of people across our Easter services. There were a number of moments during the services that were particularly powerful for me. The first was on Good Friday, when Frank and Louis shared on Isaiah 53. It was not only the meaningful things said that were so moving, but the backstory of how Jesus brought Frank through major surgery only recently, and that Louis had written all the spoken words for his second Easter as a Christian. 

The second moment was Easter Sunday when Zoe Hanlon and Stephen Day were baptised. The Hanlon’s came to The Grove for the first time on Good Friday eleven years ago. Zoe was the last of her family to be baptised at The Grove, testifying to the one who not only changes lives but whole families. 

I only met Stephen this year, and got to know him through Alpha. Not too long ago Stephen decided to follow Jesus, and as he shared in his testimony, a significant moment was meeting a Christian librarian at a public library who not only showed him where to find a bible in the spirituality section, but where to find a church. Stephen went to church, and things started to fall into place leading to his baptism on Resurrection Sunday.  

Recalling the saving and restoring work of Jesus sets a good tone for term 2. There are so many more people in our neighbourhood and city who Jesus is pursuing with his love. There are fresh signs of a hunger in people to find what will fill the hole in their heart that nothing else does. That's why we must be ready as a church to introduce people to Jesus. I am convinced that preparing to have a conversation about God is the kind of faith action he will always honour. 

I pray many would come to Alpha Training on Tuesday night. Imagine fifty people in The Grove being Alpha ready. We are going to need this, because more are coming with questions, struggles and a deep desire to explore faith in Christ. 

The Alpha dinner is also an opportunity to grab hold of. Many have been praying for up to five friends since before Easter. Now is a great opportunity to invite someone to dinner. Perhaps this will be the moment they share in a baptism testimony, of the night they came to dinner. 

Next Sunday we are starting a short series on the life of Jonah. There is hardly a better story in the Old Testament about God’s relentless pursuit of people. He chases those running away, he rescues those sinking in despair and revives cities even as dark and racked with evil as Nineveh was. If we think certain runaways can’t be chased down, or the best we could hope for 

a city like Brisbane is the Olympics, then we need a deep dive into Jonah. 

It’s the Old Testaments gospel of amazing grace! 

God bless, Marty.