Around 10 months ago, Mark Driscoll came to Australia and gave a talk called "Burn Your Plastic Jesus". Amongst all the great stuff he said, there was one comment that really stuck with me. Mark was complimenting Sydney on its beautiful harbour and parklands, and he said something along the lines of "But you know, this is the problem. You guys know you have it so good, and you think, this is Heaven, this is all there is." (I think he phrased it much better than that but that was the general idea.) And that really struck a nerve, because it is so true! Sydney (and Australia in general for that matter - I'm a Melbourne girl by birth) is a really great place to live - as much as we complain about it, we do have great health care, education, food and so on, and a beautiful country to boot. And we think, it can't get any better than this. But it can, cause none of it means anything unless God is in the centre of the picture.
And though Mark was mostly talking about non-Christians, I think Christians can be equally guilty of this: "Oh, we have a great country, we have free of religion and the right to meet as a church free from persecution." But that's not what God calls us to, to just happily meet together and 'do church' and that's it. We are commissioned to go out and reach our cities and ultimately the world. And seeing the number of Sydney-siders (over 15,000!) visiting a site like The Resurgence last year gives me hope that as a Christian community, we are catching on to that vision, to reach our whole city and beyond.
You're the God of this city, you're the King of this people, you're
the Lord of this nation, you are - Chris
Tomlin
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