Author Archives: cabramat

Member Spotlight – Brian Phung

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Tell us a little about yourself, for people who may not know you.

I am a first-year uni student studying primary education at Western Sydney University. During the week, I am usually studying, reading, meeting up with friends from church, and trying to keep myself busy in various ways. I have a few hobbies – basketball, video games and reading.

How did you find out about CAC?

I started coming to CAC around mid-2017 for ACCESS youth group and decided to start attending church around late 2017. This decision was influenced by my friend David Ada, who invited me to youth group and kept working on me and trying to get me to know more about God. This eventually led me to start attending church as I found interest in Christianity.

How did you become a Christian?

Becoming a Christian was a slow process as I was always sceptical about religion. At the same time, I was curious about it because I believed there was a higher being. However, my friend David convinced me to come to church and learn more about Christianity and God.

As I continued to attend church I found myself learning more and becoming interested in the stories of the Bible, Christianity and God. As I learned more I found myself in awe about God and the things he has done for us. This led me to eventually put my trust in God, which is where I am now!

What do you see as the biggest change in yourself since becoming a Christian?

My biggest changes after becoming a Christian are maturity and awareness. Maturity in the fact that as I began to learn more and more about the Bible it’s not just trusting in God but the fact that we have to genuinely repent and try to better ourselves. After becoming Christian and learning more, I’ve started becoming more self-aware of the flaws and sinful tendencies I have.

What’s one piece of encouragement you would like to share with fellow Christians?

One encouragement I would like to share with my fellow brothers and sister is the importance of prayer. Prayer is one of those things that people tend to shake off or neglect. However, prayers is one of the ways we can communicate and build on our relationship with God. It allows us to grow spiritually and it has had a huge impact on my life as a Christian. It gives the opportunity for reflect and admire God and the grace he has given us. Overall prayer has a huge impact and allows us to grow, making it something that is important to keep persevering in.

Book Review: Life Together

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Review by David Guo

COVID-19 led us to question our church community and culture. What does genuine fellowship look like? Can the church survive if we are not in regular contact? What are the essentials to God’s community? We ought to assess the culture of community so we can faithfully move forward as God’s servants. 

Written in Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer’s Life Together deals bluntly with these concerns. He offers profound insights about physical gatherings to the modern, comfortable Christian.

Bonhoeffer doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. He presents simple truths that we often take for granted. Since reading the book last year, his words are still stuck with me. From start to finish, there is a tone of sincere appreciation and belief in the gift of fellowship. This is what makes Life Together so unbelievably powerful.

“One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for something for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires in Christian brotherhood.”  – D. Bonhoeffer 

It is easy to camouflage my selfish desires behind seemingly good things – prayer meetings, social events, accountability groups. But, Bonhoeffer helped me realize that I am distorting God’s grace given community to merely feed on my ambition. What I was doing was reprehensible.

God hates the dreamer that wishes to impose his own vision into God’s holy community. “Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality”. In other words, fellowship is not something we are working towards – God has already achieved fellowship for us. We are bound together by faith through Christ, and not by worldly experiences or interest. So, it only makes sense that we must return to his Word in order to grow as a church. 

Life Together also brings wisdom into many other overlooked Christian practices. From morning devotion of the Psalms to the ministry of listening, meekness, and holding one’s tongue, it is difficult not to be challenged.  

You won’t find quick fixes to the church community in Life Together. It is a hard book to read because it faces you with the truth. But I assure you that if you are seeking a meaningful answer to the questions above, it will not disappoint. As someone who doesn’t highlight very often, this is one of the most colourful books in my library. From life alone to life together as Christians, this book will deepen your understanding of what fellowship is and could be if we are faithful to the Scriptures. 

CAC COVID-19 Update

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ADAPT…is how we would summarise the past two months of COVID. It’s been challenging, draining, and the ground keeps shifting. We have found ourselves swinging between being cautious and complacent. It’s been easy to be complacent with the low numbers of new COVID-cases. Yet at the same time we want to remain cautious as it only takes one COVID patient to infect a whole country. 

The NSW government has announced the easing of restrictions from Friday 15th May.1 This includes:

  • outdoor gatherings of up to 10 people
  • cafes and restaurants can seat 10 patrons at any one time
  • up to 5 visitors to a household at any one time
  • weddings up to 10 guests
  • indoor funerals up to 20 mourners, outdoor funerals up to 30
  • religious gatherings/places of worship up to 10 worshippers
  • use of outdoor equipment with caution
  • outdoor pools open with restrictions.

We have discussed this as a leadership team and arrived at this current position:

  1. We will continue to hold off meeting face-to-face in Growth Groups until further notice. We recognise that religious gatherings of up to 10 worshippers are permitted but we understand this as referring to a gathering in a ‘church’ building. The restriction of ‘5 visitors to a household at any one time’ still stands and our intent is to abide with the law. Technically, our Growth Groups could meet at church, but if many groups decide to do that, it becomes a bigger gathering. Not only that, the majority of our groups hover at (or above) 10 people. We hope to be able to resume face-to-face Growth Group gatherings when NSW reaches Stage 2 restrictions.
  2. We will continue to hold off meeting face-to-face on Sundays until further notice. We recognise that religious gatherings of up to 10 worshippers are permitted. However, we feel that the right time to resume gathering face-to-face is at Stage 3, when gatherings of up to 100 are permitted. Our plan is to wait for this stage. However, we will continue to review and evaluate our situation and adapt accordingly.
  3. We will continue to meet online for ACCESS, Kids, Creche, and Playgroup throughout Stages 1 and 2.2 However, we intend to use this time to plan and prepare for restarting these ministries in-person during Stage 3.3  

Our suggestions at this point are:

  1. Sunday gatherings: We encourage you to consider watching  the livestream on Sunday together in small groups with no more than 5 visitors at a household. We understand this to be 5 visitors (adults and children) in total.
  2. Mid-week share & pray: We’d also encourage you to consider informally catching up, to share and pray with other brothers and/or sisters in Christ. God’s given us each other as a way of encouraging each other to persevere in living for Jesus. 

We believe these next steps are the best way forwards for our community as God’s people at this stage. We recognise it’s tiring to keep adapting to the changing circumstances. But thankfully, we have a God who comforts us in our afflictions. He’s given us an imperishable hope. He will raise us from the dead. Our afflictions (as hard, challenging, draining, excruciating they may be) are light and momentary compared to the eternal weight of glory to come! (2 Cor 4:17). 

Our Gospel is unchanging and we hope that this edition of Cabra PHO will add fuel to your prayers, hope amidst your afflictions, and encouragement to your souls.

Your brothers in Christ,
Will, Hien and Rob.

1https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/what-you-can-and-cant-do-under-rules/changes
2See the Government’s 3-stage plan here: https://www.pm.gov.au/media/update-coronavirus-measures-08may20
3See Sydney Anglican Diocese’ 3-stage recommendations for our churches here: https://sydneyanglicans.net/covid19

COVID-19: Cabramatta Anglican Church Goes Online

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Dear Cabramatta Anglican Church Family,

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made an announcement today banning all enclosed gatherings of 100 or more people. In light of that, Archbishop Glenn Davies has issued a statement to suspend all public church gatherings until further notice. You can see the statement here.

Our priorities
We are committed to continuing to proclaim Jesus as Lord, trusting in Him and sharing the love He has for us with others. In this challenging season we will continue to grow in God’s word together; sharing our lives with each other and serving those inside and outside the church. With the move to church online the logistics behind how we do so may look differently, but with the help of technology we will still meet with one another to stir up and encourage each other to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:25).

We will continue to monitor the situation and adhere to updated advice issued by our Government and the Anglican Diocese. We have been urged to act now and take social distancing (reducing the rate of physical contact with one another) and hand hygiene seriously to reduce the risk of community transmission. As a church, we want to be proactive in loving our neighbours and adopting the measures we can to slow the transmission, thereby helping to protect the most vulnerable members of the community and reducing the impact on essential, life-saving health services.

What does this mean for our 11am Service?
We will live stream our services online which can be accessed on our website. Our services will be live at 9am (Chinese), 11am (English) on Sundays and a recording will be made available if you cannot join us while we’re live on Sundays.

What does this mean for Access, CACTUS, Creche and Playgroup?
We will put them on hold until we resume normal Sunday services. Our leaders will be in touch with parents to distribute age appropriate resources/activities to assist with reading the Bible. A kids talk will be part of the live stream.

What does this mean for our small groups?
Small groups will be meeting online via conference calling software. You should be contacted by your growth group or other small group gathering leaders to confirm the new arrangement. If you’re not already in a group, please contact Rob on roberty@cabra.church if you would like to join a small group.

Pastoral care
With the shift to church online, we would like to take this opportunity to work together in caring for those without access to the technology many of us take for granted. If you’re able to help please contact us for how we plan to care for those who may be more vulnerable, isolated or have limited mobility in our midst.

Outreach
Our Mobile Community Pantry (MCP) ministry will continue to operate at a reduced capacity adhering to all necessary precautions under the direction of Anglicare until further notice. It has become especially critical at this time in providing affordable pantry items to our community which they may find difficult to access elsewhere.

We are also planning to letterbox drop cards to those in self-isolation in our local community to let them know we are here and available to help (whilst following the necessary health precautions) with gathering urgent supplies, posting/collecting mail, praying/talking through any questions they may have and inviting them to our online services.

We understand that this may be an unsettling time of change and uncertainty for many of us. As followers of Jesus Christ we can trust in His sovereignty and bring our anxieties to Him in prayer and petition. Let us hold out the hope of eternal life we have in Jesus who has conquered death. May we come together in strength and unity, in love and compassionate care for each other and the hurting community around us. If you have any questions or concerns, or need any assistance practically with supplies please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Your brothers in Christ,

Hien, Rob and Will