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From Disbelief to Joy
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 4 Apr, 2021
Easter is an opportunity to reflect on the Lord’s life, death, and resurrection. But what if you’re not sure what you believe about all of that? Or what if you believe that it happened but it doesn’t feel particularly relevant to your life? In either case, you’re in good company. On Easter morning the disciples did not immediately believe that the Lord had risen from the dead. It took them a while and a number of experiences to get to the point where they believed that it was true. On Sunday we’ll look at some of the stories after the Lord’s resurrection from the Gospel of Luke and what we can learn from them about the process of growing in our belief in the Lord. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Finding Jesus in the Lives of the Prophets - Ezekiel
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 21 Mar, 2021
The role of the prophets was to communicate God’s messages to the people. They did that by speaking and writing but also by embodying the message they were communicating in one way or another. The prophet Ezekiel was often commanded to do some rather weird things to embody the messages he was communicating. This Sunday we will be trying to understand why he did these things and what that can reveal to us about why Jesus did the things that He did as the Word made flesh who dwelt among us. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Finding Jesus in the Lives of the Prophets - Isaiah
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 7 Mar, 2021
The teachings of the New Church say that the whole of the Word relates to the Lord Jesus Christ and what He went through while on Earth. And so we’ve done sermon series in the past on finding Jesus in the life of Abraham, Joshua, and Elisha. This time we’re going to focus on three of the major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. This will be a chance to learn a bit about these prophets, about what the Lord went through on Earth, and about the role of a prophet in difficult times. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Stories from the World of Spirits
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 21 Feb, 2021
Two weeks ago we talked about what life is like after death. We discussed the structure of the afterlife and the succession of states that we go through. This week and next week we want to flesh these ideas out with stories. The teachings of the New Church contain lots of stories about things that happened in the spiritual world. Why were these stories included and what can we learn from them about how things work after death? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
What Do People Do After Death
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 7 Feb, 2021
A lot of people have lost loved ones recently. When someone we love dies we can have a lot of questions. First, how do we know that they are still alive somewhere? If they are alive somewhere, what is their experience like? What do they do with their time? Is it a pleasant experience; is it an unpleasant experience? There is a lot of information about the afterlife in the teachings of the New Church. This Sunday we will scratch the surface of that body of teaching and try to cover some of the important basics of a New Church understanding of what life is like after death. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Practicing to Be Spiritual Through Meditation
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 24 Jan, 2021
How do we get better at being the kind of people we want to be? How can we get better at catching ourselves before we do the mindless or hurtful things that we find ourselves prone to doing? The same way that we get better at most things: by practicing. Practicing meditation is one way to practice being more spiritually awake. This Sunday we will talk about a New Church Christian approach to meditation and then we will practice it together. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Taking Refuge in the Lord
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 10 Jan, 2021
Things do not feel particularly safe or secure in the world these days. There are many reasons for people to feel upset, fearful, and anxious. This Sunday we will reflect on passages from the Word about taking refuge in the Lord. How can we take refuge in the Lord? And then, from that place of security and peace, how can we move back into the world to face whatever we need to face? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
The Perspective of Anna and Simeon
Worship Service: Family (may include music) - 27 Dec, 2020
After Christmas life goes on. Life can seem pretty long and hard without something to look forward to. How can the stories of Simeon and Anna, two old people who meet Jesus shortly after His birth, help us to gain a different perspective on our lives? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
"Let It Be to Me According to Your Word"
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 13 Dec, 2020
Last week we looked at the significance of the angel telling Zacharias and Elizabeth that John the Baptist would be born; this week we come to the story of the angel telling Mary that Jesus would be born. These stories have a lot of similarities and some crucial differences. Understanding those differences can help us understand the kind of salvation that the Lord longs to give us. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Building Relationships - 1 - An Active Relationship with the Lord
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 22 Nov, 2020
The vision of New Church Westville is to be a community that builds relationships, with the Lord and with other people. This Sunday we’re going to talk about how to build a relationship with the Lord. Our vision statement describes the kind of relationship we’re striving to build with the Lord like this: “We each have an active relationship with the Lord – walking with Him and asking what He wants us to do, turning to Him in times of need and joy, getting His help in turning away from what is harmful, learning from Him.” Let’s talk about how we each can make progress towards this vision. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Nature - Part 3 - Animals and Ecosystems
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 8 Nov, 2020
In our third sermon on the natural world we’re going to consider the animal kingdom. Why are there animals in this world we live in—from the smallest insect to the biggest whale—why are they here? Why are they part of the world that the Lord created and what purpose do they serve? This will also be an opportunity to reflect on topics like the theory of evolution from the perspective of New Church teachings and how we can cultivate a good spiritual ecosystem. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Nature - Part 1 - The Mineral Kingdom and Structure
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 25 Oct, 2020
For the next few weeks we’re going to have a bit of a change of pace—we’ll be doing a sermon series on the natural world and its connection to the spiritual world. This Sunday we’ll be talking about the least alive parts of the natural world—the rocks and minerals. In future weeks we’ll talk about vegetation and animals. This Sunday we’re also going to talk about the structure and design of it all with maybe a little chemistry and physics thrown in for fun. The goal is that you’ll come away from the sermon looking at the world around you with a fresh perspective. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Cecilie Young Memorial Service
Memorial Service - 17 Oct, 2020
On 9 October 2020, Cecilie Francina (Buss) Young peacefully passed away at the age of 104. If you know Cecilie, you'll know that she has been ready for some years to pass on and so we can celebrate with her that she is finally done with her earthly life and can move on to the spiritual world where so many of her loved ones already are. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Stages of Life - Part 3 - Adulthood
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 11 Oct, 2020
In our series on the stages of life, this Sunday we come to the stage of adulthood. We will follow the story of Moses as he is called by the Lord to do something great. And we will also see how he tries to get out of it any way that he can. Moses eventually grows into one of the greatest leaders of the Children of Israel but he also experiences a lot of ups and downs, victories and defeats along the way. Such is adulthood and the Lord’s Word can help us to find our way through it. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Stages of Life - Part 1 - Childhood
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 27 Sep, 2020
Are you an adult still trying to figure out what it means to be an adult? Are you a teenager or young adult trying to figure out where you fit in the world? Or, are you feeling like you might actually be getting old now? Over the next few weeks we’re going to be using the story of Moses as a way of exploring the challenges and opportunities of the different stages of life that we go through in our lives. This Sunday we’re going to start with the story of baby Moses being put in a tar covered ark in the Nile river and what this can teach us about the first few years of our lives. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Soulmates? Therefore....what? Part 2: After You Get Married
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 13 Sep, 2020
What do you do if you’re pretty sure that the person you’re married to is not your soulmate? That’s a big question and we’ll be doing our best to answer it on Sunday. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Soulmates? Therefore....what? Part 1: Before You Get Married
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 30 Aug, 2020
Do you believe that you have a soulmate? Can you know when you’ve found your soulmate? These are philosophical questions, in one sense, but the conclusions that you come to about whether or not you think someone is your soulmate can have huge consequences in your life. This Sunday we’re going to talk about how your beliefs about soulmates can impact the decisions you make before you get married and in 2 weeks we’ll talk about after you get married. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Relationships - Part 1 - When the Wine Runs Out
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 16 Aug, 2020
We’re starting a series on relationships. With the pandemic and lockdown regulations, relationships have been under additional strain for almost half a year. This Sunday we’re going to focus on how to work on our relationships in these weird and hard times and we’ll be using the story of the Wedding at Cana. The story begins with the wine running out at a wedding and this seems to relate to times when all the fun and joy seems to have run out in our relationships. Can the Lord help? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Revisiting the Lord's Prayer - Part 3 - Lead Us Not Into Temptation
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 2 Aug, 2020
This Sunday we will finish revisiting of the Lord’s Prayer by reflecting on the last two sentences of it. We will be focusing particularly on how the Lord teaches us to pray in times of temptation, crisis, and evil. Sometimes it takes things getting pretty bad to make us resort to giving prayer a try. But, especially if we’re out of practice with praying, and our desperate prayer seems to go unanswered, that can be pretty hard to take. Let’s revisit how to pray about hard things and when things get hard. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Revisiting the Lord's Prayer - Part 1 - Our Father
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 19 Jul, 2020
We say the Lord’s Prayer regularly but because of that familiarity we can sometimes forget the meaning and significance of the words that we’re saying. Over the next three weeks we will be revisiting the prayer that the Lord taught us so that it can become all the more meaningful for us when we say those familiar words. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
You Have Enemies and You Need to Love Them
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 5 Jul, 2020
If I asked you, "Do you have any enemies?" you would probably answer, "No." I think most people don't think that they have any enemies. So does the Lord's revolutionary command to love our enemies not really apply to most of us? Well, we all have people that we treat as enemies and we need to recognise that fact. And then we need to learn what it means to love them and then do it. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Living in a Post-Apocalyptic World, Part 3: The Future of the New Church
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 21 Jun, 2020
What's going to happen in the future of the New Church? What are things going to look like in the next 50 years or the next 1000 years? Will there be a need for another new church? This Sunday, as we celebrate the founding of the New Church 250 years ago, we will try to get a picture of the future of the New Church and an understand of what our role is right now. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Living in a Post-Apocalyptic World - Part 1 - The Larger Narrative
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 7 Jun, 2020
Things in the world these days can seem rather apocalyptic. Intriguingly the teachings of the New Church say that the apocalypse has already happened, over 250 years ago in fact. What does that mean for us today? How can that larger narrative help us to understand what's going on in the world at the moment? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Misconceptions of Providence - 3 - It's all God or it's all me
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 24 May, 2020
In this sermon series we’ve talked about how the Lord is working in every little detail of what happens in our lives. That can be a profoundly comforting thought but, in other moods, it can make us feel like it doesn’t matter what we do. If it’s all in God’s control, then our decisions mean nothing, really. In other moods, it can feel like God is just some distant force (if He’s there at all) and it’s entirely up to us to figure out what we need to do with our lives and what God is doing or not doing is largely irrelevant to our daily lives. The teachings of the New Church provide another option for how to understand this. | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA
Misconceptions of Providence - If it happened, it was meant to be
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - 10 May, 2020
We’re starting a sermon series on misconceptions about Divine Providence. Often when something difficult happens we want to know why—why did this happen? Sometimes the answer that people come to is that “it was meant to be”. But is that true? What does that even mean? How should we think about all the different things that happen in our lives? | By Rev. Malcolm G. Smith , Westville, RSA