Stacey Trolove - "Ekklesia: Understanding God's Heart and Purpose for His Church" - 28 June 2026

I'm going to be speaking on the theme of Ekklesia, which I believe you guys have been doing the last couple of weeks.

I'm going to continue that theme this morning.

And if you're new here or you haven't been in the last couple of weeks, ecclesia is basically the term that the biblical authors use for the word church.

Okay, so we've translated it to church in our English translations, but the original term would have been ecclesia.

So we're going to unpack that a little bit this morning.

But before I do, I just want to honor your incredible pastors, Rick and Ord's.

How's that? I didn't even have to ask for a clap.

They freely offered up the clap, which means they clearly love you guys.

I didn't even have to stir them to give it.

So I just want to honour you guys.

You guys are awesome.

I feel like you're everyone's, like, I wish that I had you guys as parents.

Like, you're the cool parents.

You're the guys that I would have wanted to come around to your house and, like, hang out if I was friends with your kids.

And I feel the same feeling here in this church, that as you guys parent this church, you're doing it with such open arms, with such fun, with such freedom and love.

And yeah, I just really want to honor you, what you guys are building here.

I can feel it.

Can you guys feel it when you're here? You can just feel it tangibly that people just want to be around you guys.

You're a whole lot of fun and what you're building here is really awesome.

So I just honor you and thank you for what you're building here in Ballina.

Okay, if you have your Bibles, let's go to John chapter 20, and I'm going to read from verse 19 all the way to 23.

But before I do, just to catch you up to speed, John 19, so the chapter before, we read about the crucifixion of Christ, okay? Now, if you're not a Christian or you've never read the Bible, I can't catch you up to speed with what's happened in the previous 19 chapters, but I will tell you that a guy named Jesus dies in chapter 19, and it's really important.

And then in John chapter 20, just a chapter over, it says this in verse 19.

It says, Now this is fascinating.

Don't forget, he just died.