Survivor: A Matter Of Finishing Series

So, who’s it going to be? The dentist, the bartender or the deputy? We know it won’t be the postal worker as she was the first person voted off this Thursday. When Survivor Two began in Australia last winter the smart money was on Kel Gleason, the US Army intelligence officer who graduated from high school in Fredericton. He lasted two whole shows. Oh well. After the first show Deputy Jessie Camacho had a 98% popularity rating and the Vegas bookies were giving the best odds on Ethan to win, but how you start doesn’t always dictate how you’ll finish.

By now you all know the concept of the show, 16 people form two tribes who compete in various test of skill, physical fitness and lunacy and at the end of each week one of the contestants is voted off the show either to live in obscurity or infamy as was the case of Kel Gleason who has making the public speaking circuit in the Maritimes. The final contestant wins $1,000,000.00, of which half goes to the US government, as well as various other prizes. They are courted by everyone from Larry King, to Oprah to Playboy and then they eventually drop into the collective chasm of public forgetfulness. After a year what is Richard Hatch the winner of the original Survivor remembered for other than being a homosexual who wandered around naked on his birthday? Quite a legacy. Poor Tina the winner of the second show is even more forgettable. She also claims that most of her winnings are gone, what can you expect she’s had it for six months. But what can we learn from survivor? What can Survivor the show teach us about Christianity the life?

1) It’s Important to Start. An Old Chinese proverb says “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And so in order to play the game you first have to begin the game and that happens by sending in a video and letter to the network outlining why you would make not just a good contestant but a great contestant then being chosen for an interview and auditioning. Then if you pass through those requirements and you fit in to the blend they are looking for on the show, male, female, black, white, heterosexual, homosexual. And you look good in a bathing suit you can begin. By the way we’ve been told that there won’t be a survivor show done in the arctic until they can come up with a polar bikini for the girls to wear.

Everything we do in our lives needs to start at some point. The dream for Bedford Community Church began in Brisbane Australia when the Atlantic District of the Wesleyan Church approached me about beginning a new Wesleyan Church in Bedford. Bedford Community Church had its official beginning on April 9 1995 when we had our first service at the Lions Den Community Centre on Holland Ave. Thursday evening we met to discuss the possibility of acquiring land and building a church home, and the group voted unanimously on this motion “I am in favour of beginning the process of acquiring property and constructing a permanent church home for BCC. I understand that before any financial commitments are made by the leadership of Bedford Community Church that the congregation will be consulted.” That will be noted as the official start of that project when we as a church said “we want a permanent church home.” Personally I can look to Friday August 3rd I was driving Deborah to New Brunswick so she could begin her summer employment at Caton’s Island and for most of the trip we talked about how great it would be to have a church building, a permanent location that wouldn’t have to be set up and torn down every Sunday, a place where the youth would have a room of their own, a worship centre where couples from our church could be married, where babies could be dedicated and where funerals could be held. For three or four hours the preacher and his daughter dreamt of what could be. And as I drove home the next day I built churches in my mind, I worked out the finances tried to think of where we could build and how we could build. It was the start of what will be one of the most exciting phases in our history as a church. This dream, this building will be a start but just a start.

Everyone here today, who is a Christian, had a point where that relationship began. You might not remember exactly when and where it was, but there was a time in your life that you embraced the words of Jesus Christ when he said in John 3:3 “I assure you, unless you are born again, you can never see the Kingdom of God.”