After more than a decade of planning and preparation, New Life Presbyterian Church has officially opened the doors of its new building in Officer, offering a fresh spiritual and community hub for local families. (PAKENHAM OFFICER STAR NEWS 07/04/26)

From memory, and I acknowledge I may have the amount wrong, but leading up to the opening of the new church building, it was announced that either $3 million or $5 million and a lot of hard work had now come to fruition with the new building opening.

This Good Friday sermon was the first Good Friday sermon in the new building. So what do we get after decades of planning and millions of dollars of parishioner offerings?

A Good Friday sermon of 15.57 minutes. The first 10.17 minutes of the sermon was a run down on various church buildings. Then a statement to the effect that the “cross changes the way we live and it’s easy to forget it”.

This was followed by a question “What must I do to be saved?”. Answer; “Believe in the Son that was lifted up”.

In summary, The sermon should therefore be judged as substantially faithful in its central direction, but materially underdeveloped in its account of atonement, justification, repentance, regeneration, and the biblical context it invokes.