Richard Botta
Name: Richard Botta
Year: Diploma of Ministry 1985
Bio: Richard is married to Sue and has three adult children. He and his wife are Senior Pastors of C3 Carlingford in the Northwest of Sydney, which they planted in 1994 from C3 Lane Cove. They are also the C3 Regional Overseers for South Asia. Richard lectures at C3 College and Alphacrucis college and has a particular interest in discipleship. He is the overseer of five churches in Australia and coaches executives in business settings. He loves to garden, walk in the bush and enjoys good food, wine and the company of friends!
1 John 2: 12-14 has been a pivotal scripture in my ministry as it gives a pathway of discipleship. So often people question if they are growing in Christ and how would they know even if they thought they were. My engineering background has always led me to think in the language of measurement and here in this passage, we get some markers for our growth in faith.
John says that our youngest stage, Infancy, is all about forgiveness. We help the youngest in faith experience God’s forgiveness! We help them realise they have lived contrary to God’s design and desire for their lives and to turn to Him asking to be forgiven. How remarkable it is to find the freedom of forgiveness. Of course, this then begins to get extended not only from God to us but from us toward others and ourselves.
John then says that the mark of a Child in their faith development is to know God as Father. Great parents provide, they protect, they affirm who we are as designed by God, and they provide stable contexts for us to thrive in life to test our boundaries.
John then moves to the stage of Young people in Christ. This stage of faith development is characterised by being strong or assured in our faith, by God’s Word living in us and by victory over the schemes of the Evil One.
Then the final stage is adulthood – which John says is characterised by “knowing Him who was from the beginning” – which is a great phrase to capture the enormity and absurdity of the finite trying to apprehend the infinite – every time I think I have a handle on God He blows me out of the water by revealing something new of Himself!
So where are you in your faith journey and what are your next steps in following Christ?