Pray Straight Away!

Following the challenge put out the other week in the sermon for us to pray for people as soon as it is mentioned (my key bit was that it is so you don't forget later - I really have a head like a sieve), I took the bull by the horns and offered to pray with my Boss (who is a Christian) over his housing situation (he is in the process of moving up here from Kent).

Within 1 hour of our praying together about getting an offer on his house and getting the house he needed here to move into whilst he looks to buy (Catchment for the right school is important), he had received an offer of the asking price on his house and had got the go ahead on the house he wanted. Before we prayed together both of the situations were on the unlikely side of not happening.

Take care, God Bless, hope to see you all next Sunday

Pete & Christina

Breakfast!

Coming soon .... hear about the fabulous breakfast cooked up by Joan on Easter Sunday ... I'm even going to mark it using the Curry Club scoring system.

It's Not All It's Cracked Up To Be!

In order to reach out to the community and understand the needs, one of the house groups came up with the idea of giving away eggs. The idea was to visit the streets close to the Mission Church. I have to say that some of us were a little apprehensive at knocking on a strange door, not knowing who would answer and what their response would be. Oh how often we lose our faith, when we should know that the Lord will always be with us.

There are many stories to be told and perhaps some will offer to share them personally. For now, my own experience was this. It is clear we live in a world where nothing is free and we are always looking for the catch. This was so clear when people answered the door and were greeted by someone wanting to give them a chocolate egg for nothing. It was such a joy to see the realisation dawn on faces when they were told there is no catch. We just want to wish you a happy Easter and say that if there is anything we can do to help or if they know someone that needs help, just let us know. We gave them a small card with details of who to call and can only now pray that needs are made apparent.

Everyone who took part is this out reach had a wonderful time and were very blessed with the response. The Lord was with us all the way and allowed us to speak to young and old to spread a small amount of joy. Actually, it is all it's cracked up to be!!

Tony

Listening to the Podcast

I missed the service last Sunday as we had friends down and had booked a meal for Mothers Day. It's great to be able to catch up with the talky bit from the service using the podcast. Earlier this week I travelled to Newcastle on the train (4 hours one way!). I was able to shut my eyes and listen to Pastor Ian through my iPod. Having listened to the service, I opened my eyes and looked around the train carriage at the various people sitting around me. I wondered whether they knew God, I wondered whether they had friends who truly cared for them, I wondered what sort of community they lived in. Life is not easy and we need our family and friends to support us in so many ways. What would life be like if we lived on our own? Many people do and they should know the care, friendship and love of people around them. That's what a community is about .. caring for those around us.

Tony R

A Tasty Treat

In Sunday School the children have been doing lots of things for 40 Days of Community. We made cakes and then shared them out to the whole church. We also made posters, one saying love and one saying share. I am enjoying it at the moment.

Georgia R, age 11

20 Days of Purpose Driven

Wow, how the time flies. It only feels like yesterday that we were talking about the planning for the 40 days campaign and here we are half way through. I have to confess at the outset that I am a blog novice, but thanks to excellent tutoring from Tony here I am, blogging.

So, to what's happened so far. One of the big things that is causing us some interesting challenges is the project. As has already been mentioned there are those who are finding this quite difficult. We did not have a specific project in mind when we started but there have been some wonderful ideas that have come to the surface as we have talked in the small groups and in the leadership meetings. Some of these will be driven by the groups themselves and another is going to be our church project, I'll be saying more about this on Sunday (Mothers day, March 2nd) so watch this space.

We might well ask ourselves why are we finding this so difficult, after all, we believe that God has called us to have this focus over this 40 day period so surely the project ideas should be flowing freely and we should all be of one united mind bursting with enthusiam and eager to be meeting all of the needs that we find around the church on the Wellingborough Road in Rushden.

I am reminded of the study we did a couple of weeks ago about the feeding of the 5,000 men. Jesus asks the disciples, "What do you have?" The answer was the 5 small loaves and the 2 fish. They brought what they had to Jesus, he gave thanks and broke it and gave it back to the disciples to give to the crowd. How do you think they felt at that point? Just before they took out, what on the face of it, was a meagre offering. I don't know about you but I imagine that they didn't suddenly have armfuls of food to give to the crowd. I believe that they only had the small portions that Jesus had given them. However, as they walked around the crowd, with each offering to every person there that day, the small portion they had just didn't get any smaller! Yet it took a step of faith for every person they met to be fed. That is where we are. We're looking at the resources we have in our hands, we're looking at the need and we're thinking, "This will never feed this lot!" The disciples had a choice, and so do we. They could have decided to walk away and leave the crowd hungry, but they did not, they trusted Jesus with what they had and he did something amazing with it. As a people we're going to step out, trust Jesus with what we have and allow Him to do the rest.

Last week in a prayer meeting one of our ladies had a picture. It was of a little boy with a bat (the sort you hit a ball with, not the black flappy mammals!) He was shouting at God, "Why don't you hit the bat with the ball God? Come on. Here I am, you keep missing the bat!" We can be like that, God throws the ball to us and we expect the ball to hit the bat, when what we need to do is to meet the ball in the air, we need to swing the bat. It's time for us to hit the ball!

We have seen some incredible changes over the last couple of weeks. The church has grown numerically, and now it's time for us to grow spirtiually. There have been answers to prayer. Last week a young girl had gone missing and there had been no contact. Her relatives were very worried about her, they wanted to offer her a place to stay, so they asked that we pray that God would enable her to get in touch. Two hours later they had made contact, she was safe and well and arrangements were made for them to go and pick her up. This Sunday a man asked for prayer for his hands, he had lost the feeling in them and it was causing great frustration. We prayed and at the end of the service he said, "I shouldn't be surprised, but I can feel my fingers!" We have a glorious and wonderful God who gently leads us and grows us. My prayer is that we will see an outpouring of His spirit as we step out.

God bless
Pastor Ian

PS I am such a novice that I don't know how to get the spell checker to work, so I may have used some interesting spelling, but I hope that the message gets through!!

Project Thoughts

During the small groups we are considering some form of project to reach out to the community. In one group we expressed difficulty in getting to grips with an obvious idea. We reflected on the work the church currently does with lunch club, single mums and various other initiatives. We could build on these, perhaps giving more assistance to those in the church who give up their time already to make them work.

One person I spoke to from another group was going to Wellingborough to the Hemmingwell Estate to see what another church has been doing to create a place for the community utilising an old pub!

Another person I spoke to confessed to some intrepedation within their group as they look around the group and wonder what they can all get involved in. 

We will continue to pray and God will show us what He wants us to get involved with. We are making ourselves available and there will be something we can all be part of.

Tony R