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

Sunday 24th Feb Service

On Sunday we continued with the 40 Days of Community study, looking at Fellowship. We considered what destroys relationships and what builds them. Central to this is selfishness, many relationship failures can be attributed to selfishness, what I want. Instead Selfnessless (yes there is such a word) builds relationships. It's about what can I do for you?

As usual now, Pastor Ian's talky bit was recorded and is available to download from the main church website Rushden Mission Church Audio. Just select the media section from the home screen and then pick audio. You will see all the recordings from the last 3 weeks.