Front Edge 2010

For the first time this year, the Home Counties region that we are part of as Newfrontiers, will be hosting Front Edge. This is a conference that sees excellent faith-filling evangelistic equipping coupled with evangelists going into churches to preach the gospel and pray for the sick.  I have had the pleasure of being involved in many of these around the country and am so excited that we will be doing one here in our region. 

As I have said there are two elements - the first is on Saturday May 22nd. This will be a day that I will be calling as many RFCers to be at as possible. The two main speakers will be Lex Loizides and Adrian Holloway. The blurb below comes from the conference leaflet:

Lex was born again in Brighton and is now based in Jubilee Community Church , Cape Town.  He has a wonderful combination of outrageous zeal and mature theology.  His remarkable evangelistic gift has taken him all over the world.  in recent years he has also been seeing an increased number of healings, both in Africa, and on his many visits to the UK.

Adrian is the author of two best-selling evangelistic books, The Shock of Your Life, and Aftershock, which tackles the most common objections to the Christian faith in the form of a novel.  He is based at Christchurch, London where he serves alongside David Stroud, who leads the Newfrontiers UK team.

I will be getting more info out to people as  the weeks go by, but I do think that this will be an important time for us as a church to come and listen to evangelists that are seeing great things in the name of Jesus and who are coming to equip us.

On the Sunday we will have an evangelist coming to visit us and before that Sunday we will have an opportunity hopefully to meet him.  I too will be going to another church to preach and so as a church we will be extremely involved in all that is happening.

Put the 22nd and 23rd May in your diaries now and let's start praying and asking for God to move powerfully with us over that weekend, both in equipping and healings and salvation.

Again! Again!

Only yesterday, I posted that we would be ringing the bell for Becky. Well last night at about 10pm I had a text message which read:

"Hi Scott, you can ring the bell now Andy&Karen"

This was a text message that filled me with great joy as it was announcing that my friend Andy had accepted the invite of Jesus to follow Him. This has been a great journey that I have travelled with Andy over the past year. He came to the first Alpha@CoffeeRepublic in April last year and has been a regular at church on a Sunday morning with his family. He did the foundations course in September but still couldn't make that step of faith. Now he has!!!

These are the text messages/ emails/ phone calls that I live for, they give life to me and I hope that reading this will give you courage and confidence to persevere in relationships and keep praying and let God work in someones life in his timing. Just be ready to rejoice when you see someone come to faith in Christ.

The bell to ring again

Last term we ran Alpha where we saw one young lady commit her life to following Jesus. This last weekend I also heard of another young lady, Becky, who whilst at home over Christmas realised that she too believed in Christ and she committed her life to following him also. This same young lady took part in communion for the first time on Sunday morning and was baptised in the Holy Spirit.

we shall therefore be having another bell ringing on Friday night at the prayer meeting to celebrate another saint being rescued from the darkness and being brought into the light.

This excites me so much and fuels my desire to see more lives changed. Not for me, but to bring glory to the Father through his Son, Jesus. It's what I want to see more of as we take our step of faith this Sunday in starting the evening meeting; as we continue with Alpha in April; and as men and women and children of RFC go out into the workplaces, schools, mum and toddler groups, university halls and houses, wherever it may be and shine bright for Jesus in word and deed.

I trust that this year we will once again be ringing the bell of salvation more than once a month, but with a greater frequency. If you have any stories of opportunities you have had in sharing your faith either through words or through actions please let me know either here or on my email.

God is good and so is his gospel that we steward, let's get it out there and see more Becky's welcomed into his kingdom and the church.

Prayer

I love praying with others in our church and with brothers and sisters from other churches. There's something about it that just builds my faith and leaves me hungry for more of my King. To that end please see this from Sitho:

We are not far from the launch of the evening meeting, the start of the marriage course, the planting of new life groups and lots more that God has put on our hearts for this year. As with everything else in our own lives, the bible is clear that "by prayer & petition, with thanksgiving present your requests to God."

Let's gather together to rejoice for all that the Lord has been doing among us and to boldly come before our Father in heaven as we submit to Him all the challenges before us & ask for breakthrough in all that He has called us to in Reading.

Please decide if you are able to fast, when you will set aside time to do this, and also try to arrange some prayer time with a friend(s) during next week. Corporately, we will meet at the following times :

· WEDNESDAY 3^rd February @ The Church Office, 8pm – 9:30pm

· THURSDAY 4^th February @ The Church Office, 8pm-10pm

· FRIDAY 5^th February @ The Church Office, 8pm - 10pm

* The Thursday meeting will be a combined meeting with our friends from Thameside Church.

May I encourage you to make the prayer meetings a priority next week, there are few things in life that matter more - Jesus said his house would be called a house of prayer.

I don't know what you planned to next week, but make prayer top of your list - it's not going to be convenient, but I know we'll meet with God!

Good times...

Over the past two weekends we have had some great experiences as a church.

On Sunday 17th January, we met at South Streets Arts Centre in the town centre, for

our vision evening. 105 people (including babies) turned out to hear what is in store for us this year which in itself was exciting. The most exciting thing though was worshipping in a new venue. This will be the venue that we use for the evening meetings kicking off on Sunday 7th Feb and it rocked. It gave us a foretaste of what is to come as we open a new door into the town which God has called us to love and reach with the gospel.

Then this weekend we gathered 222 people over two venues - 149 here in Reading and 73 down in Bognor at Butlins (Newfrontiers weekend away). Howie Kellett preached in Reading, Kat lead worship and Simon anchored. By all accounts, people met with the living God and were challenged by the message. At Butlins many were inspired by good teaching and enjoyed fellowship, whilst a small group served the 350+ youth over four meetings. The RFC band that played were fantastic and lead the young people and the leaders into the presence of God, Nicholas (from Catford), Dave (from Ascot) and our very own Sitho, preached well, but more importantly, we met with the Holy Spirit.

It was fantastic to see so many young people responding to be baptised in the Spirit for the first time and for others to be filled again. What a joy and what a privilege to be part of the weekend. My role was to be DJ and ministry team member: I must confess it was brilliant to once again to play my trance tunes loud and with purpose in a way that I have not done for over 9 years. Hopefully more chances like that will come along!!!

In all what these two weekends has shown me is that God has plans for us as a church to help serve the wider body in out region and in our town, but also we are a church called to be dynamic in the way that we approach our town and love her in order to reach her for Jesus. In faith we shall pray about this for three days at the end of next week - more details to come

What a remarkable family

As I read this this evening I couldn't help but shed a tear and reflect on the fact that I have the privilege of knowing this family. This godly couple have had such an influence on the lives of B and myself. They continue to have that influence as they show is what it is to face the end and yet still do all they can to enjoy the last few days. Their reliance on God through their faith in Christ is inspiring to say the least. This is the post from Craig's blog today:

A decisive step on the journey....

Karena was quite sick through the night. As expected, her bowel has now stopped functioning....so they have stopped the laxatives and given her some more meds to dry things up in the stomach and to stop her sickness, and she has also stopped eating as a consequence. So she has not been sick today, which has been much better for her. We both had a jolly good cry earlier today as it feels like another very decisive step on the journey we are all on. They have told us that Karena should live at least another 3 days, but probably less than 10. One of the drugs they are now using will make her even more tired/sleepy than she already is.
She is still strong in heart though and we had some giggles tonight as we read "Christmas Chaos for the 100mph dog". Most amusing - a funny family read !
Tomorrow I have taken the children out of school in order to spend the day with their mum. We will finish the book hopefully and perhaps watch a video, look at some photos and play a game or two. Karena will be he hub of our attention of course (when she is awake). Should be fun - these are very precious days.

So it looks like by the end of next week Karena will meet Jesus face-to-face.

Rom 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Christmas 2009 @ RFC

It may seem that Christmas has been somewhat low key at RFC this year. We have for sure had a short Christmas series based on Christmas carols. This Sunday we will have a family meeting that will look at the carol Joy to the World. We will have some fun together and we shall celebrate Christmas across the ages. We shall also meet together at the offices at 10am on Christmas morning to remind ourselves of the reason we look forward to this time of year.

However we have done some community things. The Whitley cluster once again helped out at the North Whitley Residents Association Christmas party for the over 60's in the local area. It was a great success with 84 of our older neighbours coming out to enjoy food fellowship and fun. Phil the singer provided entertainment and an array of sandwiches the like of which I have never seen before, where devoured by the partying matriachs and patriachs of Whitley. It was great to have conversations with them and enjoy the richness of their experiences. There was an man who hadn't left his flat for 15 years, telling the organisers that this had changed his life, plus another lady who found that a friend from 20 years ago was still in the area and a friendship was reunited. It was truly a privilege to be there.

Another group went to Douglas Court - a residence for the elderly in Early. Sean and the team had a fantastic time singing carols, and talking to the residents. (Read here for more details.) Still another group went carol singing around Earley on Saturday afternoon. They went to some 35 houses and gave out mince pies at each after singing a verse of a carol.

We are going into this Christmas time taking opportunities to meet with our local communities and being good news to them as well as taking opportunities to share the good news with them. As we head into 2010, we can build on this momentum and we can become more involved with the areas in which we meet and live. this will, God willing, mean areas like the Oxford Road and Lower Caversham as we continue to see people coming from those areas. Who knows we may be even doing some town centre things as we embrace new people as a result of our Sunday evening meetings. Whatever God has in store for us we will be faithful with the message that he has given us and continue to seek to be good news to the town that we have been called to.