Looking forward in anticipation

It's been great to get away and refresh a little, but I'm now excited to back and raring to go. This is a big term starting next week with the arrival of three new year teamers. You will no doubt hear the names of Andrew, Hannah and Sam (Samantha) over the coming months, but just to say they are all quality people who we are looking forward to having on board.

This term will also see us running Alpha again (more details in a later post), foundations and for the first time, the marriage course. We will hopefully be partnering with Reading Girls School to put on a carol concert at the school as well as meeting for Christmas day in the church office.

The preaching series this term will be Gathering and Going which will see us teaching into what it is to gather as a church in different contexts and then subsequently how we are to go into our local community and the nations. This will, as always, be based in scripture and will build towards Sean and Liz moving to Amsterdam to start the church.

There will be people At RFC that will hear the call to go to Amsterdam with Sean and Liz and we will be taking up an offering to support Sean and Liz in setting up the Church Plant as a gift to them.

Sunday mornings will be back in Reading Girls School from the 14th September when the children's work will all start again. There will be some recruiting of personnel going on between now and then, no doubt, particularly in the area of creche. The students will return at the beginning of October which will mean a return to student lunches each week.

We will be having Ben Davies, Tony Thompson and Mark Landreth-Smith come and visit and preach with us. We will see Richard come into eldership and the church leadership handed over.

there is so much happening this term that it could be easy to take our eyes off of Jesus. We must be those in the coming weeks and months, who, regardless of what is happening around us, must look to the cross and know that we are Christians not for our comfort but for his glory. We as a church are not gathered to be a cosy community, but a radical community who live for something other than ourselves. In this busy time lets remember the author and perfecter of our faith and run hard for him. My prayer is that no one will be left behind in all the changes; that we will all be caught up in this great mission of starting two new chapters, that God has called us on.