Campanology - RFC style

'Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.' Rev 7:10

Salvation does indeed belong to Jesus, but he has entrusted us with the gospel that we may declare and share it, speak and leak it, talk and walk it; our remit is to emit the love of Christ and the good news that he has given us.

This year we are going to be a church that does just that. On Sunday evening I outlined the vision for the evangelism strategy this year. We basically want to become a church of campanologists or more simply, bell ringers. I mentioned Luke 15 in my last post and the fact that we should be those who rejoice when one person is saved.

Over the coming year, as we see people saved and added to the kingdom, we shall ring a bell and join with the angels of heaven who rejoice. If you have the privilege of seeing someone saved around you then it will be your joy to come and ring the 'salvation bell' to celebrate what God has done.

To see Dorothy's face on Sunday night as she rung the bell was fantastic. It's not about a bell, but it is about acknowledging the miracle of salvation!

What are we going to do then?

It starts with us as individuals, having non-Christian friends, loving them, loving them enough to tell them our story and about Jesus, then actually telling them. Campanology RFC style, starts with us individually.

Cell groups also have a great responsibility: our cell groups need to be a place where we share stories of chance meetings, conversations, acts of service, praying for someone - this encourages, it strengthens and it starts to help us see that reaching out to people with the good news of Jesus is something all Christians can do. Use witness time to it's full potential this year and lets see cell groups taking corporate campanology lessons!

Cell clusters will work slightly different this year. They are to purposefully start building links into the communities where they are based. Whitley cells will work together to work into Whitley, Earley cells to Earley - you get the picture.

Finally we get to the church as one together. As well as supporting the church in doing the above three things, I shall spend a lot of time, with Sean, in making sure that Sunday mornings are meetings to which we can invite our friends. On top of this we will be looking to run Alpha twice this year in a venue like Starbucks, building on the success of Glo. The course will be slightly different in format and in style but I know that we will see people saved through it.

Over the next few posts I shall unpack a bit more on each of these so watch this space but the overriding thing is that: yes-salvation belongs to our God, but let's get onto the part that we play in that and every time we see fruit lets celebrate it and become one of the RFC bell ringers.