So how's Alpha going?

So far on this Alpha course we have rung the bell 3 times for those who have made a commitment to follow Jesus. I look forward to seeing 2 of these come through onto Foundations and into the all that God has for them.

In the meantime we still have 3 more weeks to help others come to the same conclusion as those who have already rung the bell.  Let's keep praying for the Alpha course.  Just because it's not talked about in the wider context let's always stand alongside it as life groups and individuals in lifting the people up to Jesus.

Let's be those who engage and choose to think about it and let it encourage us and challenge us as to who we can invite in September to the new course.  It's been such a long time since last I saw one of my friends do at least one night of Alpha and I hope to see that changed in the Autumn.

As I often acknowledge, salvation belongs to our God, but we have our part to play in inviting and helping people find him and discover for themselves, the grace and mercy and love that we know as a reality in our lives.

Invite people to hear about Jesus

It's been a couple of weeks now since we saw the bell rung for not just 2, but three sinners repenting and turning to Jesus.  The third was a guy who came to Alpha, heard about Jesus and gave his life to Him.  This is thrilling and should give us all courage and strength to be inviting people whether we think they will say yes or not.

In a months time on Sunday April 10th, my good friend Paul Brown will be with us at both the morning and evening meetings.  He is a seasoned evangelist who has seen many respond to the gospel and has stepped out and seen people healed.  I have learnt and am learning so much from him on what it is to love Jesus and love those who don't yet know him.

I am expecting to see God use Paul wonderfully at  both the morning and evening meetings and know that we should invite as many of our friends to hear him as possible.  This is not always the easiest thing to do when you yourself have not heard him speak. Here is a recording of one of his preaches recently - it'll take 25 mins but it's worth it! 

However if you don't have time to do that, I strongly urge that we gather as many together to be there  to hear the gospel preached and the sick healed.  I long for the day when we are ringing the bell regularly, however we will only see that when we bring people to hear about Jesus and to meet Him..

A great story of the Holy Spirit doing what he alone can do

A few weeks ago a lady accompanied a couple from RFC on a Sunday morning.  As we sung our songs of praise to Jesus and heard the preach something was happening and as the call for salvation came, she was in tears and unable to say why.  That morning the Spirit started a work in her that three week later, when the call for salvation came again, resulted in her raising her hand and giving her life to Jesus.

The following Tuesday, at  the prayer meeting, she came along with the couple she had originally come with and they rang the bell to celebrate what God had done in her.  It was glorious to see another woman pulled from the clutches of darkness and now walking in the light of Jesus.

This Sunday I looked around to see if she was there and sure enough just behind me I saw her beaming smile as we worshipped Jesus as brother and sister.  Her words to me afterwards were of how much brighter life seems and how much happier she feels in herself, even though none of here personal circumstances have actually changed.

I love our God and I love the fact that we have the great joy of seeing lives being transformed by the grace and mercy of a living loving Saviour, Jesus Christ, by the power of his Spirit.

My prayer is this, that we would see many more people like this, whereby the Spirit does his work, enabling people to see their condition of brokenness to a point where people can do nothing but turn to Jesus as he calls them to follow him.

As we approach Christmas, pray that you would be someone who God uses at the Christmas party or at drinks with the neighbours or around the Christmas dinner table, to be the peace bringer and to be the joy giver and to be the grace bearer.  And maybe you too could be celebrating with a friend or family member as the bell is rung again to mark yet another sinner repenting and turning to Jesus.

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.

A company of bell ringers

Since the turn of the year I have had the joy of reporting of 5 people turning to Jesus. I have the joy of telling of at least two others.

On May 21st I had coffee with a young Lithuanian guy in our church. For 2 hours we discussed Jesus and what it meant to commit to following him. After 2 hours we returned to the church offices where he did commit his life to Jesus and he was wonderfully baptised in the Holy Spirit. To see him ringing the bell then and at the prayer meeting was immense. There was so much genuine joy that I couldn't help but worship God!

The second story came only yesterday. As I was getting ready to go to Alpha last night I had a phone call from Elli, a student in our church. She was extremely excited and it soon became evident why. A friend of hers who had been asking Elli questions deckared to Elli yesterday that she wanted to follow Jesus. Following a conversation Elli had the privilege of leading her friend to Jesus

God us doing a work amongst the people of Reading Family Church and I for one am looking forward to more bell ringing escapades!!!

A week of stories!!!

One of the things that is important in life is to be inspired. There are many things that can inspire us, but I am someone who becomes particularly inspired by others. This week I have been totally motivated by the stories I have been sent on facebook, text and email. I shall outline a few of them below. If you are anything like me you will hopefully read this and hopefully feel that speaking to people about our faith or inviting people to meet Jesus is quite a natural thing to do.

Stuart works in a multi national company. He speaks to people around the world in the course of a day. He has acquaintances as a result in India. One of those got into an instant message conversation. The upshot of which gave Stuart the opportunity to share the reason for the hope that he has. He pointed the lady toward passages in the bible which surprised her but also enabled her to say that she had been to church when she was younger but had 'drifted away'. He writes this to conclude his mail:

"We have since prayed for her in our Life Group that she would find calm, patience, and peacefulness and although she had a very difficult weekend (28th/29th March), she was able to find strength through praying which is something she never would have done before."

Carol and Mike are a couple who have just joined our church. They are a fantastic pair and have really started to get their sleeves rolled up. At the end of last week, Carol sent me this:

"This is just to tell you that this morning I have had a long talk with someone who has some extremely complex and difficult circumstances in which she lives. I have invited her to Alpha. At present she's not sure she could really even fit Alpha into life (as she has lots of responsibility for others). I talked about her needs being met and that she needs God to take on her burden and see her through!

I know her well and we have had talks over a couple of years ... but today's was the most direct, with reference to God in my life! "

What a great email to receive!!! Carol is also going to be serving on the Alpha course!

Lawrence has been prolific this week. I have had three texts from him telling me of his exploits. The first of which was inspired by Karen's story that I told during my preach on Sunday morning (link here). He was sitting in the barbers chair and was able to tell his story to her. His second opportunity was to tell his geography admin lady (he's a student) what his mission trip to Poland was all about. He wrote this:

"The opportunities are there even though we think we don't make the most of them!"

Since those first two texts, he has also been able to share his story with a waitress and a ceroc dance instructor. He's on the front foot and loving it!!!

I share these with you as they have encouraged me to action this week. I made my first invite to Alpha in years on Monday night. There was no resounding "yes" but my good friend did say he would think about it. I am praying that he will come.

The bell rung once more!!!

On Sunday morning a young lady who has been coming on a regular basis prayed a prayer of commitment. As I lead a prayer during a time of response she said it quietly under her breath. She then approached me before she left and she told me that she had said the prayer once before but had said it again this morning because she wants to follow Jesus.

This is wonderful news. Jesus came to die for us, to set us free and to make peace between us and the Father. He did this because of love. That is now two people for whom the bell hath tolled this year. My prayer is that many others will come to know the saving grace of Jesus and respond to him.

We must be those who are loving and compassionate - looking for the lost as the Father looks for the lost - and to fulfill this we must be those inviting people to meet Jesus out of relationship, by showing them the real Jesus of the bible, by telling our stories or simply by taking every opportunity that comes our way.

Being bell ringers is what we are about, let's be expectant that we will all have that thrill!!!

The joy of a father

I cannot stop speaking about my darling daughter. For some I guess I speak too much about her, but I want to tell the world about her. Every opportunity I get to tell some one and share my joy, I take it - and probably give more information than they are actually interested in.

As I realised this whilst standing in St Andrews bookshop a while ago, it made me think once more of Luke 15 and the parable of the lost sheep. It says that the shepherd lets people know about the finding of the sheep by calling to them and inviting them to rejoice with him. It then says that there will be more rejoicing over a sinner who repents - a person being born again.

The joy I feel about Rachel is only a shadow of the joy that our Father feels and expresses when someone gives their life to follow Jesus. When we rang the salvation bell for one 10 year old lad, we were just joining in that celebration. I long to hear that bell ring again or at least hear some stories of friends of our church moving closer to that time!

Immediate response

After saying I had had no new stories I had one from Rachel, I have put it on here by her kind permission:

'Just before Christmas, a few people from work were meeting to have a few drinks for my manager’s leaving do. I was a bit nervous about going as I could imagine it being an evening of drinking and gossiping; something that I did'nt want to get involved with. In the end I decided to go. To my surprise, I ended up having a really good conversation with one of the managers. We talked at various times throughout the evening about all kinds of things and it turns out that he has a history in church. Since then we have had some brief conversations at work, but I was really encouraged by how easy it was and how interested he was. It reminded me that God can use us in any situation and that it’s never too small a thing to have those conversations with people. Who knows where it will lead...'

I love the closing statement that she makes (in bold), particularly about how easy the conversation was and the fact that it's never a small thing to take the time to have a conversation. I look forward to seeing if Rachel will be ringing the bell this year celebrating the new life of this dear man.

Learning to bell ring together

Well it's been a week now since the last post. I have yet to hear any other stories from individuals, please keep them coming! Over the next three days I want to expand on the last three points that I made at the vision evening. The first of those is cell life.

As a church we have always gathered together as cell midweek. It has been a strength of us growing in community and learning to love one other, by challenging and rebuking, laughing and crying and enjoying worship and prayer with each other. This is the firm foundation which we can build upon in this coming year. Our cell groups should now become a place where stories are regularly told of conversations had with friends who do not yet know Jesus; where we encourage each other to meet people who are not Christians or like us; where we prayer for those contacts we do have; where we practice telling our own story of when we turned to Jesus; where we do socials that our friends will actually come to; where we get behind Alpha and pray hard that our cell will have at least one on the course.

Cell groups have such a valuable part to play in us growing in our witness to Jesus and I feel that I have overlooked that in the past. As B and I start a new cell this week, I fully intend to have the witness section of cell as an important part of each week. There is a whole town out there that doesn't yet know Jesus and if our cell group can play a part in seeing at least one of those saved, we will do all we can to do that. Why?

Let's never forget that our motivation is to be the same motivation of Jesus - not to have a great tally of salvation at the end of the year, but because we love people enough to let them know that good news that changed our lives.

There are things that only individuals can do, but as a group you can strengthen and support each other and grow in campanology together!!! I am always available to support cell groups when it comes to thinking about what witness looks like and I would love to hear the stories that are shared in cell.