Pastor’s Thoughts – September 2018

Pastor's Thoughts

Dear friends,

I was going to say welcome back from your summer holidays but as I am just about to leave for mine (1–16 September) that doesn’t make much sense! However we are turning back to what most of us regard as a new session in our lives. Back to school for some and back to serious endeavour for many of us.

In the life of the church, September seems to be the time when we begin to think about new programmes that will be starting and old ones that will be resuming.

In January we began Celebrate Recovery and we are set to resume in October starting the material from the beginning. If you’ve been here for a while you will probably have heard us speak about this programme quite often. You will also have heard some testimonies about its effectiveness. Like most things Celebrate Recovery only works if people commit to it and to following its principles. I want to encourage you to think about whether it would be a blessing to you.

  • If you have some kind of habit, a temptation to some particular sin in your life
  • If there are things in your life that cause hurt to you or others
  • If there is something that you wish you could live without
  • If other people have hurt you and you find the pain won’t go away

If you can answer yes to any of these things, then please come along and see for yourself if God can use this to bless you. He’s used it to bless thousands of people around the world.

You need to know that this is completely confidential. It is not a meeting where you have to share with everyone. Look out for information about the start of the course which will be available soon.

On 2 and 3 November we will be hosting the Global Leadership Summit. This is an event that has been very useful to us over the years and we felt that we should offer to host it when the regular hosts at St Albans were unable to. This is a first-class conference looking at different aspects of leadership and it’s designed to appeal to both those in the church and those in business. Members of the fellowship get a discounted rate so if you want to come, there’s an incentive. You need to speak to Tim about this. If you want to bring others, then please sign up. If you would like to serve the kingdom and bless others, then we have a variety of volunteering opportunities that we need help with. Again please see Tim or sign up at the table in the Gathering Area.

Another activity that is resuming in September is Zone, our Friday night youth activity. Zone has had a bit of a makeover and they are looking for more helpers, so if you feel that the Lord may be calling you to work in an informal setting with young people please have a word with Elaine Tallintire.

Finally, I hope that you have had an opportunity to read the report on the first few months of activity involving our partnership with Tearfund in Rwanda. It will bless you and amaze you to see what God is doing, and what he has already achieved in such a short passage of time. I don’t think that any of us expected so much to have happened already. How easily we underestimate what God can do if we let him. In Mark 12: 10-11, Jesus describes his mission by quoting Psalm 118:

‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes.’

Indeed it is.

John