Steve Barnwell's induction at Oakham Baptist

Yesterday I was present at Steve Barnwells induction as Pastor of Oakham Baptist Church
It was the third induction I had attended and taken part in , in the last 12 months, and was as enjoyable and meaningful as the other two, which you can read about here  and here
There is something very moving about a minister committing themselves to a church, and a church committing themselves to a minister as they promise to journey together into Gods future 
Steve had done a very good job in Shrewsbury and is missed but after yesterday and watching him interact easily with the people he is now called to minister to , I am convinced that he and the folk at Oakham have made the right decision and will grow the Kingdom together 

Roger Sutton spoke powerfully basing his thoughts around Luke 5 and speaking to folk from our church this morning ,his message had challenged them to see things things not as they are but as by the grace of God they could be 
I also found the covenant promises that minister and church made to each other deeply meaningful 
After the service we shared food and memories together before leaving for home. 
I am sure that over the next months and years we will hear about good things
happening at Oakham

A Mike Frost story from his book- Exiles

This morning some of us had breakfast together at Central, and reflected together on both Spring Harvest 2013 which a group from church went to; I have blogged about it before here ,and also the Christian Associates conference which I wrote about here.

As part of our reflection I read this story from Mike Frost's excellent book Exiles see here

" I remember meeting Shaun Tunstall, from the city of Brisbane on the east coast of Australia, who, in his mid twenties and living with dyslexia and ADD, finally decided he would stop attending church. He couldn't sit still during church services, and he wasn't wired to take in information from half-hour sermons. He wasn't getting anything out of the meetings, even though he had been attending church weekly since he was born.

Now, flushed with frustration and early adult rebellious energy, he decided to stop going to church. Instead, Shaun decided that he would take his power-boat out on Brisbane's Pine River and go water skiing on Sunday mornings. He gathered a group of friends, some Christian, some not, and headed off to the river for a relaxing day of water skiing. But after reversing the trailer down the boat ramp and edging the craft into the water, he became wracked by guilt. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and every week of his life he had been in church. Now here he was about to go water skiing. He expected one of God's vengeful lightning bolts to burst from the clear blue sky and sink his boat at any minute. So, in an attempt to salve his conscience, he grabbed a pocket Bible from his car and announced to his friends that he would like to mark the day by reading a short passage of Scripture. You can imagine his friends' surprise. After reading the shortest psalm he could find, he reflected briefly about the beauty of God's grace and then asked the guys if there was anything they'd like him to pray about. Stunned by these proceedings, his friends, especially the non-Christian ones, eventually offered up needs they had that Shaun could pray about. Then they went water skiing all day.

Next week, twice as many people turned up. Shaun read a brief passage, shared a few thoughts about it, and asked for prayer points. He did this for weeks. The numbers kept increasing, and soon he had a community of over fifty people who would meet by the river, share a short devotion, pray together, and enjoy God's creation. Soon, people started becoming Christians. After a while, they started breaking for lunch at some picnic tables by the Pine River, where they would break bread and drink wine and remember Jesus' sacrificial love. 

They shared a meal together and took up a collection each week and gave the money to the poor.

They took it upon themselves to become the "chaplains" to the general river community. Now they are known as the people who tow broken-down boats back to the boat ramp. They provide free parts and repairs for other boats that have given up the ghost. They eat together, they serve the poor, they share Jesus with others, they celebrate the Lord's Supper, they serve their general community. 

And all along, Shaun's parents and church friends are hoping that he'll come to his senses and start attending church again."

I really love this story.It is one of my favourites about accidental church planting, but it also has a great deal to teach us about what church is, and the importance of being culturally relevant to the people we are trying to serve,love  and reach and share Jesus withReading the story certainly encouraged a lively and helpful discussion about what church really is and what it means to be church

A trip to Ludlow

If you read this blog you will know that we are on a journey to becoming a more missional church.
It can be a tough journey at times as Simon Jones points out in an excellent  blog post here .
The journey does however has its joys, and many of these are to be found, as we engage with our local community, and  as we seek to discover what God is doing and enthusiastically join in.
Since Central opened we have had  wonderful opportunities to do that and we have been blessed and by the grace of God I believe we have been a blessing.
The coming few months look extraordinarily busy and very exciting
One of the things we are doing is playing a small part in the first ever Shrewsbury Food Festival website here which is coming up towards the end of June.
Our small, but exciting (and probably fattening!) role is to have a pudding tasting event at Central

It is not something I trained for at college, so Liz, Jude and I set of for Ludlow today to learn how they do it for The Ludlow Food festival
We had a wonderful time meeting the 2 women who had started  the pudding tasting event at the Methodist Church in Ludlow and they were incredibly helpful.
Their vision and energy ,their desire to serve and to bless their community and help us was awesome and inspiring
We came away with lots of ideas,lots of things we should do and should not do, and other things we need to think carefully about
What inspired us most though was the sheer energy and enthusiasm of these 2 people( who I think it is fair to say are not in the first flush of youth) and the way they want to use their gift to serve and bless people

God grant me their enthusiasm at their age

Spring Harvest 2013 -a few thoughts

• 

  
  

  I am feeling physically tired but spiritually refreshed after my second Christian conference in as many weeks.
   I wrote about the great time we had with Christian Associates here and last week I was at Spring Harvest in Minehead.
   It  was the first time we had been for well over 20 years, and much was very familiar 
  Here are some of the things I especially enjoyed:
  

  
  

  The morning family worship 

  This was half an hour all age worship and it was very well done.the time included prayer ,bible reading,drama,dance  and great use of technology
  The missional tone of the event.
  There was a real encouragement throughout the week for  Christians to engage with their local communities
  Spring Harvest have not led this trend but it is great to see they are reflecting it 
• Spring Harvest is great at technology and use it as well as any conference I have ever been at; but it was used well to illustrate rather than to overwhelm

  The facilities for those with Special Needs there was signing at all the major meetings during he week ,a good area for those in wheelchairs with very helpful and well trained stewards, all in all very positive, though it would have been good to see at least one wheelchair user speak  on the main stage during the week ,so there are still  areas to work on!

  The chance to spend quality time with people from church.

  It is true it would have been good to do more of this, but that is not always easy in a conference with so much going on all the time, but we still managed to eat together, celebrate a couple of birthdays together, and have some important conversations,which all helps to build relationships. 

  The chance to meet old friends again 

  In our case Claire and Derek and their family. Claire  used to run the youth work with us in Ross many many years ago and it was amazing to see them again 

  It was also great to  bump into Tim and Marlene.We had seen them more recently, but it was good to catch up with their news

  The after hours entertainment It included Tim Vine and John Archer -need I say more !

  
  

  There were other moments I enjoyed and were helped by , and any list like this is very personal, but all in all it was a good and helpful time

  
  

Christian Associates- Summit Leadership Conference -A visitors view.

I am just back from a Christian Associates Leadership Summit at High Leigh Conference Centre website here
One always worries a bit when heading to a smallish conference where we knew very few people,and they mostly know each other fairly well but we were made very welcome and came away both encouraged and inspired by the people we met and the stories we heard.
Indeed it was also affirming to all that we are seeking to do in Shrewsbury.

My highlights included:

Seeing Dudley Callison again and meeting his wife Laura

I first met Dudley in 1989 when he came for a mission trip to Ross on Wye and Gorsley and I have no doubt he will make a highly effective leader of Christian Associates as they move forward into a new era. In my opinion he has exactly the gifts that are needed. Dudley is an excellent communicator with a wide experience of cross cultural mission and a passion to see missional churches share Jesus.Combine all that with an ability to relate to people and a strategic mind and my guess is that CA have got the right person at the right time


Another highlight was the the teaching of Kim Hammond from Forge
Kim is another great communicator who spoke with honesty, humour and knowledge on the subject of" multiplication-reproducing local leaders and churches" there were some great one liners such as" radical people inspire ordinary people to do radical things" but above all it was the wisdom he shared that was so inspiring . I only wish the talks had been recorded and it is encouraging that Forge are looking to work more in Europe in the future

It was also great to meet some wonderful people from all over the world who told encouraging,indeed amazing stories of Gods work from the person planting vegetables in Haiti to the woman sharing food and faith with prostitutes and the guys sharing faith in Russian orphanages.

We were also able to make connections, which we hope and pray will help us as we seek to partner with Christian Associates in bringing Phillip and Christina to work with us in Shrewsbury

As much as anything though we were encouraged by the healthy culture of Christian Associates which is accepting,permission giving ,creative, respective of local cultures and people, and above all passionate about Jesus

i will try hard to remember all we  were reminded of but above all 3 things :

• Firstly, that Gods grace is prevenient. In other words God is at work in lives long before we get there and will be at work long after we have left,but we can by Gods grace be links in the chain

• To tell more stories

• To be even bolder and more faithful  in seeking to show and share Gods love in innovative ways to people made in His image

We hope to keep in touch with CA

Easter Sunday 2013

Like many churches we had a wonderful turn out to our Easter Sunday morning service .
It really is one of my favourite days of the year as it really is such a powerful message, that because Christ is Risen -Everything is different !
One of the blessings of leading services these days, is that there is so much good stuff you can show on the video/projector, and when we lost the services of Liz due to illness, who was going to do our children's talk, we were able instead to use a very powerful bit from The Miracle Maker series.
I love the Easter songs, both old and new .(and we sung a variety!) At the end of the sermon I gave people a chance to reflect again on the difference Easter makes and as they did so ,played this video,which a number of people commented on ,so I said I would link to it on this blog;so here it is .Happy Easter! He is Risen!

Good Friday 2013 at Central

Over a 100 people came  to  our Good Friday Service at Central.
We wanted to give people an opportunity both to reflect on the events, and respond to the message of the first Good Friday.
We provided this opportunity in most of the usual ways through the bible readings and through  the songs we sung (both ancient and modern), & through use of the video projector and we shared communion together giving people the chance to be prayed for individually ,or as families as they came forward to receive the bread and the wine.
 I always find this point in the service moving as having been around for a while now in Shrewsbury I know both the joys and the struggles many of our people have. 

BerylAlan

Instead of a sermon Beryl shared a story she had written imagining what it would have been like to have been the centurion in charge of the execution of Jesus Beryl has a real gift for these stories and brings out many of the parts of the story that are in the Bible but which we often miss
(I have offered to put her Lent series on this blog but she is going to publish them in a book so look out for it!)

We concluded with the wonderful and powerful hymn "And can it be " before sharing the grace together

We then took chocolate and hot cross buns out onto the local streets together with an invitation to join us on Easter Sunday