Calm In A Storm

Today feels like a calm in a storm.

Yesterday was a good day at Life Church Southampton; we gathered about 110 people - the first time since February that we have had over 100 at a main meeting, and a number which puts us well on the way to seeing 150 next month and 200 by March.

Part of the reason for the large number of guests yesterday is the beginning of the university academic year. Students are still touring the churches looking for somewhere to settle, and I estimate that we've had about 50 first-time students visit us in the last three weeks. So yesterday we also ran a free lunch for students, to help us get to know them a bit, and to help them to work out whether they would like to settle with us at Life Church Southampton.

After the student lunch I was shattered! And looking ahead, the week is packed: tomorrow we will travel up to Peterborough for two days of Prayer & Fasting. Thursday is full of meetings, and Friday and Saturday I have training in Bournemouth (this month with Matt Hosier on Christian Ethics). Then it will be back into another Sunday (a Gift Day), and into another week.

Because I was feeling ill, not to mention tired, I decided to cancel life for the next 36 hours. So today, rather than working as I normally do on a Monday, I have spent the day trying to get better in time for a busy week! I hope it will pay off. I have no desire to be ill through Prayer & Fasting (in fact I have already decided I won't be fasting)!

The Founder On The Future

At Together On A Mission this summer, Mark Driscoll came to serve us and (his words not mine) to learn from us. It was an honour to have him among us, and he brought much of great worth to us.

At Acceler8, we hosted afternoon tea with Terry for elders and wives in our local Newfrontiers churches. At this gathering, Terry shared some really helpful comments outlining his reaction to the conference. It surprised me to hear him say that this was the first context in which he had publicly spoken about Together On A Mission. He said that he was eagerly awaiting the next Newfrontiers core team meeting at which they had an agenda packed full of questions raised by Mark Driscoll's visit.

Now, Terry has made public some of the developments which have occured in response to some of these questions. You can read Terry Virgo's comments on Mark Driscoll's visit here. It is encouraging to see the team responding in faith to some of the challenges.

The need for doctrinal clarity in a world full of error has been one we in Newfrontiers have responded to by building close relationships with one another. Now it sounds like we can expect to see more in the way of written statements. In the past I have continuously defended the relationships approach, and I still would; it would seem however that God has put a task so huge in front of us as a movement, that we will need to use all means possible to ensure that we don't err in terms of doctrine. Terry says "though we are keen to continue our emphasis on strong relationships, we realise that international growth can challenge ‘family’ attitudes." The truth really is more important than anything else, and the priority is that lost people are saved. I think more written clarity will be helpful in seeing us become more effective at this.

The plans to change Together On A Mission are also exciting - head over to Terry's blog now to read all about it!

Prayer, Peanuts, Pregnancy & Paynes Road

Last night we launched our annual autumn Week of Prayer. At 7pm twenty or thirty of us from Life Church Southampton gathered at St. John's Centre in Shirley, a suburb close to the centre of town. God clearly caught our attention, reminding us that he wants to speak to us as we pray this week, and that he wants us to take our stewardship of the gospel seriously. I felt that this would be a week where we will be getting our house in order in readiness for everything God has for us in the future.

As part of this I have felt challenged to fast this week. I don't think I've fasted for 5 days before so, in an attempt to ease myself into it, I am eating a small lunch of just a few peanuts. It's not quite the same at Treats' bacon and stilton sandwiches.

After we had gathered to pray last night, I went home and was just falling asleep when I received a phone call. It was the phone call - the phone call I have been anticipating for weeks. Sure enough, my pregnant friend Anna's waters had broken and she was heading into hospital to have the baby! My job was to babysit while we waited for Simon's parents to arrive from Bournemouth, so I was only there for an hour. Seems like it's going to be a slow one as I still haven't heard news of any baby!

This morning we gathered again to pray, expectant that we would hear from God. We started by praying for the Fry family at this exciting time. Then Chris Kilby shared news with us which was reported by the BBC late last night. That just as we were gathering to pray last night, on Paynes Road in Shirley just round the corner from where we were gathered, a man murdered his two daughters then hanged himself. You can read about the Paynes Road murders here.

The time of prayer that followed this morning was marked in a big way by this news. God spoke to us significantly through it. It was one of 'those' prayer meetings. I feel like I will never be the same again, and that our church will never be the same again. I spent most of the meeting crying as God showed me wave after wave of His compassion for the lost of our city.

For a man in our community to feel so hopeless so as to do something like this makes us think about the impact were are actually having on this city - and makes us all the more adamant that we are here in Southampton for a reason, and that reason is not primarily to play at mission. It is to do mission. It is to bring about transformation in our society, and to do this by offering the Word of Life to the men and women which it comprises. To do it by building a counter-cultural, large, city centre church to the glory of God.

This morning we were shaken out of our comfortable paradigm to consider those who don't know Christ, and to see the contrast between a family which knows Him, and a family which doesn't. We owe it to our city to proclaim the good news about what Jesus has done.

I have a feeling that we will be sharing this good news in a markedly more urgent way in future.

Greg Haslam On Creation

Upon arriving at the BBC News site earlier today, something unusual caught my eye. ' Who are the British creationists?' the link asked. As I clicked on it I thought to myself 'I could show you a good one', thinking of Greg Haslam, my old pastor from our Winchester Family Church days who is now filling Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones' old pulpit at Westminster Chapel in central London. But in reality I was expecting the BBC to have deliberately gone out and looked for the most embarrassing type of person around, who also happened to be a creationist.

Immediately, I was pleasantly surprised to see Greg's name in the article. I don't know anyone else who has the ability or willingness to speak into this area with such clarity and authority. Hearing him teach on the topic during my year at Bournemouth Family Church (now Citygate Church) was hugely formative, as were the key years as a teenager I spent under his outstanding Bible teaching.

"The materialist explanation of the creation has nothing to offer - if we came from nothing and go into nothing, then that encourages people to lead reckless and materialistic lifestyles."

I agree, and I think it is fantastic that in Greg the United Kingdom has someone who will speak out on the issues the nation is talking about and bring a healthy, Godly correction where there is error.

Exploring Life.

I have decided to re-name this blog once again. From today, www.lukewood.info will be know as Exploring Life.

Before I explain this change, let us briefly re-cap on previous names.

When it first started, this blog (then accessible only through lukewood.blogspot.com) was called Luke Wood: Southampton, Sheffield & Bournemouth. At the time, I had just finished a year of training with a church in Bournemouth. I missed it, it felt like home and I wanted to go back. I had just started studying at Sheffield University. I had known God'd leading in this change and yet I was finding I was hating the content of the course, and missing Bournemouth way too much. The Southampton part turned out to be somewhat prophetic (I had no idea at the time that I would end up living and working for a Newfrontiers church there)... it was simply intended to convey that I sitll identified very much with the place I had done most of my growing up. This place was called Chandlers Ford, right on the edge of Southampton's city borders. But as no one has heard of Chandlers Ford I put Southampton.

Halfway through university I realised my life was changing and so was my blogging. At this time I was writing lots about the character of God, parachurch and church. I think I felt quite radical at this time, although the most radical I really got was renaming my blog. Wow. Luke Wood's blog became Exploring Family On A Mission.

What was also happening at this time was that the number of Newfrontiers bloggers began to grow. Until this time there had been only one or two bloggers I knew of who were members of Newfrontiers churches. Adrian Warnock and Mark Heath were at one stage the only ones I knew of. Reading their blogs back in 2004 in some way helped me to realise I should start one. So I did. But at this later point in time, more and more were being saved and added into the blogosphere.

Today, there are so many Newfrontiers blogs that there is a separate blog set up to collect the postings of those of us in a Newfrontiers church. Very different from the blogging world I came into.

But I digress. The point is that my life has changed. The biggest change of the last year and a half has been moving to Southampton to help start a church. This church is called Life (linking rather nicely with the new name, don't you think).

Also, because the content of this blog had become almost exclusively Christian, at one point in time I started using a Xanga page to write more inane thoughts. You know, the thoughts that are less article-like and more drivelly. And now I would like to include more drivel here, thus changing the content from the more specific subject of 'family on a mission' to life in general.

You never know, it might mean I actually write here more.