How About An Update?

After a long day in the Life Church offices (I got home at 7:30 this evening!), a lovely dinner cooked by my very kind Mum (Marian Groves' meatballs recipe... mmm...) and a nice big cup of tea I thought it was about time to update this 'ere blog.

We're just in that season as a church where we're getting ready for students to arrive/come back. Solent University have their Freshers Week this week, Southampton Uni is next week. We've sure missed our students over the summer, and we're believing that students are going to form a large part of the Life Church population! We've launched a work called 18:20s which is for everyone between the ages of 18 and 30, including those in their student years. There'll be some exciting things going on as we establish an 18:20s team and suss it all out.

It's been a great month for forming relationships - one of the anomalies of church-planting is that although we're called to have excellent relationships, in the early days jobs still have to be done whilst relationships are forming. You end up working quite closely with people you've not known that well until that point, but God has been so gracious towards us. Newday and Life Camp helped us take a big step in the right direction, and there have been lots of opportunities since then to get to know one another. It's funny to think that one day I'll think of lots of these guys as some of my closest friends! And relationships like that are already beginning to form.

We've now finished the series in Romans which we have been going through since April, and embarked upon a brief three-week period of 'standalone' Sunday morning meetings. Last Sunday we had David Stroud with us which was a great privelege and really good to have him with us. We aim to have one guest speaker Sunday per month (next month it's Richard Shaw from Solent Community Church, Portsmouth) and it's great to be able to have people like David input so early on in the life of Life Church. Audio is not yet available to download (we're reviewing our initial website and switching to a brand new system in the near future) so if you'd like to have a listen, email office@lifesouthampton.org and I'll get you a copy emailed out.

This Sunday we have one of our regular 'Gospel & Healing' meetings. We're making an effort to regularly present the gospel in a way which will help us reap a harvest, and making space for God to heal people (next year we're having Front Edge Wessex for the first time ever, but that doesn't stop us going for that kind of thing more regularly - it's why we're here!). It's going to be a great time.

The third Sunday is Life Vision Sunday where we'll be launching into the new term properly. Another exciting time, and it's great to think that many students' first time among us will be either among healings and salvation, or with a clear vision presented!

Following that, we'll be spending the rest of the term following John Groves' Foundations material. We felt called to be careful at laying a thorough foundation for this church, so rather than rush through, we're taking a whole term.

Getting stuck back into the Wessex region has been excellent too, striking up some new friendships with people from Hedge End, Bournemouth and other places as well as taking up old friendships with friends in Winchester, Bournemouth. It's amazing that some particularly close friends were also called to Life Church - it's great to be back with them again!

It's a different pace of life than I was used to, and in amongst it all I find three days a week to earn some money with a firm of Structural Engineers. That in itself has been really interesting so far, and it's such valuable experience to contrast with the running of a church.

Managed to find a sneak preview of the new Brighton album, so have been listening to that all week in my car. There are some corkers! 'Let Your Rain Fall Down' and 'Amazing Grace' in particular have really stirred me... but more about that in another post...

It's a thrilling season, if a little tiring (but then when has God not required us to work hard?!). Very fun, and exhilirating to think of all the promises of God yet to be fulfilled in Southampton, the UK and the Nations!