Trying Something New

It's almost September, and during the coming month I'm going to try doing something I've not done before whilst living with my parents: blogging every day.

I managed it in May, in my last full month in Sheffield. It was really fun and manageable (despite being place in the middle of deadlines and final exams!). But that was in Sheffield. This time I'm going to go for it again, just to see how it works out. I hope it'll help focus my mind as I enter a new season!

On Monday I start a new job. I'll be working three days a week as a Graduate Engineer, and two as Administrator for Life Church Southampton. God's provision in the engineering job has been amazing, and it's allowing me to give much more time to the church plant than I could otherwise afford. It's going to be daunting stepping into something quite unknown, but I hope it'll be fun as well!

So here's hoping that blogging will play a part in my getting through the next month!

Life Camp

This weekend we hosted our first ever Life Church camp - conveniently named Life Camp. No strenuous programmes or endless meetings, just a great time together, with God and hearing so clearly from Him. And it was really relaxing too!

If the first part of my summer was consumed with preparations for Global Cafe at Newday, the second half consisted of organisation for Life Camp. When we were praying for the church plant about a year ago at Winchester Family Church, we received a prophetic word from Marian Groves about the strength of our relationships being vitally important. We have since seen this brought to our attention by God again and again, and this weekend was an excellent step in the direction of strong relationships. It's a strange thing that at the beginning of a new church you find yourself working closely with people you don't know as well as you might like - how else could you get off to a good start when you all come from different places? But more and more we're finding ourselves drawn closer together - and already we're developing a history in God together. This weekend was key in that.

We had great fun, and we've decided to go for it again in 2008 in the May Bank Holiday. That way our students will be around (most of them are away over the summer and couldn't make it back this time, so with over 50% of the church falling in that category, timing affects us very much!). In the August Bank Holiday we'll be helping to run Wessex Bible Weekend (I don't think there's an official name yet?) which will also have a highly significant place in our calendar, albeit with a slightly different purpose.

It was a great privelege to have with us on Friday and Saturday Greg Haslam, my old Pastor from his Winchester Family Church days. Speaking on 'A Healthy-Souled Church' and 'The Church In The Power Of The Holy Spirit', we were greatly encouraged by everything God brought to us through him. I'll probably write about them under a separate heading, but the clear highlight for me was the way Greg got us all involved in using prophetic gifts, praying for one another, and his passionate call to a response to Jesus' command to believe, THEN be baptised. As a result, two people were baptised last night - our first ever Life Church baptisms!

It's brilliant to see God building His church in Southampton!

P.S. I'm looking forward to the release of 'Amazing God', this year's album from the Newfrontiers Together On A Mission conference in Brighton!

It's Been A While

It's been over a month, so I thought I would update. Things seem to go quiet blog-wise over the summer, and not just for me.

At this moment I'm in a different place to when I last blogged. Then, I was accustomising to being in Southampton, getting ready for a holiday and a few conferences. Now, those things have come and gone, and I'm preparing to start work in September.

Brighton (by that I mean Mobilise 2007!) was a huge blessing. In fact, today I sent off an article for the next Newfrontiers Connect e*news, but at 400 words it really does skim the surface of the 'mountain range' of a conference Mobilise was. Hopefully I'll get the chance to write about what I gained from the conference in more detail soon. These days, going through my notes as I used to on this blog would be fairly pointless in terms of readers. Not only can anyone download the sessions and listen themselves, but there were a number of live-bloggers covering the event. But then I always said I typed up my notes for my own benefit, no one else's. So maybe I'll do it again. But I can't recommend highly enough that you download the the sessions from here.

Following Brighton, I had a week to sort myself out before jetting off on holiday for just over a week. I went with my family to the Algarve in Portugal, where I tried my best to prepare for Newday, and we also got the chance to visit the Newfrontiers church in Lagos.

I arrived home from Newday 07 late yesterday afternoon. I must be honest; camping in a field in Derbyshire is not my idea of fun. Sleeping in a tent is not my idea of fun.

I was involved in leading the milkshake bar in Global Cafe this year, which was fun, and a lot of hard work. I had recruited an amazing team (primarily from Life Church Southampton) before the event, and they made it what it was. There was a great atmosphere in there all week, and thanks to some very keen customers, I had to go shopping about a hundred times this week. The whole social side of Newday takes a huge amount of organisation in itself, without all the work that must go into the 'main' stuff. It was great to get to know some of the other team leaders and to pray and worship together each morning. We even had someone recommit their lives in one cafe (Sarah Dickenson's Pink Bar)!

It's very easy during a week like that to get all 'Cafe-Cafe-Cafe', so it was very refreshing to get to one or two sessions and enjoy God with everyone else. That's why everyone was there, not for milkshakes (though I hope people enjoyed them!). When you see scores of people running to the front to be saved, or because they've been healed, you know God is at work. And that's more my idea of fun.

Going into our church office today, I was reminded that this (Life Church Southampton) is the reason for the conference. Churches. I've come back so excited to help build Life Church - that is the whole purpose of something like Newday, not the other way around! Having said that, it was great to be able to serve the vision of Newday as a church. I was inspired in 2006 by ChristChurch London, who, despite only bringing the Stroud and Holloway children, had 100 people on site, serving. I want Life Church to be a serving church! So although we only have 2 people in our church of Newday-age, we took 20 people to Newday. Ten of those ran Global Cafe. I'm praying for more in 08!

If you've never been to Newday before, I would highly recommend to you (whatever age you are) to go. If you're too old, then cook for your youth group, or serve all week (perhaps not the 15 hours a day I found myself doing!). Anything to get you there and see what's available for young people today. As Terry Virgo took the stage one evening to tell the story of Newfrontiers (one of the highlights for my fifteen-year-old brother who said "I thought he was just an old man! Not anymore!"), it struck me that what Terry didn't receive in support as a teenager, now exists. The support he needed as a new Christian now exists in one form or other, both in the form of Newday, and of hundreds of vibrant churches for teenagers to be fed into! What an amazing vision.