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!

Getting Before God

Life Church Southampton have taken on Winchester Family Church's tradition of having a week of prayer at the beginning of each school term. I'm looking forward to seeing what God does with us over the next few days!

We're starting in about 40 minutes with a big kick-off praying for revival and simply pressing into God. We'll then have early morning prayer for and hour each weekday, with another large prayer meeting instead of Life Groups on Wednesday.

Arnold Bell says prayer is simply 'getting before God'. If we were going to prioritise a week out of the church calendar to particularly do one thing, surely it ought to be to get before God! Especially at the beginning of a new term, where we have a number of evangelistic meetings, several visiting speakers (including David Stroud on 23rd September and Guy Miller on 6th December) lined up.

So I'll watch and participate with baited breath waiting to see what God does in us, and how He speaks to us over the coming week...

Targets vs. Legalism

So here we are a week and a day after I boldy proclaimed September to be a month full of blogging. And how many posts have I written between then and now? One. So much for SMART targets.

Increasingly I am coming to the conclusion that the only targets worth acknowledging are those inspired by God Himself. And even then, perhaps we shouldn't drive ourselves to 'fulfill' them as I know I often do. I'm not talking about aspirations, which I think are a more general desire for something to happen. I mean targets. Sometimes they involve numbers. Sometimes they involve the phrase 'every day'. Often they involve some sense of timescale ("by Christmas we want the church to have grown to 20/50/100/1000").

I'm gradually becoming aware of how targets affect my life, even my relationship with God. Mostly, I set unrealistic targets. That means I often feel let down by myself. But even when the targets seem SMART at the time, there is the odd occasion where we were simply mistaken. Often we find in those times that the targets themselves have become the goal, even though there are much bigger things at stake, and even though targets are only a means to and end. The problem is not targets themselves, it's our reaction to them. When a target isn't met we feel dejected and let down by all sorts of people. Often we forget to give thanks for the good that has happened, and we discover a man-centredness in the way we think. When a target is met we can feel elated and full of joy. But even then we can forget to give God thanks, and again we find the man-centredness buried deep in our hearts.

The more I think about it the more I think that the one big aspiration we all need is a relationship with God. To be living in the grace of God, diving into the Bible and lingering in His presence is pretty much what it's all about. And we can take or leave the other things. Genuinely. Even the God-inspired targets, or the promises we hide in our hearts. Yes, we need to aspire towards the things God speaks to us, but I think too often I turn them into targets, and start to measure my performance. Often the result isn't pretty. And the result is not good for my God-centredness.

Performance measurement is something the world is really pursuing. There's probably nothing wrong with that, really. But I felt so released recently by a prophetic word which basically said "stop trying to analyse how you got here, how you're going to do what God's called you to. And get on with it!" I think God looks at direction more than performance. Questions like: is your life heading Godwards? Are you heading in a missional direction? Are you worship-orientated? And is your Godward-ness growing or shrinking?

Take the promise God has given to the Newfrontiers churches in the UK that we are to be churches of thousands and have thousands of churches. It would be easy to set a target for each of the next 10 years, as if the target would get us there. Instead, I think the right approach is to say 'are we heading in the direction God's got for us?' There will inevitably be the day, week, month or decade during which a particular target is not being met. Though that in itself is not a problem, it is if our reaction is legalistic. It's incredibly easy for even the most Spirit and grace-filled promises to turn into target-idols which fuel legalism in our hearts.

To abandon targets is not to abandon the promises God has given, and it is not to neglect to plan for the fulfillment of a promise, even to work towards it (it's direction, not performance that's important). But the question I've started asking is 'when we turn a command or promise from God into a set of targets (even if they're the SMARTest...), are we on the first step of the ladder of legalism?

Celebrations

Today I noticed that BBC Parliament are repeating the footage of Diana's funeral in real time from the day she was buried ten years ago. Lots of people have at least been 'nudged' to think about her life and others are actively celebrating her life, ten years on from her death.

I've just got back from a lovely wedding at King's Community Church in Hedge End - another celebration of a different kind. It's funny seeing someone you grew up with getting married!

In a moment I'll be heading off to Bournemouth to celebrate the 6th and 9th birthdays of the two Lawrences boys - children I spent a year living with when I did Frontier Project in Bournemouth Family Church.

Later this evening we'll be having a family meal to celebrate my Dad's 47th birthday, which is also today.

So, lots of celebrations! And to top it all off, we call Life Church's Sunday morning meeting our 'main celebration'. I see nothing wrong with spending large parts of a weekend celebrating.