Moldova

Sprung

Even if you’re not one of the lucky ones who will soon be wrestling canvas and tent poles, I hope that you are aware that our home-grown Summer Camp takes place next Friday at Downe Activity Centre.

I appreciate that if you don’t have kids going, or you’re not part of the organisational team, then it might feel hard to get too excited by it all. However, I’d encourage you to try and see it as something of real spiritual significance. These camps are more than just great fun. They often represent times when our young people take real strides in their faith, or when those on the edge of church life make a commitment to Christ. The value of those sort of things cannot be quantified, but they will only happen if the church family rallies in prayer.

So whether or not you’re going to be at Downe next weekend, you can be involved in the crucial work of praying your socks off. Pray for the leaders, the young people, our guest speakers (Anna and Josh), and most significantly that God’s Spirit would be at work in the thick of all the activity, drawing new followers to his side.

A Call to Exercise...

This week we step into our new sermon series, ‘You Asked For It’.

Over the next 6-7 weeks we’ll be looking at some topics that can be emotive, and may well have been a source of pain for a number of our church family in the past. It’s healthy to acknowledge that, but we don’t want it to mean that we duck consideration of these subjects.

As we delve into them though, it will require us to sharpen our understanding of something dear to the gospel, which also has the power to soften our hearts. It is something with which Paul invariably tops and tails his letters to the churches. It can be easy to miss, but one way or another, ‘grace’ forms the bookends of all that he wishes to communicate with the people for whom he cares.

This series will cause us to consider the very nature of this ‘grace’ thing, but more than that I pray it will propel us to exercise its healing power.

Summer Spruce Up

The long Summer holiday can be a good opportunity to have a bit of stock take and consider any adjustments you might want to make to your house, work, life…

 As you walk into church next week, we hope that you’ll notice a few changes. Over the Summer we’ve been putting together various materials, largely aimed at providing newcomers with a better sense of what’s goes within our church family. Without giving too much away, there will be different ‘packs’ on display, ‘Connect’ cards, and the area around the font will become an ‘information point’ for our Vision, Home Groups, and Teams.

 Of course, all that is simply window-dressing if it is not matched by a ‘de-cluttered’ people (John 15:2), who take time to assess how they are walking with their Maker. If you haven’t yet done so, there are still a few weeks of Summer left.

Moldova

In July a group from St John's joined a Link to Hope working party working in rural Moldova. They spent their time with lonely. elderly, isolated and impoverished people, sharing God's love through practical work, including painting and mending things for them.

In this video clip Roger & Rosemary talk about their experience.

The working party will be speaking about their experiences at the prayer meeting at SJ's on Monday, 25th September.

Moldova Map.jpg