Untitled Sermon (11)

PRAY

If you were attending GC 18months ago, you’ll remember we were preparing getting ready to launch our afternoon 4.30 service.

And we had a number of gatherings as a church in our new congregations, were we thought about and prayed about the new service.

They were called weird things like,

Pot-luck, Ponder and Pray,

Or Bonding and BBQ.

And many of you have upped your serving commitments at church to make the second service happen.

And I trust we are all grateful to each other for that.

For both services have now continued for over a year, with some growth.

I hope you were exciting if you were here on Christmas day to see some having to sit on the stage to fit us all in.

Or encouraged by the whole church BBQ’s in the summer, were you’ll have caught up woth friends form the other servcei, and seen people around you probably had never met!

And then last January, we launched our new church vision statement,

Following Jesus Together - Passionately, Courageously and Increasingly.

If you are a Christian, a follower of Jesus - then I trust you are on the whole encouraged by doing it ‘together’.

That is what the NT calls us to do, to follow Jesus together.

And perhaps if you haven’t enjoyed, or arent enjoying the ‘togetherness’ of our church, well then todays passage is going to help us.

We had a series of BS looking at the vision statement and it’s biblical basis.

And i asked for feedback from them to help us to better ‘Follow Jesus Togeteher - passionatly, ccourageously and increasingly.

WE had all sorts or helpful ideas.

Things such as thinking through how we can help each other improve our motivation for serving on rotas, as it is hard sometimes (always) to stwered, be in the band, serve refreshment, teach or help in Sunday School, welcome, read, pray, lead, PA, Powerpoint, and so on.

And we want to do that with an atitude of joy to serve Jesus, rather than regret for ever agreeing to be on the rota.

So we now have the doodle poll to help relieve the burden of swaps or over commitment. We do try and listen and keep an eye out for those who are over burdened.

It’s not perfect, and it’s never going to be easy, service is supposed to be sacrificial, but together, we can keep moving forward a s a church.

But one of the biggest thins that came up from all that feedback and the alunch of the new service, was wanting to get real, practical encourageamnet amoung us into our services.

So we are encouraged in our own faiths, so we know what to pray for each other, so we know what we could be praying for ourselevse.

So some of the things we’re going to try and put more of into our services is an oppertunity to hear from each other occaiasionally.

That’s why Sarah was interviewed earlier.

Real and normal people sharing real and normal life as a Christian.

And part of imporving our fellowship is to be able to pray more and communicate more as a church.

So, here are some practical things we’re introducing today.

There is now this feedback and prayer box for you to put anything you would like prayer, or you want to feedback about the service or sermon, or questions you have. There is a slip on the service sheet that you can tear of and put something in here if that’s helpful.

And we are also launching a new prayer email address today.

So you can share requests and praises.

Not just for emergencies,

but also perhaps you’re wantingto hsare the gospel with a family memeber this week and you’d like prayer, or perhaps you’re starting a new job and you’d like to start well and somehow let them know you’re a Christian early on.

Whatever it might be.

We can then make sure we’re praying for each other using these emails perhaps at prayer meetings or even on Sunday at church. So we start really engaging with each other’s lives.

And all this got me thinking about what we ought be thinkning about today as we begin another year ‘togeteher’.

And prayer seems like an obvious place to start. But prayer in the bible is typically always paired with another idea or topic in the bible.

In for example it was heavily tied with evangelism.