Missional-Life

When Keith Hazell was with us as a church last October he shared a prophetic word with the Elders, which we believe is going to be hugely significant for the coming season. Keith saw Nene Family Church as a gateway church, but specifically as a gateway that had three doors in it. These doors led to the city, the region and the nations. Keith also felt that the door to the city had in the past been largely shut to the church, but now was the time for us to push it open.

Come and join the adventure we look to see transformation in the whole city!

Life is great at the moment!!! As a church we’re in the middle of a prayer week. It’s been really exciting seeing and hearing people praying big prayers for the future of Nene Family Church. Please do email me if you would like me to send you the prayer diary so you can join us as a church in this week of prayer.

Yesterday a good guy from our church led us in communion. He opened up the communion by applying John Piper’s worship quote to communion. He said… “our times spent round the communion table should be times of gravity and gladness”. Gravity and the magnitude of what Christ both gave up and accomplished for us. Gladness at the wonderful inheritance that is now our due to his sacrificial death for us. What a fitting description!

“The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing. If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the peebles you drop to becomewaves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity, you don’t need to have a high IQ. You don’t have  to have good looks or riches or come from a fine family or a fine school. Instead you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things–or one great amm-embracing thing–and be set on fire by them.” – John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, Pg. 44

“Run, John, run the law commands

But gives us neither feet nor hands,

Far better news the gospel brings:

It bids us fly and gives us wings.”

Here is an article I wrote for ‘the loop’, the bi-monthly magazine of King’s Community Church (Norwich).

Have you ever felt a sense of disappointment as the credits start to roll on an epic adventure film that you’ve been watching? For an agonisingly short period of time everything within you has been captivated by a great adventure! Suddenly a lifeless story has ‘got under your skin’ and moved not only your imagination but also your desires and longings. However, by the time you’ve unloaded the DVD, scooped the stray popcorn off the carpet and removed the empty beer bottles, you’ve managed to persuade yourself that those adventurous feelings are just childish dreams with no place in our modern and sophisticated world. Or are they?

I believe that God has invited you and me to join Him on this great and thrilling adventure! In many ways the book of Acts is the start of God’s great adventure of creating for himself a glorious church! Not the sedate, cautious, inward looking church that is so often portrayed in the media, but rather one that is: a city set on a hill (Matt 5:14); a glorious mountain of the Lord where all the nations shall flow to it (Is 2:1-2) ; a mission focused church; a city and region transforming church! Or as Charles W. Colson states “The church is not incidental to the great cosmic struggle for the hearts and souls of modern men and women.  It is the instrument God has chosen for that battle – a battle we are called to by virtue of being members of His body.” (‘The Body’, 1992).

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, in the middle of December 2009, whilst most other people where madly getting ready for Christmas, my family and I were moving from Attleborough where we had been planting Christ Community Church (www.christcommunitychurch.co.uk). We were relocating to Peterborough to enable me to lead the team at Nene Family Church (www.nenefamilychurchchurch.org.uk). We are praying that many other people will also hear the call to join this great adventure in Peterborough!

Peterborough is a great city! There are approximately 180,000 people from a wonderfully rich and diverse ethnic and cultural background. It is a growing and developing city and an ideal place to bring up a family. However, although Peterborough is a great city, it has tremendous need of the transforming power of the gospel!

My dream is to see a significant gospel-centred, mission-focused church in Peterborough that will play its part in seeing this great city transformed through both demonstrations of the Kingdom, such as ministry to the poor and declarations of the life transforming message of the gospel.

However, this type of dream will only be fulfilled by many, many people coming together to humbly and sacrificially ‘sow’ their lives into seeing the city and region transformed. I’m unashamed in saying that we in Nene Family Church cannot fulfill this dream on our own. We are praying that God will send many people who have a heart for the city and surrounding villages and towns. Maybe God is calling you? If so, please do get in touch to find out more

⁸ Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! ⁹ For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, ^wlike men sentenced to death, because we ^xhave become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. ^{10 y}We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ^zyou are wise in Christ. ^aWe are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. ¹¹ To the present hour ^bwe hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and ^cbuffeted and ^dhomeless, ¹² and we ^elabor, working with our own hands. ^fWhen reviled, we bless; ^gwhen persecuted, we endure; ¹³ when slandered, we entreat. ^hWe have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, ⁱthe refuse of all things.(1 Cor 4:8-13, ESV)

“… part of the reason why Paul’s stance (see above) seems alien to many of us is that we have unwittingly become more like Corinthian Christians than like like Pauline (that is, biblical!) Christians. Many of us are well-to-do and comfortable, with little incentive to live in vibrant anticipation of Christ’s return. Our desire for the approval of the world often outstrips our desire for Jesus’ “Well done!” on the last day. The proper place to begin to change this deep betrayal of the gospel is at the cross–in repentance, contrition, and renewed passion not only to make the gospel of the crucified Messiah central in all our preaching and teaching, but in our lives and the lives of our leaders as well.” (D.A. Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry, p. 108)

Over Christmas I finally found where the Key Theatre was located. What a treat!

In James 1:27, the author writes an amazing provocation:

“Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress…” (James 1:27, NASB)

What is James saying through this verse? Genuine faith in God will produce in us as believers a desire to “visit” the orphans and widows in their distress.  Faith must overflow the banks of our hearts and flood our communities with genuine kingdom compassion and concern.

Paul writing to the church in Galatia recounts a discussion he had with James, Peter and John about his ministry to the Gentiles (or non Jews) and this is what he says their response was …

“But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised (for He who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised effectually worked for me also to the Gentiles), and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we might go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. They only asked us to remember the poor — the very thing I also was eager to do.” (Galatians 2:7-10 NASB)

“Remember the poor – the very thing I also was eager to do.”

I believe that an authentic expression of the Kingdom of God in Peterborough requires that we as a local church live and breathe these verses.  James doesn’t say wait till the orphans and widows show up on your doorstep and then help, but to go out and ‘visit’ them.  In the days of when James was writing orphans and the widows were those within society that fell through the safety net.  They were the ones on the bottom of the pile with little to look forward to and much to dread.

I don’t believe we have the liberty to see this as a bolt on to our role as ambassadors of the Kingdom of God.  When Jesus was starting His earthly ministry He used a prophetic picture from the Old Testament to describe the nature of His ministry…

““The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are downtrodden, To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”” (Luke 4:18-19 NASB)

Jesus said, My ministry would be a poor engaging, captive releasing, sight restoring, and downtrodden reinstating ministry.  These are the marks of authentic kingdom life!

“visit the orphans and widows … remember the poor”

I believe that one of the great tragedies that has taken place in the church has been the divorce of what some have termed the ‘social gospel’ and the ‘preaching of the gospel’.  In the early church there was no separation.  If the kingdom of God burst out through the church it was both preaching the good news and demonstrating the good news.

I remember reading about William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army.  There was time when he was living in the east end of London and would walk down the streets and every other shop would be a Gin joint.  Many of these drinking holes would have makeshift wooden steps up the side of the bar so that young children could place their order for the ‘hard stuff’.  He also saw around him child poverty, and social decay and he was moved to action.  Nearing his death he said this …

“While women weep as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight – I’ll fight to the very end!

This was a man who had captured the heart of the Kingdom and knew what it meant to “remember the poor” and “visit the orphans and widows”.

Reason 14 for moving to Peterborough is very simple. Peterborough needs an army of people who have been moved by the Christ’s compassion for the lost, poor, marginalised, alienated, abused, broken, abandoned and downtrodden!

The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians states emphatically:

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Cor 2:6, ESV)

We live in days when there is a growing emphasis within some quarters of the Christian world on ‘entrepreneurism’   or ‘you-can-make-it-happen-ism’.  There is nothing inherently wrong with a pioneering spirit, and in fact Paul was probably the greatest New Testament example of a pioneer (apart from Jesus). However, any form of pioneer-ism or entrepreneurism that gets disconnected from the wonderful truth revealed in this passage is very dangerous! Paul is emphatic; it is the sovereign activity of God alone that makes the difference! All of his and Apollos’ work would have come to nothing if God’s sovereign life giving work was not at work!

Returning to reasons to move to Peterborough, one overwhelming reason to come is that this work that we are looking to accomplish does not depend upon me, you or anyone else! I’m absolutely clear that this task that God has called me to is totally futile without God sovereignly breathing upon it. However, this truth make the adventure that much more enjoyable, because we know that we are totally reliant upon God for everything!