Road Map
I tried to get a road map of
Israel online the other day but all Google would produce was peace talks!
I have been thinking much
about where we are as a church and what I want to do this morning is review a
few things that we do to get an idea of which direction we are going. So this
morning is less of a sermon, more of an explanation of how we plan to go
forward.
We have a strap-line but how
do we work that out in practice?
South Ruislip Christian
Fellowship responding to the love of God.
We chose this because it
underlines grace. We are not here because of what we can do for God. We are
here because of what Jesus has done. We are not working up to win favour with
God. He has poured out his love for us. Hang on a minute, where have I seen
that expression? Right here Romans 5:5
God has poured out his love
into our hearts. How does he do that?
Well we have a whole Bible written to tell us. But we need to understand
that God loves us even though we reject him. He loves us even if we don’t
believe he exists. And he proved that by sending Jesus to die on across and
rise from death to life. In simple terms, God’s love turns nature on its head.
Death becomes the starting point of life. His death brings life for us. His
death was followed by the resurrection.
Wow! So SRCF is about responding to that love. Everything
we do should be because we are motivated by the desire to respond to that love.
Otherwise it is empty. If we act or behave to draw his attention to us, we are
wrong. If we act or behave to gain his pleasure, we are misguided. But if we
recognise that this love which turns darkness to light, death to life has
entered our hearts we have the most glorious motivation. Our response has to
match his love, even though it is a pale reflection. He gave freely and we must
respond freely in return.
And how do we do that?
Our Mission statement takes
four things that Jesus taught as measures of our response. .First we respond to
the love of God by loving him back in return. Jesus commanded it.
You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength.
But how do we do that? First
by our worship. This morning we worshipped. We will share communion together,
again responding to the love of God in worship. On Sunday evenings we meet
every other week to celebrate Jesus’ love, his death and resurrection in open
worship. It is a real concern of the elders that so few of us make it on Sunday
evenings. We pack as much as we can into this hour and a half on a Sunday
Morning but there is so much more we want to express in our worship and that is
why we meet 2-3 times a month on a Sunday evening. Whenever we meet there is
some kind of worship. We respond to the love of God in Worship.
We also respond to the love
of God in prayer. Jesus speaks about prayer a lot in the gospels and much is
made of it in the letters. Any relationship will only develop when there is
communication. Granville spoke last week about feeding the new man and starving
the old man. We feed on Jesus in prayer. Whenever we meet we pray. Our
relationship with Jesus is always benefiting from prayer.
If you have been around in
the last few months you will have picked up that we talk a lot about
discipleship. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commands” Following
Jesus involves us in a lot of things and we have talked about them in recent
weeks. One aspect of discipleship is Baptism because it is us following what
Jesus did.
We also respond to the love
of God in teaching and learning. You will have in your folder or you can
collect one a programme of teaching for the coming year. We want to explore
together God’s word. You will see in that programme that we are coming to the
end of our exploration of “John’s Gospel – Our Gospel” Then between Easter and Pentecost we are
looking at each of the 9 responses to the love of God in our Vision for
Mission. As part of Hope 08 they will be as practical as we can make it, so the
6th April will be a worship service, without teaching. 27th
April we hope to find a way to out into the community, 4th May to go
and tell the Good news and so on.
Then we move on to Paul’s
letter to the Romans. And we are going to get to know this letter as best we
can. It has so much to say to us about our gospel, our salvation, Our Saviour,
our life-style and our so much more.
In the Summer we change gear
for Summer Specials which are ¾ hour all-age worship events. Then in the Autumn
we go right back to the beginning and explore god’s relationship with his
people, starting with Adam and ending with the three great names by which God
identified himself. The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
But our response to the love
of God is more than just loving him. John in his letter points out that if we
love God we must love our brother also.First our brother is our neighbour. We
seek to be active in our community being good neighbours, good citizens, caring
and supportive. Some are employed as teachers, nurse, carers, and so on. Tuesday Focus does that for older people,
Age Concern information is held here to help. And for young families, there is
Teddy Bear Club and we have added Antenatal Classes. But we are always looking
for ways in which we can be in our community as salt and light. This is where
Hope 08 is intended to hep us get into gear. And the best way we can love our fellow man, whether he is
family, neighbour, workmate, colleague or just someone you know, is by sharing
the good news of Jesus with them.
Easter speaks of the big HOPE
and we will look for fresh ways of communicating the living hope that comes through
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Following Easter we want to
bring HOPE on the streets and we are planning to do that on Sunday mornings and
if you have a great idea of how to do it, share it and help us to spread the
Good News. This culminates in the Global Day of Prayer which is on Pentecost
Sunday.
In September we explore HOPE. We will run an Alpha course and
invite all those we have made contact with to it.
Finally, next Christmas we tell of the gift of HOPE. It is suggested
we go into the local pubs! We are well received there so maybe we can expand
and at least include the Bell in Ruislip Gardens.
And we are not limited by
parish boundaries or national boundaries. Our mission extends to the whole
world. We are part of the global church. And so we support Graeme and Jenny
Riddell going to Uganda and we continue to support an Assembles of God Minister
in Capetown – Stewart and Carol Sampson. In addition we join with the global
church on 11th May for a global day of Prayer. Plan to be there and
pray this year the trains run on time!
We also are called to love
one another. That involves first and foremost Fellowship. We try to be a family
church in the sense of including everybody and making everyone special. That
expresses itself, at present , in a number of ways.
We have tea and coffee
after church.
We have celebrations
as part of the service.
We have five House Groups
and we always aim to attach everyone to one of the House groups. They meet on
Monday Mornings, Wednesday and Thursday Evenings. They are the place where you
can relax, have fellowship, pray together, read God’s word together, eat
together and so on. They are the key fellowship events.
We have a directory of
church members and associates which Granville maintains. This is not just
an address list, it is from here I get the birthdays and wedding Anniversaries
so we can celebrate them with you. Being on it means that we can share
opportunities better.
Then we have a Prayer
Diary, which Ann Saville organises which means that we share our points of
praise and prayer every two months. I hope yours is well worn by now as you
pray for each other person in the fellowship. We have Personal folders at the back of the church to act as a
post box to keep you informed and to share together. If you haven’t got one,
ask me about it and we will sort it out.The Emergency Prayer Chain is a
way of sharing urgent prayer requests quickly. It is a confidential messaging
service so as many as possible can be asked to pray within hours of news
breaking.
We have meals together.
Sometimes at church, sometimes in a local restaurant or pub.
We have a formal
membership but we never limit anything to the members as this church
welcomes everyone equally. If you have joined us in recent months, once we have
got to know you, we will be inviting you to join the fellowship formally. The
basis of that is on confession of faith in Christ Jesus, evidenced in baptism
and showing that you are seeking to be obedient to Jesus in holiness.
We visit pastorally for chat
and prayer and encouragement.
We also express our love for one another in service. That includes
the multiplicity of rotas to do things but also opportunities to serve by using
the gifts that God has given you. We include in our list of service, prophecy, speaking in tongues, healing, working miracles, as you will find
in the Bible. We believe in the priesthood of all believers, so anyone can
serve in any way. There is no job that cannot be done by anyone who God gives
the gift to. So while I am paid and do a number of tasks because that is part
of my job, none of those tasks are my exclusive role. If you come from another
church with a more hierarchical structure this may seem confusing. But if we
are truly church, Jesus is the head and the leadership are his servants.
Talking of which, we do have a leadership. Ken Jousiffe and I are what we call
‘elders’ with specific responsibilities in guarding the integrity of the church.
Then they with Sylvia Baxter, Nina
Jousiffe, Nicki Lewington, Sarah Mir,
Liz Platt, Granville Richards,Sue and Tony Wenger form the leadership
team. In every department there are teams working together, so that the ‘who
does what’ list contains most of the membership of the church because we
believe in whole body service based on the verse “you are the body of Christ
and each one of you is part of it.” 1Corinthins 12:27
The
leadership has been much at prayer recently about what God is doing next. We
want to be in the action that God has for South Ruislip and the surrounding
area. We want to respond to the love of God in ways which bring praise to him.
What we do, we do because we believe God wants us to do it. We want to do more
because we want others to hear this Good News, and come to faith in Jesus, to
receive eternal life, the Holy Spirit and the blessings of a God who has poured
out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.