Sept 24 Monthly Message

Dear Church Family,

 

How was the summer for you? I hope most of you managed to find some time to rest and recharge? Many of you have asked me how my summer was, and for the most part I think I’ve responded in a polite British manner, assuring you that it was good. Whilst that is true, what I increasingly find is that in a change of pace, things come to the surface of my life that I had been ignoring or which had been buried below the surface. And so, what I found was that, over the summer some things began to emerge for me that I had to pay attention to and start to address. Now, you may be sitting reading this and assuming that the vicar is broken, on the verge of psychiatric breakdown, or having a crisis of faith. It’s nowhere as drastic as that. What I am saying though is, like everyone else, I am still a work in progress. I am in no way sorted. The Holy Spirit is still doing a work in me as I seek to follow Jesus. I just want to be honest with you all that I like many of you, know that there is work to be done on my character. And even though it might be painful to go through that process, the outcome is worth it.

 

Over the summer we’ve been gathering each Sunday for a combined service at 10am, and I know that many have valued those times together. We’ve also had our Summer Socials which many have attended – I hear that the Croquet and Pimms on Sara Loch’s lawn was a particular highlight of the calendar. We also had a very successful series of Stay and Play events each Wednesday over the Summer. We have had 211 guests join us across the 5 sessions (139 children and 72 adults), and 17 families have been at least once. My thanks to Tina and the whole team who served over the sessions. What an impact we were able to make as a church community into the wider community.

 

Many of us will have been sad to hear of Dave Griffiths death at the beginning of this week. It’s always hard to lose a much loved and key member of the church community. Dave was one of the church wardens when I was appointed to this role, and was, along with Debby, a massive help to me in those first few years of leading BFPC. Even though we didn’t agree on everything, we very much loved and respected each other. One of the many things I admired about Dave, was that as I’ve described in the first paragraph above, Dave wasn’t afraid of doing the work of digging below the surface of his psyche to see where some divine surgery was needed on his heart and mind. He lived what he preached about the need to become more aware of who we are as individuals and what was driving our behaviours – both helpful ones and unhelpful ones! I wasn’t present, but some of you may remember Dave giving a testimony earlier this year of where he’d had an encounter with the power of God in a very gentle way, and received a great healing of a deep seated wound that he’d lived with for his whole life. It changed him markedly, and I believe prepared him for what was to come, even when he didn’t know it was coming. Praise God for Dave and all that he was to us individually and to the church as a whole.

 

Dave’s funeral will be on Tuesday 17th Sept at 11.30am in Church followed by a wake in the Parish Centre. Everyone is welcome to come along, but please can you Tina in the office know if you are so we know numbers for catering. Debby is asking us to not wear black – she wants the service to be a celebration and thanksgiving for Dave’s life. She also asks if church members could make cake for the wake? If you, please also let Tina know.

 

We had the pleasure of welcoming Megan and Jack to Blandford over the summer, and Megan has begun to settle in to work and started to get to know the many faces of us in the church community and the wider community. Please do pray for her as she starts work, and especially because she has me as her line manager – which I’m sure isn’t an easy prospect! Over the next few weeks she will be spending a lot of time in Salisbury with the Bridge Project, learning the ins and outs of school chaplaincy, but will be with us on Wednesdays and Sundays. Please do introduce yourselves and make an effort to get to know her. And just to remind you, like me with Galaxy chocolate, she’s partial to Pringles crisps.

 

This month we resume our series on discipleship called “Surprise the World” by talking about the first L of BELLS – Listening. I spoke last Sunday from Mark 1.35-39 and the need to connect with God through prayer. Unfortunately it didn’t get recorded live, but I hope to sit down and record myself talking through it for those wanting to catch up on the sermons. We want to encourage as a many people as possible to take that first step in growing in prayer. Come along to one of prayer gatherings in the week… set aside time in your day to just be with God. My advice is to just make one change to start with, and then keep doing that thing consistently before making another. That way the change is gradual and permanent, rather than all at once and then abandoned.

 

Having spoken about Sunday, it was encouraging to see so many people in church across the two services. We had over 80 in the morning and another 30 in the evening. And there was a real buzz in the room and a sense of the presence of God at work in us. God is definitely at work in our church, and the number of exciting conversations I’m having with church members and visitors is so encouraging. My prayer is that the momentum will continue and we will continue to see people coming to faith, new people joining our community, and lives transformed by the power of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit. Please Lord don’t let it stop!

 

We also had an amazing time at Going Deeper on Sunday evening, where there was a tangible sense of God’s presence with us. Will spoke powerfully, and Megan was amazing in leading us in worship. If you’d like to listen back, then Will’s talk will be with all the others on the church website.

 

Alongside the blessings, there are also battles. It was disheartening to find that someone had attempted to break into church on Monday afternoon/early evening. We came into church at 8pm to find the back door to the Julian Chapel had been kicked to the extent that the frame had become detached from the surrounding masonry. The plus was that the individual(s) had not actually gained access to the building. As a result most of my Tuesday has been spent getting the paperwork sorted for the necessary permissions for the repairs to be made. Whilst this is annoying, I am taking this event as an encouragement. As the church of Jesus Christ, we are involved in a spiritual war, and the enemy is never happy when God is at work. We could get distracted by the damage and the vandalism or as both Paul and Peter do in Acts, we could choose to praise God that we are worthy of the enemy seeking to disrupt us. Lets keep going and pressing in to the more the Lord has for us.

 

This Saturday, we’re having a big church tidy up. If anyone is able to give their time and effort into helping us get the church and churchyard back into a more orderly space, we would be amazingly grateful. Heidi has a list of jobs for us to do, and we’ll gather at 9am and start to divvy them up across whoever comes. I’ll be there with my gardening things on ready the push a mower around. I look forward to seeing many of you in your work togs.

 

At the end of Sept we will start our next Alpha course at BFPC. We hadn’t been planning to run Alpha this term, but the sense of momentum from the course we ran at the beginning of the year, and the baptisms we had at Pentecost has meant that we already have a significant number of people waiting to attend. So we already have a good number, but there is always room for more. Alpha is a great place to invite people you know who have questions about faith to come along to. It’s a relaxed non-threatening environment, there are no stupid questions and there’s no pressure to believe a certain thing or think a certain way. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to invite people along.

 

Many of you will be aware that we are starting the process of consultation about what we need to do with the church building to make it fit for the future. The PCC will be meeting with the architects later this month, and we hope to invite everyone to come and share their views and opinions in early October. We haven’t got the dates firmed up yet, but I wanted to let you know that these events were coming soon. There will be two sessions for church members to attend – and we’ll let you know dates and times etc once we have agreed them.

 

Many Blessings

 

Chris