You may remember that back in the autumn of 2011, as part of our “Autumn Outreach Initiatives” we, as a church, started collecting tins and packets of vegetables, fruit, cereals, soup, beans and other foods, in order to make a donation to the excellent work being undertaken in our local community by the East Bristol Food Bank.
Our pre-Christmas collection finished on Sunday 18th December, and we were able to make a big donation in the week leading up to Christmas. In fact, here’s a picture of some of the food we collected, being sorted by a couple of glamourous assistants!
I wanted to take a moment to pass on the emails I received recently from Andy Irwin, the local food bank co-ordinator, expressing his thanks to YOU for your generosity and kindness in helping to support struggling single parents and local families feeling the current financial pinch.
Here’s the first email from Andy, on Christmas Eve, the day after we made our donation:
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the generous gift yesterday from the church.
It weighed in at just over 100Kg – the equivalent of feeding 4 medium sized families for three days = approx. 150 meals
We had a manic day yesterday with 51 folks getting fed – 21 voucher holders coming in.
In the midst of that, our folks got a chance to pray with some of them and a bible was given to someone just coming out of prison.
Thanks again – Have a great Christmas!
Andy
Then on 16th January, I received this second email:
Dear Nathan,
Happy New Year to you and thank you for your contributions in 2011.
I am enclosing a 1 page stats report – part of my report to the Trustees – it gives you a quick idea of what we have achieved in the last two months of 2011 with your help.
It was really fun before Christmas adding some Christmas food and goodie items – some folks got really excited and I recall one young lady with her child being quite overwhelmed – she had to stop work due to Rheumatoid Arthritis and was still waiting to receive benefits money.
The Foodbank has had a large increase in giving Food recently with two record days before Christmas and last Friday that both cleared out the shelves of our café store.
If you are collecting again can you prioritise Tinned Tomatoes, Sugar, Pasta Sauce – Bolognaise, Coffee, Pasta and Tinned Meat – though any of the usual list items are fine.
Thanks again for you excellent support – we really appreciate it.
Andy
If I can echo Andy’s words: Thank you to every one who gave so generously to this project! We are very grateful to you for your kindness and the tangible difference it has made in the lives of people we don’t know! However, there are still more opportunities to get involved…
How can you get involved?Beginning in February 2012, Grace Church will be collecting food donations every Sunday morning and will make a bulk donation to the East Bristol Food Bank at the end of each month.
Please bring any donations and drop them in the box/bags available at the back of the meeting hall.
If you are not sure what to donate check out this foodbank shopping list. All food must be in-date and non-perishable.
You can make donations of anything on the above shopping list, but the co-ordinators at the East Bristol Food Bank have told me they are particularly in need of:
Matt and Lizzie, Noah and Beth Chapman are living in the USA as Matt undertakes study at the Sovereign Grace Pastors College this year. We’ve asked him to keep us all up to speed with what’s happening in their world and lives. Here’s their second monthly update:
It’s hard to believe that a whole month has passed since we last wrote a post for the blog! This past month has been much busier than our first but in and through all that has been taking place, we have experienced God’s abundant kindness and generosity to us as he has met with us and provided for us again and again. Just a few evidences of his kindness to us are that we’re continuing to enjoy and benefit from deepening friendships with other families here at the Pastors College. We have received timely advice and encouragement from Gary and Betsy Ricucci that has really helped us in our parenting. And we have been provided with an abundance of toys and books for Noah and Beth to keep while we’re here!
I (Matt) have now had four weeks of classes in the Pastors College. We focus on a different area of study each week and so far we’ve covered some Systematic Theology, some Biblical Theology, some Church History and some Old Testament studies. I’ve learnt so much already but the thing that has stood out to me each and every day is this: We have a God who speaks! And he speaks clearly to us, through the Scriptures, in order to bless us and make himself known to us. Please bear with me as I just expand on this a little here. I am eager to pass on to you some of the riches of what I have been learning and I don’t want to wait until I get home to start doing so.
Some philosophers like to argue that we can’t really know true things about God because God is so much bigger than language and words and letters on a page – ‘how can language be adequate to describe God?’ they ask. But the truth that has powerfully and freshly impacted me again is that language and relationship are not human inventions. Before any part of the creation was brought into being, God was a speaking and relational God. Something that’s easy to overlook is that language is God’s idea, not man’s! When God made Adam and Eve, he made them to be creatures who could listen and talk and enjoy fellowship because he is a God who listens and talks and pursues fellowship. The all-holy, all-powerful, creator God made you and I for intimate relationship with him. This is so central to his purpose for us that he went as far as to sacrifice his own Son, to make a way for our sins to be covered and for this relationship to be restored.
Now God himself has determined that the means he will use to make us wise to all of this is to speak to us, in his own words, from between the covers of that small unassuming book called The Bible. The Bible is not like any other book we will ever read! It is God-breathed and able to make us wise for salvation. And I am excited that you and I get to read it and enjoy fellowship with our God through it each day!
During all the time that I spend each week studying and reading (and generally enjoying myself!), Lizzie has been patiently and cheerfully caring for our family and our home in a thousand and one ways. We guys are regularly reminded by those teaching us at the PC that our wives sacrifice far more and work far harder than we do each day and I have never been more aware of that than I am now. I thank God each day for Lizzie’s patience and perseverance in all that she does as a wife and mother to serve us as a family.
Lizzie has been able to fit in a few regular highlights into her weekly schedule. One of these has been a weekly ‘mums and kids’ group that is run here at the church for the wives and children of the PC students. Towards the end of the session all the husbands take a break from class to go next door and ‘surprise’ the children. Noah never fails to look surprised even though we’ve done it five times now! We’ve also taken out a family membership at the local library and I’ll often arrive home from college with two or three books I’ve been studying that day, only to find that Noah and Beth have taken out twenty new books from the library for them to study and (literally in Beth’s case) chew over!
We think of you all constantly and, while we are experiencing much blessing and enjoyment here, our hearts are very much with you all. We can’t wait to be together with you again soon and we are eager to hear about all that God has been doing in your lives while we’ve been away!
Matt and Lizzie, Noah and Beth Chapman have now been in the USA for about a month, and we’ve asked him to keep us all up to speed with what’s happening in their world and lives as Matt undertakes study at the Sovereign Grace Pastors College this year. Here’s the first update:
“The Chapmans in America – Update 1 – August 2011″
We arrived here in the US just three short weeks ago and we already have so much that we want to share with you, our church family and good friends back home.
We touched down late on a Tuesday evening in an airport just outside Washington DC where the temperature was still 30 degrees at 10pm! We made our way through to US customs and happily found that our paperwork was all in order and (apart from a quick detour through agricultural control because of a half banana we were trying to smuggle into the country) we soon planted our feet on real American soil.
We were warmly welcomed at the airport by Gary Ricucci. Gary and his wife Betsy are responsible for providing pastoral care to the Pastor’s College students and their families each year and they have already been a source of great encouragement and welcome to Lizzie and me on numerous occasions since we arrived.
Having loaded up a very large car with all our luggage, Gary took us on a 45 minute journey into Gaithersburg to the home of our host family. We have the great pleasure and privilege of living in the basement of the Linn family from Covenant Life Church for the 10 months that we’ll be here. Jim and Marianne Linn and their three teenage children have hosted 9 different PC families before us and their hospitality and wise counsel is literally legendary amongst the staff of Sovereign Grace Ministries. We feel very blessed to be with them and are eager to spend as much time as possible with them in the coming months.
Since moving in we have had 3 weeks together as a family before the start of term and we’ve packed a lot in: exploring the local area; finding the nearest playgrounds; driving down to Virginia to celebrate Tim and Kate’s wedding; visiting an agricultural show where we watched a pig rodeo (no joke!); setting up a bank account; riding out an earthquake in Washington DC, and lots more.
One way that God has been particularly kind is in quickly forging strong relationships between the families attending the Pastor’s College. Even before term began there were almost daily opportunities to be together with other students – helping people to unload their U-Hauls (see Wikipedia), sharing meals, playing Frisbee golf and getting lost together in the truly huge church building each Sunday (we still prefer the Grace Church trailer!)
What has most impressed us about these families is they have each made great sacrifices to be here this year, many do not know what God has in store for them after college and many have left behind long and successful careers in other fields for the sake of serving Christ and his Church wherever he might call them. And yet they have all come humbly and joyfully, keenly aware both that they are nothing special and that the one they serve is supremely special.
I think at times I had an unspoken concern that other people attending the PC this year might be quite private and serious, professional and proper, but to our delight we’ve found a group of families who are marked by joy and laughter, humility and gentleness – people who take God very seriously but who don’t take themselves too seriously. We already feel a great love and affection for each of them and even more so because they remind us of all of you dear friends back home.
Term has just started for the students this week and so things are likely to get a lot busier from here on in, but in all that has taken place since we arrived, the thing that we have been most freshly reminded of is this: God is faithful and kind, he dearly loves his children and he will meet their every need whatever the situation that he calls them into; be it attending a Pastor’s college, caring for children at home, working to support your family and live out the gospel before colleagues, or studying hard at school to get your GCSE’s. He feeds the birds and clothes the flowers and he cares so much more for you and I than he does for the birds and the flowers.
It would be wrong for us to finish this without sharing with you some of the differences and oddities we’ve come across in this big strange country that bears some similarities to our own but which is also so different. Here are a few to start with and we’ll keep our eyes and ears open for more to include in our next blog post:
One final thing to pass on is something Jeff Purswell, Dean of the Pastor’s College, encouraged us all with the other day. He shared his conviction (with tongue firmly in cheek) that God clearly has great things in store for this year’s students because our arrival has been accompanied by signs and wonders – already an earthquake and a hurricane! But there was in fact a third miraculous event that only our friends back home would recognise and appreciate as the greatest sign and wonder of them all – today Matt played sport!
With love to you all from Matt, Lizzie, Noah and Beth x
On Thursday, Peter and I made the 3 hour trip down to Brighton to take in a day at the Together on a Mission (TOAM) New Frontiers Leadership Conference. Peter has been before, several years ago, but this was my first visit to Brighton and to this particular conference.
The draw to attend this year, came from the visiting speaker, one Mark Driscoll.
Mark Driscoll hails from Seattle, on the US west coast. In 1996, he founded Mars Hill Church in Seattle. It has grown to over 6,000 people. He co-founded and is President of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network, which has planted over 100 churches in the USA and internationally. Most recently he founded and leads the Resurgence Missional Theology Co-operative. The Church Report has recognised Mark as the 22nd most influential pastor in America. His sermons are downloaded more than a million times a year. Mark is married to Grace and they enjoy raising their three sons and two daughters.
He’s also the author of of Radical Reformission, Confessions of a Reformission Rev, and Vintage Jesus.
I’ve read his books, listened to his sermons, read his blog posts and read blog posts about him. He is a man who everyone seems to have an opinion about – good, bad or ugly. When we heard he was on his way to Brighton we decided we’d go and seize the opportunity to hear him first hand.
We got there at around 11am for the first main session of the day. “Worship” (which I’d say was more singing and having fun together than worshipping Christ) was led by Evan Rogers, a worship leader from South Africa. Then, PJ Smythe, who leads a church in Johannesburg, South Africa spoke.
PJ was a very engaging communicator, and had some great one liners which were definitely food for thought. Especially poignant was his illustration of what leaders are called to do. Using a cricketing illustration (with bat in hand!) he talked about the need for leaders to defend the wicket (which I took to mean doctrine, the church), make progress (take the single runs available and maintain momentum and direction the church is headed in) and pioneer (smash the ball for 4 or 6).
After a quick lunch break we were all back into the main hall for the afternoon session. Worship was lead by Simon Brading and was excellent. We sang some fantastic new songs (which we will learn and sing if I can remember them). Then, Mark Driscoll came up to preach.
The message was about movements and the history of church movements – how they get started, why, how they grow and develop, and how to guard the movement against becoming a museum (i.e. a family of churches that has stagnated and spends its time reflecting on the good old years).
Mark’s comments were, obviously (and rightly – it was their conference!) specifically directed towards New Frontiers, so while there was much to reflect on, it wasn’t directly applicable, so there isn’t a lot to report.
However, I will make some comments about Mark Driscoll.
Having been familiar with Mark’s style for a while, seeing him confirmed again that he is an exceptional communicator. His words were measured, insightful and wise. even in a context that was new to him, he didn’t feel the need to flatter or to water down what he wanted to say. He was gracious, sensitive and winsome, whilst offering his observations, challenges and warnings. He spoke with gratitude about his time with Terry Virgo and the NFI pastors and friends he had made/met.
At the end, Terry thanked Mark and declared him to be one of God’s most remarkable servants around at the moment.
It was clear to me that Mark Driscoll loves Jesus, loves the gospel, loves the church and loves the lost. I’m challenged by his preaching – content and delivery, and by his desires to reach the world with the good news of the gospel. It was certainly a journey to Brighton well worth making.
More details about the conference can be found here at Adrian Warnock’s blog or here at Dave Bish’s blog.
Adrian’s original post is here.
CJ Mahaney is now blogging at the Sovereign Grace Blog: CJ’s Views from the Cheap Seats. Check it out!
And Carolyn Mahaney explains on Girl Talk why we should follow her husband’s blog.
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