01/05/2022 – 26/06/2022
Mission Impossible
In the current secular culture in which we live, being a follower of Jesus can feel like it is Mission Impossible. God’s heart has always been to draw people back to a relationship with him that they were created for. This is a task that we have been chosen by God to partner with him to do. In this series we will look at not just the ‘why’ but the ‘how’ of mission to give us confidence and faith that God is still in the business of changing lives both locally and around the world.
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Finding people of peace
In Luke 10 Jesus calls us to stay with people ‘who promote peace’, i.e. people open to the gospel. So where do we find these ‘people of peace’ and how do we share our faith with them? Isaiah 55 helps us to answer those questions by showing us God’s appeal to the thirsty, the broke(n), the open and the nations, four groups who are disproportionately made up of the people we’re looking for. When we find thirsty people we get to share with them a God who can fulfil their deepest desires. For the broke(n) we have good news that someone has paid for our mistakes, for “our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor so… we might become rich”. To the open we can share God’s “word that goes out from his mouth”, the word that leads to life, and the nations offer us a new opportunity to find people of peace in numbers not seen in the UK.
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Love in action
As we look to how Jesus shows love in action, we see from Matthew’s gospel that Jesus’ first followers prioritised being with him, becoming like him and then doing the things he did.
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God’s heart for the nations
In his talk Mike points us to just some of the many scriptures that show God’s love for all peoples everywhere. We look at how his desire is for churches not just to reach out to those nearby them, but to take the good news of Jesus to the ends of the earth. Mike also considers myths that stop Christians from going and churches from sending, and he encourages us to pray for the nations, especially places that are unreached.
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Ambassadors for Christ
British Ambassador Tim Cole says it’s “my job is to tell them about the UK – what we stand for, what we believe in and what makes the UK special”. Replace ‘UK’ with ‘Jesus’ and you’ve got an idea of what an ambassador for Christ does. This week we look at what motivates us to do it – “fear of the Lord” and “the love of Christ”. We look at our methods – words and deeds. Jesus’ love has to be seen to be believed and yet the gospel needs explaining too. Finally, we note that our message is from God, so we’re not free to tweak it to suit what our audience wants to hear but it’s also a message about the death and resurrection of Jesus so that’s where our focus needs to be. Finally, our role as ambassadors is to make heartfelt requests based on friendship, so we have to get to know the people around us if we’re to share with them a message which, let’s not forget, is good news!
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The challenge of living a sacrificial life
As part of our Mission Possible series, Simon Dust looks at how we can be a blessing to others, particularly how we use our finances in a way that is sacrificial and costly. This is demonstrated really practically through the vision of the Nexus Project to enable us to better serve our community and resource our town. We learn from the Macedonian church in the New Testament how amazingly generous they were despite their own poverty and need
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Motivated by love
This talk is about being ‘Motivated by Love.’ to meet the needs of our Community. Initially looking at the author (John’s) background and his initial mistaken understanding of the Blessings of God. It then looks at how after being corrected by Jesus, his understanding changed, and he in turn started encouraging others to love as directed by Jesus. Finally, we were all challenged to adopt John’s new understanding of love and implement this love in practical terms to our Community.
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Mission Impossible: A mission minded church
Why do we share our faith? Acts 1 reveals it’s because Jesus has one plan for people to hear the gospel and be saved and we’re it. Second, it’s because we’re powered by the Holy Spirit – the missionary Spirit. All the way through Acts it’s the Spirit, not the Apostles, who’s driving the missionary activity of the church and he’s still doing it today. Third, it’s because we’ve been called by Jesus to be ‘witnesses’ just as in a courtroom. Yet, we’re compelled to say what we’ve seen not by a judge but by our natural human instincts to share discoveries with others. That’s why we ‘evangelise’ for Netflix shows, music, bargains, and holidays. So, why wouldn’t we do it for Jesus? Yes it’s hard because ‘witness’ also means ‘martyr’. So, we bear the cost of what others might think, of standing out, of unpredictable reactions and of social awkwardness and yet there’s no better time to start than today. No sooner had Jesus left the apostles than an angel appeared and said…““Why do you stand here looking into the sky?”, put another way – ‘what are you waiting for?’…
Speakers
Ant Dixon
Simon Russell
Mike J
Simon Dust
Paul Hodgson
