May 22, 2012

7:30 pm to 9:00 pm

The Ladies start their new Spring / Summer Season on Tuesday 24th April at 7-30pm in the chapel hall with a 1970s questionnaire.

1st May : Beverley Passion Play.

8th May : Cheese n crackers.

12th May Saturday : Link back to the ’70s.

15th May : Painting with Viv.

22nd May : Poetry.

29th may : Flower arranging.

5th June : Half Term.

12th June : Dominoes.

19th June : Singing the “Golden Oldies.”

26th June : Beads with Natalie.

3rd July : Back to Basics with Jayne.

10th July : Craft night.

17th July : Pie and Peas.

Well, happy new year….a bit late I know and I do apologise. We seem to get caught up in stuff don’t we. We always seem to be doing something and all of a sudden January has gone and it is the middle of February. Don’t get me wrong it is all good stuff that is filling the time up, it just seems that there is a lot of it. That is the “beauty” of being a small church, everyone of us has our fingers in a lot of pies.

Our latest venture is getting involved with the food bank programme, in particular the Holderness food bank, based in Hornsea. In the UK, 13 million people live below the poverty line, that is about 1 in 5 people. Food bank is designed to help individuals and families in crisis, through the provision of emergency food supplies.

Local professional care workers in the Holderness area refer these people with a food voucher, to the food bank centre, where the vouchers can be redeemed for their emergency food supplies, usually enough food for about 4 days or so. At the food bank centre as well as receiving food, people can get a coffee and have a chat and get help in finding other professionals who can help them out of their crisis.

You can find out more information from the following website http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects

If we are not careful though we can find ourselves being too busy doing church stuff that we forget to give God the time He deserves.

At the moment we are involved as a church in a series of talks about worship. I can commend them to you, (they can be found in the multimedia section of our site.) Worship is not just  about coming to church on a Sunday and having a good sing, it’s not about being entertained by the fantastic worship band, it’s not about the latest songs or hands in the air or lying prostrate or dancing or kneeling. Worship is fundamental to who we are, we should want to glorify God, we should want to give Him the glory 24/7. If we cannot praise and worship our Father, if we cannot praise and worship Jesus then…the rocks and stones will cry out. If we cannot praise God then some other part of His creation will and you cannot get more inanimate than a rock.

The trouble is we are busy, but we must, we must, bring God our praise and worship, we must bring Him our sacrifice of praise. We need to daily lay aside our own desires our own “busyness” and come before Him, and worship Him, putting all our energy and resources at His disposal and trusting Him to guide us. Why do we do this, we do this out of gratitude for what Jesus has done for us.

Do we want to see signs and wonders, do we want to see miraculous healings, then come before your Father and give Him the worship, give Him the honour and the glory and enthrone Him with fervent passionate praise and worship, Hebrews 13v5 “Let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name.” A sacrifice is giving someting up, we must give someting of ourselves when we come before Him…….

Worship Him in the car, worship Him at work, worship Him in the street…….but worship Him. You see it’s not about us it’s about Him. And if we don’t do it then the rocks and stones will.

My prayer today is for us all to ask God to help us experience him in a new way, ask God to help us experience a new kind of worship and let’s ask God to show us things we have never experienced before….. 

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Well it seems a while since I sat down and had a type…no excuses except that we have had a full on summer, which now seems a long time ago.

A fantastic time on the North west coast of Scotland was followed very quickly by Sue and Ruth flying off to Hyderabad with a small team, 3 adults and 8 young people, to assist and help with the work the church in Hyderabad does in the local community. They were home for a night and then it was straight off to Grapevine on the Lincolnshire showground.

This week sees us full on again with Smartiz and Link ladies tomorrow afternoon and evening. We have already had our first Purpose Driven Pint of this new Season where we discussed 9/11 and managed to eat lots of chips n sausages, courtesy of the Dacre Arms.

Church last night was truly excellent and God blessed us with 26 people (I know it is not about numbers, but it is nice when people do turn up)…..you know the feeling, when you just do not expect anyone through the door and then people keep coming……Our worship time was truly awesome as Mike and the band led us into God’s presence and Jayne gave us an excellent talk on Matthew 7 v 1~6. (Podcast should be up on the site soon. ) Judging others….who are we to judge anyone, especially relevant as yesterday marked 10 years since the atrocities of 9/11. It is not up to us to judge the terrorists……………….listen to the podcast.

And of course we had doughnuts and muffins……… Sue was only going to get a few doughnuts, I am so glad we bought enough………….I cannot wait for the day when we have to buy trays full of the sticky, gooey, jammy, doughy balls of nutritional goodness.

I really feel that we should be starting to have an urgency about our work as a church and individually……we have got to get out there and tell people about Jesus we have got to get out there and show people God’s love in action, we have got to get out there….. But you know it is no good getting out there if we aint praying…..We can expend all the energy in the world putting on evangelistic events but if we aint praying it aint going to happen. We must pray, pray and then pray some more for our broken land, we must pray for revival for a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit over our communities so that people will have an awesome supernatural encounter with God and realise that Jesus died so that all might be forgiven. We cannot argue people into the kingdom but we can pray them in. I believe we have entered a new season, it’s time to get serious, it is time for Christians to step up to the mark and fall on there hands and knees and pray for this fallen nation of ours.

Nothing else should matter to us, Jesus should be the first person we think about in the morning, He should be on our mind all day, in everything we do, we should be giving God the glory, in the car at home at work, Jesus is all that really matters in this short life of ours. The most important person in our lives is Jesus, the most important work we do has to be for Jesus.

If we want to see people saved we must pray, if we want to see miraculous stuff happening we must pray if we want to see healings we must pray, if we want to see revival we must pray. It’s happening elsewhere in the world………….it isn’t happening here because we just aren’t serious enough about it. I want to see people come to know Jesus, it is time for us to pray…….

Wouldn’t it be great if people were knocking on our doors asking us about the awesome things that were going on in our churches instead of us having to knock on their doors telling them about our next event.

Father we pray for an outpouring of your Spirit on our land, we pray for a new season of spiritual awakening, a new season of people opening up their hearts to you, a new season of supernatural happenings on our streets and in our homes a new season of miraculous healings. Father as I sit hear listening to the wind rattling around the house and see the trees bending over with the immense power as it blows across the open land, I pray that you will send your Holy Spirit and rattle our houses and homes in the same way, rattle our lives Lord, rattle this nation, Father, bend our knees as the wind bends the trees,  with your immense power, so that all will see and know you are our awesome God. Come Holy Spirit come…………………………

I have had some interesting ships this week. On Wednesday we piloted  the “Morning Lena”, a huge car carrier capable of carrying 8600 cars.

The ship is 232m long, 32.2m wide and 33m deep with a draught of 9m. A huge rectangular box. We "park" the ships in Immingham outer harbour. The manoeuvre consists of swinging the ship 180 degrees and then sliding the vessel sideways through a 315m wide gap before backing  into the berth. In the words of a famous Meerkat.... Simplezzzz.

Please pray for me as I have started leaving bibles on the ships I pilot. At some convenient moment in the pilotage, usually when we are safely moored, I get the Captain to one side and present him with the bible. I just pray Lord that the bibles will be placed in a convenient and accessible place so that they may be used and read by the officers and crews of the ships.

Well this last month or so has flown by. Our little church seems to be as busy as ever. Link ladies is going from strength to strength with 14 ladies at the last meeting, a manicure evening with Wendy Stephenson. Other evenings have included patchwork sewing with Angela Chard, exploding boxes with Christine Webb and dancing with Julie Hood,

The mens Purpose Driven Pint at the Dacre Arms has also gone from strength to strength with 18 guys having come along to our meetings.. Our discussions are varied and lively, just recently we have debated sectarianism, Osama Bin Ladens death, the role of women in society, role models, class system in the uk (with the guys acting out the famous John Cleese and 2 Ronnies  sketch in the pub,) the Japanese disaster, mens health…The Dacre always provides us with masses of chips and either pizzas, battered chicken, scampi, sausages etc etc. The good food and beer always helps the discussion along. I seem to have a pre meeting meeting with some of the regulars before anyone arrives, and also a post meeting meeting with the regulars who are still around after the guys have gone home. We also had a go karting event at the beginning of June. 13 of us from PDP and Beverley Community Church hurtling around the track in East Hull. It was a great afternoon. A series of heats and then a winners final and a losers final of 15 laps each. The winner of the afternoon was Mike Bickerton, (Link worship leader,) 2nd : Sean Clark (leader Beverley Community church,) 3rd : Richard Bradbury, (senior leader Beverley Community Church.) I don’t know what happened, but a red mist seemed to come acoss everyones eyes when they sat in the karts…….every man for himself as all brotherly love seemed to disappear in the squeal of rubber on track and revving engines. Needless to say I let everyone else win, which I thought was only appropriate for the person who organised it………….I felt sick until I went to bed, a horrible horrible sea sickness. The winners received gold, silver and bronze go kart model trophies which are all in pride of place in their repective homes!!! Photographs of the afternoon are in the multimedia section of the site.

I have also been on a mens weekend up at Wyedale on the North York’ moors. A time of chillin’ with the guys and receiving some great teaching. ( pictures also now in the multimedia section of the site.)

We are having a great time at church as well, fantastic music and praise and we are continuing our series on the Sermon on the Mount which has kept us occupied now since September.