Holmstead Manor

I hope you all got a lot out of our weekend away together. It was great learning about God the father, the son and the holy spirit, as well as being together building friendships!

As far as making a video of the weekend, I was not well while I was there and so have a truly pitiful collection of photos and no videos, therefore any video I put together is not going to do the weekend justice! I'm sorry, I feel like I've failed you but I promise more videos will be made of future events!!

Sunday 4th October

Nicely following on from the last post, Andy Hickford (a guest speaker from Maybridge Community Church) spoke this morning about the church. Having said that we must 'be the church', now I can elaborate - using Andy's talk - on what the church actually is!

The church...

• is a people who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
• is a worldwide community
• is in the past, present and future
• belongs to Jesus
• will always triumph

He also gave us some purposes that the church is working to fulfil...

• a ministry to God through worship
• a ministry to believers through discipleship
• a ministry to the world = the mission of God!

Andy left us with this thought: "Church is not an ideal that we have to realise. It is a reality in Christ in which we have been called to live!" AMEN

Be who you are called to be!

Colin said in his preach on 6th September: "God blesses us so that we can bless the world" So lets be the church and pour out the blessings God has given us into the world.

Sunday 23rd August

Today, Pete preached on Daniel 8 and using prophetic gifting (this was something that everyone got fired up for at Newday) - one thing that he stressed was the importance of spending time with God. If you read through Daniel you'll get the story of a man who was dedicated to spending time alone with God. We want to be a generation who are shaped and encouraged by God and much of this will happen through prophetic gifting, not just from leaders but from among the youth as well! I would encourage us to set aside time to spend on developing the prophetic by getting before God - lets be a youth group that listens to God and acts on his word.

for teaching on the prophetic listen to Simon Virgo at Newday and Pete will be starting a course soon on prophetic gifting.

Newday 09

The talks from this year are now online at www.newday.xtn.org