Let me say this up front: I like blogs. I read some blogs faithfully almost every day. I read some others every now and then, when I remember how awesome they are.
And I actually like blogging.
As a teenager I used to keep a diary that my best friend used to read; and I'd read hers. I guess that was as close to blogging as we could get in the late 70's and early 80's. But then life happened, and I grew busy, and never went back to writing unless I had to.
The internet kind of re-started this longing to write down things that were important to me - so every now and then I write a new blog post, and then I forget about blogging for a few months, or a year :-(
So if you were wondering if I'm still around, well, I am. And although I haven't written anything new on my blog, things have been very interesting - exciting, maybe - this past year.
First, the teens that were hanging out in front of the church doors last year grew into a nice youth club. They are great kids, it is a joy to see how they are maturing, and building healthy relationships, and developing their spiritual life.
I had the privilege of helping a few homeless people get off the streets. One of them is now a steady part of a faith community, and has been asking me lately about being baptised. Seeing transformed lives like his is what makes being a pastor worthwhile.
Speaking of baptism, two weeks ago we had 5 people baptised in our church. They came to the UK as refugees from Iran; and the Lord turned their personal tragedy into a road to Him. They came to the Lord through the testimony of another Iranian Christian, and are part of another church in town; they were baptised in our church just because their building doesn't have a baptistry. But it was great to be with them on such a special day.
We went through an interesting adventure with our building. Our church was built in stages; the first hall was built in 1864, and it's a typical non-conformist hall, just a rectangular space with nice arched windows but nothing out of the ordinary as far as architecture is concerned. It was designed to seat 150, but that was with people squeezed together on narrow pews. We'd find it hard to fit more than 100 people in there now.
Then they built the school house in the 1870's, which includes an assembly hall that now can seat some 50 people. This is where the church used to meet when I joined Ford. And finally, in 1899, they built the 'top hall', which was designed for 400 people. The church had grown to 400 people by that time, and stayed at around those levels up to the 1940's. Then it all went downhill, to being almost closed down a few years ago.
So last year we refurbished the lower hall, and we use it now as a meeting and multipurpose hall. But the top hall has been sitting empty for years, and some years back the church decided to sell it. It's been on the market twice, and both times it failed to sell. Last time was in these last few months.
But as we went through the process of selling it - and as we went through the changes that happened in our church over the last few months - it slowly dawned on us that we shouldn't sell it after all. We need this building. Our outreach is slowly bringing more and more people in contact with the church, and by now we need a space set apart for all sorts of community events.
So the vision is to turn the top hall into a community space; it will be open to people, families and community groups in Ford, but it will also be a community cafe run by the church, with a prayer room open to all, a couple of small apartments to be rented out in order to provide funding for the project, and a large multi-purpose space. It will cost between £150,000 and £200,000. Which we don't have.
It's been a while since my faith has been exercised like that, but I believe that we are on the right track with this. Different people came up with this same vision, independent of each other. Even the teens in the youth group had an evening discussing the needs in our community and what we can do about it - and they came up with more or less the vision I had. Others in the church went the same way; and when I presented this to the church, it just sort of clicked.
So we don't have the money; I've been there before. The Lord, our Daddy, owns the Universe and more. He has the means. We just need to do our part; for the rest, we're praying for a miracle. Or rather, for a whole bunch of miracles.
And finally, this years has brought an amazing movement of God in the church in Plymouth. It started with a Baptist pastor from Reading, coming to Plymouth to say that the Lord spoke to him about a coming renewal in the church - starting here. It may sound like just wishful thinking, except that a lot of other people have been coming to this city and saying the same thing - before and after this man. And then, pastors and leaders from different churches began to meet together to pray. Another group, also people from all over the city, from different traditions and denominations, meet together regularly for prayer. We had the 10 days of prayer in the spring, and 40 days of prayer at the end of the summer. Now, an Anglican vicar, a Baptist pastor and a Charismatic pastor are working together to organise a city-wide 40 days of prayer event. A lot of other people are involved in this. We may not be an army yet, but the bones are moving and there is a rattling sound in the desert.
What will next year bring? I don't know, but these are exciting times.
