Huddersfield Calling! Autumn 2011 Hope Church Planting Prayer News and Needs

Dear Praying Friends,

‘Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7.12)

…and He most certainly has! Since we wrote last, a busy summer has turned into an equally hectic Autumn. God’s grace has been, quite simply, magnificent, and it’s a joy to honour all that He’s doing with the Allens and Hope Church.

Sundays are obviously the focus of our work and worship. Since September we’ve been meeting in Brian Jackson House in the middle of town. This is an excellent venue, with a superb central position, and the large ground floor room we use has excellent facilities for all aspects of our work. Our numbers have crept to approximately fifty in the morning, and forty in the evening, including a couple of new families who we’re all enjoying getting to know.

On Sunday evenings this term we’ve been trialling Taste & See, a ministry which involves a time of praise and preaching, then a simple meal which is followed by Bible study groups and then more fellowship. The reception so far has been excellent, so we’ll press on for the next couple of terms and take stock. We also meet on Wednesdays, where there is a great spirit of serious prayer.

Our real joy is still the folk the Lord is gathering. The majority of our number are committed Christians, though we’re loving having some seekers each week, and we’re slowly making inroads with the students. We have twenty five members (including Maisy and Ezra as Junior Members), and ten or so are exploring membership. The other Sunday we had an open house, which was a fabulous time of friendship and much laughter.

It seems that our Apprentices, Graham and Chris, have been with us for an age now, and they’re both making a huge contribution. They’re godly, wise, and very committed, and are taking forward work with students and evangelism, as well as lending a hand in many other things. Graham is teaching part-time alongside his work with us, and is studying on the Christian Ministry Training Course, on which I’m a tutor. Chris is with us for at least a year (he was working with UCCF in the town last year), and already I can barely imagine the thought of working without either of them.

Meanwhile, the children are going great guns at their schools (3 different ones!). Each is enjoying school in different ways. I think all are missing London friends, and are finding it slow-going developing really good friendships here. Still, they’re full of courage and no little faith as they continue to adjust in this new environment. Sam’s asthma has been troubling him a lot the last few months, and we continue to work with the Consultant on its best treatment. All of the children are predictably active doing different things, and it’s often hard working at home after school with the noise of three different instruments being practiced, or shooing a child away who causally walks into my study with a chicken tucked under one arm!

Sarah’s covering a maternity leave for two terms part-time, at Maisy and Ezra’s High School. She’s enjoying the stretch, but doesn’t plan to try and take it further beyond Easter.

Here are three very specific prayer updates: thankyou for your prayers relating to the Christian Bookshop in town. We’re so hungry to see this venue used as a centre for the best in Christian resources, as well as a base for discipleship and evangelism. We’re exploring a major refit and restock with the manager in order to further these goals. Do please pray on. Secondly, thanks for your prayers for the children’s summer camps. The oldest three who went had heaps of fun, and very spiritually enriching times. Thirdly, there was a wonderful resolution to my bike theft: following a quite reasonable insurance payout, and an uber-generous gift from a friend, I’m now back on the road in style!

Prayer Points:-

I wonder if I could give you a point a day, as perhaps an easy way to add the Allens and Hope to your prayers?

Sunday – Hope. Please remember our worship and meetings, that they would be full of Christ and His Cross, and so, full of joy and rich spiritual life for many.

Monday – Godliness. This term Sarah and I are moving into our 40s, and so are embarking on what is a decade for many of spiritual drift! Please pray that the Lord would fill us daily with His Holy Spirit, that we would grow in zeal and holiness, and in love with the Lord, each other, our children, friends, and the lost.

Tuesday - The Children need our prayers continually. Please pray that they would be kept from the Evil One in their schools, and that they would be encouraged as they look to Jesus. Pray on, too, for good friends, and for Christian ones, too.

Wednesday –Spiritual Growth in Hope. Pray that we would be people of the Word, Prayer and Service, and so, be overflowing with grace. Everything else is secondary.

Thursday – Evangelism. Please remember Graham leading the Evangelism Team, and our work of sharing the Gospel as Christmas approaches. We’ve got a couple of town-centre initiatives planned. We long to see people saved. Remember the Bookshop as a potential base for outreach longer-term.

Friday – Students. We’re delighted that a few students have definitely made their home with us, and are growing spiritually. Please pray that God would give us favour as we reach out to the University.

Saturday - Finance. We’ve had a couple of pledges for several thousand pounds each from two Christian charities. We’re so grateful, but with increased financial commitments in this excitingly expanding work, costs will increase accordingly. Please pray for the resources we need to do the work to God’s glory.

Thankyou all for your terrific loyalty in prayer, and support on so many levels. Please do keep in touch with us.

P.S. Did you know? I send out a weekly Hope Church Flier by email. If you don’t receive this, but would like to, just drop me a line.

Hope for Uncle John

A couple of months ago Uncle John asked for an interview on Hope Church. That wasn't the dying wish of John Stott, but a request from the other Uncle, John Benton, Polymath, Pastor Longissimus of Chertsey Street Baptist Church, and Editor of Evangelicals Now. Who was I not to oblige?

It's in November's issue, and you can now access it here.

The Needle's Eye

On Sunday morning we were thinking about our treasures. The rich young ruler, whose encounter with Jesus in recorded in Mark 10.17-31, shows the demands of Jesus that we be ready to surrender our wealth, to be 'downwardly mobile', and to enrich others. Would this man do what to all the world looked like madness, and walk away from career and comforts to follow Jesus? In the evening we looked at Genesis 22, the heart-searing call of God to Abraham to surrender his treasure, his only, dearly loved son, Isaac. Could he trust God enough with the joy of his heart? And could he truly believe that, through this appalling sacrifice, God really was good, and could alone be the treasure of his heart?

Both scenarios call for a faith in God which naturally we are light-years away from. We don't want to surrender our dearest riches, be they family, wealth, or whatever else we hold close. We want to keep them, and guard them, away from the dangers of what man might do to them. Or the dangers of what God might do.

Would you want to give up your riches so that you found yourself far less well-off than you currently are, refocusing your whole life and loves so that others might become truly rich as you learn to give up your comforts for them? Would you want to see your own child off to the pain and sacrifice of mission, to live with hardship and danger, called to sacrifice daily for their faith, maybe with the risk of paying the ultimate price because of their faith in God? Would you ever dare cast yourself on God so completely that you not only contemplate, but actually embrace, the radical life of cross-bearing with all that that may bring?

Three encouragements for all of us as we struggle to live as Jesus calls us to:

1. God gave His best

God did. God the Father took His Son, His only Son, Jesus, His heart's delight, and gave Him up to the Cross. He did not spare His own Son (Ro. 8.32, clearly echoing Abraham's sacrifice). His gift of Jesus to us guarantees His total, unconditional and lavish grace to us, His dearly loved children through Christ. God gave His best, and continues to give His best love to us in Jesus every day. Our confidence in Him can be total. And so can our commitment to His ways.

2. The Son's self-giving is the pattern of our self-giving

There are two rich young rulers in Mark 10. One who left Jesus sad, because he had great wealth, which had stolen his heart. The other one is Jesus Himself. He gave up His riches and rule as He took flesh and entered our humanity. He gave up the promise of His young life as He went to the Cross. He is the true man, whose greatness in sacrifice wins our salvation and patterns our discipleship. 'For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that thought He was rich, yet for your sake His became poor, so that you, through His poverty, might become rich' (2 Corinthians 8.9). To be enriched by Him means to live enriching others (compare 2 Corinthians 6.10).

3. With God all things are possible

God the Holy Spirit unlocks greedy hearts, breaks sinful, slavish addictions, and opens grasping hands to make them generous. He gifts faith in the first place, to make us leave our worthless treasures and to come to Christ, the pearl of greatest price and beauty. God the Holy Spirit kindles the fire of sacrifice in our hearts. The same Spirit Who shows us how rich we are in Christ gives us the crowning joy we experience as we give away, safe in the knowledge that real life and wealth are safe in heaven.

So, trust Him. Trust God, as you follow what is sometimes His hard Providence. Trust the Spirit's promptings, to go without, get rid, give up and offer to others what we never needed in the first place, all to the honour of Christ. Then you will have treasure in Heaven.

Christ's Duty

Much is written on the cross and on the doctrine of the atonement today, and there are some fine books around (amongst the dull and the downright heretical). I’m never short of book recommendations on these great themes. But if I had to recommend just one to anyone who was seriously interested in understanding and living close to the cross, I wouldn’t hesitate. It would be Hugh Martin’s The Atonement (1880).

The brilliance of Martin’s book is its clear and compelling logic, as well as the freshness of his approach in dealing with the Atonement. The main premise of the book is that, in order to have a biblical understanding of the atoning work of Christ, we need to understand that the primary office of Christ is His Priesthood. Jesus was never a great Prophet or King, who also was able to deal with sin and bring reconciliation between God and humanity; instead, He is foremost our Priest, and, in fact, it is only by virtue of His finished work as Priest that Christ is our Prophet, authorised to speak the Word of God to us, and enthroned in Heaven to be our King.

Having made this case, Martin is then able to assert how we should then seek to understand the cross. By working within the categories of biblical thought regarding priestly sacrifice, Martin then reasons that Christ’s death on the Cross is a substitutionary and propitiatory sacrifice offered for the sins of His people. In our day of conflicting and confused ‘versions’ of understanding the Cross, Martin shows how seeing the death of Christ in any way other than as an atoning sacrifice is bad, and unbiblical, theology.

The following gives something of the flavour and force of Martin’s work. It really is theology on fire, biblical, deductive, soul-searching and worshipful:

‘The Cross itself is glorious; not from the subsequent resurrection and enthronement, but glorious from itself. It is itself a chariot of triumph. There is more agency and power in Christ’s cross, than in all His work as Creator of the Universe. There is as much spiritual gory in the Cross of Calvary, as in the throne of the Lamb in heaven. Christ crucified is – not after, but in being crucified – the Power of God. And He is the power of God, because He is the Priest of God. It is His priestly duty to die – a duty unparalleled and unapproachable. He falters not in the discharge of it. Official agency is in His sacrificial priestly death. “He offered Himself.” “He loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.”’

Hugh Martin, The Atonement, p.75

Mean Promises

'Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honour, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss; he promises life, and pays with death. But God pays as he promises; all his payments are made in pure gold.'

Thomas Bolton