How We Got Here

Yesterday morning’s sermon looked at a maths equation:
(a + y)(p + y) + g = s

My heart sank when I heard the equation, wondering what on earth was coming next! But as we looked at Psalm 34, the solution (s) was not as hard as I’d feared…

We were encouraged that active participation in life, and in church life in particular, needs to be allied to God if it is to be meaningful and to give us the solution to life. The equation, when the brackets are removed, looks like this:

ap + ay + py +y2 + g = s

In other words, we (the ‘y’ stands for ‘you’) need to be both active and participating, but on its own, that’s not enough – we need to have God’s involvement in our active participation too.

It seems I can’t escape maths wherever I go!

The finishing touches are being put to the building:

The signs acknowledging the grant from Coalfields’ Regeneration Trust:

A flower display in the entrance:

The card-holder in place:

The singers’ monitor in place:

Three weeks to go to the Open Day!

Milestones are stone posts placed at the side of the road to mark distances. Stepping stones are placed in shallow water to help people cross the water. Both can be important steps on a journey.

My favourite stepping stones are at Bolton Abbey in North Yorkshire. These are in very shallow water and it’s relatively easy to cross the River Wharfe using them, but there are a few which are spaced out just far enough for the stride to be a challenge.

The journey of faith that we’re on involves some relatively easy steps and some steps which are very challenging to us! I have been thinking about the milestones (markers) and the stepping stones we’ve witnessed on this journey to holding our first service in the new building yesterday.

St Mark’s closed as a Methodist church on 31st August 2008. That was the visible start of our journey (the dream started well before that.) The first significant milestone or marker was receiving the particulars of the building in November 2008. We met with Coalfields’ Regeneration Trust in December 2008. The bid for the grant was written in January 2009.

15th January 2009 was a really important milestone for the church. At a prayer meeting, we met to pray over the CRT application and decide exactly what our bid for the building would be, since sealed bids had been invited by the Methodist church. The suggestion that we should seek to offer all we had as a church was put forward with much trepidation. That was a very risky decision and one that made the next step seem a very long stride.

At that meeting, as we prayed over the application as Hezekiah did, a word was brought about surfers and we were told that the ‘first past the post would not be the ultimate winner.’ That word sustained us through the confusion of the grant being confirmed to us but us being told by the Methodists that the bid was not high enough.

At the end of March 2009, the grant was returned to CRT and the dream lay at our feet. We were unable to do anything except pray.

April, May, June passed. It seemed we were marking time, going along a road without any significant scenery or places of interest to note! Then, in July 2009, we were approached by the Methodist church, asking if we were still interested in purchasing the building, as the deal with the property developer had fallen through. The first past the post was not the ultimate winner.

We re-applied for the CRT grant. Amazingly, we did not have to re-write the application and by September 2009 the grant had been given to us again. We were hopeful about moving in to the building by the end of the year. Yet it was not to be. The stepping stones seemed to be getting further apart. There was so much red tape to cut through, so many legal obstacles thrown our way, that it felt like we were in a steeplechase!

2009 faded into 2010 and the snow came. That week, our Treasurer was on holiday, but the weather was so bad that he came home early, to find letters from our solicitor finally moving things on. Even then, it took another three weeks and several stalled dates for us to exchange contracts on 12th February 2010. By the time the text came through to me confirming that St Mark’s really was ours, I was almost unable to get excited about it, because it seemed so unreal.

There have been so many stepping stones and milestones to that point, and since then so many events chronicled here as we reached the milestone of our first service in the newly refurbished Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church. But this is not the end of the journey.

What milestones and stepping stones lie ahead? Only God knows, but we know He is able to keep us from falling into the water!

Today was the first time we met in Market Street, but it was reassuring, perhaps, to see that some traditions don’t change. In true family style, we celebrate birthdays and this week there were four to celebrate. Each person comes to stand on the ‘birthday box’ and gets to wear the ‘birthday hat’ whilst we sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to them.

The children also had a great time in the new children’s room:

And as always, we spent time worshipping and praising the God who has made all this possible:

Last Sunday was the last meeting held at Beever Street. This Sunday, 6th June 2010, was the first meeting held in the new building on Market Street.

It was the anniversary of D-day in 1944, and it was certainly D-day for the church! After years of dreaming, praying, hoping, fasting, giving, waiting and working, Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church opened a new chapter in the story of God’s work in Goldthorpe.

The morning’s sermon was from Hebrews 12:1-3, looking at the race set before us, with a reminder that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses cheering us on and that we have a great example in Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

This evening’s sermon was from Genesis 26, looking at the topic of wells and reminding us that whilst we drink from the wells dug by our forefathers, we need to dig our own wells and move on in God, understanding that our arrival in a new building is not the end of the story. There is still much to be done!

And, like last week, we closed the meeting with a photograph of all those present for the archives :