Last night’s ‘Churches Together’ meeting, attended by members of Goldthorpe Parish Church, Goldthorpe Salvation Army, Furlong Road Methodist Church and Great Houghton Methodist Church as well as GPCC members, looked at the topic of mission and how whole-life discipleship is needed if we are to fulfil Jesus’s Great Commission in Matt 28:18-20. We need to see that there is no such thing as a sacred/ secular divide, for as Mark Greene explains in this DVD clip, God is interested in every part of our lives and our influence in society is not restricted to the times we spend together in church gatherings or doing church events.

Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is like a woman baking bread, using yeast. (Matt 13:33) Dave kindly baked two loaves for us, made with exactly the same ingredients except one used yeast and one didn’t. One was flat; the other, more than three times the size of the unleavened loaf. As God works in us by His Spirit to motivate, demonstrate love and inspire creative ways to serve Him, our influence can be transformation to our local communities. The same power which raised Christ from the dead works in us too! (Eph 1:19-21)

We spent time identifying our spheres of contact, those places where we go regularly and meet people, sometimes briefly, sometimes regularly (as in the context of work or neighbours, for example) and realising that we can pray for these people and for opportunities to be Christ to them. We also enjoyed an activity involving jigsaws, when we realised that if any of the pieces are missing, the picture will be incomplete… just as we are all needed in God’s service for His mission to be completed.

Here are the completed jigsaws:

We concluded the service by sharing Holy Communion together, celebrating Christ’s death and resurrection and sharing in this act of remembrance together as a sign of our unity. Christ’s power, available to us through this sacrament, is able to transform us and make us salt and light in our community and we pray God will use each one of us to make disciples.

After the service, we enjoyed good food as always – many thanks to all who provided refreshments for us to enjoy!

Don’t forget the ‘Churches Together’ meeting this Saturday evening, starting at our church at 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served after the meeting. These meetings are a great opportunity to meet Christians from other local churches and to explore the many different strands of Christianity as well as showing us the common purposes of our faith: growing in grace and our knowledge of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and witnessing to His transforming power and unifying love. Tonight we’ll be looking at whole-life discipleship: how being a Christian affects every area of our lives and how we can be salt and light in our local communities.

The next ‘Churches Together’ meeting will be a joint community carol service at the parish church on Saturday 6th December, starting at 6 p.m. This will be a great time of witness and fellowship, so put this date in your diaries as well!

Other events where you can join with other Christians include the BigChurchNightIn which will be at Huddersfield Christian Fellowship (Cathedral House) on Saturday 15th November featuring worship led by Rend Collective and Phil Wickham. Doors open at 6.30 p.m. for a 7.30 p.m. start. If you want to know more about this, watch the promotional video here. Tickets cost £15 for this event and can be ordered online here.

October promises to be a good month for new worship albums! Chris Tomlin’s new album ‘Love Ran Red’ is released at the end of October and here’s a preview of one of the songs called ‘Jesus Loves Me‘:

‘Jesus, He loves me, He loves me, He is for me. He holds the stars and He holds my heart with healing hands that bear the scars.’

We need constantly to dwell on the reality of the cross and all it shows us of God’s love for us. The title song Love Ran Red (At the Cross) continues this theme:

‘There’s a place where mercy reigns and never dies,
There’s a place where streams of grace flow deep and wide.
Where all the love I’ve ever found,
Comes like a flood,
Comes flowing down.’

October also sees the release of Aaron Shust’s Christmas album ‘Unto Us‘, recorded in the Czech Republic with the Prague Symphony Orchestra, and Worship Central complete the trio with the release of their live album ‘Set Apart’ on 26th October. Their first single ‘The Way‘ can be heard here.

I need to start saving…!

We also had another birthday to celebrate at the weekend:

It’s funny how themes recur in our lines and how we find God saying the same thing to us more than once (largely because we are dull of hearing and even duller of heart, I expect.)

Over two years ago, I wrote a post called ‘Bass lines. I’d just attended a marvellous concert by ‘The King’s Singers’ and had been pondering how all those beautiful harmonies blend together to form a piece of music that is sublime to listen to. I’d also realised that life inevitably involves what to us seems like dull repetition (aka the bass line of most pieces of music) which actually is just as important to life as those soaring melodies.

The daughter of a friend of mine has just written an article for Open Doors Youth (you can read it here.) Nell plays the trumpet and she has a friend who is a cellist. Their opinions on a certain piece of music (Pachelbel’s Canon, one of my favourites too!) differed, largely because the cellist plays eight repeating notes throughout the entire piece and was therefore bored by it!

She talks about contentment being the ‘bass line’ of the Christian life, saying ‘And so, stop, think for a minute, and listen to the bass line of your life. Strain your ears past the melody of your day to day emotions, and listen to what underpins all that you do. If the melody were to change, or to stop completely, would the bass line still be music to your ears? Would you still want to listen to the song of your life, even if the embellishments quieted and the excitement stopped? If your bass line springs from the One who brings peace and fulfilment to all who know Him, then it will continue even when any other music fades. And that is true contentment.’

Many of us prefer melodies, with their beautiful variations, interesting intervals and singable tunes. We prefer life to be exciting, interesting, entertaining and diverse. We think of the bass line as boring, repetitive, mundane and humdrum and we hate it when our lives are like this. But God weaves both bass lines and melodies together to make a richer whole and in the same way He works every aspect of our lives into a whole which can glorify Him. Whether we’re on the mountain top or in the valley, experiencing dazzling visions of God or feeling bereft of His presence, He is there, underpinning our lives, working faithfulness, patience, endurance and contentment into us.

Dave spoke from John 8:48-59 on the deity and pre-incarnate nature of Christ. The difference between orthodox faith and cults or between Christianity and other religions has always been focussed on the person of Jesus Christ. Other monotheistic religions do not understand how Christians believe in one God in Three Persons: Father, Son and Spirit. Clearly, the Jews of Jesus’s time also struggled to understand this and He was crucified because they asserted that He claimed to be God (which was blasphemous in their eyes.)

Jesus often engaged in debate with the Pharisees who were astounded at His words. By referring to the divine name ‘I am’ (the name by which God revealed Himself to Moses in Exodus 3), Jesus showed that His existence did not begin with His birth at Bethlehem. Rather, He knew glory with the Father before the world began (John 17:5) and was loved by God before the creation of the world. (John 17:24) John 1:1-3 makes it clear that Jesus is the creator of the world and the Word of God, co-eternal with the Father, without beginning or ending of days. 2 Cor 8:9 reminds us that He exchanged all the riches of heaven for poverty on earth: He knew the riches of love, fellowship, harmony and immeasurable resources, but chose to take on human flesh so that He could save us from our sins. He did not cease to be God when He took on flesh, but the Incarnation was the only way that man could be saved:

‘He laid aside; and here with us to be,
Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,
And chose with us a darksom House of mortal Clay.’ (John Milton)

Christ appeared in theophanies in the Old Testament (eg at the burning bush) and there seems to be some reference to this in the passage in John 8, for God’s promises to Abraham found their fulfilment in Jesus. Heb 2:14-15 shows us why angels could not bring our salvation. Instead, Jesus shared in our humanity in order to bring salvation to us, being both God and Man, truly the means of our salvation!