Garry spoke at our AGM about the need for ongoing development in our individual and corporate lives, looking especially at 3 areas:

1. prayer

2. what makes us distinctively Pentecostal

3. evangelism

In our Bible studies on the book of Acts, we have been seeing how these three strands work together to enable church growth. The early disciples were revolutionised by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, and we need this outpouring on us too if we are to see the signs and wonders which enabled people to see and begin to understand God’s miraculous power among them. They were devoted to prayer and to each other and sought to speak about Jesus everywhere they went. We need to be people who are changed by the Holy Spirit, fired up and sent out by Him into our workplaces, neighbourhoods and communities with the good news of Jesus Christ. Nothing less will change our nation and bring growth to our church.

It’s a privilege to be able to work with other local churches in our area and at the AGM, we reviewed all that has been going on with this vibrant network.

Prayer Meetings

We hold a ‘Churches Together’ prayer meeting once a month. The next prayer meeting is this Wednesday (17th August) at 10.30 a.m. at Sacred Heart RC Church. Please pray for local ministers, who are often looking after more than one church:

• Father Carl Schaefer (Goldthorpe Parish Church, St Andrew’s in Bolton-on-Dearne and Hickleton church)

• Father Declan (Sacred Heart RC Church, also working in Hoyland and Wombwell)

• St Helen’s in Thurnscoe (currently without a minister, with Fiona Kouble and David Hildred helping with the church)

• Wayne Ashton (Furlong Road Methodist Church, along with 2 other churches)

• Alison Sykes (Salvation Army)

Fun Days

Our fun days are a form of outreach, where we combine crafts, games and refreshments with a Christian message (e.g. Pentecost, Easter, Christmas.) We seek to find innovative ways to reach our community, such as the Good Friday Church Crawl in 2018 which looked at how different denominations celebrate Easter and the Advent Sheep Trail where we placed knitted sheep in local shops and encouraged children to find the names of the sheep and bring their responses to a joint service.

We have also been privileged to work with the Dearne Area Team and other organisations on Summer Fun Days in 2018 and will again be involved in these this summer, with a Superhero Party being held at GPCC on 14th August.

4FrontTheatre

One of the most exciting ventures for local churches has been inviting professional theatre company 4FrontTheatre to our area to perform Christian shows in our local primary schools and to our local community. In November 2018, Goldthorpe schools were treated to ‘Job & Jingle’, with 115 people attending the evening show at GPCC. This June, schools in Thurnscoe and Bolton-on-Dearne have seen ‘Fisherman’s Tail’, with 83 people attending the evening show at St Helen’s. We are looking forward to the team returning on 25th November with their new Christmas show, ‘Back In Time For Christmas’. This has strengthened the churches’ relationships with local schools, enabling us to take assemblies more frequently.

Looking ahead, we have invited ‘The Message Bus’ to our area on Wednesday 30th October and will be holding a Nativity trail in local shops in November (similar to the sheep trail, but with knitted Nativity figures), with a joint service being held on 14th December – so lots more to come!

Yesterday at our AGM, we looked back at some of the things the church has been involved with over the past 18 months. This included our Parent & Toddler group (which has seen an increase in babies and toddlers attending and which has had the benefit of new equipment, thanks to a gift from Thurnscoe Pentecostal Church) and our youth club (which meets on Monday evenings and regularly has about 25 people aged between 5 and 13 years attending.) We are grateful for these opportunities to reach out to our local community and for the church members who willingly give up their time to help. We are also grateful to the Family Centre staff who help with crafts at the Parent & Toddler group.

Sadly, the closure of the market has affected numbers attending our Coffee morning on Saturdays quite drastically and so reluctantly we have decided to close the coffee morning. We will continue to hold the coffee morning on 20th and 27th July, but there will be no coffee morning after this. Hopefully we can still host the Macmillan Coffee Morning on 28th September.

We continue to meet once a month at Cherry Tree Court (including this morning!) and are grateful for the opportunity to meet there and interact with residents.

We are also privileged to be able to support the Salvation Army food bank each month. Alison’s report highlighted the difficulties caused to local residents by the roll-out of Universal Credit, which takes 6 weeks to set up and leaves residents without any finances at all for this period. The Salvation Army food bank is also supported by local shops as well as local churches and the church supports working families once a month. 15 volunteers help regularly at the church and some have recently found jobs in the area, which is a real blessing.

In addition, the church holds meetings twice on Sundays and holds a midweek meeting on Thursday evenings, and has also been involved in many outreach events with ‘Churches Together’, men’s fellowship meetings and has hosted two children’s film nights this year. We seek to be with God in the community and with God for the community and are looking to grow and develop in different areas. It’s an exciting time to be part of God’s kingdom.

‘Conversion’ is described as ‘the process of changing or causing something to change from one form to another.’ In spiritual language, the word describes what happens when a person’s religious beliefs are changed and, for example, the person becomes a Christian. The process can happen quickly but often involves a period of time and several stages.

In Acts 28, we read of Paul’s conversation with people even while imprisoned and stages in conversion are described when people have the opportunity to ‘see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn and be healed.’ (Acts 28:27, quoting Isaiah 6:9, 10, a passage to which Jesus also referred on occasions.)

Conversion, therefore, seems to involve 4 stages:

1. Seeing – in the book of Acts, we often read of miraculous signs and wonders which seemed to act as the ‘gateway’ or ‘opening’ in the apostles’ evangelism. Healings or mirauclous signs not as Paul not being affected by a snake’s bit opened people’s eyes to the fact these people had a message worth listening to. We need to pray these signs and wonders will be seen in our evangelism too.

2. Hearing– the miraculous signs were explained by the apostles, who always brought the focus back to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. There is a place for preaching in evangelism. This can be one-to-one (Philip explaining the message of Isaiah to the Ethiopian, for example) or preaching to a crowd (as Peter and Paul frequently did), but the spoken word of proclamation is still necessary: how will people convert if they don’t hear the message? (Rom 10:14-15)

3. Understanding – understanding has to involve both the head and the heart. There is a place for rational explanation (apologetics) in our evangelism, but we need to understand that conversion involves the heart (emotions and will) as well as the head (reason and logic.) Conversion is a holistic process; if only one part is convinced, it’s more likely the person will not put down roots and may fall away.

4. Repentance – the final stage in conversion is when we trun away from our sin and turn back to God. This theme is stressed repeatedly in Acts and needs to be stressed emphatically today. We have to renounce our old ways of living and turn towards God so that times of refreshing may occur. When this happens, we become new creations in Christ. (2 Cor 5:17)

Don’t forget our AGM today (Saturday 13th July) at 4 p.m. It’s always good to look back at what God has been doing over the past 18 months (yes, we are a bit late holding the AGM!) and to see the ways He has blessed us! It’s also good to pray about what’s ahead and to be together as we look to the future.

Tomorrow (Sunday 14th July) we’re at Cherry Tree Court in the morning (10.30 a.m.) and will be holding a communion service in the evening at 6 p.m. at Market Street.

On Wednesday 17th July we have our ‘Churches Together’ prayer meeting at 10.30 a.m. at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church on Lockwood Road.

This is the last full week of term, so it will be the last youth club on Monday and Parent & Toddler group on Friday until September.

The fact that we are children of God means, in essence, that we are distinctively different. Fashion urges us to conform to the latest styles, but some people have the knack of looking different, no matter what the prevailing fashion gurus declare! They are quirky and dare to be different, where most of us spend our time trying to fit in and be like everyone else.

God wants His people to stand out, to be different, not to conform to the world around us (Rom 12:1-2). Christians are urged to be distinctively different – not in our fashion tastes, perhaps, but in our deameanour, attitudes and actions. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is perhaps our clearest picture of what this looks like.

So often, we can look like the world all around us. We may be like the Israelites who followed the practices of the nations around them (to their peril). (2 Kings 16:8) We imitate the values and actions of others, even when these are at direct odds with God’s word. (2 Kings 16:15) At times, we allow our worship of God to be mingled with our worship of other things (2 Kings 17:41).

Jesus urged us to live by kingdom standards, to live in a way that acts as salt to a godless society. (Matt 5:13-15) He wants His people to be distinctively different, to live out their birth! This is seen in 3 different areas:

1. our speech – saying kind and gentle things, speaking the truth in love, seeking to build people up, not tear them down, refusing to join in gossip and seeking to find positive things to say.

2. our attitudes – refusing to allow bitterness, envy, pride, unforgiveness and dog-eat-dog attitudes dominate our lives.

3. our actions – living out our faith in practical ways, seeking to reflect God’s nature in all we do.