A Church Where Love Is

It is a sad reflection that I hear far too often around the country comments about lovelessness within local churches.  So the idea of finding a church where love is would sound very attractive to many.  I wonder if you find your self thinking "If only!"  I am also delighted to say that I have had the joy of finding churches where love is and experiencing a little of the blessing.

How might you know that you had found a church where love is?  Here are some possibilities:

• It would be a church that treasures its more elderly members, providing transport for them, offering to take them out, visiting just so that you can spend some time together, and making sure that they are comfortable, adequately fed and coping with life and its challenges to the elderly.
• It would be a church where children find that adults are happy to listen to them and take genuine interest in what they have to say (and possibly laugh at their jokes); where children are given time, shown respect, are valued, and can confidently feel safe.
• It would be a church that smiles at the idiosyncrasies of others rather than complaining about them, possibly because they have learned that the faults they see in others are often to be seen in themselves!
• It would be a church where people often use the words "thank you" - for the little things; not just the big ones.  Where all who serve the congregation (whether from the pulpit or the dustbins or somewhere in between) are encouraged  in what they do,
• It would be a church where a stranger soon feels at home and will want to come again.
• It would be a church that practises being hospitable.
• It would be a church where people across gender and generations like to do things together.
• It would be a church where the preaching and teaching style feels humble and helpful rather than harmful and judgemental.
• It would be a church where people do not rush off as soon as the service is ended.
• It would be a church where Sundays are definitely not to be missed both because of what people can contribute to the blessing of others and because they feel it's where they belong.
• It would be a church that is slow to accuse and quick to forgive anyone who might inadvertently have caused an offence, and where everyone feels it essential that they do all they can to bring healing and restoration as soon as possible after hurtful incident.
• It would be a church where prayer is as natural as breathing.

Now that is a church that would be likely to attract others and could rightly be called Christian because it is Christ-like.  It would also be a church where the work of witness and evangelism is made easier because of the spiritual quality exhibited.

While it has indeed been my overwhelming joy to be part of such situations or to have ministered among them, I have also felt the cold chill where there is an atmosphere of spiritual superiority and judgementalism, where people seem to think themselves to be perfect and criticise others, where it feels cliquie and unwelcoming, where hurts are left untended, and people feel under-valued.  In other words places where love isn't.

The words of Paul in Colossians 1:4 have always stood out for me: "... the love you have for all God's people...".  This sounds so wonderfully inclusive.  No one was left out.  There are lots of references in the New Testament about loving one another (I counted 19 references) but this phrase in Colossians somehow seems to say more.  This love is all-embracing.  Now that's a church where love is.  Paul also gives us a clue as to how it is that they have such super relationships.  He tells us in chapter 1 verse 8 that this love comes from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  When writing to the Christians in Rome Paul writes "... the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us".

When I was still a young Christian I had a problem with a colleague who had a very destructive tongue and was highly critical of others.  Sitting under his ministry on one occasion I found myself resenting what I thought was a sermon targeted at me.  I silently told God all his dreadful faults, clearly thinking myself to be more perfect.  Suddenly, I felt that the Holy Spirit had withdrawn from me offended by what was in my heart at that moment.  Realising my poverty I silently cried to god, "Oh Lord, please take away this bitterness and baptise me with your love".  The next moment what I received was the baptism of the Holy Spirit, with what felt like fountains bursting within my innermost being.  I shook under the power of the Holy Spirit and had insufficient strength in my legs to stand for the closing hymn!  All I could do was pour out praise to God.

Where the Holy Spirit is there will always be love.  Perhaps it is also true that only where there is true love will God the Holy Spirit feel at home.  Will you say, "Let it start in me"?  Let's have churches where love is.

Let there be loved shared among us

Let there be love in our eyes

May now your love sweep this nation

Cause us, O Lord, to arise

Give us a fresh understanding 

of brotherly (sisterly) love that is real

Let there be love shared among us. Let there be love.

(Dave Bilborough. Copyright(c) 1979 Kinsway's Thankyou Music)

From the Diary

If you follow me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ruralbarry) you will know that I have had two great school assemblies this week.  Last week a highlight was teaching on the Safe & Sound Course at the William Booth College for Salvation Army  Among the cadets (officers in training) were some that had recently been featured on TV.  This was a really excellent group of 29 students who thoughtfully engaged in exploring theologically what true repentance and forgiveness is.  The whole day gave me a 'Wow'  feeling.  Please give thanks.

Last Saturday we held the second of our version of Messy Church at Yelvertoft.  Since we have no young families and young children it is a challenge to build this out of almost nothing.  But we have a good core team.  Despite clashing with a children's party and sleepover we had a good time.  We are learning as a team and the children are enjoying it.  This seemed proved on Tuesday when I went into the school for the assembly and was greeted with cries of "Yeah! It's Barry" etc!  Please give thanks.

Today it was my privilege to chair a meeting of the Churches Rural Group, a Coordinating Group of Churches Together in England.  As part of what we are doing is to explore the situation among rural churches in the UK to see if we are understanding the challenges faced by churches, their ministers or clergy, and whether they are responding to the needs and opportunities in mission in their local setting.  An appropriate response would be a strategy engaged upon to respond to those needs and opportunities.  I am running a similar piece of research at present through the Rural Evangelism Network.  Please pray.

Tomorrow I am meeting with friends in leadership of other rural mission agencies who meet periodically to encourage one another and explore areas of collaboration.  Please pray.

On Sunday 2nd February I will be leading the meeting at Goodwood Evangelical Church, Leicester. This is one of their periodic all-age meetings and I have been the guest speaker at these in the past. On this occasion we will be exploring what it means to be called to follow Jesus.  Please pray.

On Wednesday 5th I will be taking part in the Congregational Federation's Pastoral Care Board Meeting.  Significant responsibilities rest on the shoulders of the Board members and I value your prayers please.

Finally I have two people from our village congregation needing prayer.  Rob had an operation yesterday (28th January) to remove a fairly large tumour on his back near his spine.  Peter, our bubbling-over-with-Jesus 92 year old is currently in another hospital hight dependency unit.  In asking your prayers for Rob and Peter I also encourage your prayers for those in the UK affected by the severe flooding, including the farmers affected.  Please pray for the work of the Farming Community Network (formerly farm Crisis Network) and those engaging in this serious situation.

Thank you.

What do we mean by 'Believing'?

An evangelist is essentially a messenger of good news.   But is the telling all there is to it?  I was still in my teens when I felt God's call on my life as an evangelist.  Apart from the biblical accounts my examples at that time were the various missionaries whose biographies had been given to me with each successive Sunday School anniversary, the evangelists I encountered through monthly events called Hastings and District for Christ, George Verwer (founder of Operation Mobilisation) and, of course, Billy Graham.  What they all seemed to have in common was not just telling the story but encouraging people to make a positive response by receiving Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

When Jesus told Peter and Andrew that by following him they would become "fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19) he was talking to men who knew what fishing is about.  Fishing was not about merely influencing fish; it was about catching them.  More recently I have noticed that some who might have soft-pedalled the issue of encouraging a response have now started using the term "intentional evangelism".  This is a term I have used commonly and made clear in my analysis of evangelism into three stages.  My earliest experiences as a teenage evangelist were in tract distribution among seaside tourists, engaging in conversation with other teenagers in coffee bars and speaking at youth events.  While I was always ready to listen and have a respectful conversation I remember making clear that the listeners would inevitably make a response.  It would be either to welcome Christ or to reject him.

From 1964 to 1988 I was part of an evangelistic team and had a number of responsibilities as we conducted many evangelistic missions each year, mostly in rural settings.  One of my tasks was to encourage a response after the main evangelist had spoken.  I saw this as "drawing in the net"; it was the Holy Spirit who put the fish there.  So I sought, and still seek, to avoid emotional manipulation of any kind, but always to make it easy for someone to take that important step of faith.

In 1974 when there was a lot of fresh thinking about evangelism I remember an older and more experienced man at a conference for evangelists state that he felt that the 'Gift of an Evangelist' was seen in his ability to draw in the net.  He was implying that almost any Christian should be able to tell the story, but the ability to bring about a response was most effectively done by those whose gifting within the body of Christ was that of an evangelist.

The biblical record of such net drawing is quite limited.  On the day of Pentecost the crowd asked what they should do (Acts 2: 38-41), to which Peter called them to repent and be baptised.  A similar request came from the Philippian Jailer who wanted to know what he had to do to be saved (Acts 16: 30) to which Paul responded "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ..."

The language of response to the gospel has been expressed with various words such as repent, believe, commit, trust, receive, accept, etc.  On most occasions where I give such a call it will include the opportunity to say a brief silent prayer following phrase by phrase what I have prayed.  Typically evangelists in the past have then invited people to indicate that they prayed that prayer by raising their hands while others are bowed in prayer, or speaking to the evangelist or a counsellor afterwards, or picking up a response card, or inviting people to come forward publicly.  This last example was one we rarely used in village evangelism where the cultural context militated against a public show.

The Bible does not offer a template for response to the gospel or model wording.  We need to be careful that we don not develop an evangelistic culture which we anticipate is the right or even the only way for God to work to bring men and women to himself.  Personally I struggle a little with the word "believe" in this context.

The earliest evangelistic activity was targeted at Jews where the heart of the message involved a mental consent that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah or Christ. On his missionary journeys Paul always started by proclaiming Jesus as Messiah in the synagogues, but he also employed the concept of believing when speaking to gentiles (for example the Philippian Jailer).  But within the Greek culture of the day the word we have translated as "believe" implies trusting in and committing to.

My problem in the UK today is that when we use the word believe, the dominant concept is one of mental or intellectual assent.  Now I know that faith is fundamental and I also do not want to suggest that a response to the gospel should be 'mindless'.  But sometimes I wonder if using the expression "believe in Jesus" we are actually using jargon that might mean one thing to those of us who know him and have a biblical knowledge, but another thing for those whom we long to know him.

I suspect that 'trust' and 'commitment' carry a better understanding of an appropriate response in our culture.  So we might urge someone to trust that Jesus has taken their guilt and punishment by his death on the cross, and urge them to commit to following Jesus, making him Saviour and Lord of their lives.  Is there a danger in allowing people instead to infer that to become true Christians they have to be able to intellectually accept things that they might at that moment find unbelievable in the intellectual sense?

Those three stages of evangelism to which I referred earlier are (a) engaging with people, (b) telling the story, and (c) encouraging a response.  To do (a) and (b) but neglect to do (c) is, I suggest, like someone going fishing with a rod and line and bait but no hook.  But to an experienced fisherman what kind of bait and hook he or she uses will always depend on what kind of fish they are after.

It has been confidently asserted that one Christian in ten has the gift of an evangelist.  If we are not seeing evidence of a harvest in our churches what does this imply? We urgently need to discover, develop and deploy such people.  Evangelism can be carried out in many different ways in many different contexts, but all with the same aim, because that is what God intends.  Potential and embryonic evangelists in rural areas are likely to be both isolated and challenged by the social context of village life.  During 2014 I hope to offer more support advice and training in this area.  If I can be helpful to you or your church please let me know.  Whether or not you need such a service I hope that you will give me your support especially though prayer.

IMPORTANT: Did you receive last weekend's Praise & Prayer News on "Not settling for Normal"? We missed the usual response we  get from these emails.  If you did see it through an email please would you let me know at barry@ruralmissions.org.uk.  Thanks.

From the Diary:
Sunday 19th - Yelvertoft Congregational Church.  The morning meeting will be followed by lunch and an envisioning Church Meeting exploring where we believe God is leading us.
Monday 20th - Research into rural evangelism
Tuesday 21st - Gartree Prison Ministry
Wednesday 22nd - Teaching at the Salvation Army Training College, London, on Safeguarding and appropriate pastoral response to victims of abuse.
Thursday and Friday mostly writing and administration related to rural evangelism.
Special Note:  You may have read or heard on the news about the man from Market Harborough who died after saving his sons from drowning in the sea off Australia.  He and his family attended a local church and his parents are neighbours of one of our village church members.  Please pray for the Priestley family as we offer pastoral support at this tragic time.

Thank you.

Barry
You can find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ruralbarry
Main website: www.ruralmissionsolutions.org.uk

Don't Settle for Normal

Recently one of the men in a prison where I do some of my work enquired if everything at the church was "OK as normal".  I am always slightly uncomfortable about the word 'normal' being associated with church or anything else related to our journey with God.  Visitors to our church sometimes ask if their experience with us is normal for a Congregational church.  Is your experience on a Sunday normal?

In my first church my father served as an elder and for a while as Church Secretary.  He had a dreadful habit when giving the weekly announcements (intimations for my Scottish readers) of saying, "There will be a meeting as usual this evening at 6.30 followed by the usual informal fellowship.  Next Tuesday the usual Prayer Meeting.  On Wednesday the Women's Fellowship as usual.  On Thursday we will have the usual Bible Study" and so on.  Always one to tease my dad, one Sunday as he walked forward to do his duty I invited the congregation to listen out for the word usual and cheer if he said it.  He struggled through bravely to the end and managed not to say the usual word until he was about to step off the platform and realised he had omitted one item, which - of course - he announced as 'usual'!  Loud cheers erupted from the congregation!  Poor dad!

The point is I don't want my life to be normal, nor my ministry to be normal, nor my Sundays at church to be normal - unless the normal experience is never normal. Have you ever wondered what life was like for the disciples during the three years they were on the road with Jesus.  The account in the gospels seems to suggest that any day anything could happen.  They might find a crowd of people eager to hear Jesus or a group of hostile Pharisees.  He brought peace where they expected riot and riot where they expected peace.  They might find themselves sharing in a miracle to feed a hungry crowd, or seeing a lame man walk, a blind man see or even a dead girl brought to life.  Things were hardly 'normal'.  Going on Mark's account of the ministry of Jesus it was all very dynamic.

But even when the followers of Jesus were first sent out on their own their experience wasn't what most people would think of as 'normal'. "Even the demons are subject to us..", they said.  And after the resurrection and ascension, going to a prayer meeting as normal a lame man was raised up and a near riot started.  Prayer meetings don't seem normal from what we read.  Being baptised with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost wasn't their normal experience.  Feeling the premises shake as they prayed can hardly be described as normal.  Hearing the person you were praying about and who was in prison knocking at your door  -  was that normal?  Seeing 3,000 people come to Christ and be baptised in one day wasn't normal.  Seeing a congregation suddenly receive an outpouring of the Holy Spirit while still in the middle of a sermon is probably not what we see as normal on a Sunday.

But wait a moment!  Perhaps that is what is normal, and what we experience is the abnormal.  I have been fascinated with the concept of revival all my Christian life and wonder if revival is what should be our normal experience.  Jesus promised, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within him." (John 7: 37-39).  During the Pentecostal Revivals of the first half of the 20th Century ECW Boulton, a faithful minister, wrote:

"Rivers" is thy promise, this shall be our plea.

Less than this can never meet our cry for thee.

Tired of lukewarm service and the loss it brings,

We would live entirely for eternal things.

When with joy we follow in Christ's triumph train,

And our lives are flooded with the Latter Rain,

Then the world around us shall the impact feel

Of a Church with vision. fired with holy zeal.

It has been my privilege to experience some exceptional times when the Holy Spirit has moved and we have felt his presence so real that we could almost touch the Spirit.  I have known profound moments of awe that have come upon a meeting.  I have had times when I haven't been able to speak or do anything as God has come in power and men and women wept their way to the Saviour.  Such occasions, that once seemed common, now seem almost only a memory.  Why is that?  Such occasions were profound life-changing experiences that were not the product of hype or human emotional manipulation.

As I look back to those days I recall that churches and individual Christians were much more prayerful than we are today.  On one occasion I drove members of the team of which I was a part to take a Sunday School meeting.  On arrival at least 30 minutes before the start of the meeting we found a large meeting room full of children earnestly praying for God to touch and change lives, to save the lost and heal the sick and bring honour to his name.  Would you think that was normal?

Do you think it possible that we could return to a time when our normal church experience is ever wondering what God was going to do this week, when Christians are bursting to share their stories of divine intervention and blessing through the days of the past week?  Just what kind of 'normal' do we desire?  And is it that God cannot be bothered to move in our midst or is it we who have lost the desire and the willingness to seek him until he pours out a blessing on our lives, our churches and our service for him - a blessing too great for us to contain so that it keeps overflowing to others?

I am inclined to think that the prophetic word through Hosea needs to be heard by God's people in this land at this time.

"Sow righteousness for yourselves,

    reap the fruit of unfailing love,

and break up your unploughed ground;

    for it is time to seek the Lord,

until he comes

    and showers his righteousness on you."

This begs the question as to whether we are willing to seek the Lord until he comes with showers of blessing.  

When I was 17 I first caught my vision for revival.  I asked my church minister, who was clearly evangelical unlike his predecessor, why he did not preach the gospel clearly.  He told me that to do so could split the church. Together with some other teenagers we decided to do what we could.  We started attending the weekly Church prayer meeting, we witnessed to our peers, and we started a Tuesday night prayer meeting for revival that sometimes continued well into the night.  God transformed the life of that church. I certainly would not claim that this was entirely the result of the commitment and prayer of the Christian teenagers but I have no doubt that we were part of the story.

So, suppose that in order to see a profound move of God in rural Britain at this time it became necessary for there to be men and women with a passion for all that God could do among us, ad a willingness to sign up to seek the Lord until we feel the showers of blessing descending, would you be willing?

Please don't settle for normal if that is mediocrity. I would like a new normal where nothing is normal that does not include our total commitment to God's will and a deep sense of his presence in our lives and meetings impacting the world in which we live.   May God grant us all a not-normal meeting next Sunday.

Diary Notes:

The responsiveness of the group from the London Central Division of the Salvation Army last Monday was encouraging.  Addressing the issue of the awful nature of sexual abuse, how to prevent it and how to care for those who have been past victims is not the most welcome of tasks but how essential it is.

Jean managed to join me at prison this week as she adjusts to life after her husband died at Christmas time.  The men were very supportive and worked well on a Christian song that is new to them.

Video conference for Mission for Christ went well.  One of the trustees is in mid-west USA and took part with temperature -30 degrres Centigrade!

Sunday 12^th and 19^th – Yelvertoft Congregational Church

Monday 13th - Research into Rural Evangelism
Monday 13th - - a telephone conference for the Mission and Society Committee of the Congregational Federation.
Tuesday 14th - Gartree Prison.

Thank you for your fellowship,

Barry   

Please visit the website at www.ruralmissionsolutions.org.uk You can also find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ruralbarry

Saying Sorry is Not Always Good Enough

Any Christian listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 last Thursday  would have been intrigued to hear an extended interview with a lady called Maureen Greaves.  Maureen's husband Alan was brutally battered to death by two young thugs while he was on his way to a Christmas Eve church service in Sheffield in 2012.  Maureen is a committed Christian, as was Alan.  This came over clearly in the interview as she spoke about her forgiving the men that had taken the life of the man she loved.

It was a sensitive interview and teased out something of the relationship between forgiveness and justice.  The topic was followed up in another helpful interview with two others reflecting on Maureen's testimony and the topic of forgiveness.  It has also reached other aspects of the UK media.

As I was about to teach on the subject of sexual abuse and the pastoral care of victims at a meeting for officers in the Central London Division of the Salvation Army I thought I should incorporate a recording of the interview and use it as a discussion starter.  So I produced a video to incorporate the audio recording and included various slides with pictures of Alan and Maureen and some quotes taken from a UK newspaper interview.Also among the slides are some pertinent questions on the difficult issue of forgiveness.

It is a difficult and complex issue and after seeing the video we had an excellent discussion at the meeting in London on Monday 6th January. I'm happy to make the video available to others who might wish to use it.  You can contact me at barry@ruralmissions.org.uk. (Please put 'Videos' in the subject line)

While I have no hesitation in stating that God loves everyone all the time and unconditionally, I cannot say that God forgives everyone unconditionally.  To do so would be a denial of his character of being just.  I also believe that it is absolutely wrong for Christians to rush headlong into a process of forgiveness without at least some understanding of what they are doing.  Sadly, this runs counter to what we hear a lot from pulpits and sometimes from poorly informed counsellors.

In the interview Maureen repeatedly stated that she had forgiven the men who killed her husband.  But what had she forgiven them for.  She could certainly forgive them for taking her husband from her, but she certainly could NOT forgive them for the act of murder.  That is not her prerogative.  By contrast, Jesus could forgive those who drove nails through his hands and feet and who gambled below the cross for the last piece of property he owned.  Similarly, Stephen, the first Christian martyr, could forgive those who threw the stones that killed him.  But you or I could never grant third-party forgiveness - nor could even Mary.

I also asked  the group to reflect on what Maureen thought she was affecting by her act of forgiveness.  We know that being able and willing to forgive anyone for a hurt we have suffered can bring peace and healing as we let go of malice, bitterness and resentment. Maureen was a secondary victim of the brutal act the men committed and in offering her forgiveness for that hurt she might affect the hearts and minds of the villains - if it increased a feeling of guilt and remorse.  Others hearing her loving words might also be affected and moved to be more loving and forgiving themselves on personal matters.

A third discussion centred around 'feelings' and punishment.  Maureen stated that she had not felt rage - just bewilderment that anyone should do something so dreadful to the man she loved.  Later she did say that she had some negative feelings and has found herself needing to repeat the act of forgiving them.  I think that unless a person feels some kind of anger or rage over what has been done to them the act of forgiving is less significant.  If we hurt and feel the pain then forgiving has deep meaning.  If it is costless then it could be worthless (not that I am suggesting that Maureen's act was worthless; far from it).

She was asked if she was 'happy' with regard to the prison sentences given to the two young men.  One has to serve a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 25 years before he can even be considered for parole.  The other man was found guilty of manslaughter and was given a nine year sentence.  Maureen stated that she was happy with the life sentence but thought that nine years was too lenient.  She and her family have contented themselves on the lesser sentence on the grounds that when that man is released his face will be well known and they felt his punishment would be more intense after release. "From the start", she said "I wanted justice for Alan".

It is at this point that the interview exposed a hole.Maureen had repeatedly stated that her act was based on the extraordinary forgiveness she had received from God for her sins.  She spoke of God 'forgiving and forgetting'.  Was she, perhaps, acting like the man in the parable Jesus told as recorded in Matthew 18: 23 -35?  The discussion digressed slightly to reflect on John 20:22.  Let's come back to that as it is difficult.

Maureen went on to make a good point.  People that do wrong need to receive due punishment.  It is good for them and for society in general that this is so.  So, unlike the forgiveness we receive from God ,which comes with justification and so no punishment, accepting the rightness of their punishment (and even feeling that one sentence was too short) is right - but perhaps using the word 'happy' was unfortunate.  On the other hand, closure is needed so I don't want to minimise the psychological and emotional benefit derived from the sentences being served.

The final discussion was on what was effected (achieved) by her act of forgiveness.  For her it seems to have brought some peace.  We don't know that it has had effect on the men (that is stimulating remorse and real repentance).  I think it is important to state that it will not have had an effect on God regarding his relationship - or lack of it - with these men.  In God's eyes They remain sinners and his forgiveness requires genuine repentance, and genuine repentance means more than saying sorry.

So let's go back to that tricky verse in John 20:22.  I don't think that this gives to anyone the ability to act in a priestly way to absolve someone from their sins where there is no real repentance.  I certainly do not think that anyone (including ordained priests) have authority to forgive sins that have not been committed against them (i.e. acting as a third person).  I do believe that where we have been sinned against and where we have grace to forgive them, and where they wish to acknowledge culpability and receive forgiveness, then in such a situation where we give forgiveness they are also forgiven in heaven.  But true repentance will always be expressed in a willingness to accept any earthly consequences that follow the sin (e.g. a prison sentence).

I am happy to point people to the words of 1John 1:9.  Where there is acceptance of culpability, true remorse to the extent of openly acknowledging guilt than I am happy to give assurance that in such situations God justly forgives so that "there is now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus..." (Romans 8:1).

Forgiveness is something precious and we should not cheapen it by passing the words around like sweets from a bag.  In every situation there are always more than one person involved.  Being willing to forgive and offering that is not actually effecting forgiveness if there is no true repentance.  So we need to be careful how we use the term.  We need to consider the issue not just from our side (if it is we who want to forgive); we need to consider the impact on the perpetrator, and also of its impact on society, and in the eyes of God.  Let's be careful that we do not short change someone of a process of grace, or worse still pass them a dodgy note that has forgiven printed on it but is frankly worthless.

From the diary
Sunday 5th - Yelvertoft Congregational Church
Monday 6th - London Central Division of the Salvation Army
Monday evening - video conference for trustees of Mission for Christ
Tuesday 7th - Gartree Prison
Thursday 9th - Bible Discussion Meeting, Yelvertoft
Sunday 12th - Yelvertoft Congregational Church
Monday 13th - Research into Rural Evangelism
Monday 13th - - a telephone conference for the Mission and Society Committee of the Congregational Federation.
Tuesday 14th - Gartree Prison.

I pray that you will be greatly blessed in 2014, which you will be as you seek to walk well with God.

Thank you for your fellowship.

Barry