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The Grace to live fully
Well given that it’s already Jan 25th and I am only just now getting round to writing a New Year blog may give you some indication of how busy things are around here at the moment. Knowing that we would be frantic this year and trying to balance our Grace Project commitments with our corporate work we were pleased to enjoy a blissfully quite & intimate Christmas & New Year.
We will be leaving for Brazil next month to visit the work there and to promote the new book The Apprentice, I can’t wait for you to read that it is the second book in the Until Christ is Formed series I didn’t think that I was capable of writing something so precious, but then it really is not I that live anymore is it!
If you have you haven’t grabbed hold of it already, you will soon realise that the key theme for The Grace Project as we move into 2008 is The Grace to live fully. We are already seeing signs that our folks are really embracing this concept. I have to tell you there is a monumental difference between living gracefully and having the grace live fully. This year is all about that for us – if you like it’s about moving from simply knowing who we are to being who we are!?!?
For each of us that is going to be a process and possibly an anxious process of self-discovery and self-disclosure. We have each to one degree or another decided that its better to play-it-safe; we each have developed very sophisticated self-protective mechanisms which whilst they achieve the goal of preventing us from getting hurt they also come with the painful side effect of preventing us from living the abundant life that the Lord has given us (Jn 10:10) .
I have known for sometime that if we love ourselves in the wrong way, we are incapable of loving others, I am beginning to realise that if we allow ourselves to be less than God made it possible for us to be we will be incapable of helping others fulfil their God given potential also.
Grace East & Grace West
It was a real thrill to have us all together for Christmas dinner at the Tower Hotel in December. There was such a perfect sense of unity amongst us. The new community in East London (Grace East) is growing so quickly we can hardly believe it. There is a real sense that we are finding God’s rhythm for us in that new work which is amazing.
No inn for a room!?!?
Nothing sums the new mood up better than how everyone mucked in when we arrived at the UEL 23rd December only to find ourselves locked-out. It as a real life nativity story! We literally had no place to meet for our Christmas service. Well the saints just laughed and smiled our way through it all and eventually we managed to find an alternative venue across town and so we travelled in convey over there. The delay meant that we didn’t start till about 1pm, the time we normally finish but you know, nobody minded we just enjoyed the adventure.
Earlier this month we held our first Stakeholder’s Day – You’re the Difference at which 56 of us gathered to spend the day to discuss the type of church we want to grow together. We are now looking into developing and implementing some of the key recommendations that were put forward. But perhaps that Sunday will live on in the memory because of what happened in the last ten minutes when we closed in a time of prayer/worship and the presence of God was so thick and so real we could hardly stand.
Last Sunday saw the start of our new seminar series “Made to be Free” the series was initially designed to run for three weeks but we have taken the decision to extend it by one week in order to give us time to really allow God to minister his love and healing to us through our teaching on this core subject of the Christian identity. If you are able to join us for those remaining meetings I think you’ll be blessed.
Be sure and check out the “What’s on” section of the website to see what is happening at Grace West the team there have changed the pattern of meetings in an attempt to express themselves more as a community. They are encouraged about the way that God is leading them. I have yet to catch up with them about last Sunday’s social but I am sure that it was as blast. This weekend they will be back at the Encore Hotel continuing in their new teaching series, Journeying through the Pastoral Epistles.
Virtual Grace
As the actual communities start to grow in both Grace West and Grace East and overseas we are mindful that we also have a substantial virtual community. 2007 saw a 91.27% increase in the number of users of our website. In December alone we had 3395 unique users and on average users are reading something like 700,000 pages per month. Our web hosts, Webx Solutions are looking into integrating web tools such as Myspace and Instant messenger that will enable us to really ramp up the virtual community aspect of our website so watch for this.
iTunes
After some initial teething problems the iTunes podcasts are working well. Since its relaunch in December we have already got 721 people who now receive the podcasts. We will continue to upload our Sunday talks to the padcast suite, the only exception being when we are running seminars such as we are at present. These seminars will be made available in CD box sets and during these periods we will be uploading other messages to the site which we think that you will enjoy.
Hayley and I begin our travelling for 2008 next month with a long overdue trip to Brazil. We will be in Sao Paulo Feb 14th – 28th In We’re home for a month and then leave for Florida 26th – 28th March for our Radical Grace conference with Steve McVey, if you’re in the US and can make the trip to the Sunshine State it would be great to meet you.
As ever I have a pile of books on my desk ready to read but thought I’d let you know about my friend Fred Pruitt’s latest offering The Axe is at the Root go to www.christasus.com if you’d like to find out more about it.
“Let’s discover why we were born before we die”
Paul
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