Another years gone… and we have another year of challenges and opportunity ahead.  As you get ready to face 2010, here’s one “may you” prayer I have for you:

May Jesus himself and God our Father, who reached out in love and surprised you with gifts of unending help and confidence, put a fresh heart in you, invigorate your work, enliven your speech. 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, The Message Translation

May Jesus…

• Put a fresh heart in you (above all else guard your heart in 2010; Let the Living Water wash you and flow through you… Be ALIVE)
• Invigorate your work (Don’t settle for dull purposeless use of your gifts and talents; give your service to The Great Cause… Dream & Do BIG)
• Enliven your speech (Get rid of death speaking, and start to speak what builds you and those around you up; Get Gods Word in your heart and out of your mouth and speak faith, hope & love; speak the Good News of Jesus more & more and to more & more… Speak LIFE)

Thats my prayer for you to get 2010 going…

Wow, we have now reached the £7,000 goal for blessing the work at the Village of Hope for children with AIDS in South Africa! Thank you to ALL who initiated fundraising events, and thank you to all who gave so generously – it has been fantastic to see such generosity at the end of a very touch year financially for many here in the UK.  Any further funds raised will go to our PHASE TWO of the Challenge, which will be to raise the funds for the vitally needed additional volunteers accommodation unit/extension. So keep it up if you can!

A reminder of why we raised this £7,000 (see project description here), and how it will make a significant difference:

£1,000 will be used by the Village of Hope Team to buy much needed playground equipment for the children – this will bless the kids directly with what many of us take for granted as the joys of childhood.

£3,000 will be spread over the next 6 months towards the London monthly support of Daz & Lisa Muir (see their blog here), who went from London to serve as part of the full-time staff of the Village, and play a key role in the development, sports, clinic etc. They will multiply your giving many times over through their work. They are true heroes, for the past year living in just one  room of the volunteers accommodation unit with their baby son Seth, sharing all other facilities with the volunteers who come and go… which leads us to the next £3,000:

£3,000 will be the deposit for laying the foundations of some additional volunteers accommodation on the Village to make more room for the full-time, medium-term and short-term Volunteers who are such a key part of making the work possible. The planning and permissions are currently being sought for extending this vital part of the infrastructure, and as soon as this is in place and we know the cost of the complete project, we will be joining up with many other supporters to raise the funds for the complete accommodation block. This £3,000 investment will make a difference for many years to come – who knows, maybe you’ll sleep there as a volunteer one day!

Daz & Lisa Muir - Full-time volunteers

Daz showing the love...

Watch this space for pictures and updates on all these projects, and follow the Village of Hope Blog for news from leaders Tim & Maz Walker and the team here.

Once again – THANK YOU FOR GIVING!!

PS – Please remember that this “Hope Challenge” was an initiative facilitated by the Every Nation London church, and is one of many fundraising initiatives for the Village by different groups.

Here’s how Paul puts it to the Philippians in chapter 4 verse 7 (From The Message Translation):

“It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the centre of your life.”

Christmas is about wonder, and there’s a lot of wonder around, like…

• I wonder what gift I’m going to get…
• Or, I wonder what I’m going to give…
• Wonder if it’ll snow in London … or rain…

Then there are deeper wonderings…

• I wonder who I’ll spend Christmas with
• I wonder if dad will get drunk again…
• I wonder if mom will spend our money at the betting shop…
• I wonder if I’ll get beaten or abused again…
• I wonder if I’ll have enough money to pay my rent…
• I wonder if I’ll get a job soon…
• I wonder if I’ll be the next to lose my job…
• I wonder if next year will be any better for me than this year was…
• I wonder when God is going to answer my prayer…

Then there millions of people with even deeper “wonderings” this Christmas…

• I wonder if we’ll starve again tomorrow…
• I wonder if we’ll find water tomorrow…
• I wonder if mom will die of AIDS just like dad did last year…
• I wonder if the police will come back to take my dad away again for preaching the Gospel…
• I wonder if…
• I wonder if…

So yes, there are a lot of “wondering” going on at this wonderful time called Christmas…  what are yours?

Now here’s something that’s really wonderful in all of this and above all of this: the real wonder of life and of Christmas is what you experience when you let Jesus move to the centre of your life.  When you give up the throne to Him.  When He “displaces” stuff you are wondering about.

It’s not as much about moving stuff out, but about moving Christ in.  That’s when you experience the “power of displacement”, which happens when you move something of greater substance in, resulting in that of lesser substance being forced out.  Don’t focus so much on what you want to get rid of, that you forget about the One you need to invite in.  Don’t be like the Innkeeper who made no room for in his inn, placing Jesus with all his other stuff in the barn on the side. Here’s my advice: Make room! Make the BEST ROOM available for Jesus - because …. The greatest wonder of Christmas and life is what happens in you when you move Jesus to the centre of your life.

It’s great to celebrate Christ in the crib, or even to believe with your head that Christ died on the Cross, but the real wonder of life for you personally happens when you let Jesus into the centre of your life, and He displaces all the stuff that steals/kills/destroys…

Have a wonder-full CHRIST-mas, because….

It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces ????????? at the centre of your life.

These are thoughts from my Sunday 13 Dec message called “How to have a wonder-full CHRIST-mas” – see www.everynation.co.uk/downloads

We have reached over 90% of our goal towards the £7,000 for the Christmas Hope Challenge! Thank you all who contributed so far – our congregations have been amazing showing huge generosity and creativity in raising cash. We’ve had all sorts of endeavours, from cake sales, food sales, auction, dinner parties, car boot sale, sponsored moustache growing (?), and plain old sacrificial giving.

So only £600 more to raise – have you taken up the challenge yet?

All details on our website here…

Today is Worlds Aids Day, and I went to attend a special service in St Paul’s Hammersmith where I met some good folks working with AIDS affected people right here in our part of London. It highlighted to me how important our current “HOPE CHALLENGE” initiative is.

UPDATE: We’ve raised 52% of the £7,000! The Hammersmith congregation Sunday “soup, bread & cake” lunch raised over £900! Cake sale in Stratford raised £160!  Liz Lugt ran her Money Management Seminar last Saturday and raised £440 through the registration fees! And, the Siku paintings were auctioned off at £400! Well done all and thanks for giving so generously.

Coming up is our Movie Night this Friday, and this Sunday I am organising some of our teenagers to have a table at a car boot sale in Chiswick – if you have any good quality not-too-big items to add for sale, please get them to the Every nation Offices by the end of Fridays Movie Night.

If you need some motivation to give or do something to raise cash, read this piece from the Village of Hope staff blog – it says it all…

We have a new baby…

We have been working with a very needy mother in our community, unfortunately this young lady has full blown AIDS and the virus has attacked her eyesight and she is now blind…..she has also just given birth to a 4 week premature baby, born last saturday in our local hospital….she was discharged that same day with the new born……!

the mum is now in thembacare receiving some much needed support from the wonderful team there and she realises that she cannot support this child and is happy to place him up for adoption, however for the foreseeable future we will help her as we take this precious one into our care at the village of hope until all the red tape has been sorted (and that could take some time)…..

please pray for this mum, her child and the team here on the village of hope as we seek to do our best for her and her baby, that she might be fully restored and that this child might grow up in a family who can provide him with a bright future….thanks

JOIN US…TAKE THE HOPE CHALLENGE... YOU CAN GIVE ONLINE HERE TODAY… (Please mention that it is for “The Hope Challenge”) Thanks!

Here in London we have a goal for this Christmas: To raise £7,000 towards the work at the “Village of Hope” in the town of Grabow, outside of Cape Town in South Africa.

This money will go towards three key areas:

• £3,000 towards the foundations of much needed new volunteers accommodation
• £3,000 towards the annual support of London-sent full-time staff Daz & Lise Muir
• £1,000 for new playground equipment for the AIDS clinic children based on the Village of Hope.

Can you / your church / company join us and give towards the HOPE CHALLENGE and make a significant difference to the AIDS affected kids this Christmas?  Come on, together we can make a difference – for giving and other details check our website here.  And check out this video that I took when Ali & I visited the VOH a year ago…

By the way: From our regular offerings received Every Nation Church London will match the first £3,000 given towards the goal. Over £1,000 has already been received by mid November, so come on, get creative and GIVE HOPE!

PS – If you are doing something special (Like the moustaches growing in the Stratford congregation!) – let us know with a comment below, or on my FaceBook.

Last Sunday our new preaching series called “Crossing Over” launched with just great all round services in all of our London congregations. The message was about REVELATION: How and what the cross reveals to us about God.   In our Hammersmith congregation I focussed on the cross revealing that:

• God loves unconditionally
• God is THE friend and Saviour of sinners
• God is ALIVE!

This revelation has the power to change so much in your life as you begin to understand how much Gods loves you and what he did for you, and that His cross was “vicarious”, meaning that “it was an act on behalf of another” – in this case you and me and every human ever. Download my message and PowerPoints here

This Sundays Crossing Over message is about the VICTORY of the cross. I’ll do the first part about Christ’s victory on the cross, and Ali will do the second part looking at how we can live in Christs victory…

Come and hear and experience how you ARE more than a conqueror in Christ!

All our Sunday service details here

We’re raising £7,000 towards the Village of Hope by Christmas!

Most of us have lived with some type of financial squeeze this year, yet of course ours is nothing in comparison to the billions around the world who live below the poverty line in desperate squalid conditions. At Every Nation London we have a three pronged commitment to those in need, and we call these :

• LOVE LOCAL – Our congregations meeting local community needs
• LOVE EUROPE – Ministering to the poorest in Europe, currently focussed on the Carpathian mountains near Lviv
• LOVE THIRD WORLD – Partnering with Thembalitsha’s Village of Hope in Grabow, South Africa

Our Christmas Giving this year is towards the Village of Hope, and our goal is to raise £7,000 towards some key development needs here. Check out details on our website here, and to see the project, watch the video below which I put together after Ali & visited the Village of Hope last December.

Lets see how inventive we can be in raising some cash and being a blessing to those who desperately need it. Please Join us in giving generously: Take up the Hope Challenge.

This weekend we start a life-changing new 5 week preaching and Connect Group series which focusses on the rich truth of the work of the cross of Jesus Christ, and how we “cross over” from death to life through its power.

In John 5 verse 24 Jesus makes this profound statement, saying: “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.”

In this series we’re trusting to see many “dead areas” of our lives experience the “newness of life” which comes through a revelation and embrace of the amazing and powerful truths which radiate from that epic day when Christ declared that “IT IS FINISHED!” Bring your friends, and lets cross over…

Each message will focus on a particular aspect/truth revealed and accomplished through the cross:

• Crossing Over: Revelation (Soldier: “Truly this man was the son of God!”)
• Crossing Over: Victory
• Crossing Over: Reconciliation
• Crossing Over: Righteousness
• Crossing Over: Example

NOTE: SERVICE ORDER CHANGE: By the way, the order of all our services will be all changed for these 5 weeks, starting with just one or two “making God big” praise songs, then straight into the message, followed by communion each week, and then a time of worship with response… so try your best to be on time if you don’t want to walk in half-way through the message!

See all service details for our four congregations on our website here