From the Manse September 2003

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As a church we have much to give thanks for.  One of the things that has encouraged me most in the past year has been the way God has given us ever-increasing evangelistic opportunities.  Let me remind you of three particularly. 

1. Our Tuesday evening outreach to teenagers on the streets.  There’s hardly been a week when church-members haven’t been out, plodding the beat, talking to groups of youngsters on street-corners.  We’ve been kept safe - that’s not something we take for granted.  And we’ve talked to scores, maybe hundreds of teenagers.  Many of them have been abusive; a few have been threatening.  But others have listened respectfully, asked serious questions and shown real interest.  Most of the youngsters living in the area are at least aware of us now - either they’ve met us personally or they’ve heard about us from their friends.  Just by being there on the street, we’re a  reminder to them that God is not dead.  The media tell them that nobody nowadays takes God seriously.  But when they meet us they know the media have got it wrong.  They know that we are people for whom God is supremely important.

2. The outreach into nursing-homes.  First there was the Reinbek nursing home.  Peter was able to get us entry there because his friend Don was a resident. Don’s now in glory, but a team still goes in to take a Sunday afternoon service once a month.  And Rose, Wendy, Linda and others are able to visit the home at other times.  Then an opportunity arose in a second nursing-home. Carole’s mum, Jennie, moved to the Peel Moat nursing-home in Heaton Chapel.  Carole suggested to the matron that we might hold a service there: the matron was delighted.  For more than a year we’ve been holding a monthly service there on a Friday afternoon.  Jennie’s moved on now to a different home, but the services at Peel Moat continue.  Month by month, a dozen or more elderly folk listen to plain Bible preaching.  We’ve got to know some of them very well and we think we see a dawning understanding of the gospel in one or two of them. Happily, the Peel Moat home is right next door to Rebecca and Charlotte’s school.  The school encourages them to be involved in some ‘community service’.  They’ve chosen to do theirs in the nursing home.  So as well as our monthly service, we’ve got our missionaries visiting the home at other times.  And now a third door has opened.  We’ve been invited to the home to which Jennie moved - the Hollymeade home in Heaton Moor.  It’s about half a mile from Peel Moat, so it should be possible to hold the Peel Moat service and the Hollymeade service straight after.

Perhaps the most encouraging thing of all about our nursing home services is that we’ve always been given complete freedom to preach our message.  No-one has ever tried to persuade us to tone it down or make it more user-friendly.  We’ve preached about God, about sin, about heaven and hell, about the cross of Christ, about repentance and faith, about the fact that salvation is found nowhere but in the Lord Jesus.  We’ve spoken against false religion, against the confessional, against praying to Mary and the saints, against self-righteousness of every sort.  The preaching’s has been very straight, very pointed.  At times we’ve wondered if residents or their families will complain, or whether staff will be shocked.  But the doors have remained open to us. 

3.  Our Bible-study in Martin & Jacquie’s home.  Each month, Martin and Jacquie have been able to invite friends, neighbours, colleagues into their home for a Bible-study.  Average attendance has been around five or six on any occasion but altogether a dozen or so different folk have come.  They’re a mixed crowd - mostly couples in Martin and Jacquie’s age-bracket, but from very different backgrounds. Some are already believers; most aren’t.  Some know a fair amount about the Bible; some know almost nothing.  But they’ve all listened respectfully - and most have come back for more.  The format is simple.  We just read the Bible together.  We started at the beginning of Genesis - we’ve now reached the ten commandments in Exodus.  We’ve not read every chapter, but we’ve drawn out the big themes as we’ve gone along.  God, creation, the fall, God’s promise of a Saviour, God’s judgments against sin, sacrifice - and now God’s law.  I talk about what we’ve read; others can chip in or interrupt with questions if they want to   When I think I’ve talked long enough, (or too long),  I’ll pause, give space for discussion and then we carry on reading.  On average, the meetings have lasted an hour and a half, sometimes more.

As the months have gone by, we’ve seen people changing.  I think of one man confessing his own bewilderment.  “I don’t know why I come... if somebody had told me a few months back that I’d be coming to a Bible-study, I’d have said they were mad.  But I just know I’ve got to come.  Maybe it’s God pulling me.”   There are no maybes in my mind!

Rowdy teenagers on the streets. Elderly folk in nursing-homes. Respectable young couples in a private home.  How different these situations are!  God has given us such a range of opportunities to spread his gospel.

Of course there are others besides those I’ve described.  We’ve been running our Sunday-school for many years now, bringing in youngsters from the surrounding estates.  Numbers seem to have dwindled in recent months.  But there’s still a handful who come back again and again and hear God’s Word.  There’s our message-line.  I can’t say we’ve seen any great success there. Maybe it’s time to try to revive interest.  What if each member of the church were to aim to give away just one message-line card each week?  There’s our witness to asylum seekers from Kosova.  It was God who brought them to our area - in answer to the church’s prayers.  It was God who gave us entry into their homes.  It’s God who has given us Albanian-speaking friends like David Young to help us communicate with them.  It’s God who opened the way for me to visit Kosova: the fact that I’ve been there gives me a bond with these folk.  It’s God who brought Vlora last week to share her testimony with them.  All along the way we’ve seen God working in providence - we believe that more than that, he’s working in their hearts to draw them to Christ.  There’s the ladies’ meeting.  It’s primarily for the ladies of the church.  But at least once a term, they try to organise an evangelistic meeting for their friends.  There’s the children’s holiday club. That’s been so worthwhile.  It would have been worth it just to see one neighbour and her little boy, sitting listening to God’s word preached each week.  And of course, above all, there’s our witness to individuals.  It can sometimes be hard for Christians to maintain friendships with unbelievers without compromise.  But God has given many of us friendships with people who know where we stand, who respect us and who listen when we speak to them about the way of salvation.

We’re grateful to God that he’s given us the openings, the personnel and the resources for all these activities.  But let’s not be complacent.  There’s so much more we could be doing!  We used to deliver a leaflet door-to-door around the area three times a year.  That’s a work we could all be involved in.  We’ve held a harvest supper in past years and invited unconverted friends to come and listen to a speaker.  Sometimes the supper’s been well attended, sometimes nobody’s come.  Why not hold such evangelistic meals a couple of times a year? Harvest may not be the best time - let’s experiment.  God has blessed the church with lots of babies and toddlers - and there’s more on the way!  Should we be thinking about a mums and toddlers group as a way of reaching young mums in the area?  And then what about overseas students?  Many of them arrive in this country, anxious to find out more about British culture - and about the Christian faith.  Many of them are lonely and homesick and are glad to accept any invitation into a friendly home.  What can we do for them?  Or for the homeless folk who sit begging down in Mersey Square?  Or for Stockport’s growing Muslim community?  Or...

The writer of Ecclesiastes has some common-sense advice: “In the morning sow your seed, and at evening, withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will do well..”   We must seize every opportunity to sow the seed of God’s Word.  We don’t know which of our ventures God may choose to bless.  It may be this one - or that one - or he may bless them all.  What we do know is that no work done out of love for Christ is ever wasted. 

Every blessing to you all, Stephen.