Let the children come....

Here we were last March working to get some of the rooms ready for the children. And the children have been coming! We will continue to pray for more children and more families.

Some facts from the May/June 2006 issue of Baptist Union of Great Britain:

96% of children in Britain don't go to church.

87% of children perceive church as boring.

80% of children in our churches go with their parents.

We need to see the church and the world from a child's perspective.

Jesus said "Let the children come to me" (Mark 10:14).

Pictures and dates

For those of you who are considering going with us to England next summer, I wanted to give you the dates. The VBS will be either the last week of July starting on July 29th or 30th or it will be the first week of August starting August 5th or 6th. Please mark your 2007 calendars with these dates. As you can see I finally posted a couple of pictues. This is a side view of the church. The other picture is Sara and myself.

More Paul Notes

In July Jepye and I attended our 20th Interlaken. It was great but when I saw the numbers that attended I wept like the old men who saw the new temple and cried because they remembered the temple Solomon built.
I forgot to take my cane to Interlaken but managed to walk all over town without it, that is a PTL since just over a year ago I went home in a wheel chair.
Jepye and I volunteer for a British Charity called Hospice at Home. We provide palliative care for patients and care givers. We both have a client that we visit once a week.

Not long ago our church adopted a vision statement and core values. I don’t believe we have shared those with you so here they are.

Vision statement: The vision of Stukeley Baptist Church is to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ and membership in His family, to help them develop to Christ-like maturity, and to equip them to find their ministry in the church and life mission in the world, in order to magnify God’s name.
This vision statement states the 5 purposes of the church found in the Great Commandment Matthew 22:37, 39 and the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:18-20.

Our core values are:

We will make you Welcome and be Family Friendly.

We will be Practical and Relevant – recognizing and embracing the real problems and concerns that affect your everyday living.

We will help you Explore Answers to Spiritual Questions - and provide the place and time for calm reflection amidst the bustle of a busy life.

We will ensure that your visits will be challenging and we help you to make sense of the Biblical Message of Jesus.

We will help you to discover for yourself God’s Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness.

We will offer you an opportunity to make a New Start.

The notes above were from Paul's update this month. I am having trouble uploading pictures but promise to post some soon. I want to show you some pictures of the church. Keep checking back.

Update August 2006. Some highlights from Paul's lastest update: they now have 12 to 14 children who attend bible study and worship on Sundays. They are in the process of raising funds to repair the building so that they can use it to minister to the community. The children are studying about Joseph in bible study and have decided to write a musical about Joseph's life. It is completed and they will perform it sometime in September for the parents. (Wish I could be there to see the performance!) They are having one or two visitors on most Sundays, continue to pray for more.

Please join us in pray for the following:

The children's program to reach the parents.

That they will get more workers so that the ministry can be expanded.

That the children's musical will reach the parents.

For funding to repair the building especially to replace the roof which has several major leaks.

For the team from Emmanuel Baptist Church that is planning a VBS in 2007.

That they can penetrate the community.

For Paul and Jepye, that God will guard their health.

In my next posting, I'll share with you the vision statement that their church has recently adopted. They have a vision to penetrate the community where they live to meet the social and spiritual needs of the people who live near them. They long to repair the building and then use it as an outreach tool to the community by partnering with the local Parish Counsels. They could use it for debt relief counseling, after school programs for children and teens, a recovery program for people who are addicted and any other physical or social need that can be identified.

Thank you so much for joining us in prayer for this ministry. I'm so excited by what God is doing already!!

Let me introduce to Paul and Jepye Hendrix. Most of you already know them from their service here at EBC. I was priviledged to get to know them this past spring when myself, Bonnie McMinn and Sara Phillips went to England. Paul and Jepye are pastoring a church in Great Stukeley in the eastern part of England. It is located about two and half hours drive north of London. We are already planning to return to Stukeley next summer to lead a week long Vacation Bible School. I will post prayer requests, details of our plans, ways that you can be involved, etc. Please check back every few days. I have lots of pictures and updates to post.