Dear friends and church family,
Can you believe that 2023 is over, where does time go?
For some of us 2023 has been a year of sadness and challenge whilst for others it's contained moments of real joy and celebration. Life offers us both, Jesus is with us in both.
In 2023 we saw many new people came along to life church, some have become valuable members of the family. We began the year by continuing to explore what following Jesus looks like in practise in our 'Way of Jesus' series (this has now formed the basis of our discipleship booklets being used by our Huddles). We gathered around Jesus' teaching on prayer in the spring and we stepped out into the community once again in July for Chyngfest.
We multiplied from one meeting to two on Sundays, launched a new ministry for those in recovery (Keys Detox), baptised new Christians and sent teams to Istanbul (twice) to serve the church plant.
In August the church family came together to send our young people for a week's camping at New Day and from September we re-launched groups, gathered for prayer in Newhaven and engaged with issues affecting Christians and the culture and enjoyed visits from several people from within our New Ground family and beyond.
We've celebrated engagements, new babies and new marriages and we've also said our farewells to dear loved ones, much missed from our gatherings (dear Jon Carpenter's smile was infectious wasn't it!).
Belonging to a family bigger than our domestic/natural ones is a gift from God!
Something I feel God's opened my eyes to see this year is the eternal aspect of our church family. For the podcast I produce I read and connected with Dr Danielle Treweek, an Australian theologian whose book 'The Meaning of Singleness' made a big impact on me. I've come to see that our individual households are the 'practise' ground for the Forever household of God's people and our marriages are but dress rehearsals for the Marriage of Christ and his bride, the church.
With all of its unrequited aspirations, our visions our longings and challenges, with all our joys and frustrations and our 'why won't someone just…'s - it's in all this that we see glimpses of the majestic beauty of God's diverse, multi-generational, multi-ethnic family, knitted together by the Holy Spirit.
In a society and at a time like ours, a time of isolation and meaning-crisis, Jesus has added each one of you into his people and enlisted you onto his mission! We will be delighting with and worshipping alongside one another for eternity.
We've barely scratched the surface in understanding and comprehending the wisdom and beauty of God on display in the church. If you're after a book that unpacks this more, try Jon Tyson's 'Beautiful Resistance'
Let's pray that God will continue to build us together into a holy temple, a people for his dwelling as we continue toward all that he's called us to.
As elders we want to thank you for all that you are and all that you bring to life church Seaford. It is an honour and privilege to serve you and serve alongside you week in week out.
May Jesus be glorified and may many be drawn to delight in him in 2024!
2024
We begin every year with a couple of weeks of prayer. The first week of January sees us meeting as a church for a night of worship and prayer on Thursday 4th and throughout the second week of January we're inviting you to join us in prayer & fasting. Whether for a day or for the whole week, why not go without eating and instead devote your meal times to prayer. We'll be releasing prayer focuses and videos in the lead up to this. It's the main time in the year that we set aside days to fast, and since fasting is a key discipline for followers of Jesus, I'd really love to encourage you to give it a go.
At the end of that weekend, to mark the end of the fast, we'll be feasting together. In fact you can sign up to say you're coming to that here (numbers are limited so get in quick if you're interested).
You're invited. A week of hospitality.
Following on from our week of prayer and fasting is our of hospitality. At the end of December's expectation and excitement, January often feels like a tough time of year. Therefore, we want to do what we can to reach out to others and show creative ways of including people in our lives.
During this week there are a few activities going on organised by the church: half price coffees at the cafe (Tueday 16th), an evening of sociable eating with families at the church (Thursday 18th) and a curry night on Saturday 20th (sign up here), but the main thrust of the week is to encourage all of us to get out and invite someone into our home for a meal, or take someone out for coffee. Share the gospel of "Welcome home!" with those we live alongside.
Following this our groups restart, among them will be the Alpha course (www.seaford.life/alpha).
BREAD
One final thing, I want to also encourage you to buy a copy of the Bread books and join in with our community read through of the scriptures. Buy one here: www.seaford.life/journal
That's all from me,
Thanks for reading and thanks again for being part of life church Seaford.
See you in the New Year!
Jez
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