Identity
Helen spoke on Sunday about our Identity and how we need to root this deeply in Jesus. If you didn’t manage to hear this, here is the link.
You are warmly invited to join with Kairos Church at the following two events over the Christmas season.
Simply Christmas – Sunday 21st December.
Join us for carols, treats, mulled wine and activities to explore the story of Christmas. This is an event for the whole family, drop in any time between 3 and 5pm.
Christmas Day Gathering.
On the 25th December we will be meeting to celebrate Christmas with communion, we’d love to see you there!
Sunday 28th December.
On the Sunday following Christmas there will be a Communion Gathering in the Kairos Room at 9am.
All gatherings will be in the Kairos Resource Base at Westcliffe Hall.
Please note, there will be no 10:30 gathering on the 21st December.
On Sunday Ben talked about God’s Provision. If you missed it, then you can listen to it here.
The reading is cut off in this recording. It was 2 Corinthians 9: 6 – 15.
Since Easter Kairos Kids have been meeting every other Tuesday for tea, fun and discipleship. These have been really good times! On the Friday of Half Term (31st October) we are having a party from 4:30 – 5:45pm in the Hall! There will be food, lots of fun and a chance to build friendship. If you have children or grandchildren do encourage them to come along and maybe to invite some friends. Speak to Pippa or Chloe for more information.
Mark & Ben
The Feast is our annual celebration of all that God is doing at Kairos! This year we are holding two events:
Feast Night of Prayer: Friday 10th October to Saturday 11th October – 8pm til 8am
We will be praying in the Kairos room from 8am to 8pm: you could come to the whole night, half the night, or just a couple of hours.
There will be prayer resources and space for you to encounter God on your own and in small groups. There will also be led prayer every hour.
Have a look at the times listed on the Kairos Website and decide how much you can commit to.
If you can’t make it to the time when your MSC or team is being prayed for don’t worry too much, come along at another time and pray for someone else.
Feast Sunday: 12th October
10am – 12:30: Whole Kairos Gathering
There will be time to worship and share communion together. We will be celebrating what God has done and listening to the things he is calling us to for the coming year.
Please do prioritise being there.
12:30pm: Lunch
We will continue the celebrations with lunch with the whole Kairos family. The more the merrier; let Rachel you are coming (you can do that by hitting reply) and she can make sure there is plenty of provisions!
Enjoy the Feast Weekend!
For our fourth evening at Base Camp we looked at missional communities. If you weren’t able to make it download the mp3 here:
For this Weeks Handout, click here: Base Camp 4 Mission Shaped Community and Family on Mission
Join us next week for Practical Fishing for beginners
On Sunday in our Central Gathering we talked about God’s Call. We had fun identifying together the Purposes and Promises God gives to those he calls, and the purposes and promises he has for us. If you want to, you can listen to the sermon here: http://wp.me/p4E7sz-I3
This week I’ve been thinking about those things some more, and reflecting on Paul’s declaration to the Philippians:
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14 NIV)
Paul is running for a prize. What is it? It is purpose and promise; it is nothing less than everything God has for him. Running for this requires perseverance: Paul forgets what is behind and presses on.
One way of thinking about our MSCs is as communities that have formed around running after a particular prize. There are purposes and promises God has given to each one that we are called to persevere as we run towards those things. Do you have a sense of the prize God has for your community?
We must persevere through many things. I’ve become increasingly aware, however, of one area that can stop us even before we started running. That is preference. Our choice.
We all bring sets of ideas about what church should be like, about how far we are willing to go for God, about the kind of life we want, about the way we want people to think of us. These preferences influence what we say yes to and what we say no to, what gatherings we choose to go to, which opportunities we respond to, how we react to people of peace and so many other aspects of our discipleship. Often they operate on an unconscious level – we don’t think they are unusual because we’ve lived with them for a long time. I think God wants to work on these preference.
Paul counted his preferences as nothing, he set them aside to strain towards the prize. I think we need to get more used to doing the same thing. As leaders this means making hard decisions for ourselves, but we also need to help others in our MSCs do the same. Often this is done by creating opportunities where personal preferences will need to be exposed, acknowledged and worked through.
Do you have a sense of God’s purposes and promises for your MSC?
Can you see where preference – yours or other people’s in your MSC might be holding people back from perseverance?
Ben
Here’s Ben’s sermon from Sunday – God Calls. The talk includes a bit of discussion from people at the central gathering and some prophetic ministry at the end.
I really enjoy the accounts of the resurrection appearances of Jesus at the end of John’s gospel. The beginning of John 21:1-14 shows Peter and six others by the sea of Galilee. We often imagine that life for the disciples was constant action and overlook the amount of waiting they did – very reassuring. Here they are waiting, yet again. Peter announces that he is going fishing – in the waiting he is simply going to do something he can do – fish. Of course that is what he was doing when first called and he encounters Jesus once again in the process of fishing. So often we focus on the miracle – a net-breaking catch of fish – and miss other things. Encounters with Jesus are often in ordinary things – they are extraordinary in the the ordinary, the ordinary things we can do are often the things that we encounter Jesus in. Recently Rachel Wilkinson and Elaine Higgins started Stuffers – an MSC forming around something that they can do – crafts – something they enjoy doing and expect other people will like to do. When Penny and I started Allsorts MSC we just simply did something we could do – something we could start with: had people round to eat together…. and we are continuing to do that together encountering Jesus as we go.
Missional Communities aren’t rocket science. They are essentially simple…… shaped around things that we can do and want to do together because the God of mission is at work and we will encounter him in the midst of it and on the way. There may be lots of change after that but it’s okay….. you’ve got to start somewhere – why not start with what you like doing, what you can do and what can occupy you while you wait expectantly for the guaranteed encounter with Jesus.
I think that is one of the keys to starting an MSC – simply doing something – clarity of vision follows. Resurrection Bikes is another example of this. John Rowe and Andy Ryland get involved in doing something – something they like doing and it grows and develops. “Let’s just do something we enjoy” grows into, well, something else – they realise that what is developing needs focus, encouragement and a way forward and so Resurrection Bikes is born, an emerging Kairos MSC.
Over the last couple of weeks two more Kairos MSCs have emerged. As I think about them I’m reminded of the way in which Peter took a group of friends who were gathering with him off on his little fishing trip. Pippa & Matt, Ben & Helen have both got people who are simply happy to go ‘fishing’ with them. Going together is so important – starting with a group who are willing to go and do something. These two MSCs also have a sense of vision, to young adults and young families respectively – they know what they are fishing for.
Of course we aren’t all called to start an MSC – some of us simply need to function like the six others that were with Peter – they replied to Peter’s statement “I’m going out to fish” saying “we’ll go with you”. I’m pretty sure that Nathaniel – one of the disciples mentioned wasn’t a fisherman which is helpful to know – he just went along & I guess did what he was instructed to do to contribute to the trip. Perhaps you are really committed to participating in missional community and need to say to someone else who has a vision “we’ll go with you”. Missional community /Mission shaped community is nothing without vision and even less without community! Let’s be people who say “we’ll go with you”.
As I reflected further on this passage I was thinking about the simplicity implied in the life with Jesus that we see in these encounters – this again is what MSC life is all about – keeping things simple. Last Saturday we hosted a Discipleship & Mission Workshop day and one of the things that people participating noted was how profoundly simple the Triangle: UP IN OUT is and how effective it can be in keeping us focussed and effective.
What’s God saying to you at the moment? Maybe reflecting on this encounter in John 21 may help.
Mark
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