NEW YEAR DINNER

Thank You is a word we do not use likely here at the Ashford Salvation Army Christian Centre. Today we held our New Year Dinner - a free meal - for all those who support our various Family Ministry Events and Community Ministry Events. 40 People sat down to enjoy a three course, and more, meal, to thank them for their support and commitment to our mission programme. We also had time to thank the team members and the many who help lead these groups too. So thank you everyone, and we look forward to working with you in the year to come:

THROUGH THE STORMS - WITH GODS STRENGTH

Today we have been blessed as a church community, to be part of the spiritual journey of two of His precious children. Joel Whitewood and Clare Hayward approached our senior leaders sometime ago about preaching - not because they really wanted to, but because God told them too. Who could argue with that! Some church's would not theologically agree with our senior leaders on this one (and indeed some salvation army churches too) but our leaders believe that God anoints people of all ages, to speak for Him, and we are all gifted in many ways - whether we have been to Bible or Theological College or not! College does not give you an anointed - just training and equipping. This Morning Joel Whitewood (one of our junior members, and also a choriester at canterbury cathedral - so on missionary service from the salvation army) spoke of God's Strength and how we need it! As if they had planned it together, Clare Hayward spoke on God, the cloud lifter! How God helps us through the storms, the importance of focus, the importance of commitment and more. Both spoke with spirtual authority and power! After both talks several people made prayers at the cross. We thank God for His work through them, and their obedience to Him. When we are all obedient to Him, the blessings not only come to us, but also to others!

WHAT AN INFLUENCE !

Some months ago we shared how our youth ministries officer needed to go deeper with God, and felt it was time to preach. The influence of that obedience has continued! Following that meeting our senior leaders received a text from one of our 'junior soldiers'. He too, for sometime has been writing sermons, and wanted to preach! This was no easy feet - this was no desire - this was God's Idea, and after all, The Word says that The Spirit of God comes on people of all ages - men and women, boys and girls - we all have an anointing, and all gifts to bring to The Body - if its because God wants - then who are we to stand in the way. Some weeks later our senior leaders received another text from someone exploring full time ministry as a Salvation Army Officer in the not too distant future. She needed to also be challenged, as Trevor did, and again influenced by many, including trevor, asked if she might be permitted to preach one Sunday.

THIS SUNDAY in our morning worship meeting, Joel Whitewood (also a chorister at canterbury cathedral) will be bringing The Ministry of The Word. THIS SUNDAY in our evening meeting (disciple college) our acting childrens ministry officer (as of this month), Clare Hayward, will be bringing The Ministry of The Word.

As we launch out on our focus for this year - Living in Hope - both the words that God has laid on their hearts lay great foundations for the years ahead!!!!

Thank You Trevor for your influence!

LIVING IN HOPE

Living in Hope is our focus for 2007, and as God has spoken about the amazing things He believes we will see this year, already many of our people are finding themselves under attack, not having the time they need for things, under pressue, work loads and so much more. Its in the reality of such days that the following song has been penned:-

In the Midst of Confusion - In the Midst of Pain

In the Midst of Aniexty - in the Lowness of the Day

In seek to find the answers, I need to know The Truth,

Lord, Jesus, help me look only to You!

You're my Hope, You're My Strength,

You're My Light, My Friend - my all in all

Jesus Christ, I Worship You!

Jesus Christ, I Worship You!

Before Your Cross, I bow My Knee

I Crown You King of all, You want me to be

Lord, My God, my only Hope!

Jesus Christ - the Hope of all the world.

(c) 2007, ASACC

FRESH WIND, FRESH FIRE (2)

More reflections for believers everywhere (it might be easier if you get the book!)

• We have lots of markings that look like Christianity these days, but we have drastically revisted the parameters. People have lowered the standards in vain attempts to make churche look more successful than they really are. The sermons have to be uniformly positive, and the services cannot go longer than 60 minutes. Even then, church is inconvient for some, especially during football season. Shwoign up at church is such a burden that soon people will be faxing in their worship!
• Seriously, what will our children and grandchildren grow up experiencing in church? Extended times of waiting on the Lord will be totally foreign to their experience. There will be no memory bank of seeing people reach out to God. All the will recall are professionally, polished, closely timed productions
• The message of the cross will always be foolishness to some, a stumbling block to others. But if our attention is on the market reaction, we move away from the power of the Gospel. This fearfulness to talk about the Blood of Christ is an overreaction. Worse than that, it borders on heresy, distorting and deflating the power of the Good News
• We don't need need technicians and church programmes, we need God.He is not looking for smart people, because He's the smart one. All He wants are people simple enough to trust Him
• According to 1 Corinthians 13, if meetings are governed by the Holy Spirit, the result for the visitor will be that 'the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, God is really among you' (v25) This should be our goal. When a visitor comes in, there should be a mixture of God's truth and God's presence that the person's heart is x rayed, the futility of his life is exposed and he crumbles in repentance
• In revival the congregation does the preachin (Alexander Whyte) What hemeant was that beyond the presence of preachers, musicians and other ministries, what speaks to the heart is that God is dwelling in close communion with His people
• The absent element is what is expressed in the final sentence of the prayer recorded in Acts 4: Stretch out........ (v30) What gains unbelievers attention and stirs the heart is seeing the Gospel expressed in Power!
• In too many churches today, people don't see manifestation of God's Power in answer to fervant praying. Instead they hear arguements about theological issues that few people care about. On Christian radio and television we are often merely talking to ourselves.
• What we are dealing with today is an Old Testament 'vow religion' comprised of endless repetitions and commands to do all the right things.......There is little dependance on God's power to make an ongoing difference. There is little callijng upon God to revolutionize us in a supernatural way.
• In too many places where the Bible is being thumped and doctrine is being argused until three in the morning the Spirit of that doctrine is missing. William Law, and English devotional writer of the early 1700's wrote 'Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and as unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependance upon Him.
• Yet Christians often hesitate to reach out to those who are dfferent. They want God to clean the fish before they catch them. If someone's gold ring is attached to an unusual body part, if the person does not smell the best, or if the skin colour is not the same, Christians tend to hesitate. But think for a moment about God reaching out to us
• Anytime people get hungrey to truly know the Lord, the Holy Spirit quickly puts a shovel and broom in their hands. Husbands and wives begin to deal with long buried issued hurting their marriages. Adults take a closer look at their choice of TV programmes and movies. Church members begin to see the damage wreaked by their gossup, their racial attitudes, their criticism
• When it comes to spiriual matters, you and I will never know our potential under God until we step out and take risks on the front line of battle. We will never s what power and anointing are possible until we bond with our KIng and go out in His Name to establish His Kingdom. Sitting safely in Bible discussions among ourselces, or complaining to one another abou the state of todays society will do nothing to unleash His Power
• Consider how many Gospel preaching churches there are in the 50 states of Amercia - 200,000 if not more. If each of these churches, on average, brought only two converts to Christ a week - not robbing peopel from First Baptist orFirst Nazarene down the road, but winning new people for the Kingdom of God, that would mean 100 new baptsied believers in each church in a years time, or 20,000,000 nationwide.

That will do for now!!!!

FRESH WIND, FRESH FIRE

As we start this new year, already some of our members are talking about how they believe God is going to do some amazing things this year - but we are also very aware of satans desire to damage much and destroy what has already been done among us. Our focus for teaching this year is Living in Hope, and we know thats about keeping focussed on Him and not allowing anything to get in the way.

Fresh wind, Fresh Fire is a book thats been around for some years, written by Pastor Jim Cymbala. The sub title of the book is: what happenes when God's Spirit invades the hearts of His people. Some of his writing is a very timely reminder to our church community, and also to the wider Christian Church. Here are some reflections:-

• I could just preach God's Word as best I knew and then call the congregation to prayer and worship. The Lord would take over from there
• Those experiences showed me that I didn't need to play the preacher. Jesus called fishermen, not graduates of rabbinical schools. The main requirement was to be natural and sincere. His disciples had to depend totllay upon the Lord and His Power. In the same way, I had to stop trying to act ministerial - whatever that was. God could only use Jim Cymbala the way he is
• I began mulling over the many ideas and strategies I had heard or read on church growth. One Christian leader had told me 'Forget about the institutional church building; home meetings are where its at these days. You might as well sell your building: God is doing a new thing
• If we don't call upon the Lord, He has promised nothing - nothing at all. Its as simple as that. No matter what I preach or what we claim to believe in our heads, the future will depend upon our times of prayer
• The condition o the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be a slothfulness in prayer (Spurgeon)
• God likes to see His people shut up to do this, that there is no hope but in prayer. Herein lies the Church's power against the world (Andrew Bonar 1853)
• Satan's main stratgy with God's people has always been to whisper, 'Don't call, don't ask, don't depend on God to do great things. You'll get along fine if you just rely on your own cleverness and energy'. The truth of the matter is that the devil is not terribly frightened of our human efforts and credentials. But he knows his kingdom will be damaged when we lift up our hearts to God
• Only when we are full of the Spirit do we feel the need for God everywhere we turn
• Our forebears back in the camp meeting days used to say that if people left a meeting talking about what a wonderful sermon the preacher gave or how beautifully the singers sang, the meetin had failed. But if people went home saying things like 'Isn't God good? He met me tonight in such a wonderful way' - it was a good meeting. There was to be sharing the stage with the Lord
• The feature that is supposed to distinguish Christian churches, Christian people, and Christian gatherings is the aroma of prayer. It doesn't matter what your tradition or my tradition is. The house is not ours anyway, it is the Father's
• If a meeting does not end with people touching God, what kind of meeting is it? We haven't really encountered God. We haven't met with the only One powerful and loving enough to change our lives.

COUNTING OUR BLESSINGS

New Years Eve. We didn't expect many at church today to be honest. But we were blessed with about seventy people, if not more with us. We decided to end the year as we started - with a breakfast and time of celebration. This time we met in the school hall and even that was full! We focussed on Psalm 24, and counting our blessings. We recognised how many new faces we had seen in this past year since moving to the school - and over twenty five have been welcomed to the family, and we now see regularly. Who could have seen all these blessings in the past year - we know God did, and just desired that we would obey Him. We recognised how it is so wasy to spend New Years Eve looking at failings and weaknesses of the past year - but actually as Christians we should be counting our blessings - and there we recognise all that God has done - what an aweseom God we have. During this meeting our senior leader encouraged us to use Psalm 24 as our desire for the new year - to remain in God's Presence, and to be there because we have clean hands and pure heart. Senior Leader Ian, shared how as a couple, Sue and Ian are committed to ensure we know the fullest spiritual life in Him that we could have, and that we can never be about anything else. They committed to seek to not fail us or Him - and to continue to ensure that we are growing in Him and knowing all His blessings. We recognised that we needed to have open hands, giving hands and hand that would be used to be able to continue to grow in Him and live empowered lives. It was a special end to the year - and one where no one could fail to see how He has blessed us in so many ways. We concluded with singing these words:- May the God of Love fill us with all joy and peace as we trust in Him, as we trust in Him, May the God of Love fill us with all joy and peace as we trust in Him, as we trust in Him. That we may overflow with hope - by the power of the Holy Spirit, that we may overflow with hope, with hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Father God, we love You, Father God, we thank You, Father God, we love You every day. Fill us with Your Joy Lord, fill us with Your Love Lord.......

We pray that for you too.

LIVING EMPOWERED

Each year it is our custom to take a focus for that year, to help us to build our teaching ministry around over those twelve months. For the last few years, we have seen the very reason why God has led us that way, and this past year our focus has been Living Empowered. God challenged us at the beginning of this year to encourage the church congregation to 'grow up' and become bigger and stronger men and women of God. We were also challenged that what we are doing today is preparing us for tomorrow. We saw how God was revealing to us that what we do and did we could do on our own, but without the Holy Spirit empowerment we were very little effective. It has meant a real boldness in some of the teaching. It has meant a real boldness in some of the way we have pastored and cared for people. Its pretty hard at times, when you know God is wanting to challenge us and shake us up, when God is wanting to do something amazing among us, but people are just so comfortable. God really wants us to be effective people. God really wants this world to be full of the signs and wonders of His presence among us - yet we all hold so much back - because we have what we want and taking it further might be asking far too much thank you very much. One of our leaders shared with us a sign that she saw on a van at the beginning of this year. It read: Progression through empowerment. That hit it right where it should be. In order to progress in our spiritual lives and in our relationship with Him, we have to allow God's Spirit in. He gives us daily bread - not stale bread!

It is our sincere prayer that for our members and friends this year, they have more of His Spirit in and working through their lives than ever before. We love them too much to see no progression!

Sue and Ian [Senior Leaders]

CHRISTMAS - His Presence among us

Many people have shared how this season has been for them a Christ - mas - knowing the presence of God among us. We have had some special times together, which for many will be held onto dearly. For many too, the opportunity to provide a family for many without on Christmas Day is also very special, and helps us put our belief into action - on a day when many are not easily thinking of others. It was estimated (although not totally acturate because numbers were up and down all day) that we served about 150 meals on this day. As we looked around us we wondered how on earth we had managed such a day at our own church centre in the past. This year we were granted use of the East Stour School, and what a blessing that was. There was space - there was room - there was safety!!!!! The day commenced at 9am as people started arriving, although some had been there behand preparing, and some even there the day before setting up. Meeting the guests is always a privilege and as well as welcoming back familiar faces from the past, we also welcomed new faces for the first time. This being our 4th year, we have a good regular attendance, and as well as some of the faithful volunteers returning, again we were able to welcome some new faces to the team. One commented on how amazed she was at such a miltary operation! To many of us it was just chaos that we tried to get through. God was gracious - providing us with enough drivers, enough food and gifts to give to people as they left, and enough time to pack a lot into one day - from a carol service, led by captain Sue, to our four course Christmas dinner, to entertainment, games and quizzes, a christmas tea and concluding with a couple of songs. Everyone mucked in together, and the day seemd to go well without too many errors and problems. Whilst it is hard work, we do thank God for this opportunity. Many burdened people shared the day, and many left unburdened. One lady commented on how she enjoyed watching the sea of faces filled with happiness. A number of our guests were without homes, other on low income, others with very little family - if any - so indeed we were able to provide one big family for so many people. And what a family it was.

Our sincere prayer is that we will be able to have brought hope to those dear people, and that they will remember long after this season, the presence of Christ among them, as we continued to express to them that this is just what this season celebrates - and can be known beyond such a day as well.

I FEEL AMAZING!

Christmas Eve Morning Worship continued our reflection on The Gift that God has given us. Today we moved from hearing about the gift to seeing the gift and the reaction that the Bible states people made. We shared how people knelt before Jesus in awe and amazement. We shared how people were bowled over by seeing what they heard. We shared how people went glorifying and praising God. But we did not just share all this, we saw it happening before us. Many people made prayers before the cross - many people were overwhelmed by the presence of God and broke into tears. Others responded to what God was saying, and gave their lives to Him afresh. Above all - one person knelt before the cross for the first time, and in tears cried out to God - her God - the greatest gift ever. After the meeting.....she shared how she felt amazing. She told how she found herself at church this morning, and had no idea that would happen when she walked in! Thank you Jesus. This is what its all about....seeing people responding to this Gift and we can, but be nothing else than thankful.

We pray for all those who responded to God today - and pray for those who have not yet got to that point. There are many yet who have a way to go in their journey - but we pray with all our hearts, that they will journey to adore Him - and humbly bow before Him, and crown Him Lord of all.