From 10th - 20th May, churches around the world will be joining in a special season of prayer. When we pray "Thy Kingdom Come" we're praying for God's rule and reign to break out in the lives of our friends, communities, workplaces and families. 

As we've just settled on our mission priorities for the coming years, we're going to use this season to pray especially into those areas, asking God to use us to make a difference in his world. 

Come along to as many or as few of the sessions as you're able to. And if you're not able to, do join in from home! 

And remember, fasting often goes with prayer. (We had a really helpful sermon about it a few months ago.) So why not miss a meal a day that week, or miss all your means one day that week - as a sign of your commitment to God about our mission priorities. 

There are some really encouraging videos and useful resources on the Thy Kingdom Come website - do have a look - and pray!

If you weren't able to make our Annual meeting on 23rd April, here's the highlights:
1. We elected Jayne Crispin and Sheree Drury to our Parish Church Council.
2. Dan launched our collective mission priorities. You can watch him talk about them below, and download the booklet which explains more, or pick up a copy on Sunday.

3. Our treasurer gave a report on the finances from 2017, encouraging us to think hard about how we change our income and spending in the coming years. 

Hey church family,

So we had another PCC meeting last Monday, only 3 weeks after our away day. It didn’t feel like very long at all since our day out, but in some ways this was a good thing, because we spent quite a bit of the meeting running through our proposals so far on our new mission focuses. Please be assured that we are spending quite a chunk of our time and prayers working through the detail of this to make sure it’s right for us moving forward.

For anyone involved in a leadership capacity at church you will have received an invite from Dan to join us in the next Leaders evening, this Sunday 25 March at 7.30pm. We will be starting the process of sharing our thoughts on mission priorities during this evening, so I would really encourage you to join us if you are free. We would love to hear your thoughts.

The short time we had left in the rest of our meeting we whipped through some quick updates on buildings and safeguarding. A big shout out goes to Chris Lockwood who has done a sterling job during our pre-planning application to do as much work as he can to negotiate prices down - saving us considerable amounts of money so far!

We concluded our meeting with a quick retrospective of how the meeting went, and a hotly debated topic was 'when do we want our meetings to finish?'! As you can imagine, with a packed agenda and lots of opinions and debate we do often find ourselves running over time quite a bit! In case you're wondering, the verdict was 9.45pm!

Cheers,
Helen

An invitation from Dan to our Easter services and Annual Meeting (23rd April), plus an update from Katy about pastoral care.

Some of the Beacon wrapping Easter Hampers Last Year.

Over the past 3 years, the Beacon Missional Community has been giving Easter Hampers of chocolate eggs, cakes and other food treats to families and individuals, in and around Shirley, who are struggling with their finances.
We are working alongside local organisations like SCRATCH, Christians Against Poverty and Southampton City Mission and are seeking to build relationships through our bi-monthly Supper Clubs. As we try and bring hope, help and support, we are aiming to demonstrate the love of Jesus and our prayer is that in time we will see people come to faith.
Can you help by donating some food items for Easter Hampers this year? We are planning to package everything up on Wednesday 21st March in the Parish Hall from 7pm. Any donations can be brought to church or the Parish Office before that date, clearly marked “Beacon Hampers”. Please check that all items have a use by date that is after Easter, as it may take us a week or so to complete deliveries. We’d also love it if anyone would like to come and help us pack; we’ll be chatting and eating cake as we gift wrap the parcels! Offers of help with deliveries are also appreciated.
Last year we made up about 20 hampers and we anticipate making a similar number this year. If you are aware of an individual or family, whether inside or outside of church, who would appreciate a package, please email beacon@stjamesbythepark.org

19 February 2018

Dear friends, 

On Sunday, Simon Clift spoke on fasting [see ‘Love is an action' series’] from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I sense this is a real ‘word in season’ for us for three reasons:

a) It ties in with the ‘spiritual health-check’ we did on Ash Wednesday and the suggestion that people use the ‘spiritual healthcheck’ book individually during Lent. (If you hadn’t heard about that, look at this blog [http://www.stjamesbythepark.org/blog/taking-a-spiritual-healthcheck] or pick up the materials from church next Sunday.) 

b) This coming Saturday, the PCC are having an away day at which we’ll be looking to make decisions about the key mission priorities we want to have as a church over the coming years. This is the culmination of last term’s “Big Yes” / “discerning our collective mission priorities” evenings which many came to. In due course, the priorities the PCC decides upon will help to shape our decisions about buildings and budgets - as well as shaping the life of lots of groups within the church. 

c) This coming Saturday is also a worship training day for our bands and tech teams, led by Neil Bennetts. As many of you know, the last year or so have been a testing time for our bands and tech teams, and this will be a great opportunity for them to come together to worship and learn together as they seek to serve God and us and lead our church in worship. 

In the light of this, I’d love you to consider agreeing one day this week, or this coming month, when you will fast. 

Simon gave some suggestions during the sermon as to what that might look like - typically going without food (but drink plenty of fluids) between an early breakfast and an evening meal; or for 24 hours. Some of you may need to seek medical advice first to see whether it is wise, but for the vast majority of people, fasting can be a really healthy discipline - and of course, when we are fasting to seek God, it becomes of great spiritual worth, too. 

Specifically, would you pray and fast for our PCC (as they make these key decisions and work out how to implement them) and for our bands and tech teams (as they continue to adjust to lots of changes and seek to lead us in worship)? 

Fasting isn’t just for the ‘super-spiritual’. It has been a common practice for most Christians for most of the last 2000 years - but is something that our generation has lost. Jesus clearly expects us to - so let’s learn together. 

I’m suggesting that each cell group and missional community commits to experimenting with fasting on the same day (even though some will be at work, others on holiday etc) because we often need the encouragement of others to start at something which seems daunting. That’s why some who want to start running choose to join a ‘couch to 5k’ running group - it provides encouragement whilst training, and a degree of accountability. If your group fasts on the same day, you can message each other through the day to share how it’s going, and reflect on the experience together. 

If you’re not in a cell group or missional community, choose a day to fast - you can always ask other friends in the church to give you particular encouragement on that day. 

Who knows - once you’ve done it once, you may want to try again (for a slightly longer period?) later in Lent. Simon shared yesterday that since he started experimenting with fasting over the last couple of months, he has experienced a greater hunger for the things of God - in addition to a new enjoyment of food and a new awareness of how food can diminish us. 

Let’s seek God together in prayer - and in fasting - for the life of our church and our mission in this area. Let’s pray - and fast - for God’s Kingdom to come and his will to be done. 

Your brother, 
Dan

We take cars for annual MOTs. Some of us get regular physical health-checks. When was the last time you took a spiritual health-check? 

On Ash Wednesday, we gave the opportunity to take part in one. For those who weren't able to make it, here's some of what we covered:

Spiritual health is closely tied to spiritual growth. Sadly, for many Christians, a spiritual growth chart looks something like this: 

In other words, after we become a Christian, we grow spiritually quite rapidly - but then we plateau for the rest of our lives until we die. At that point, Jesus completes our spiritual transformation (we are renewed in body, soul and spirit) and we get to live in his presence. That spiritual growth chart is similar to a physical growth chart for humans - growth through childhood and adolescence, but then no more growth for the rest of our lives.

But the Bible pictures spiritual growth as being more like this:

In other words, we should be on an overall trend of spiritual growth throughout our lives. Yes, there are ups and downs along the way. But by the time we die, we should be considerably more spiritually mature / healthy than in the immediate years after we become a Christian.

The apostle Paul was a great evangelist - but he wasn't just interested in people becoming Christians. He was passionate about Christians becoming more spiritually mature: "We proclaim him [Christ], admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect [mature] in Christ" (Colossians 1.28). 

Similarly, when talking about why Jesus gave certain gifts to the church, Paul explained that it was "so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity ... and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." And the effect of this maturity? "Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching ..." (Ephesians 4.11.16). 

Spiritual maturity means becoming more and more like Jesus. Here’s Paul writing to the Corinthians: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory" (2 Corinthians 3.18). John Ortberg describes the effect of spiritual transformation like this: "When transformation happens, I don’t just do the things Jesus would have done; I find myself wanting to do them. They make sense. I don’t just go around trying to do the right things; I become the right sort of person." 

So ... being a spiritually healthy Christian means growing to spiritual maturity - becoming more and more like Jesus. And that's a lifelong process - not one that stops after spiritual adolescence! 

We developed some questions (actually, we borrowed bits from various different sources) to help each of us diagnose the state of our own spiritual health. Click here to take this 'spiritual health-check' yourself. 

Go on - give it a go! You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. As you fill it in, be honest - this is just between you and God. If you score low in a section, it doesn't mean you're a bad Christian - it's just flagging up areas where you can grow. 

A physical health-check is only beneficial if we begin to put into practice the GP's recommendations. It's the same with this spiritual health-check. If you just leave it there, it's been a waste of time. To get the most out of this health-check, once you've done it, choose one (or maybe two) areas which have been highlighted as needing some attention, and begin to work on it, prayerfully. 

And don't work at it alone! Spiritual growth comes as we allow God's Spirit to work in us, and it happens in the context of Christian fellowship. Learn from the wisdom of others who are stronger in that area than you are. 

And if you want some more ideas on how to work on these areas, specifically on 'spiritual disciplines', here's the 'growing spiritually' handout we used to help people follow-up. 

Have fun - and let us know how you get on!

"In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy ... being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1.4-6).

Dan.