July 2024: Wrapping Up

It's July and I'm now coming to the end of my time as a Ministry Trainee at St Paul's. Thank you so much for your ongoing love and support, even through not many updates. Here's a few highlights of stuff I've been up to lately.

Highlights: Adult Discipleship

One of the areas I was focusing on this year were "Adult discipleship" (ie, encouraging and building up Christians in church). I've had a few opportunities to do this. We've been able to start a small ministry of 1-1 Bible reading, which isn't something St Paul's has done much of prior to now. In God's kindness I've been able to organise around 7 pairings so far, with a few more in the pipeline. It's very satisfying to be able to pair people up and then watch them just run with it and grow together in reading God's word!

My big plan for the summer is to try and help people in our church family grow in their confidence in understanding the Bible. To this end, I'm starting a book group where we'll try and read Dig Deeper, a book which has massively helped me over the years. We'll try and get together and chat about the book in the Autumn but I'm mostly just happy to get it into people's hands for them to read at their own pace.

Highlights: Exodus with Youth Group

Our fortnightly youth group "Eat. The Word" is a continued highlight. Katy (our childrens and youth worker) and I have been working hard at making it as useful as possible for the six young people we regularly get. I'm very conscious that my youth group growing up was a huge help for me and I'd love for our youth group to bless these young people in a similar way.

We just finished an overview of the book of Exodus. We covered it in a slightly ambitious seven studies, which I summarised with these seven emojis: 😓 🔥 🐑 🌊 🌋 🐄 ⛺. If you can work out what passage each emoji corresponds to, message me and you'll get a shout-out in my next update if you're correct.

(nb: emojis really are the gift that keeps on giving and save me hours of unpleasant googling for clipart)

We did Exodus because we really wanted the young people to be familiar with such an important, foundational Biblical story, but even more to just be amazed by the really clear picture of the Lord it shows: the Lord who rescues his people out of slavery, brings them into covenant, and comes to dwell among them.

We've realised that in many ways the book of Exodus is a mini-version of the whole Christian life. This came out in our final study looking at God coming to dwell among his people (Exodus 40), which is clearly also in mind in John's vision of the new creation in Revelation 21:

Highlights: Door Knocking

I've continued to go door knocking this year. We've also rolled some litter picking into our termly church-wide door knocking push events, to give people an opportunity to go out and serve our community even if they don't feel confident to knock on doors. And it turns out litter picking is also a really fun family event.

I've had a few encouraging conversations at people's doors lately and have even had a couple of opportunities to go deeper with people. I went for coffee with a really nice Muslim guy where we talked about faith, and I'm hoping to meet up tomorrow evening with another guy who read a bit of the Mark's Gospel I gave him.

Highlights: Preaching

I've continued to preach, and got the privilege of rounding off our 3-year series in Luke with 2 sermons from the end of Luke 24 (which has rapidly become one of my favourite chapters in the Bible). I had a slightly unnerving experience when a sermon that I thought would come in at 25 minutes actually turned out to be almost 40 minutes. To this day I have no idea how that happened and I quite simply refused to believe it until I checked the recording.

But there is something nice underneath that - before I started preaching I thought it'd be a real struggle to find something to say for 25 whole minutes, whereas now I realise the difficulty is in not massively exceeding my time limit. That's testament to how much great stuff there is in God's word and how you can always go deeper and deeper.

Next year

I'm still wondering about whether to go into ministry in the longer term, but for now I've decided to go back into software engineering and am hoping I can find a job that starts in September.

However I'm keen to continue lots of my ministry from the past 2 years. I'm hoping from September onwards I can continue leading at an adult Bible study group, the youth group, and continue with some occasional preaching and a bit of door knocking.

I've also been asked to become an Elder at the church from September, which is simultaneously a privilege but also very daunting. I've been praying through some of the key Bible passages about eldership lately to get ready for that.

Stuff I'm praying for (and would like your prayers for)

Thanks:

• For lots of encouragements from individual people at church who are growing in their walk with the Lord!
• For lots of chances to teach the Bible this year in many different ways (preaching, 1-1, small groups).
• For all the ways I've grown through the input I've had - from individuals, from formal training (Cornhill/Co-Mission) and from God's word.

Ask:

• To have time in my calendar to continue my momentum in ministry, particularly in those areas I listed above.
• To be an elder who keeps watch over myself and the flock (Acts 20:28).
• To soon find work as a software developer from September.
• For wisdom for me and Courtney as we continue to consider what work and ministry might look like in the long term.
• For a great week at summer camp, starting on Saturday!

Thanks so much for reading. I'll try and send one final update out at the end of August, so sign up below so you don't miss out!

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