Fun in the Sun

Over the weekend, about 15 of us went down to a lovely cottage neat Tiverton, Devon to celebrate someone's birthday. Decorum prohibits me from sharing the specific age but needless to say it was a bit of a landmark. Pray for them. Anyway, most of the people who went were from B.C.C. but there were a few others who I didn't know that well, if at all. The venue was a wonderful extended cottage set in the folds of the rolling valleys of Devonshire countryside. It was located down some rather narrow lanes and the drive leading to the front door was very steep indeed. It included a huge kitchen, living room, extensive upstairs bedrooms with washing facilities and a converted barn with cinema-sized screen, pool table and underfloor heating.

We had some really great times to relax, have a laugh and build friendships over the weekend. There were plenty of edible treats (I baked a few myself: flapjack, chocolate brownies, Smarties cookies and caramel shortbread) and tasty coffee courtesy of Dave and Nicky's Nespresso Machine. We enjoyed some meals together too, sang "Happy Birthday" a few too many times (in some rather dodgy keys) and in the evenings relaxed in front of the open fire or sung along to ABBA SongStar (yes, there is footage of some of us making idiots of ourselves) in the Games Room. Some people enjoyed the rugby on Saturday afternoon, others participated in a bit of cricket in the garden and the weather was PERFECT the whole time!!

On Sunday morning, a few of us travelled back up the M5 to Taunton to visit Kingdom Faith Church, South West. I'd wanted to visit for a while and when I knew we were going to be down this end of the Country, I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to pop in. At the moment, they meet in a local school and as we pulled in it reminded me of the many years B.C.C. used to live a similarly transient existence, moving from place to place like spiritual nomads! The amount of work required in setting up and taking down every week is very demanding but it certainly shows how committed you are to the task in hand when this is what is required of all those wanting to get involved.

For the sake of brevity, I will focus on the message preached by Judith Butler, the Leader of the Church. She shared for about an hour and I really liked both the spirit and content of what was said. Essentially, she said we must always keep the Cross at the centre of our Gospel and not allow things to be softened by a desire to be more appealing to the world; you can't have forgiveness without repentance and too many Churches were willing to go down this route in order to see more people come through the door. It sounded like some of her 'no nonsense' approach had also come at a cost within the Church itself as people had become offended and left. Some of her message was highly prophetic and confirmed the themes we have been hearing about in B.C.C.: always very encouraging! I came away feeling both challenged and built up.

Why do I emphasise this? Well, Judith's message was particularly important as I read in Christianity Magazine over the weekend that Brian McLaren, the unapologetic apologist for emergent church movements who's views on hell, penal substitutionary atonement, sexuality and expressions of church are highly questionable, will be speaking at this year's Spring Harvest Conference. Jude vs4-5 says, "For certain men...have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a licence for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord." I would suggest that anyone who does not place Christ, His life, death and resurrection at the centre of the Gospel message may well find themselves meeting the criteria in the above verses. As we enter another week, you do the same!

P.S. I came back to the Cottage to find people had listened to the live webstream of KF Horsham's Message followed by John Maskell's message from itunes - what an excellent Sunday morning double-whammy!