from flickr by Phil Bradley

What a great morning back amongst my great friends at New Life Church earlier today. I preached on the Prodigal Son from Luke 15, and there were 7 who responded to the first appeal for salvation and 6 for the second.

This is a church I first preached at 13 years ago when I first started out in church paid work. And since then “New Life” has more than doubled in size and they now have their very own swish converted warehouse venue, with superb huge facilities for children’s work and youth work and also a wonderful large milling/social area, where everyone can hang out after the service.

Simon Elliott, who leads the church, has done a superb job, and I really felt the benefit of everyone’s prayers in a well-attended prayer meeting before the service. The venue was almost full, and there was a cracking atmosphere throughout.

Some great stories also from those who responded this morning. One guy became a Christian on only his second ever visit to church. Another middle-aged man came up to me and just threw his arms round me afterwards without even saying hello. It was an emotional preach and and an emotional response.

On a previous visit I’d encouraged the church to make friends with people in the East Grinstead area through leisure activities. Several of the leaders have joined sports clubs and made friends with people who (up until this morning) didn’t know Christ, and the increased attendance this morning was partly as a result of some of those new friends turning up at church!

So it capped off a great weekend that started on Friday night in Southampton. I took Julia and our 4 girls down there for the Southampton University CU weekend away. I introduced them all and did a little interview with all 5 of them. Emma, our 2 year old, stole the show. After dinner, I preached an overview of Romans chapter 1 to 8. An ambitious attempt to summarise the whole argument! It was all Pauline theology with none of my own jokes or illustrations, so it hopefully laid a foundation of security in Christ, for all the students who came. The idea was to establish the doctrinal basis of our confidence before God, before we even began to talk about evangelism. First things first!

John and Alison Risbridger, from Above Bar Church Southampton, very kindly let us stay in their wonderful bungalow on the edge of the New Forest overnight. And the following morning, I preached on “6 reasons why we will see many people become Christians” and then in the afternoon, I did a new talk on “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” In between times, to Grace’s (aged 4) delight, there was 2 hours of arts and crafts making, and I met lots of students who I’d connected with in the past at various events. For example, one girl came up to me and told me that she’d become a Christian three years ago at an event I preached at in a tent in a field in Essex, called “Solid”. I’d forgotten all about it, but that was the day that her life changed forever!

It was great connecting again with Tom Heasman and the excellent SUCU team, who are doing a great job. We all got excited looking forward to the 4 back to back Carol Services on 11th December!

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