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New Year Update

Posted in Uncategorized on January 4th, 2011 by jez – 2 Comments

So what have we been up to here in brum for the first 4 months of church planting!  he a update of some of the work and progress so far.

The first month and a half was mainly preparation for the launch of the church in early November. I spent time recruiting and equipping the core team, networking, preparing the teaching and training schedule, administration – setting up structures etc, and meeting together twice a week, with the team, for prayer and preparation.

We started with a core team of 14, we now have 17 regulars with further interest from locals – both believers and unbelievers (expanded below). We currently meeting in the front room of our rented house, but are in discussions with a local Christian trust to use a space in their building on Sundays as we have no room for more people to come.

The first two months of the church have been about laying foundations within the body and within the community.

In the church

We have been teaching through Mark’s gospel and proverbs, midweek we are studying a series on Christian doctrine and a DVD series from CCEF “how people change”. Men’s and Women’s ministry group meet once a month and every member has an accountability partner to meet with. Leadership is being developed with an elder and a deacon being appointed and more to come in this next year.  We have got together all the documentation ready to set up a charity company for the work of the church. Many pastoral visits and prayer. We have linked for regional support and involvement with the Birmingham 2020 church planters network and currently, we are in conversation with a grouping of churches which might provide mutual accountability and support to the church.

In the community

we have set up a partnership with another local church to take on running two groups – a family activity group and an 7-11 children club.
I’ve spent time networking with local agencies; police, ward support, tenants groups etc and Christian groups in the wider area.
Without a building the opportunities to meet people has been limited but not insignificant.  At Christmas, we visited 800 homes, in three of the four housing estates that make up our area and hand-delivering a Christmas package, made up of a Christmas card introducing ourselves with information about is going on now and from January, a present (box of chocolates) and a “two ways to live” tract.
We have had a great response from this project. Lovely conservations at the door, phone calls of thanks from the elderly, people interested in finding out more about the church, request for pastoral visits, opportunities to do bible studies with three different men all with addition issues.  One of these guys has started coming to the church and is coming on our weekend away next week.
So it is great that we are becoming known in the area and already have opportunities for the gospel, we pray that these will increase.

In the short – medium term

Community football team – will be starting in early January – this is focused on reaching local young men.

A “Faith in football” local league for 7-13 is plan to start in April or June

At Easter, we are planning to visit every home in the area, about 1800, with an Easter family goodies bag/box which will contain among other things – a Mark’s gospel for every home.

Recovery House – a building has come available to be used for a recovery house which my wife and I move into at the end of February, and will have our first house guest after Easter.  There will be space to take a maximum of three guests at one time.  My wife and myself will act as house parents and the each addicts with have a recovery programme – one to one, support groups, daily devotion, bible studies, daily chores, therapeutic sessions, and work/serving placements.

With Birmingham 2020, we are putting together a two year church based training program to start from September 2011 for those interested in church planting. We’ll probably use the Porterbrook network resources for the training.  We expect to have two people full-time who will be part of this programme. Other members of church are seeking to make themselves available part-time to work for the church which is great encouragement to me.

In the Medium – long term
we are current looking for a base (building) to work out of in the estates – we are current in conversation with one group about the use of their building and also have possibility of getting hold of a house on an estate to work from.

Planting other churches in the surrounding area remains a long term plan.

Update on finances
From January, we will have raised regular personal support totaling £500 per month but are running at £300 deficit a month not including contingency money. Someone kindly bought us a car as ours broke down – Praise the lord.
We thank God that for the blessing it is to serve him in the venture and he has provided what we need so far and trust him in the future. i’ll keep you updated – please continue to pray for us

jez

the history of redemption

Posted in Uncategorized on December 18th, 2010 by jez – Be the first to comment

This is a really great presentation, which uses only scripture to walk you through redemptive history from creation to new creation, and from Genesis to Revelation.

“The History of Redemption was designed as a tool for you to memorize the history of redemption and be reminded of God’s great grace so that you might be compelled to share it with others.”

Really inspiring to listen to and there is a challenge, if you choose to accept it, to memorize all 47 passages. Let me know how you get on!

Watch and listen by clicking below

redemption history

Santa Claus is coming to town!

Posted in Uncategorized on December 14th, 2010 by jez – 1 Comment

This week see us embark on our first community project together as a church and our first big opportunity to introduce ourselves to the people of Short Heath, Erdington.  We manage to get hold of a Christmas sleigh (which plays music) and we plan over two nights (with Santa help!) to deliver approx 800 Christmas cards, presents, and tracts to the home in the area.  We will hopefully have some additional helpers from another church to help us complete this project.  Please pray that it produces fruit for us in the community, that it will be a blessing to the community, that the church enjoys get into the mix of the community, and that God will provide opportunities for the gospel and relationships.

“Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells, Jingle all the way, Oh, what fun it is to ride, In a one horse open sleigh”

Paxmans interviews Hitchens

Posted in Uncategorized on November 30th, 2010 by jez – Be the first to comment

The interview by Paxman of Christopher Hitchens is really worth watching. Hearing Hitchens talk about his life and beliefs is, at times, sad, depressing and frustrating.  It’s hard to see a man with great intelligence, lack wisdom or fear (respect and reverence) of God, and who has harden his heart to the Lord so to be self deceived.  We can only pray that God would change his heart and transform his mind so that he may see Jesus’ life and death as great act of love not some entrapment to anti-reason.

paxman interviews C Hitchens about his life and beliefs

What’s Wrong with Theistic Evolution? by Kevin deYoung

Posted in Uncategorized on November 3rd, 2010 by jez – Be the first to comment

Thought that this might be interesting to some of you -

What’s Wrong with Theistic Evolution?

Most readers of this blog are probably aware that theistic evolution has been a hot topic in evangelicalism of late. Certainly, the aggressive support for evolution from the gang at Biologos has succeeded in stirring the pot. As did the address this summer from Albert Mohler responding to Biologos (for Mohler’s latest on the controversy go here; that link will also take you to the most pertinent links in the debate).

Given the ongoing debate, many of you should be interested in a new book from the Discovery Institute entitled God and Evolution, edited by Jay Richards. The book is not necessarily a defense of Mohler’s position, but it is a strong critique of theistic evolution.

Jay Richards (whom you may remember from this work) was kind enough to do an interview with me about this new book..

Hi Jay, thanks for doing another interview for us. Maybe you can start by telling us what you’re up to these days. You’ve left Grand Rapids and are back in Seattle, correct?

Yes, I left Acton full time in November 2008. In 2009, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and worked on a couple of projects related to economics. In September 2009, I also started writing as a Contributing Editor at the The American and the Enterprise blog at American Enterprise Institute, and returned to Discovery Institute full time in February 2010. We’re living in Seattle now, just a few miles from the Discovery Institute offices.

You edited this new book “God and Evolution.” Who are a few of the others contributors and why did you feel compelled to do this book?

Other than me, the book contributors are John West, Stephen Meyer, Casey Luskin, William Dembski, Jonathan Witt, Jonathan Wells, Logan Gage, David Klinghoffer, and Denyse O’Leary. All of these folks are associated with the intelligent design movement, so you might wonder why a bunch of ID folks would get together to write about God and evolution. We did so for several reasons. First, in recent years, there’s been a resurgence of attempts to reconcile theism with Darwinian evolution. Many of these “theistic evolutionists” have claimed that ID is bad theology. Some have even called it blasphemous! These accusations needed a response. Second, while intelligent design arguments are based on public evidence and standard forms of reasoning, the debate over design obviously has theological implications. Finally, speaking for myself, I’ve grown increasingly concerned that many well-meaning Christians are confused about the question of “evolution.” Too many people seem satisfied to say that evolution is just God’s way of creating without being clear on what that means.

We’ve all heard the phrase, but what exactly is “theistic evolution?”

The problem with the word “evolution” is that it means many different things—some trivial, some significant and controversial. We use the term “theistic evolution” in the book to refer to those who seek to reconcile more or less traditional theism with Darwinian evolution. Darwinism has always been defined as a purposeless process, so reconciling it with theism is a grade A dilemma. If, in contrast, a person believes that God guided an evolutionary process in creating the various forms of life, they might believe in “evolution” in the sense of common ancestry, but their view would be very un-Darwinian. They would be a design proponent rather than a “theistic evolutionist” in the sense that we use the term.

I know you’ve got a whole book on this topic, so I don’t expect you to rehearse all the arguments, but perhaps you could briefly highlight one or two scientific problems with theisitc evolution?

The key scientific problems with theistic evolution are identical with the key scientific problems with Darwin’s theory. Though we know that Darwin’s mechanism can explain some trivial things, such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria and variations in finch beaks, there’s no evidence that random genetic mutations and natural selection can create major new systems in biology. On the contrary. Much of what we know suggests that Darwin’s “mechanism” is quite limited in scope. One of the popular arguments theistic evolutionists use against ID proponents is the idea that most of our DNA is “junk.” Francis Collins (head of the NIH) is quite fond of this argument. You would expect flotsam and jetsam left over from the Darwinian process, according to Collins, if the system were cobbled together by a mindless process, but not if the system had been designed.

A decade and a half ago, some ID proponents predicted that many of these so-called non-coding regions (regions that don’t code for proteins) would eventually be found to have important functions. Well, evidence for important functions has been reported for years in the scientific literature. It’s becoming clear that some religious scholars were so quick to accommodate Darwinism that they didn’t check the evidence carefully.

You also talk about philosophical and theological problems. Do you think theisitc evolution presents dangers to orthodox Christianity?

THE central theological problem for theistic evolutionists is reconciling Darwinian Theory—which defines “random” to mean “purposeless”—with theism. The theist claims that God created the world for a purpose and providentially guides it. But it simply makes no sense to say that God directs an undirected process. This basic contradiction at the heart of the project leads many theistic evolutionists either to trade in equivocations, or to jettison major parts of traditional theism.

How should a Christian student or scholar respond when someone dismisses Intelligent Design out of hand saying “It’s not science”?

The best thing someone can do to respond to the claim that ID is not science is to take the time to read the responses to this charge from ID proponents. We deal with it a bit in the book. To make a long story very short, any definition of science broad enough to encompass Darwinism, origin of life studies, and cosmology, will allow ID arguments. Any non ad hoc definition of science strict enough to rule ID out will also rule out these other disciplines which we all accept as science. However you define science, however, ID arguments are based on public evidence from science and don’t depend on private revelation. So the question remains: Is there evidence for intelligent design in nature, or not? Even if ID were basket-weaving or European history, that’s still the relevant question.

What is the relationship between ID and young earth creationism? Are there cautions you would have for Christians in either camp?

ID differs from young earth creationism because it is based on the evidence from nature alone, and is not an attempt to reconcile the biblical text (or an interpretation of the biblical text) with the evidence of nature. ID, strictly speaking, simply claims that there are patterns in nature that are best explained as the product of an intelligent agent. That’s consistent with a variety of different creationist views, but is identical with none of them. Of course, many ID proponents have specific views about the doctrine of creation, the age of the universe, and so forth. But ID per se is distinct from these ideas.

To put it differently, if you’re a young earth creationist you’re going to believe in some forms of design. But you could think that some things are best explained in terms of design, but not be a young earth creationist. The key contrast with ID would be materialism. ID proponents think you need the category of agency to fully explain the natural world. Materialists ultimately deny this.

discussion: piper, keller and carson

Posted in Uncategorized on October 10th, 2010 by jez – Be the first to comment

A Conversation: Tim Keller, John Piper, D.A. Carson (1 of 6) from Ben Peays on Vimeo.

This video was shot at the 2008 leadership meeting for The Gospel Coalition.

the man from the physio, he says, yes!

Posted in Uncategorized on September 24th, 2010 by jez – Be the first to comment

For those interested in the on-going situation with my knee (ACL reconstruction), I’m please to announce that I official (yes, jo (my wife) the physio said so!) have permission to start playing football again!  Now for all you doubters out there – I’m not saying that it will last but i am going to give it a try.  18 months of not football is over! – lets hope i don’t do a Michael Owen and trip over my own studs and snap it again!

conspiracyoffreedom.org

Posted in Church Planting, Uncategorized on September 15th, 2010 by jez – Be the first to comment

Got passed this on by a member of our church plant.  conspiracyoffreedom produce thought provoking video, in this one they seek to challenge our response to the consumerism and individualism of contemporary culture as people who follow Christ. Their strapline is “less stuff, more life”.  It seemed very relevant when we’re all seeking to commit to our community and those in need.

Watch Home here:http://conspiracyoffreedom.org/2010/07/10/home-2/

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