Praying for Harvest Glasgow

Here are some things to be thankful for and to be praying for us as we seek to plant this local church.

Thanksgiving
The number of people who are still expressing an interest in being part of Harvest Glasgow, and who are excited about the vision that we have for ministering impactfully as a local church.

The way that our Men's ministry, 'Fortify' and womens ministry 'Flourish' have already begun to develop deeper disciples living for God's glory- for the amazing sense of community that God has begun to produce amongst the launch team.

Alison and I were working out some rough Geography for our small groups and noted that we had 30 people who needed to be accommodated between the core launch team members and others who have expressed a commitment to be part of the church from launch.

We have one confirmed intern for next year, a theology student at a local college, and others who are praying about the possibility of giving time to the work ranging between 10-20 hours. Our desire has been to create a team environment and we are thankful that God has gone ahead of us in this regard.

Prayer
For our children's ministry and worship teams to develop strongly, for wisdom in the leadership of these and for a clear sense of unity and direction in these areas.

All our incorporation papers are submitted- please pray that this process would be completed quickly so that we can be properly established. Likewise our bank account is in process of being opened.

For the resources, human and material, that we need to undertake the work in such a way as reflects the excellence of God's greatness. He has already proved himself so faithful in providing for us and we continue to trust in Him for all things.

A number of people are still pondering whether to make Harvest Glasgow their church, pray that for those God has for us He would plant within them an urgency to be part of what God is doing in this local church. That God would meet our needs in regards to drawing to us Godly men and women with a passion for God's greater glory, a heart for the local church, a desire to deepen their walk with Jesus, and a recognition that they are called to love for something greater than themselves.

Launch Sunday will come quickly and while there is much to do our most important prayer is that the fruit of that service will be life transformation to the glory of God. Pray for those who attend and for those who prepare that God, by His grace, will change lives in such a way as can only be explained by pointing to Him.

Thanks once more for your prayers. Do get in contact and let us know how you are and how we can serve you or if we can give you any more information about how you can get involved in what we see God doing here in Glasgow.

James MacDonald on Young Preaching Mistakes

http://blog.harvestbiblefellowship.org/?p=2414

Pray for Re:Hope

Please take time to pray for our friends at Re:Hope and if you have any wisdom that you can share, any practical help you can offer or such like please do so. Above please pursie this strong in prayer before the Lord- asking that He would use this to multiply their work as evidence of His grace upon Brian and the team there.

'Well, it is time to pray hard. Time to pray for me. This church. This mission.

After two years of living with two weeks notice we have received our official and final two weeks notice. We must completely leave our church building and hand in the keys in no more than 13 days from today. Meaning, we will have church in our building tomorrow and next week then we must be leaving.

I am sure many will feel shock and grief at this. No doubt you may have many questions that I have NO answers to. Why? What will happen? Where do we go? I have no answers for these questions at all. I do know it is time to pull together.First of all, we need a MASSIVE prayer covering. If you could commit at least 30 minutes a day to specifically praying for me and our church situation for these next 20 days we NEED it.

Secondly, if you are local and have ideas on places we could go either short or long term please send me the details. Find out how much, how long we can be there, how soon we can move in, is there place for our stuff, where is it located… ? Then send me all that data via email as soon as possible. (brian-at-rehope-dot-co-dot-uk)

Thirdly, if you live locally you are also very welcome to join us Monday morning at 9am at the church for prayer and planning over this quick and unexpected change.

If you are wondering how I am feeling? I am confident that “The One Who Leads” sees and knows and cares about our situation. I am confident that the One who began this work will be faithful. No doubt this moment is not my favourite of all time, and I would love to stay where we are forever. There is shock and grief. However, I do find myself grinning at the unknown, sure that God will lead us, and what seems horrible in the moment we will look back upon as important, pivotal and amazing for our future.

I have been looking ahead at the passage for our final Sunday in the building, 8 days from now, and it could not be more perfect. God has set us up for His final message to us in this great building as we get ready to enter our second exodus from the same place.

Father, lead us clearly through the unknown.'

Read the whole thing here.

Harvest Glasgow Playlist

One of the most common questions that we have been asked is what do we mean by contemporary worship. Well here is a sample playlist of some of the songs we are likely to use in our worship in the first few months (and beyond) at Harvest Glasgow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGPTK24hQxc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b35E8zzASk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfpT9lYs1n4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfEO5zdh4tk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOiIW8nrw5g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onxhvivQYfI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ1vXgRKgSk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZqil68nw0U
http://www.vimeo.com/4302493
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76ifTTuL4XI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6392LoZ9XJg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d61LamkXfwk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdRNHCNLdps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV5lJNK4D2Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZBPD-T20t0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PuQFh--Lk4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-08YZF87OBQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o5SSQlxNLs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TIg2QOzPpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axqXMuW8x1U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF2mikICUAo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah84_iZBm9o

Prayer that Repairs

Today saw the beginning of a look at the book of Nehemiah with the Harvest Glasgow launch team. We are entitling the series 'Restoring the City' and today we looked at 'Prayer that responds and repairs' from chapter 1.

Jerusalem had broken walls and burnt Gates which made God's people vulnerable to attack
But the persistence of it pointed to an abdication of responsibility. We can learn four things from this:
Weak boundaries produce ransacked hearts.
We are too readily content to put up with spiritual squalour.
Trouble and shame is the fruit of this ungodly contentment.
There is a need for certain men to stand up and be counted.

Nehemiah sets us an example of passionate and persevering prayer that believes that God can rebuild what is broken and restore what has become ashes.

Prayer that repairs-
Rejoices that God is great (v. 5)
Regards God with humility (6a)
‘Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty.’ John Calvin
Repents personally- no finger pointing allowed (6b)
Recognises that sin is always against God first (7)
Remembers God’s Word- learn to cling to God's promises (8-9)
Rests on God’s grace and mercy (10-11)

I love this- particularly the final paragraph!

John Piper (HT Colin Adams)
Preaching Is Expository
Expository means that preaching aims to exposit, or explain and apply, the meaning of the Bible. The reason for this is that the Bible is God’s word, inspired, infallible, profitable—all 66 books of it.

The preacher’s job is to minimize his own opinions and deliver the truth of God. Every sermon should explain the Bible and then apply it to people's lives.

The preacher should do that in a way that enables you to see that the points he is making actually come from the Bible. If you can’t see that they come from the Bible, your faith will end up resting on a man and not on God's word.

The aim of this exposition is to help you eat and digest biblical truth that will
Make your spiritual bones more like steel
Double the capacity of your spiritual lungs
Make the eyes of your heart dazzled with the brightness of the glory of God,
Awaken the capacity of your soul for kinds of spiritual enjoyment you didn’t even know existed.

Preaching Is Exultation
Preaching is also exultation. This means that the preacher does not just explain what’s in the Bible, and the people do not simply try understand what he explains. Rather, the preacher and the people exult over what is in the Bible as it is being explained and applied.

Preaching does not come after worship in the order of the service. Preaching is worship. The preacher worships—exults—over the word, trying his best to draw you into a worshipful response by the power of the Holy Spirit.

My job is not simply to see truth and show it to you. (The devil could do that for his own devious reasons.) My job is to see the glory of the truth and to savor it and exult over it as I explain it to you and apply it for you. That’s one of the differences between a sermon and a lecture.

Preaching Isn't Church, but It Serves the Church
Preaching is not the totality of the church. And if all you have is preaching, you don’t have the church. A church is a body of people who minister to each other.
One of the purposes of preaching is to equip us for that and inspire us to love each other better.
But God has created the church so that she flourishes through preaching. That’s why Paul gave young pastor Timothy one of the most serious, exalted charges in all the Bible in 2 Timothy 4:1-2:
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word.

What to Expect from My Preaching and Why
If you're used to a twenty-minute, immediately practical, relaxed talk, you won't find that from what I've just described.

I preach twice that long;
I do not aim to be immediately practical but eternally helpful;
and I am not relaxed.

I standing vigilantly on the precipice of eternity speaking to people who this week could go over the edge whether they are ready to or not. I will be called to account for what I said there.
That's what I mean by preaching.'

DeYoung on Prayer in the church

A great reminder today for me as a church planter about the importance of cultivating a prayerful dependence from Kevin DeYoung. Incidentally his blog is now one of my favourites. Worth scrolling back over the last couple of months for some great mini-series blog posts.

'If I could snap my fingers and change one thing about myself, I would ask God to make me more devoted to prayer. Don’t get me wrong, like you, I do pray. I pray almost every morning. I pray at staff meetings. I pray before meals. I pray with my kids before bed. I go on prayer walks. I pray in hospital rooms and in people’s homes. I pray for folks over the phone. My life is not devoid of prayer. But yet, oh how I wish my commitment to prayer were more, much more--more earnest, more faithful, more saturated in Scripture. What to do with Acts 6? I’m not sure what it would look like for me and my elders to hand off almost everything else so we can be fully devoted to the word of God and prayer (Acts 6:4), but I can’t imagine we are looking just like it quite yet.

I desperately want my church to be known as a church of prayer (not known for the sake of being known of course). We certainly aren’t failing in prayer. But I don’t know that we truly believe we would fail without prayer. Several weeks ago I listened to an interview with Ben Patterson where he talked humbly about the prayer meeting he leads at the church he attends and about the four hours he spends in prayer each morning. Hearing Ben, who I know from my days at Hope College, talk about prayer did not make me feel guilty. It didn’t make me feel competitive, like I need to pray as much as he does. And it didn’t make me feel skeptical, because I know Ben and know people who know Ben and I know that he is the real deal when it comes to prayer. Listing to the interview made me feel like I want to pray more. It made me want my church to pray more.

I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt that the church in North American is know around the world as a church committed to prayer. We have money, education, books, a lot of missionaries, and some great teachers. But do we have a reputation for serious, importunate, long-suffering prayer? What if the single biggest answer for the decline of Christianity in America and our paucity of evangelistic fruit was not the lack of a new strategy for engaging the culture or the lack of new music or the lack of new ways of doing church, but the lack of prayer? What if your church, my church, took a fresh look at all we are doing, put everything on the table and said, “Let’s put prayer first and we’ll see what we can fit in after that?”

Of course, we need prayer plus–prayer plus good preaching, good doctrine, good leadership, good strategy. But so often we think of everything else we can do besides pray. We end up minimizing prayer because 1) it’s hard and we aren’t very good at 2) we probably don’t really believe in its power. Deep down I think we believe that if we spend a lot of time praying, we’ll still have the same problems left to deal with. We just won’t have as much time to deal with them. Prayerlessness is the measure of our unbelief. We don’t really believe that God answers prayers. We don't really believe that we have not because we ask not. We don't really believe that God can do more than we ask or imagine. True, God doesn't need to hear from us, but he ordained prayer so that we might be convinced of our need for him and he might be glorified in answering our prayers.

Reformed Christians believe most deeply in the sovereignty of God, the mercy of God, and in the power of God to whatever he desires. And yet, we often lag behind our brothers and sisters from other traditions when it comes to prayer. If the recent interest in and identification with Calvinism is truly a work of the Holy Spirit, and not just a passing trend, then we will see among the young, restless, and reformed a passion for God, a passion for truth, a passion for people in body and soul, and, infusing it all with unction and authority, a deep passion for prayer.'