New season, new start.

It transpires that the winter months have not been so conducive to regular bloggery but now that the sun is starting to fight its way back from behind the iron grip of British gloom, I invite you to dust off your metaphorical glasses and watch as I take this leaf that I'm holding and proceed in turning it right the way over! aaah... much better.

I'm not going to try and fill in all the gaps since my last post as I'm not sure there are enough characters left in this here window to do so. I will, however, tell you that things have been progressing very nicely. We had both the Youth and Reach weekends away, as well as putting on the second 'Gathering', so it's been a busy time but then I wouldn't want it any other way! Reach itself is going great and we've continued to see new people coming along as well as seeing those who've been around for a few months getting connected with lifegroups and starting to move towards involving themselves with the myriad of ministries that we have at church.

One thing that God is irking me with at the moment re: gathering new people is that we do so with people who aren't Christians yet. It would be really easy for me to look at numbers and say "we've gathered x amount of students. great. job done." but that just won't cut it. 1) we're dealing with hearts and minds, not attendance figures and 2) the vast majority of the growth we've experienced at reach this year hasn't been so much growth as transfer - i.e. settling in those who came to Manchester already as Christians. Don't get me wrong, it's been amazing to have been blessed with so many students and it's so important that we do our best to stop them from falling away from God when they come away to uni, but I'm also really conscious of the need to not rest on our laurels and think we're a healthy, growing church because we've got more bums on seats. We need to be doing all we can to see the lost saved, people coming from death into life! So that's one of my main foci at the moment - working out what I, as student worker, can be doing with our students to get out there and "do the stuff". So watch this space!! It's so encouraging tho as it's something that God's really put on our heart as a church and Phil & Sarah and James et al are doing a great job in challenging and facilitating us in living as partners in that there Great Commision.

There are a couple if things it would be great you could pray about if that's your style:

1. I've got a few 'preaching engagements' over the next few weeks and would appreciate being covered going into those - Man Met CU on 17th March, Reach Exchange seminar on 22nd March and then Salford CU on 26th April.
2. Next year! It's still up in the air as to what's happening after my internship finishes so if you could pray that God's will would be done but, more specifically, that if I'm to stay at Vinelife he would make the required resources avaialable.

That should sort you out for now - catch you again very soon! (I promise)