MCC BLOG

I just read in the National Geographic March edition that 1,210 U.S. church have a weekly attendance of over 2,000. You do the maths! That’s nearly doubled in the last 5 years. You say so what about here in Britain, well I don’t have any statistics do you? I do know though of quite a few churches that are growing a rapid rate. There’s The Abudant Life Church in Bradfor, Hope Church in York, Hope Church in Oswaldtwistle, Hillsongs in London, there are a few more in London too. Let me know if you know of anymore, it would be good to get the Top 10 fastest growing churches in the UK. For all those churches that are not growing quite so fast, learn from the ones that are, don’t get jealous and critisise. Sometimes there are times of growth and maybe you have to build some firm foundations before your church can carry growth. Don’t think of it as automatically something that you are doing wrong, but look openly at things that could be improved, don’t tollerate anything that stops or hinders growth. Healthy churches grow at some point, ours is just slowly starting now after almost 5 years of hard graft to build a firm foundation.

Just to let people know of an Easter Event that we are planning at the ‘Platform’. Never mind the Artic Monkeys we have a great band called ‘Thirst’ who are going to do most of the music in the evening event, which will also include drama, dance and other multimedia presentations. In the day we will be having an art and creativity event called ‘Gifted 2′ Emma is in charge so it will be an extraordinary day or arts, crafts, ceramics, creativity, and fun for all.  There will be an organic cafe run by our very own Zofia and Giles ‘Armadilo Organics’. This event will be an Easter event to remember and the plans are coming together really well. We will be presenting what Easter is all about in a contemporary relevent way that will be accessible to all. Can’t wait for April 3rd at the Platform from 10-4 in the day and 7.30 till 9.30 ish in the evening. See you there!!!

Tracy

That was what the message was this morning at Morecambe Community Church. It was great the way that Emma presented it in an interactive relevant style. It was just brilliant. We need more workshop type sermons like that!!! Where everyone can feel a part of it and have their say. It was also great how people started to doodle on the paper provided during the worship time too. It just goes to show that worship is a lot more diverse than songs and music. People can express themselves in so many different ways, even my little Matty was expressing himself whilst building his lego on one of the tables. One thing that stuck out to me this morning is, what a diversity of people we have a MCC it didn’t matter who you were, or where you came from or what your background is, people were altogether this morning and everyone took something with them into the week.It was just real!!  I want to see more of this each week, maybe it’s going to take a little more creativity and effort but there is so much more we can do on our Sunday morning services. God is just loving it!! Thanks Emma and all who took part this morning. Alison and Zofia did a great job with their talks too!!

Tracy

I didn’t really know what to make of David Camerons speach yesterday, did you? It’s great on the one hand that he is trying to make people realise that it is the break down of the family unit that is the cause of many problems in our communities today, but on the other hand to flippantly say that Fathers need to live up to their responsibilities was a bit of a generalisation. We are now looking at the 2nd 3rd or 4th generation of kids who didn’t even know their fathers and didn’t have a role model to look up to. It has a knock on effect and how can they automatically become a good father when they don’t know what good father is. It’s easy said that fathers should live up to their responsibilities when some fathers don’t even know how to look after themselves, and have drug addictions or mental illness because of the way they were treated or mistreated in their childhood. I come across so many people who lack simple life skills these days. These life skills need to be taught and learnt before people can start living up to their responsibilities. Some don’t even know what their responsibilities are. Some don’t even think that they need to work because it is so easy to just sit in the benefit trap where they get more money if they don’t work and why should they when they are on anti depressants anyway? I really feel that this is where the church can help society and their communities, just by teaching basic life skills and Christian values that will help people to know what a good role model is. Parent courses, marriage seminars, debt counselling and the like should be offered by churches so that we can make a difference in our society and the government should be backing us as a church to do that. This is how these problems should be tackled, for our society to realise afresh how important the family unit is, and how powerful it can be when it is strong and working the way God intended it to.

tracy

Well tomorrow is the final part of our 2 part ‘Love Languages’ seminar. The first part went really well and the atmosphere that we created @ West End Impact was great. Everybody valued just talking and thinking about how we all recieve and give love. The principle is pretty basic with the Love Languages. Basically there are 5 main love languages and most people fit into one of the categories of how they show or recieve love best. But the trick is to make sure you are showing love to your partener in the way they would recieve it best. For example my main love language is ‘Quality Time’ and if Michl spend time with me I feel loved. If he buys me flowers and does the housework it helps but not as much as spending time just relaxing a chatting about everything and anything. So part 2 of the seminar is tomorrow followed by a lovely meal prepared by friends Zofia and Giles who have been taking part of the seminar. They have their own catering business called Amadilo Organics. So I am looking forward to it tomorrow. Happy VALENTINES DAY!!

Well this morning I spoke on Evangelism, which is always a good one. Basically it was about how to maintain a healthy Christian life. How on earth are people going to become Christians if they don’t see the difference it makes in our life. I talked about how to tell people that we are friends with about our faith in Christ and how to be a genuine friend to people. People know if they are your PROJECT!! I talked about being ready with a answer as people do have many questions about God and the Christian faith. Also how important it is to bring people to a great church like ours (Morecambe Community Church). We have so many opportunities where we could invite people so that they get to know that we are just normal people with an extraordinary God. We have our Parent Cafe (Expectation) we do the Christianity vs Atheism seminar/debate, we also have great services on Sunday and at the Platform at Easter, which are relevant non threatening, lively and done with excellence. You could also ask their kids to come to our brilliant youth club, or to ALF on Sunday mornings. All these things are great!! It was obvious to me as I was speaking this morning that it was high on peoples’ agendas to tell other about their faith and that someday soon our persistance and hard labour is going to pay off greatly.  God will give back two fold and more than we can ever expect. I have a hunch that 2007 is going to be a fruitful year, and I am getting very excited. We just need to reach out to people with God’s love and show them that we really care and that we aren’t a bunch of hypocritical weirdos who have lost their brains and can’t think about lifes questions anymore. It’s tough being a Christians sometimes because you do get some stick, but that’s only from people who haven’t seen the reality of a loving, caring, supernatural God who can give you a fulfilling purposeful life, with peace, joy, happiness and hope. We might not feel it 100% of the time when life gets tricky but in God all these things are available there for the taking. We just need to walk in God’s ways and life is so much better. I’ve been doing it for almost 31 years now and I would not have it any other way.

Tracy

As a church we are trying, through our work at West End Impact, to tackle some of the issues in the community that don’t seem to be getting help from elsewhere. One of the biggest problems we find in the West End of Morecambe is the drug and alcohol problems and the knock on effect that that has on society. I have talked to many different rehabilitation organisation Christian and not, and there seems to be a national problem here that needs tackling. These are issue that we feel as a church we should be stepping in to do something about, or help with. I had an interview with one of our local team of alcohol counsellors a few weeks ago and they have two staff to cover the whole of North Lancashire and Cumbria. This is a massive problem and the government don’t seem to be putting any money directly into the problem. Social services just don’t seem to have the funding to help the problem at all, in fact rehab centre are being shut down left right and centre because of lack of funding. I think there seems to be a bit of a battle going on as to whether this is a social services problem or a NHS problem. I think that it is very much both, but it also a problem that the church should be getting involved in too. So what is the answer? Well the only thing we (Morecambe Communtiy Church) do at the moment is create a safe place where some of these people with problems can come get a meal and have a chat, and we try and point them in the right direction for rehabilitation. We want to expand our work but we need staff and funds and more knowledge and training. If there are any other churches or organisations out there with any advice or help please get in contact and tell us what it is like in your part of the country and what is being done about this massive problem where you are.  It effects, families, friends, society and of course the individual who has an addiction.  Let’s tackle this together, we have a great big God and as we know although this problem seem irrevocable to us, through pray and action its not!

Tracy

As a church we are trying, through our work at West End Impact, to tackle some of the issues in the community that don’t seem to be getting help from elsewhere. One of the biggest problems we find in the West End of Morecambe is the drug and alcohol problems and the knock on effect that that has on society. I have talked to many different rehabilitation organisation Christian and not, and there seems to be a national problem here that needs tackling. These are issue that we feel as a church we should be stepping in to do something about, or help with. I had an interview with one of our local team of alcohol counsellors a few weeks ago and they have two staff to cover the whole of North Lancashire and Cumbria. This is a massive problem and the government don’t seem to be putting any money directly into the problem. Social services just don’t seem to have the funding to help the problem at all, in fact rehab centre are being shut down left right and centre because of lack of funding. I think there seems to be a bit of a battle going on as to whether this is a social services problem or a NHS problem. I think that it is very much both, but it also a problem that the church should be getting involved in too. So what is the answer? Well the only thing we (Morecambe Communtiy Church) do at the moment is create a safe place where some of these people with problems can come get a meal and have a chat, and we try and point them in the right direction for rehabilitation. We want to expand our work but we need staff and funds and more knowledge and training. If there are any other churches or organisations out there with any advice or help please get in contact and tell us what it is like in your part of the country and what is being done about this massive problem where you are.  It effects, families, friends, society and of course the individual who has an addiction.  Let’s tackle this together, we have a great big God and as we know although this problem seem irrevocable to us, through pray and action its not!

Tracy

Well we have 5 couples signed up for the Love Languages seminar, which is great but there is room for 1 or 2 more couples. If there are any of you out there who want to give their marriage a boost, or make sure it keeps alive, I can highly recommend this course to you. I suppose I am bias as my husband is running the course, it helped us when we read the book together (the Five Love Languages) at that is what we have based this course on. It’s not particularly for those who are having terrible marriage difficulties, although of course it would help for those too. It will be great time out to talk about our relationships, which normally in the hustle and bustle of life you don’t get much time to do. The cost is £12 per couple which includes a delicious meal by our very own catering company Amadilo Organics. (Zofia and Giles do the most amazing food). So look forward to seeing you all on Wednesday and just remember there is still space for 1 or at a push 2 more couples.

Tracy

I am getting a little bit more that fed up of hearing Christians and the Christian faith and values being belittled recently. I just heard an interview and discussion on Jeremy Irvine’s show on Radio 2 the other day. It was a Christian guy who had been making a Christian TV programme for about 18 years and an atheist rang in and started trying to put him down. She was saying how irrelevant Revelation TV was and that is was exploiting people for money, just like all the other TV evangelists in the USA. When the Christian TV show producer told her that he had been doing this for 15 years as a volunteer she said that was irrelevant. Why? Also why should he not get paid for putting out a TV channel that people are obviously watching or he wouldn’t have been doing it for 15 years. Plenty of other religions get money for similar things. There is an Asian channel on BBC Radio, I don’t see a Christian one. Why because it probably would been deem unnecessary and wouldn’t get the funding and backing that the asian one gets, with hindu, muslim and budhist religions being promoted. Some of the topics being discussed such as ‘honour killing’ would be in my view not something we should be putting our money into.When it came down to it the woman atheist on the show didn’t really know what she was talking about and just wanted an opportunity to put a Christian down. The Christian put up a very good case though, and the atheist didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Also I have heard so much recently on TV where people just critisise and belittle Christianity. One guy on ‘Mock the Week’ said how can Christians say being gay is not natural when they believe that Jesus could walk on water, is that natural?’ Well the answer is quite easy, no it is not natural either, its supernatural, and that is who God is, if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be GOD!!

You see us Christians just sit back and take it on the chin time and time again, should we not stand up a bit more, or are we too afraid of being seen to be unloving. Well Jesus went into the temple and turned over the tables when people made a mockery of the Temple and were being corupt. I think we need to be quick and ready with  relevant answers when we take all this stick.  Don’t just sit back and take it, after all we should be standing up for our values which once used to be the ethos of this country.

Tracy