Watch this short intro video about the EHS Course

Here is your invitation letter to join us

We shall be running this course from Wednesday 19th January. The course will run on zoom from 8pm til 9.15pm with opportunity to either gather in a small group in person or in a break out room with your MC for discussion times. Join us as we explore together how we can all be led in a deeper experience of the theology and culture of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship.  There are 2 work books accompanying the course and we have purchased them via baulk order so that you can have both books for £5

•             Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Workbook

•             Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day

These will be available on Sunday 16th January after the Sunday Afternoon Gathering at Hoole Methodist Church.

Before the course we encourage you to

•   Undertake the EHS Personal Assessment, this will help you answer the question: “How Emotionally Healthy Are You?”

•             www.emotionallyhealthy.org/mature

•    Watch Session One teaching video which is approx. 25 mins long

Chester Healing rooms will be re-opening this autumn.

Dates: Saturdays 13 Nov, 27 Nov, 11 Dec

Time:  10am-12noon

Where:  Hoole Lighthouse Centre, Westminster Road

If you would like prayer for healing, do come along.  Our team would love to pray with you.

Why not bring a friend who needs healing ?

Our team would be encouraged to see you, especially after being closed for so long.

We need to change our collective mindset, act radically now, and pray for God to bless our efforts to redeem what is being lost, before it’s too late. He is a redeeming God, and if we turn from our ways, he will heal our land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

What can I do?

Here are some pointers. Most importantly, let’s pray that God will lead us.

Learn and worship

See also:

Use the new Doxecology album from Resound Worship to help you worship and respond, and come to a free live Doxecology worship evening on Monday 1 November at 7.30 pm at Northgate Church.

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Reduce your carbon footprint

Some lifestyle changes have a lot more impact than others. Most of the more effective changes are in the areas of eating, heating and transport.

Giki Zero is a great place to see your footprint, browse lots of ideas, sign up to ones you feel you can do, and get points.

Mike Berner’s Lee’s book “How Bad Are Bananas?” is an accessible, brilliant read, helping you distinguish the trivial from the significant.

Push for change

Individual changes by people who care are a great and necessary response to God’s call, but they won’t be nearly enough on their own; we need all of society to change, and much greater action from governments than we have seen so far.

See what Cheshire West and Chester Council is doing and sign up to email updates. Their “Climate Emergency newsletters” sometimes link to consultations where you can make your voice heard. It’s important that Christians and those in favour of significant change do contribute, to balance others who will object to anything that threatens their existing way of life.

We don’t have an opportunity to vote any time soon, but we can still write to our elected representatives and make our voices heard.

If God is calling you to more direct action, Christian Climate Action (linked to Extinction Rebellion) may be the place to start, and their book “Time To Act” will inform and inspire.

“Christ is the Lord of a history that moves. He not only holds the beginning and the end in his hands, but he is in history with us, walking ahead of us to where we are going.”

Thomas Merton

“Beware of harkening back to what you once were, when God wants you to be something that you have never been.”

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

In calling this moment an opportunity to reimagine the church we are not denying the suffering of the past year. Instead it is an invitation to reflect so that we can enter into the possibilities of what God is wanting to do at this time. Desmond Tutu captured the feel of this when he was asked if he was optimistic. Tutu said, “I’m not optimistic, no. I’m quite different. I’m hopeful. I am a prisoner of hope.”

So this time is a moment of opportunity for three reasons:

• The hope that we have founded on Jesus’ Lordship and the promise of his Spirit’s presence with us and guidance.
• The freedom we have in the church to do things differently. There has been a growing recognition that things will have to change and the lockdown period has forced this change and shown the ability of the church to adapt rapidly and creatively.
• The evangelistic opportunity. There is the evidence of increased numbers of people who have engaged with church online. The church has been at the forefront of caring for people through such initiatives as ‘Love Your Neighbour’ and foodbanks. The daily death toll and reports from hospitals have presented people with their mortality and fragility. But this time of reflection and transition will not last forever before it is overcome by the clamour to consume our way out of this experience.

As a leadership we want to seize this moment, doing so with love, believing this time of uncertainty and opportunity might be the catalyst for renewal and a fresh outpouring of God’s Spirit.

So we are going to offer these 4 phases where we can frame the next 12 months.

Preparation and Reflection                         End of March/April and into May

Recovery and Discovery                             Mid May/June/July and August

Embracing a “new different”                      Sept through to Dec

Thriving in the “new different”                  Jan to March 2022

Preparation and Reflection                        End of March/April and into May

Phase 2 of emerging from lockdown is underway, children are back in school, vaccinations are happening apace, hospitalisations and deaths are dropping and if you’re anything like me you will have a mixed set of emotions as we move through the 4 phases of Boris Johnson’s ‘irreversible’ plan.

We are now able to meet outside in groups of six, and soon it will be up to 30. We could be going back to in person Sunday gatherings  and returning to the workplace and able to hug and greet loved ones.

So how can we prepare ourselves and prepare others for what is ahead and take the journey together?

Asking Questions

The key to responding to the context we are in and adapting is asking the right questions. We will have asked a lot of practical ‘how to?’ questions in the last 12 months. How do I set up a Zoom meeting for the Leadership Team? How do we livestream our services? How can we use a WhatsApp group to keep in touch?  But the questions we need to ask are more fundamental than these.

1. What have we benefited from during lockdown that we want to take forward with us as we move forward?
2. What have we missed or lost during lockdown that we want to regain and rebuild?
3. What has lockdown highlighted for us that we used to do but don’t want to go back to?
4. What is your testimony of God’s goodness during this pandemic?
5. What signs of faith, hope and love emerged during the lockdown that we need to explore and build upon?
6. How will we bear witness to Jesus Christ in this time of insecurity, isolation, and financial distress?

We can also begin to ask questions to help to us as a church to start to imagine what the future could look like together. In this opportunity and the need to reflect, we can begin to think about the future pattern and priorities of our church. We are inviting you to reflect and learn with us as a leadership team.  In particular we would love your feedback on these 3 questions

• What are the areas of church life that you would welcome exploring with the Leadership Team?
• What are the practical issues that you feel need addressing immediately?
• What are the opportunities that you perceive where we might explore trying something new in mission and ministry?

All this needs to be underpinned with prayer! A challenge at this time is how do we hear God’s voice in the midst of so many voices? So we have set aside the month of May for a month of Prayer with Fasting and Worship to seek the Lord and listen to His voice. Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10).

Across our church we will be making space to hear his voice again, praying, worshipping, and fasting as we press into His presence and His purposes for us as church.

Go to our Amplified page for full details

Here are the dates – all Wednesday evenings starting at 8pm.

Session 2 5 May

Session 3 19 May

Session 4 2 June

Session 5 16 June

How to use this Church at Home Pack

This material is designed for you to have fun with your family at home each week!

Each session will focus on a different bible passage to read, as well as family games, crafts,

activities and prayers to do together. Then, later in the week, you can use the age- related

activities for each person to do alone (though you may need to help your littlest ones).

These activities are to let the word of God continue to move and inspire you.

The resources at the back of the pack will provide you with activities, templates and materials to make

the most of your time. Occasionally, you might need some extra equipment like pens, scissors or glue.

Enjoy!

Reflecting on these questions

What is God saying to you about..

– Who He is, and how we are being called to worship Him

– His Mission, and how we are being invited to join in with what He’s doing in the world

– His Church, and how we are being asked to reimagine our life together

– His future for our Baptist movement – what visions, aspirations, dreams is He placing on your heart

Here’s his contribution…..

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For more info www.baptist.org.uk/listening

I’ve recently been reflecting again on Mike Breen’s teaching on spiritual terrain, and the different ways that God brings His presence into our lives and our world – eruption, erosion, earthquake and excavation.¹ There is no doubt what we are living through now is a major earthquake. In these past four months we’ve had the health earthquake called COVID-19, then the racial injustice earthquake of the past four weeks, and we are now at the beginnings of an economic earthquake that will last for years – and all this against the backdrop of the environmental earthquake of this century! God is breaking in in the most disruptive ways any of us have witnessed in our lifetimes. The tectonic plates are shifting, the landscape is forever changing, and God has got our attention. The question is will we listen and hear His voice?

For me, one key aspect of times of transition is voice recognition – it’s so important to make sure we don’t listen to the wrong voices and recognise and listen to the right ones. We need to listen especially carefully and learn to recognise the voice of God. It was Jesus Himself who, as the Good Shepherd, said ‘my sheep know my voice’ (John 10:3). In these past five days I have read a few things that are beginning to convince me that I am hearing God’s voice about His Church at this liminal, crisis moment.

Firstly, I read the following in a prophetic word that was shared with my wife Sue, who heads up our Prophetic Team and Culture here at HBC Chester. It came from a team of prophetic leaders based in UK churches and they sensed a number of ‘waves’ coming from God to wash over the Church – with this being only the first:

Sifting the church: God is refining us: sifting and heating the church to purify it. This is about shaping good leaders who will care for God’s people, and an end to false religion and idolatry in our culture. Will we identify so much of our cultural norms as what they truly are – idols? Things that replace and dull our dependence on God? There is a shift to leadership culture & praxis coming that will re-orientate the church towards Jesus afresh.

The second thing I read was a statement that came out of a conversation, facilitated by Matt Bird, between a number of church leaders in the UK. As they pressed into the prophetic, they highlighted the following things:

• We are facing an opportunity to re-culture and re-calibrate church life
• The Church is becoming less platform-centric and less Sunday-centric
• As we go into the future there are going to be more small gatherings than large gatherings, which will provide the opportunity to grow and release more leaders

I am becoming convinced that for those of us involved in any level of church leadership – senior leaders, lay leaders, missional leaders etc. – God is saying that He wants to reshape our understanding of church.

Here at HBC Chester, the church I lead, we have been on a seven-year journey that has seen us completely reshape our church around the phrase ‘living a Jesus shaped life’. It has put a discipleship culture right at the heart of who we are and is expressed like this: Be with Jesus – Become like Jesus – Do what Jesus did.

One aspect of the reshaping caused by the lockdown has been churches having to move their focus to every day ministry, not just Sunday ministry. Now, with the return to gathered Sunday services coming so gradually, together with the shift to online meetings, it is my hope that church leaders will realize their focus will have to shift more permanently from buildings to people’s homes.

In many ways, this is a solid theological move. The early church in the book of Acts clearly had a pattern of church that encompassed both – it gathered in the temple and it gathered in homes (Acts 2:46). In his first letter, Peter also tells us that we are a ‘royal priesthood’ (1 Peter 2:5) and in Acts 2 that the coming of the Holy Spirit on ‘all people’ fulfils the prophecy of Joel (Acts 2:16-17). All this lays a strong foundation for leaders to focus on the empowering of the priesthood of all believers, helping congregations take responsibility for their discipleship.

For years, it has been an unspoken assumption that to ‘grow’ you had to come to a facility and participate in a program or service. Looking to the future, church leaders could begin to see themselves more as equippers, helping people bring their faith more deeply into the homes, neighbourhoods and workplaces. When it comes to discipleship and mission, ‘every day’ is more important than ‘Sunday’.

At HBC Chester we have been focusing on how we can better release missional disciples. To do this, we have recognised that Jesus had three great loves, ‘relational priorities’ so to speak. Luke 6:12-19 illustrates this as He spends time with his Father (up), spends time with His disciples (in) and spends time with the lost (out). We then see the early church follow the same pattern in Acts 2:42-47: firstly, there is the apostles’ teaching, breaking of bread and prayer (up), then all the believers together with everything in common (in) and, thirdly, the Lord adding daily to their number those who were being saved (up)

This ‘up, in, out’ rhythm is a key discipleship tool and is represented as a triangle. We engage in the process and practices of spiritual formation that help us be like Jesus (up), we seek to become and live like Jesus (in) and we do what Jesus did (out). As we give ourselves to all three of these in our journey of discipleship across the different spheres of our everyday lives, we begin to help people love, trust and follow Jesus. To facilitate this as a church, we have shifted our focus from Sunday to every day, recognising that this is where people find faith and live it out.

Let me finish with a great quote I saw this week that reflects this off-balance and creative moment. It’s from Pete Scazzero, the founder of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship:

‘We must change the scorecard in our churches for success from great services and large gatherings, to a deep transformational discipleship for every single person in our church.’

¹ For more on these concepts, Launching Kingdom Movements, Mike Breen, 2015