God's multicoloured plan

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]So a few weeks back we posted our exciting news that we’re stepping out in faith and planting a new church! We'd love to give a huge thanks to everyone who has since ‘liked’ us, got in touch and offered to pray for us.We want to help keep everyone up-to-date with how things are progressing so hopefully this blog will help you pray for us as we navigate unchartered waters. We also hope it will also encourage and bless you as we share the joys and struggles of the journey.We figured it would be good to kick things off with looking at the story so far, so here goes. Our story starts over eight years ago, when a visiting prophet to The City Church, prophesied over us as a couple about church planting, among other things.There were a bunch of things he said that really resonated with us but we have to be honest and say we thought the church planting bit was wrong – we were very settled in a big, vibrant church in a city where we felt called to live out our lives, so safe in the knowledge that we prophesy in part we parked that part of the prophecy and moved on taking onboard the encouragement from what seemed right at the time.However over the last year or so we've found ourselves drawn back to that part of the prophecy and have felt God speaking the unspeakable to us about starting something new and, most excitingly, the harvest he has in store – yes it turns out we don't just prophesy in part we also prophecy within different time frames than we expect!We have always been passionate about God's plan to work his purposes out through the local church and now we get to outwork that passion in a new way.So that’s the back story. But the main story for this blog is God’s story – God’s passion for his church.From before time began God has always been in perfect community within the trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with no need of anything or anyone else. Yet from the overflow of this relationship God created the whole world and made man in his image to walk with him and enjoy his favour.Now we know how the story took a downwards turn from there and yet God always had a plan to bring mankind back into this relationship with himself - first in the Old Testament with his people Israel and then brought gloriously into technicolor in the New Testament as he broke through the division of Jew and Gentile and made one new man in Christ - a Christian (Ephesians 2:14-16).God however didn't call us simply into a relationship as an individual with him, he also called us in community together as the church and amazingly the Bible says that through this church the manifold or multifaceted wisdom of God is displayed (Ephesians 3:10). Yes the local church is God's very wisdom! It is his plan A for reaching the world with his glorious gospel and there is no plan B and excitingly we get to be part of that!There's nothing quite like local churches for impacting society and reaching the lost, it was the same in Paul's day and it's just as true today. The need is so great and so whether it's through existing churches or new ones being planted we're excited to be getting stuck in and looking to display God's manifold wisdom in this area and beyond.So how can you get involved?Firstly and most importantly you can support us by praying, our key prayer points currently are:

• Labourers – we’re asking God for a core team of people who share God’s heart for local church and want to work with us to build this church community, bless the local community and share the amazing news of Jesus with people who don’t know him.
• Support – we've already been hugely blessed by godly folk who have spoken into what we are doing, encouraged and counselled us… we are so conscious that we need more of this as we go forward.

Finally as well as praying we'd love it if you could share this blog and let your friends and neighbours know about what we're doing. We believe that as others hear about this work there will be those who feel the prompting of God to get involved. Who knows it might even be you, do get in touch if you feel God stirring this in you!So that's it for now, please keep visiting this blog for the next chapters in the story of Hope Community Church!Rob & Gem[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]