Prayer at Hope - August 2016

[vc_row nfw_row_full_width="yes"][vc_column][vc_video link="https://vimeo.com/176051168"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="12px"][vc_column_text]Audio transcriptHi and welcome to the first Hope Community Church video blog post.It's been great to see so many of you regularly checking in with our site posts and keeping up to date with our crazy church planting journey. If you're new here and want to know more about how we found ourselves to be the most unlikely of church planters, you can find out more in our previous blog posts.When we first announced that we felt God was calling us to plant a new church into the Canterbury area, you guys were hugely encouraging to us but one question that came up was this:"Why did we feel Canterbury needed another church."Our reply is simple. Canterbury, including students, has around 80,000 people and that's before we take into account the surrounding areas. Of these 80,000 we could probably estimate maybe 3,000 bible-loving believers regularly stuck into church life.That leaves around 77,000 people who aren't regularly being exposed to God's word and encountering his presence. 77,000 people who are currently separated from Jesus and his grace in their lives. 77,000 people whose eternal future hangs in the balance. And that number just goes up when you start to think of the wider region.Even with all the existing great churches in Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay, the task is huge. So we believe more churches are required to reach our communities with the love of Jesus.A while back when we were praying about planting a church we felt God highlight to us that he doesn't simply want Hope Community Church to gather sheep simply to have a lovely time together but he wants to call sheep together to become labourers in the harvest.Now we don't know exactly what that's going to look like or even really the timing of it all but we're listening and stepping out, trusting that Jesus is more passionate to see this happen than we are and more able to accomplish it than any ability we have.So with this in mind we need to pray and we would like to ask you to pray with us.Over the next few weeks we're gonna be holding some prayer meetings for the work that God wants to do through Hope and into the communities in which we live.We have two sessions planned so far, one will be the afternoon of Saturday 13th August and the other the evening of Tuesday 23rd August. If you want to come to either or even both of these times that would be amazing!The Saturday prayer session will also involve a BBQ and hopefully freshly baked pizzas if I can get the hang of our pizza oven.  We're  suckers for a bit of alliteration so we're calling it "pizza and prayer", so bring some food for the barbie or pizza toppings and we'll get it cooked.And please rest assured these are 'no strings attached' events, so if you are interested in getting stuck into Hope with us or simply want to come and support us in prayer then either way we would love to have you along. We're just so aware of our inability to achieve anything lasting in our own strength and our need for God to move to make Hope happen.If you want to come please email welcome@hope-community.church or contact us via our Facebook or Twitter pages.Look forward to seeing you then![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height="50px"][/vc_column][/vc_row]