The Lightfoot Lane Blog

“Blessed be Your name, On the road marked with suffering,
Though there’s pain in the offering, Blessed be Your name.

You give and take away, You give and take away.
My heart will choose to say: Lord, blessed be Your name”

For a while now I’ve been encouraged to write a blog about Linda and facing her cancer together; the words of this song sum up a lot of how I feel! After a great weekend together in London, this week has been especially hard, being told that her cancer has progressed and her liver is now beginning to fail. With 4 young kids, that’s tough.

Linda on the London Eye Sat 27^th Jan

Sunday night I’m preaching in our David series on Fighting your Giants with Faith and for me, and I guess many, giants don’t come much bigger than terminal cancer. That’s my giant, but I know I’m not alone. And then when you try and give answers to the “why does God allow this to happen” question, anything you say ends up sounding trite.

In living with cancer I have learnt a few lessons, which I’ll try and explain in time. For now, a few lessons I’ve learnt as a starter for ten…

• We all face giants, and my giants may not be yours, but yours are still giant to you
• Better to face them with God than on your own
• We were never meant to try and do life on our own
• Faith isn’t faith until its all you’ve got to hang on to
• Better to put the armour of God on in a time of peace before the battles start
• Better to get yourself straight with God in a time of peace than when the bullets are flying
• Christians weren’t saved to be safe, but secure
• God is very, very real and worth trusting
• With those you love, intentionally and deliberately create special, memory times

Yesterday at a minister’s fraternal we looked at Colossians 1 v15-23, the whole passage is great but v17 jumped out at me – “In him [that’s Jesus] all things hold together.” For me, in tough times I have learnt that for real peace, I have to choose Jesus, to drive back into him, place my trust and hope in him. In all of that Jesus is no fair weather friend, and I have learnt that my faith is not dependent on whether or not he comes through for me.

“Blessed be Your name, On the road marked with suffering,
Though there’s pain in the offering, Blessed be Your name.

You give and take away, You give and take away.
My heart will choose to say: Lord, blessed be Your name”

[If you don’t know this song, see

http://shop.kingswaysongs.com/product_info.php?products_id=22  

For those not familiar with our story see my testimony http://www.fulwoodfmc.net/content/view/17/26/ or the second issue of our magazine "Heart" (copies available on request!)]

Cyberspace is very quiet! Where is everyone, are there no travelers on the information superhighway? Since I posted my first each ONE REACH one blog, no-one has replied! I thought blogs were about conversations, not monologues!!!!

Maybe the questions I have been asking are not unique?

Someone leant me a book a while back - a short one ‘cos otherwise I’d probably not have read it! It was by Mark Greene, and called “Imagine - how we can reach the UK.” [It is usually the titles of books that do the most for me - when I left the NAO to move here, my old pastor gave me a book called "The art of pastoring - without the answers!"] The idea of being imaginative and creative got me thinking - with such a creative God, such a fantastic role model to follow, how can we be creative with the timeless truths we’ve been entrusted?

Paul wrote to the Corinthian church to “set forth the truth plainly for God has made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.” (2 Cor 4:2 & 6 paraphrased). When I think of this, I think of Aesop’s fable, of the wind and the sun competing and battling to get a traveler’s cloak off. The wind battered the individual, and the traveler pulled his cloak tighter; the sun sweated, and the traveler voluntarily took his cloak off.

The message of Christianity is true! Jesus really lived, really died and really rose again, it was an event in history. It is an event that gives real hope for a hurting world, and when we realise what we’ve been rescued from and for what, we should be the happiest people on the planet (or at least in Preston!!!) In fact we should be so happy, that we shine infectiously so people see something attractive in us that makes them want to know more.

And this is what excites me now, that we are seeing this happening. each ONE REACH one was an idea I began to develop into a missionary approach last year from the idea “Imagine - what if we each reached one person?”

• If you could reach one person, who would it be?
• If you could reach one person, what would you have to do differently to what you do now?
• How can you invest in someone’s life over the next 12-months to walk with them towards Jesus?

It was from this that the creative thinking sprang. Christianity, and being part of an incredible family should be attractive, it should be fun, yes fun! It should also be natural, not forced, pressurised or heavy, but an integrity that says this is real, it’s the best thing you could ever do, but it’s your choice.

That’s not to ignore the battles of life - but as that great philosopher Adrian Plass wrote, “you need the joy to bear the pain and sorrow!” And that’s why each ONE REACH one is about intentionally journeying with people toward Jesus, something that we’ve developed and still are developing here at FFMC, and something that I’ll talk about more in my next blog!

But for now, how can you shine with an attractiveness that makes being a Christian the best choice anyone can ever make?

When I came to Fulwood at the beginning of 2005 as Pastoral Evangelist, I really began to wrestle with the question “If we really want to grow as a church with people finding Jesus as Lord and Saviour, how do we do it?” I’m sure minds mightier than mind have much better ideas than me on how to answer this, but what has excited me is walking with God and the folk from FFMC as we have discovered together something of how we might do this - what if Each One, Reached One?

As someone not originally from a Wesleyan background, I found many encouragements and inspirations from looking at what God did through Wesley. He observed that in his ministry, he did not set out with a predefined strategy but rather responded to what he saw God doing, and the needs that presented themselves to him, and to some extent, I think that is what we are currently experiencing as people are coming to faith in Christ on a regular basis here.

As a result of reading David Watson’s book “Discipleship”, I arrived at FFMC with 3 P’s burning within me, and having drawn a fantastic, amazing team of people around me to oversee our outreach work, 3 became 4 P’s and in my mind, these formed as follows:

Most people these days focus on Personal Evangelism, or do little more than pray for the lost. What about being SALT as well as LIGHT in our world? What about loving unconditionally whilst creating opportunities for God to move in power and transformation? Whilst prayer and personal evangelism are vitally important, we need to realise that we are living in a post-Christian, messy mucky world that has a big, Jesus shaped hole in it. What an opportunity for the church today to rise up with hope for our nation, for our city, for our communities. The gospel still works!

But what do you think - how do you bridge the gap between a world that just does not seem to have room for God, and a church which let’s face it, seems a pretty strange place to those outside?

Well, I have some ideas and thoughts - and in my next blog I’ll begin to share some of these; but I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Watch this space!

Pastor Chris

At last! I’ve done it! I’ve worked my way through the Windows installation instructions and arrived in Cyberspace! Now what?!?! What to say!

Watch this space……..