NEWS UPDATE : January 2012

Welcome to Christ Community Church. We hope you enjoy your time with us this morning. If you’re new please complete one of the welcome cards at the back of the church and we can get back to you with you with more information about our church and help you get connected to our activities.

Christ Community Church is a vibrant and exciting Church made up of people living in Attleborough and the surrounding towns and villages. We are part of the newfrontiers family of churches which is made up of hundreds of churches around the world who all share the same passion to make Jesus Christ known and to build excellent churches modeled on the principles found in the New Testament.

Dates for your diaries
Visions   Ladies eventSat   17th March, with Wendy Virgo, King’s Centre,   Norwich
EPIC   Weekend for School Years 4-6,   25th   – 27th May 2012, Letton Hall,   www.epicweekend.org.uk
Youth   Weekend Away 23rd– 25th March, Letton   Hall, www.ywa.org.uk

 Prayer Corner

Can you spare a moment to pray for our Ignite project that serves the local young people?
Please pray for strong, trusting and deepening relationships with the   young people we meet through Ignite.

 Services this month:

1st January: Worship and stories @ the Chapel - James Oyeniyi

8th January: Belonging series part 1 – Rob Tervet

15th January: Belonging series part 2 - Rob Tervet

22nd January: 1 Peter part one – Tom Pull

29th January: Belonging series part 3: – Rob Tervet

New teaching series…

Belonging to Christ Community Church

Christ Community Church is coming of age.  We began as a handful of people in 2006 and at the end of last year we welcomed James Oyeniyi, Rob Tervet and Tom Pull as elders.  It was a joy to see leadership in the church firmly established.

Just as those elders have made a commitment to the church and been publicly recognized, we want to give a clear opportunity for people in the church to make their own clear commitment that they are with us.  So at the start of next year we are going use our Sunday mornings to speak again about the values and vision of the church and ultimately what it really means to really belong to Christ Community Church.

There are few things that help us enjoy the journey more than knowing our place in the big picture.  Through this series we will consider again what it means to be the people of God, together on mission for the glory of Jesus.  Are you in?

 Coming up: 1 Peter: Anchors of Truth

1 Peter is a letter written to Christians who had entered choppy waters. There was conflict at home and work where they faced criticism for doing right and not doing right.  They had begun to feel like ‘strangers’ amongst family, friends and colleagues. To top it all off they had a spiritual enemy who was ‘prowling round like a lion looking to devour them’ at the first sign of weakness or slip up. Peter responds to their SOS call by challenging their perspective of who God is and who he has called them to be. The size of a boat’s anchor is proportional to the water in which it sails. A small anchor is fine in a pond but useless when the boat enters into open seas! I sense that God would want to impart to us some of the ‘anchors of truth’ that Peter teaches in this letter as we as a church seek to move into deeper waters in our relationship with God and each other.

May the ‘God of all Grace’ bless you this term, Tom Pull

The Presence of God Tour

There’s a full programme for children and youth.  It’s for the whole church and there is no Sunday service following on the 5th.  The event is free but you do need to bring a packed lunch and book online.

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Church Office – 01953 452865 – info@christcommunitychurch.co.uk

Rob Tervet:         rob@christcommunitychurch.co.uk

Administrator:     Fleur.Pull@christcommunitychurch.co.uk

One day last year I was seeking God for the good and growth of the church and I felt him speak to me very simply about the importance of prayer.  I had a picture of a can of sardines being opened with a ring pull.  There was a sense of anticipation as the ring pull unlocked everything inside the can.  I then felt God speak to me about its meaning; he said “All that you hope and long for is in the can. Prayer is the ring pull”.  I was so grateful to God for this simple reminder that prayer unlocks blessing.

It’s not as if prayer is about twisting God’s arm so he will act whereas otherwise he wouldn’t.  No – prayer is Gods sovereign way of bringing about transformation.  It’s his chosen means of causing change.  The early disciples knew this that’s why ‘they all joined together constantly in prayer’ (Acts 1:14).

This January Christ Community Church is going to pray. Rather than have one very concentrated week of prayer we are doing something different and holding prayer meetings throughout the month.  These meetings together are an opportunity for us to gather as a church and be stirred by one another in faith.  I look forward to seeing what God does in us and through us as we pray!

• Sunday Morning Prayer.  On 9^th, 16^th, 23^rd and 30^th January we will be meeting for prayer from 9am – 10am at Attleborough Junior School before we meet for family worship.
• Wednesday Prayer and Fasting– a day to pray and fast for specific areas of church life. On the 12^th, 19^th and 26^th you can join us from 7am – 8am at 18 Hargham Road. No breakfast as we are fasting!
• Final Evening of Prayer On Wednesday 26^th January there will be no Community Groups Meeting as we all gather together to pray from 8pm at Hargham Road Chapel.
• E-mail Prayer updates – each week there will be an e-mail with some key themes and challenges that we can pray into plus any update from the meetings, if you are on the directory this will be sent to you automatically.  Please e-mail Fleur Pull if you are not on the directory and would like to receive them.

Prayer Week 2010:

Our last three prayer weeks were a real time of blessing for us as a church.  The Most recent prayer week was a response to a recent prophetic word spoken over the church: “Prepare for babies”.  It’s wonderful that God is encouraging us to be ready for more new believers but it raises the question – how can we prepare?  For us the most effective way of seeing babies born and discipled has often been our Alpha courses which is why are making a big deal of Alpha this term.  If God is going to send us babies we need to be ready. 
 
On 11th July I shared a message about how we are going to prioritise Alpha this term – do check it out if you missed it.  A summary of this follows:

1. Use teams of young people to do outreach publicising these events across the town for the week of Newday (a large Christian youth conference hosted by newfrontiers).  The Newday teams managed to deliver over 4000 flyers for us in just two afternoons.
2. Run “God @ the Pub events”, using upstairs at the London Tavern for 42 type events.  The first in particular will be before our alpha supper and will be another chance to feed into that.
3. Equip you for mission with our summer preaching series called “Everyone is a missionary”
4. Run social events throughout the term where God @ the Pub will be plugged as well as alpha courses for next year.
5. Hold a week of prayer and Fliering where we will distribute the remainder of the 7,500 fliers advertising alpha and God@the Pub and pray for every household given one.  This is more Fliering than we have ever done before!

And you are having a very significant role to play in all of this:

1. Pray with us - Keep it up. Just because the prayer week is over doesn’t mean that prayer is not significant while we are living through this season.
2. Invite people – Churches grow when people are invited to events.  The significance of an invitation cannot be overstated.  A recent survey in the UK found that nearly 3 million people say they would attend church if only they were asked. It’s time to start thinking, who will you invite to the taste of alpha events? Or God@the Pub?  It’s also time to start mentioning these things to our friends.

These are great opportunities for us to continue God’s mission here in Attleborough and the surrounding villages. Please do keep praying.

To find out more about Newfrontiers please visit: http://www.newfrontiers.xtn.org/