Thanksgiving, God's Word, and England

I hope all of you had a wonderful thanksgiving! I think it is very healthy to be able to take time to consider and look back over our lives for the purpose of seeing the many blessings God has given us. Thanksgiving day my family has a little tradition. We cut leaves out of colored paper, one for each family member present, and we get a small branch and put it in a vase at the center of our dining room table. Then sometime, normally during dessert, on Thanksgiving Day we each write on our leaf what we are thankful for, we go around the room and share what we have written, and then we hang our leaf on the branch in the vase. This year I put down several things, but to my shame I did not put down the Word of God.

This morning the sermon at my home church was on the importance of God’s Word, especially the preached Word and our proper response to it, and this afternoon in my Bible reading, I read from Psalm 119 which is all about God’s word.
God’s Word is life giving and it is our guide for faith and for life. Through it we know God. It is something that we should treasure and earn for and be infinitely thankful to God for! In addition, we should be thankful that not only to we have the Bible to read and meditate on, but the most of us in America have relatively easy access to the sound preaching of the Word! It is a great privilege to be able to fairly easily find a church which soundly preaches God’s Word. O that we would remember more often to give thanks for this great blessing!

Now you might be wondering if this has anything to do with England, and it does. The fact is that most churches in England today have abandon the faithful preaching of the Word and this great blessing that we often take for granted here is actually pretty scare in England. In fact, Dr. Peter Naylor one of the EPCEW (Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales) pastors has identified a lack of confidence in the Word of God as the key factor in the Exodus away from Christianity that has taken place in England over the last half century. Furthermore, the main reason why MTW is in England is because English pastors have requested help in their efforts to plant more churches that will faithfully preach God’s Word. In other words, MTW’s work in England is to help increase the opportunity that English men and women have to experience the great blessing of the faithful preaching of God’s Word. Gateshead Presbyterian Church, were I will be serving, is one of the church plants MTW has and continues to help with. My part in this is to support and serve this church as they seek to hold out God’s Word to their city.

So I would encourage you to thank God for the give of His Word and especially the blessing of the faithful preaching of it. I also want encourage those of you who are supporting me and supporting the work of God in England that you are doing a tremendous thing by supporting the effort to make the faithful preaching of God’s Word more available in England!

Welcome!

 Welcome everyone! As many of you know I will be serving in England next year with Mission to the World and will be working as an intern for a church over there. Many of you also know that I am right now in the support raising stage of this journey. This blog is one of the early steps in that journey, and I have designed it with two purposes in mind.

1. I hope that it will help you walk alongside me as I make this journey of support raising and then serving the Church in England. (Not the Church of England for all you lovers of England)

2. I want this to be a place where I can point people to who are interested in what God is doing in England and how I fit into that. 

Hopefully I will be posting regularly on my progress in support raising and then while I am in England about what God is doing and how I am serving. I also hope to post articles and other information that will help you get a better sense of the need in England and what the Lord is doing.

Along those lines, I would encourage you to look at the information at the bottom of the blog especially the two links I have posted under "related links"