A Belated Christmas Newsletter!

The Adventure Continues...

Christmas 2011

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

John 1:14 (The Message)

This Christmas season I have been challenged to think about the Incarnation, how God became man. I love this interpretation of the verse from the opening of the Gospel of John: God became man and “moved into the neighbourhood”. God became fully intergrated in the community, He lived life. He made friends. He served. He changed the world. He calls us to follow his example.

This last term has seen us as a team become more and more intergrated in the local community and in the schools where we serve.

Here are a few stories of what we have been up to:

M4 mentoring

In November the Pais teams in East Lancashire held a weekend conference for young people from the churches we are based in. The conference was designed to equip and encourage these young people to reach out in their schools, to start christian clubs, prayer groups and to carry out outreach events. As an off shoot of this we have started mentoring a number of young people from Churches in Clitheroe and Burnley. We meet with them individually every fortnight to help them grow in their faith and leadership.

Spotlights

We have recently started a lunch club in the school mentioned in my previous newsletter. As we already have good contacts with staff and pupils we thought that a lunch club would be a good next step. The aim of the club is to introduce pupils to the gospel and we had approximately 50 pupils come through the doors during the first lunch club!

The team have also been busy running Christmas assemblies in Primary Schools in Clitheroe and the surrounding villages. The assemblies presented the message of Christmas using a variety of object lessons and the children seemed to have fun and understand the message too!

Recently I had the opportunity to help out last minute at a Catwalk show organised by the Grand. Each week the Grand runs a group for teenage girls who are considered to be at risk. The aim of the group is to educate them, to help them to protect themselves and to increase their self esteem. The Catwalk show was a huge success and it was incredible to see the teenage girls walking so confidently and to be able to tell them how beautiful they are.

This Christmas please join me in praying that:

- our lunch club doesn't just grow in numbers but also grows in spiritual depth.

- our reputation as a team continues to grow.

- myself and the team have a relaxing and refreshing break.

All that is left to say now is: Thank you for your love and support over this first term. I wish you a merry Christmas and a blessed start into the new year.

Sally xx