healed, saved and delivered

Dear Oaks,

Well it is great to be back from South Africa where the temperatures were around +25-30 and the sun shone all day! Isn’t God good in calling us to Acton!

On Tuesday evening we had an excellent Church Central during which people really met with the Living God. I remind all of you that these CC meetings are an important means to your ongoing growth in discipleship and whilst the numbers attending are very encouraging, it concerns me that others of you are missing out.

One of the reasons I am so keen to develop the “Sozo” (meaning healed, saved and delivered) ministry is that it is the only authentic way to demonstrate the fullness of the gospel of the kingdom. To stress the importance of this let me quote Jesus in Matthew 24:14.

“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come”.

The gospel of the kingdom is much more than words. When Jesus declared the kingdom of God he did so in at least three distinctive ways:

1. Words. This is self evident from the recorded teaching of Christ in the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Luke, Mark and John as well as elsewhere.
2. Works. These include such things as feeding the hungry and caring for the poor.
3. Wonders. These include such things as healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead.

This week I want to emphasise number 2 – works. As a church we are doing much in this area and more is now about to get in to full steam. We have the market church on a Saturday; schools work through Lisa; Helping Hands and not to mention all sorts of works you all do in the work place and at home and even in other churches.

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On this coming Sunday we have the Launch of our Christians Against Poverty initiative. This is to help people get out of debt and hopefully to introduce them to Jesus Christ is the so doing. It is open to people of all creeds and none and is very much consistent with our “no strings attached” policy. In other words you don’t have to become a Christian to get help.

Please do come along on Sunday at 4:30 when our guest speaker will be Helen Johnson from CAP. Please do also pray for Teresa Pickering our CAP Centre Manager. Finally remember that the task of making this fruitful and effective lies with us all.

CAP is just one more way that we shall through works seek to demonstrate that Jesus and his church are good news to the people of this area. Our vision is surely more about the community than the church and the acid test of our effectiveness is to ask: Would Acton miss Oak Tree if we all left?

I close with more words from Jesus, this time quoted in Matthew 5:16

“in the same way, let your light shine before people, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven”.

Let us make Sunday a glorious celebration and a joyful launch of a God glorifying work.

Every blessing,

Mark

Acton CAP Centre Launch Service – Sunday 28 March

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Christians Against Poverty Centre in Acton.

Christians Against Poverty is a national debt counselling charity with a network of 125 centres based in local churches. CAP offers hope and a solution to anyone in debt through its unique, in-depth service.

You are warmly invited to join us to hear more about the work of CAP and the vision of the centre opening in Acton on Sunday 28th March, 4:30pm at Twyford Cafe, Twyford Church of England School, W3 9PP.

Love Wins – Holy Week 2010

We have some great services lined up for Holy Week this year to help us celebrate the wonder and awesomeness of Easter. We would love to see you at any or all of these events.

Thursday 1 April

SERVING LOVE

8-9:30pm at 216 Acton High Street

Informal communion and some practical prayers as we remember how Jesus loved us and showed us how to serve in love.

Good Friday 2 April

SACRIFICIAL LOVE

10:15am by Acton Park Gates

Gather with other Christians to walk up the High Street together as a public witness that we follow Jesus and that we are commemorating the day He died.

The walk is followed by a short service at Acton Hill Church.

1:30pm-3pm at 216 High Street

Join us as we creatively think about  Jesus’ words from the cross and what that means for us and the world.

Saturday 3 April

TRANSFORMING LOVE

10am – 2pm on the Mount outside Morrisons, W3

Come to the Oak Tree market stall as we give out free tea and coffees to the people of Acton. Market Family will be hosting some inflatables for the kids too.

2pm – 6am at 216 Acton High Street

We will have a prayer room open. If you want to take some time out over the Easter weekend for just you and God to spend some quality time together – you can book the prayer room for an hour or two. You are also welcome to book the prayer room to pray with your family or a friend or two. Email the office if you are interested in booking a slot.

Easter Sunday 4 April

VICTORIOUS LOVE

6am- 7am at 216 Acton High Street

Celebrate the resurrection of Jesus as the sun comes up! We will enjoy breakfast together after the service. If you want to join us for breakfast – let Ruth know in the office so she can make sure you are catered for.

4:30pm – 6pm at Twyford Cafe, Twyford School

We will be meeting as usual at Twyford School for our main Sunday celebration. All are most welcome!

AGM – Annual General Meeting

It’s a chance to reflect back on the year and look forward to 2010.

We elect our ACC members and Church Wardens and hear about how we’ve grown in the year and where we are at with our finances.

The AGM takes place during our regular Sunday Service and we try to make it as un-boring as possible!

Market Church

Market CHURCH

Hello Marketeers

I heard a current story this week through a friend who is involved with the Christian Socialist Movement ;
There is a young church leader in Luton who could well become the next labour MP representing one of the Luton constituencies.
He leads a team who are involved in a young church plant, “People from every race, colour and creed are caught up together in a shared mission, and God is doing little miracles continually”,
sounds like an exciting person to vote for!

Now I’ll be honest, I find the way are made consumers of political brands rather than participants in society hard BUT
I am always excited when people who have pledged their highest allegiance to Jesus are being heard as spokespersons of their communities and further.

At the Market we are being heard.
We are heard by those who visit once, who come regularly, who observe from a distance,
I have had recently a handful of great conversations with local businesses who are fascinated by what we do.
Let’s let people hear what we are for…  fairness, kindness, generosity, hope, liberation from debt, freedom from sin, healing of sickness, the pushing back of darkness… the list goes on and finishes with Jesus.
And because of Jesus, God hears us.
_____________________________
THIS WEEK:

STALL: 2 spaces from 10-12. No afternoon shift.
HOTS: 2 spaces 10-11 and 11-12.

MarketTRAINING is THIS SATURDAY from 12.30-2pm @ 216 the High street.

COME AND EAT DOUGHNUTS AND/OR FRESH FRUIT!

____________________________

God listens to you.

Mark Bishop

Mark Robinson

I was raised in a Christian family. I remember as a child being taught about God and that he wanted to be active in my life. I have faint memories of experiencing God and seeing him do some cool stuff. I remember going to prayer meetings with my family and singing songs and seeing people putting their hands in the air and all that stuff.

When I was 16 one of the biggest events of my life occurred. We moved… It wasn’t just any move; this was when we moved from Ireland to the UK. This was a very traumatic event for me. I didn’t want to move to England. I had some great friends, I had a girlfriend and life was pretty good. Moving country was the worst thing that could have happened to me…..at least that was what my 16 year old mind thought.

The process of adapting to our new life was not what I would call smooth. On the one hand I was able to re-invent myself at a new school but on the other hand I missed my friends, siblings and old life back home. Despite the new fangled popularity I was quite depressed but over time and through growing up a bit, I got over it all.

The process of integrating in to a completely different schooling system and then moving from Kent to London two years after arriving in the UK was to be the reason I ended up doing two sets of A-Levels. In Kent I started Math’s, Physics and Computer Science. I did like them but I didn’t have any fun with them. I was a typical case of a young lad having absolutely no idea as to what I would end up doing as a career. So I chose those on the basis of some ridiculous childhood notion of wanting to be a mechanical engineer or something like that. When we moved to London it was in the December of my second year of A Levels and I was unable to find a school or college that would let me finish out the a-levels I was doing so I worked for 6 months doing a variety for temping jobs from pipe bending to computer sales. The following September I found myself in Ealing going to an open day at what was Ealing Tertiary College. My Agenda? Find a course to do that would be fun… giggle-some… a laugh.  When I left I’d signed up to A levels in Spanish, Media & Photography.

I think it was over the next two years that I would really start to question my faith. At this college there was an overwhelming majority of Asian (as in Indian, Pakistani etc) kids. I made loads of friends and also had a few short lived “teen” romances. Being friends with these guys opened my eyes to the reality that there are many different religions that people believe. I began to question why is it that the Christian Faith is the right one. I began to drift and I soon stopped going to church altogether.

I went on to go to University and the fine establishment of “The University if Central Lancashire” in Preston. Yeah, university was ace but during my first year the whole faith thing went out the window as more important things came in to play like getting drunk or laid or when the next big bike ride was happening.

In my second year I met Tika. She was to become the most important thing in my life. We started a relationship that would last 5 years. Her family was of the Hindu Faith. I remember going to the library and reading about Hinduism. This re-sparked the interest in other religious. I read about others, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Shinto, and others.  At this stage I was not on some spiritual quest. I just found in fascinating that people followed such different belief systems. I think I had been very naive and ignorant to this idea. And seeing as I was dating a girl of a different religion I thought it my duty to find out more. I eventually got to the stage where I didn’t really want to “buy in to” Christianity any more. It just didn’t really add up and it didn’t seem fair that only one religion was the right way. I officially labeled myself as “Agnostic”. I certainly did believe in God but I didn’t know what or who he was.

Life progressed onwards and I started a career as an assistant editor in White City, West London.  This brought me on to work for a Voice-Over agency in Soho. Life was beginning to be really good. I was making money, I worked in the media industry, I had a girlfriend. Yeah – life was going great. When I’d joined the company in Soho they were paying me a very low wage. This was based on promises of training with some of the best engineers and editors in Soho. These promises never came through and so frustration grew. I eventually took the plunge and went freelance. I kept them as a client but took on others like Ministry of Sound and Tesco. I also started doing more technical work in the form of Video Wall engineering and stuff like that. Again life was good for a little while.

Soon my relationship with Tika had reached a point where the next step was geeting closer. She had never told her parents about us for fear of retribution and dishonoring her family by dating a non Hindu, non Indian, non-having-a-great-career-making-loads-of-money-guy.  We got too the point where an ultimatum was needed. We decided to take a break for a month with the idea being that if we realized we couldn’t survive without each other then we would tell her parents then probably we would have gotten engaged then married soon after. After the break Tika told me that she couldn’t live without me but she still couldn’t bring herself to tell her parents. We talked the point over and over but she just couldn’t get past it. As a result of this we both agreed that we should probably end the relationship. So quite amicably and with much sadness we called it a day.

This is where life started to go down hill for me.

After this my freelancing contracts started to dry up. It was starting to get really difficult. I was scraping the barrel of my merge finances and even got to the point where I completely screwed up the household accounts in the house-share I was living in. I’d had a few relationships here and there and I realized how needy I had become. The idea that Tika had not been willing to make sacrifices for me  made me question if anyone else would. I became this clingy, needy bloke. This, coupled with the finances and no real direction to go in my life, left me starting to get quite depressed.

Around this time I was asked to do a 3 week stint as a Video Wall Engineer on the well know show “The Price is Right” This involved living in a hotel down the road from Granada studios for three weeks. The video Wall was a very specialized piece of kit so I was new to the crew. I had become a little shy again also so I spent a lot of evenings going out to the cinema. There are a few cinemas in Manchester and I went to the different ones depending on what was on but in each one they were showing the advert for the alpha course:

As editing was my main skill I was really impressed with it. I was more impressed with the fact that a Christian organization had obviously put a lot of money into the campaign. I knew what the Alpha Course was because of my Parents. It blew me away at how good the ad was.

The day after I came back to London my dad gave me call to see how Manchester had been. We caught up on all the news and then out of no-where he told me that he and my mom were helping out on an Alpha Course being run in Acton and asked if I would be interested. I found it hilarious and told him all about how I’d seen the ads in the cinema but that I didn’t think it was something I’d be interested in. He was cool and didn’t try to persuade me in any way. After the phone call I was interested to find out for myself what it was all exactly about and how it worked. I guess I had started to also think about what I believed in and why. I checked out the alpha site and then didn’t really think much of it for another couple of weeks. I dipped in and out of it in my thoughts but that was about it.

A couple of weeks later my Dad called me again to remind me about the course was starting the following evening. He wasn’t pushy, more just wanting to know if I was interested. At this stage I was not sure – I think I was more interested in a free night out with food and an opportunity to see my folks. I told him I didn’t know if id go or not with a “If I’m there I’m there, if I’m not, I’m not”. I really didn’t know if I was gonna go or not.

So the next morning I was out walking Fergus, my flat mate’s dog. Hindsight has helped me piece this altogether. I was thinking about whether I’d go to the course or not. As I was doing so I was listening to some music. I was listening to an old Gospel track (despite not being a Christian I still loved some of that stuff) and it was getting to its peak, the big crescendo if you like. At the same time I was walking in to a clearing in the wooded area I was walking through and the sun was just breaking through the clouds in the sky.

- while all this was happening I was thinking about whether or not to go to the course. I kind of felt it was pointless. I idly said to myself “If there really is a God out there who wants to actively play a part in my life he’d send me some sort of sign.”

At that precise moment, a pigeon pooped on my head. It really was a perfect moment. I burst out laughing. It was rather comedic timing after all. I couldn’t ignore this. While still rather skeptical I thought it deserved a chance so I went along.

It was an interesting experience. It was good to have my folks there. The people running the course were all very lovely people. (I married one of them) I ember worrying that these Christians would try shoving things down my throat and try manipulating me in to believing what they wanted me to believe. I was on my guard constantly. As I got to know them all a little better I found that none of this happened. They really were a lovely bunch of people. They told me their ideas and were happy to listen to my own opinions and gripes especially when I was pointing out the flaws I saw in the Christian faith. They tool it all on the chin.

I was to find out for myself – and let me stress this – I did find out for myself, this stuff was not spoon fed to me – I found out that most of what I believed when it came to the flaws was untrue. There was an aspect of where I had built up in my head what/who I thought God was. I also had an idea of what/who I thought God ought to be. I found that the latter was actually more accurate. Because of this I realized that all my issues on the Christian faith were founded in a lot of issues I had built up around myself.

I thought God was this wise old fart sitting on a cloud looking down and laughing his arse off at us and using us for his amusement. I began to think about the claims of Christianity and what they meant. I realized that if those claims were actually true then it was an actually incredible. It was ….. Awe inspiring.

After the Alpha Course ended I wanted to find out more. Ruth (who led the course and is now my wife) invited me along to their service at OakTree with the promise of introducing me to hot women and a pint after the service. When I went to the service I was amazed. This was a church service like nothing I had experienced. I actually thought it was quite cool. The music was rocking, the service was far from dull and the sermon…the sermon was fascinating. I felt like Mark (the minister) was speaking directly to me with what he was saying. It would take me a while to realize that God was using him to speak to me. At first I put it all down to co-incidences but I soon realized that there were just too many for it to be a fluke. Things started to make sense. When I started to look at the world through Jesus’ eyes it became an amazing place of opportunity, hope, love, happiness and just out-right awesomeness.

Since then I have learnt so much. With Jesus I am sooooo much stronger. Ultimately I can achieve anything, I fear nothing, and I am saved… it seems so simple but I have no more worries that He can’t handle. I don’t have to rely on my own abilities because I rely on Him. I used to say that Christians had faith as a crutch to get them through life. YES it’s true. Before I met Jesus my life was hard and I didn’t know happiness. Now I have Him in my life -  life is BRILLIANT!

Market Church

Market CHURCH

Hello Marketeers

Happy Birthday!!

We are 3!!!

Wow, 3 years…

• That’s over 20,000 cups of drinks…
• That’s about 20,000 conversations…
• That’s definitely some prays….
• That’s a lot of practice at grace and patience…
• That’s rain, sleet, snow, wind, sun, ice…
• That’s sustained mission…

And that’s not bad going for a church ‘waiting’ for a building!

I believe we have learnt so much as a team and as a church through serving in Acton Market. Here’s to continuing to learn…

MarketTRAINING on 20th March will be a bit of a celebration of the 3 years on the Market, a bit of new info about the general running of the stall and some space for us to re-visit ‘how to promote healthy boundaries’ with those who visit the stall and some specific pointers on offering prayer in our context.
________________________
THIS WEEK:

STALL: 2 spaces 10-12, 2 spaces 12-2.
HOTs: 2 spaces 10-11 and 11-12.

(also MarketFAMILIES had to be postponed from last week to this so if you are a family and free for a bit of time 11-1pm please come along and help Lisa!)
________________________

Thank you thank you thank you for all you have given and continue to give to the people of Acton.

Mark Bishop

Market Family – Easter Extravaganza

Market Family are celebrating Easter Weekend!

Details to follow.

Market Church

Market CHURCH

Hello Marketeers

And there’s nothing like the rain of the city, kicking up all the dirt and getting right to your skin.

It’s my own experience that much of February is gloomy… weather, my attitude, my feelings.

We see it in the Market too, the people who like their homes stay there, or rush through without stopping.

Those who don’t like to stay at home because they’re lonely, cold or homeless come out, often gloomy, often getting right to your skin.

There are clear seasons not just in our own lives that affect us but also in those around us (Ecclesiastes 3).
Our job on the market is not to solve these issues in an instant (although let’s always pray for that!)
Our job is to look through the gloom, to trudge through the rain, and to look for the sunshine… more to the point…
Our job is to look through the issues of our lives and of others and to look for the Son (Romans 4:1-3, Matthew 25:40).

________________________

This week!

Market FAMILIES is on 11-1pm – if you are a family or not do come and help/hang out!
AND…Can you give some time?
STALL: 2 spaces 10-12, 1 space 12-2
HOTs: 2 spaces 10-11, 2 spaces 11-12

_________________________

Mark Bishop

Easter Sunday

Come and celebrate the amazing truth that Jesus is alive!

All welcome.

4:30pm, Twyford School Cafe, W3

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