Carrying on

Joanne and I went round to Cam & Jo's last night to discuss the Exploring Discipleship course we're going to be helping to run. It's a kind of follow-up to the Christianity Explored course we ran for people that want to continue or for anyone else within the church who wants to go over (as a recap or for the first time) the basics of living like a Christian. I'm really excited about the course. It covers thing like church and prayer and the Holy Spirit and evangelism and assurance and other stuff too. It will have short talk and then a short Bible study each week working through Philippians. It's kind of cobbled together at the moment from a few other similar courses but it really is a great idea. So often people come to Christ and make a commitment but what next? Theiy're left with questions. What difference will this make in my everyday life? How do I tell people? How do I read the Bible and pray? Quite often they're not ready to be thrown in to an established Bible study group and so this eight-week course aims to bridge that gap and answer those questions.

If it's what you do, we'd really appreciate your prayers for the course. Please pray for us, and Cam and Tim and Ryan as we lead the course; that we can find another female leader; that people who've expressed an interest would commit to coming along; and that people who are just toying with the idea of coming after hearing about it in the service last Sunday do something about it.

Also I'd personally like prayer regarding a men's event that St John's is helping put on in a week or so. Brad Thorn, the pretty well-known rugby player (played for All Blacks in rugby union and Australia in rugby league), is part of St John's too and there's been a guest event organised in the corporate lounge at the AMI stadium where he will "talk about his life, the sport he loves and his faith that pushes him to be the best he can be". It promises to be an interesting evening and what I'd like prayer for particularly is wisdom in knowing who to invite along and boldness to ask them. Thank you.

Oh, and just quickly, congratulations Sun and Naomi on the safe arrival of Joshua! Very exciting :)