Webministries TV

1812 and all that

2012-02-10T09:41:00.000-08:00

This is the background behind a 200 year old church building. It's an historic building in that it's the first non-conformist place of worship on the Colneis/Felixstowe Peninsula and it's still open and functioning for the same purpose for which it was built. The video is the story of how the present building came to be as it is; reflecting as it does the changing generations and different styles of worship and different ways of serving the community.

I guess some people will be surprised that despite it's historical significance, the building has never been listed. The reason is that very little of the original building remains to make it worthy of listing - just the walls. Everything else was altered and replaced in 1897. It had to be - the roof was caving in and the walls cracking up in places. It was either a case of radically refurbish or move to another site. The growth in the population of Felixstowe meant that more seats were needed anyway. The solution was refurbish. In the last 30 years substantial extensions were added and even recently the late Victorian pews have been removed as well as the pulpit. As I said in the video, many of the old features have found new uses.

That said the building is still unique in being the only church building in Felixstowe that has a balcony - a nice piece of Victoriana - and it's one of the few bits that hasn't been changed since 1897 and probably never will be.

The main emphasis of the video was to stress that the building is not the church; the people that worship, witness and serve there are the church because that's what the word for church - ekklesia - means. That being the case, the building has been adapted to serve the needs of the church - the people - in each successive generation.

Why? Church fellowships expressions of the body of Christ. What I mean by that is a picture we are given in the New Testament is that the church is described as a body (the body of Christ). When people decide to follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit makes each one of His people part of that body (1 Corinthians 12:5). Locally He puts us together with other people in local churches and as a church we grow together as we worship, through friendship and mutual support, through getting to learn of God together and letting others know about Jesus.

The Christian faith is all about relationships: a personal relationship with the living God; and a relationship with others like ourselves.

If you want to know more, please contact me or visit your local church - or if you are in Felixstowe, do come along to Maidstone Road.

Yellow Lines

2012-01-12T05:52:00.000-08:00

We do things we know to be wrong for different reasons, but one is we do them because we think we won't get caught! That may be because we think no-one is watching or that the authorities cannot or will not bring us to book. But is lack of enforcement or the appearance of non-enforcement a reason for non-compliance?   If we're not going to get caught, is it OK to do something that's wrong?

The idea behind Yellow Lines was to illustrate our tendency to do things we shouldn't if we're pretty sure we're not going to get caught and that applies particularly to minor traffic infringments. But we've also seen plenty of examples in the news how people did far worse things, thinking that they would probably never be able to brought to account.

When it comes to things we know to be morally wrong, do we apply the same logic? How can anyone know our thoughts anyway.   What about God?   He sees everything that we do and knows our thoughts.

But God doesn't seem to do much about the wrong things we do does he?   Do does that mean there is no God, or if there is one, he doesn't seem interested in doing anything about it?

Just because there doesn't seem to be a policeman looking, doesn't mean that committing a crime is OK and there are ways of the authorities find out what we are up to.   There were no shortage of CCTV, witnesses, TV pictures and photographs of rioters and looters last summer. Someone was watching.   God watches and one day he says that he is going to catch up with every one of us - we're not going to get away with it. The Bible says that each one of us will give an account of ourselves before God (Romans 14:12.)

Worrying?   It should be, because those things we do wrong - God calls them sins - will keep us separated from God permanently.   But God is amazing. Because he loves the human race so much, he's already thought about that one, by making a way by which our wrongdoing can be dealt with so we can know him eternally, and also live our lives to the full, not spoilt by the things we have done which we have probably already been found out about and which blight or destroy our lives.

So how did he do that? God himself became a man - Jesus - and paid the penalty for our wrongdoing himself when he died on the cross.   He now gives us the opportunity to find forgiveness and wants to bless our lives in so many ways and invites us to follow Jesus, who rose from the dead and can be known today.

So what do we need to do? Recognise that things we do and have done wrong have kept us apart from God, ask God to forgive us and allow Jesus to come into our lives and follow him. If you would like to know more then do contact me

Mark

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

2012-01-12T01:00:00.000-08:00

Coming soon

Welcome

2011-12-31T01:17:00.000-08:00

Hi

This is the blog that accompanies the short videos that have been produced for Felixstowe TV. They are here to help explain in a bit more detail what the video was about, particularly the spiritual message that comes with them.

Be blessed.

Mark