Church Life - Articles
Article Title: Vision
Subject category: Devotion
Description: The Church's vision.
Worship is the offering of ourselves to God to be followers of Jesus in the world.
Part of our worship includes meeting together to sing praise to our God, consider the teaching of the Bible and encounter the Holy Spirit.
The church has four purposes:
- We seek to create an environment where people feel they belong.
- We seek to provide opportunity for growth in faith.
- We seek to encourage people to discover their gifts.
- We seek to be a people who are good news in word and action to our communities.
We wish people to feel welcome, that they matter and feel at ease and that they are able to participate in the life of the church.
We do this through reading the Bible and seeking to understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus in all parts of our lives: home, work and leisure.
Each person has unique gifts, passions, skills, personality and experience. We aim to enable people to discover their specific role as a disciple of Jesus.
Jesus's message was one of good news to the poor, healing of the sick, freedom from oppression and a calling of people to follow him.
Article Title: Thought for the Month – October 2011
Subject category: Continual
Description: Life is full of surprises
This will be the last time I write this short
thought for the month. My time as minister of Perry Rise Baptist Church
is coming to a close
I have been at the church for 17 years and it has been
something of journey. In fact, the Christian life is a journey. The
moment we think we have arrived and have got it all sorted out is the
moment when see cease to grow in our understanding of God.
Life is full of surprises. Those surprises can be of two kinds.
There are the surprises of discovering or rediscovering something about
God that deepens my experience of him and my appreciation of the life
that he gives. There have been surprises that I would rather not have
had. The tragedies of losing loved ones to terminal illness, the
challenges of finding that people don’t always act in ways in which you
expect. However, none of this happens outside of God.
When I consider the life of Jesus, his commitment to his mission and
his life as an expression of God’s commitment to me I realise that
there is nowhere that I can go outside of God. The writer of Psalm 139
asks the question as to where he might go from the presence of God only
to find that God is always present. I guess, some would find that
oppressive, might even want to ask God to ‘get lost’. That has not been
my experience. Oh, I get angry with God and I have my questions, but I
would rather he was there than not there.
As I move on to a new future I can be confident of God walking with me,
but I can also be confident of God walking with the church. I pray that
we all may know both the joy and security of walking with God.
Geoff Andrews, Minister, Perry Rise Baptist Church.
Article Title: Prayer and Reflection
Subject category: Reference and Information
Description: Resources for Prayer and Reflection.
Many people find the practice of spending regular time in prayer and reflection helpful. This will include a time of reading a section of the bible, reflecting upon it and prayer. There are number of websites which can help with this. Here are few: