The Band Rocked the House

This morning at church was stonkin! The band was in fine form as they belted out praise to God. One line which captured my attention for the song "He turned my Morning into Dancing" was God's anger lasts for a moment but His favour on us lasts a lifetime. (Well that was the jist of it anyway - not good with lyrics)

Its awesome to know that we have the favour of our great God on us for our whole lifetime. We can spend our lives trying to win and earn all sorts of people favour but we already have Gods! God is for us not against us. I know that in some churches you wouldn't believe that was the case because of the message of judgement and condemnation they propagate in the name of the Gospel, but is is true.

Our early morning service had a larger crowd than normal. The car park was a disaster area. We already provide a bus service from a nearby college car park to help with paring now we will have to start to provide this in our early service as well. We don't want people to miss out on hearing this great message of God's favour.

The Kids will lead us

I am getting to love the Internet more every day. I already love the fact that by the wonder of blogs i can, over my decaf Americano in Starbucks each morning, tap into the minds of great church leaders around the world.

What is even cooler is that some of the guys are attending a C3 conference in the states at the moment and have taken the time to post about the event. Tony Morgan posted this following observations from Ed Young's session.

* Children are the most neglected, over-looked entity in the world.
* Half of the developing world is children.
* Have you ever gone to a conference on church growth that focused on reaching children?
* 2/3 of people accept Christ before the age of 18.
* Only 1 out of 4 kids that grow up in evangelical churches will accept Christ.
* If we want to build a bigger tent, the answer isn't worship--it's kids.
* You want to build your church, you need to put your best with the kids.
* If you love people's kids, you'll get their time and attention.
* Adults will come every Sunday if their kids love the church.
* What does Jesus say about this? Mark 10. "Let the little children come to me..."

That's why we invest into our Children's ministry here at MKCC. We want our children to see church as a fun, exciting place that they look forward to visiting. We have a great team of volunteers who work with our staff making Kidz Church a fantastic place to be.

New Building

Had a great meeting yesterday with our Architect about our developments to expand our facilities at Milton Keynes Christian Centre.

Although we have some delays and difficulties it gave us the opportunity to present our vision for the future to the church and wow the stepped up. At our commitment Sunday last November our incredible people grabbed hold of the vision and pledged to give £1m over the next 3 years.

We presently have great building but it has now become too small for us and is restricting our growth. We have added a second and third service. Our usual 11 am Sunday service is still proving the most popular but we continue to explore ways to grow in our current site.

We have been able to obtain an option on a piece of land adjacent to our current site and exploring the best way to develop our campus to take us forward. Yesterdays meeting made us all feel we were really making progress. The architect is getting a clearer picture of our needs and he is helping us clarify our requirements.

We should get a couple of options sketched out in the next week or so and I am looking forward to putting some pictures to our vision with our church.

Ultimate at Alton

Mark Sherratt and I are off to Alton Towers Theme Park today. Sounds good but we will not be sampling any of the white knuckle rides like Air & Nemesis. In fact the park is still not open.

We are off to meet with the Park Events Team and our production company to plan this years Ultimate Events at Alton Towers. Every year Milton Keynes Christian Centre organizes a great day out for young people across the UK at the park with a fantastic concert in the evening.

We have been planning it for over a year and with the event on the 5th May fast approaching its time to button down the finer details of the day with Alton Towers.

It will be good to meet some old friends like Marcus who has worked with us on the event for many years. He makes sure our sound levels are ok.

This year we have the best of British in Delirious? and the best from the USA in Toby Mac.

We are praying that it will be a great day with 100's of people making a decision to follow Jesus for the first time.

Between now and the 5th May I will be eating, sleeping and drinking the Ultimate Event.