Celebration Notices 

We have recently gone into a new pattern on a Tuesday night which includes the essential elements of discipleship (we are working through ‘Purpose Driven Life’), prayer (both in individual Life groups and all together) and socials to invite others along to. The socials currently involve meeting in a local pub and having a quiz in teams! 

On Sundays, we are about to start a series on Luke.  We are so encouraged by the amount and variety of people who continue to take part in the services and hope to keep it that way!

The biggest news since our last update is that we are officially now working towards setting up a local project that we hope will provide purposeful activity and help people to gain employment or enter training and education.  We have many other dreams and hopes for this venture, which mainly centre round discipleship as well as others accessing church and coming to know Jesus.  We have applied for funding for one or two days at first.  Please pray that we will be successful in this funding bid and that if not, it will be clear how to progress.  The sessions will initially be run by our very own Roy Ealden and Alan Petty and will mostly involve arts and crafts.      

This venture has been named the Diamond Project  (Lin Ealden’s brainwave).  The thinking behind this is that diamonds are very precious, they are initially covered in rough stone that needs chipping away at to reveal the valuable gem and they reflect light and beautiful colours. Enough said!!

We are grateful for strong links with the local Methodist church and Carl and Sarah recently met with some of their leaders again.  We are planning more joint services with them and will be helping out with the God Pod when it is in our area once a month.  We are also looking at how we may make use of their building and if it would be of mutual benefit.

We will be holding a 24/1 prayer event on 14^th (1pm) – 15^th November (when our service finishes).  It would be great to have members from the other congregations there too so please see one of our team if you are interested in coming along or just turn up at the time. It will be held in the Sir Francis Hill room opposite the YMCA.

Christmas is approaching fast!  On 15^th December we are hoping to get together with other churches (yet to be confirmed) and go carol singing round the area.   The plan is that we will hand out cards with local church Christmas programmes on them and give out festive refreshments for free.  The God Pod will also be out in the area on the same night. 

We will also have our usual Christmas party and ‘Christmas special’ service to invite our friends and families to.

We really value your prayers and support.  Thanks very much!

Following on from our theme of “Adventure” we have underpinned our services with the start of a series on the early church in Acts, and their adventures as they learnt to reach out to their communities and the world beyond. 

In keeping with the Threshold traditions of plentiful food, our harvest celebration this year started with a “Biggish Breakfast”, where bacon butties were greatly appreciated by all, including visitors who had come to enjoy the lively family service. During the service, donations were made to the Lincoln Food Bank. Building on the themes of giving and sharing, we followed the service with our first “Stop and Swap”, where items from books to chutneys and plants to beer making equipment were made available for anyone to take, all without money changing hands. We will see how this idea develops, and whether it may be suitable to widen to the local community. 

While on the harvest theme, we were thrilled that Joy was invited to lead the harvest celebration at Welton Methodist Church and has been asked if she would go back again! 

The second Sunday in October proved to be a busy day, starting with the dedication of David Nugent at St Mary’s Church in Welton, a great opportunity to support the family and deepen our relationships with another local church. This was followed by an afternoon “get-together” with the Monks Road congregation where we learnt of the relationship between eggs and Acts. In the evening we were invited to join with St Chads Church in Dunholme in a service to celebrate the local Watts Wood.   

The Light Party, held at Welton Village Hall was organised as a joint venture between the local churches, with 40+ children attending a fun filled afternoon on the theme of the Armour of God. 

Most recently, we were excited to lead the service for the baptism of Barbara, Alison and Emily. Barbara attends Welton Chapel as well as CBS and Threshold so this meant that the baptism service was attended by a good contingent from the chapel too. 

As you can see, the past two months at Wel:Dun have been characterised by the strengthening of relationships with other churches and organisations in our villages. This will continue over the next couple of months as we again run a service for the cubs and scouts, and for the first time take part in the celebration for the switching on of the Welton Christmas tree lights. But more of that and the outcome of our Christmas outreach service in the next report.  

 

We are currently moving through the theme of "I'm living it" and are really encouraged by how things are going. The sessions are all about how to get the life we talk about out into the community so that it is more than just words. We have looked at how much we need the power of the Holy Spirit to do anything of lasting value. One of the sessions featured a new speaker in the form of Lydia Daubney who spoke powerfully on the power of a changed life. Other topics have included inviting friends, God appointments and recently taking the risk of going for what God has asked of us. Pete Atkins reminded us that John Wimber spelled the word faith as RISK, and as a congregation we are looking to the Lord to reveal to us how we can be faithful risk takers.

Recently we had the pleasure of hosting Mark and Carolyn Lawrence as part of our Nettleham pulpit swap programme. Mark wonderfully brought to us again the powerful truth of the Gospel and its power to save. He shared with us the story of a murderous drug dealer who turned in repentance to the Lord, showing that the grace of God knows no restrictions or boundaries. On the same morning Jenny Rowley from All Saints was speaking at the Methodist Chapel and Ed was at All Saints. We really value the opportunity to share with the whole church in Nettleham and look forward to more opportunities in the future.

The new small groups are a little more established and the emphasis on looking outward is apparent. Talk of how we can make a real impression on our communities for Jesus sake is both exciting and a little scary at the same time!

We believe that God is challenging His people at this time to respond to His promptings in a fresh and exciting way and we look forward to the next few weeks and months with a genuine hope and anticipation.

 

The new school year is now well and truly underway and things are taking off in Access. It is really exciting to have a new Access cell, full of lively year 7 pupils and led by Roxanne Fearns and Ben Southall. Schools work is also going really well and growing with lunchtime clubs, assemblies and lessons in both William Farr and Christ Hospital. We are also starting an after schools club in Christ Hospital so need to brush up on our Uno skills. The chaplaincy is also off to a great start in William Farr, a growing number of staff are showing their support to this new initiative in the school, which is really exciting.  We are all really looking forward to the residential (13^th-15^th November), which promised lots of fun, good food, challenges from our visiting speaker, Thom Law, and not very much sleep!! 

We are increasingly aware of the importance of the prayer support from Threshold. To help you be more informed in your prayer for Access we are now producing, with the help of the wonderful Jacki Myers a monthly prayer letter which you should all have received. 

We really do value all the prayer and support we receive from all of you. THANK YOU so much.

 

We had a fabulous big lunch back in July when around 100 people from the Little Oz estate joined us for a family fun afternoon. Even the rain didn’t put us off! Lots of people have already asked us to help them put on a similar event next summer.

 

Our monthly Community Prayer Meetings haven’t happened for the past few months, so please pray for relationships as we seek to re-establish these. We continue to support the local church youth group and recently had a lovely morning at the Harvest Service, during which Liam, Aaron and friends took part.

 

Our cell more than doubled in September when we were joined by other Threshold folks who have a heart for communities south of Lincoln. We are working through vision and values for our new larger group and it’s really encouraging to meet together each fortnight.

 

We are looking forward to carol singing and our usual Christmas parties.

Lisa, Sam, Nigel and Shay 

 

The small group continues to meet to pray for the village. Recently we attended the Harvest Supper, provided by Robert and Ann Speight, of St. Hugh’s, providing the washing up duties for the third year running! This was a wonderful evening and our help was very much appreciated with a total of £96 raised for St.Barnabas Hospice. In December we will be supporting the Village Memorial Committee singing carols around the Langworth Christmas Tree ( the first time this has been attempted), and providing mulled wine and mince pies for the villagers: we do hope some of you will be able to join us!

We are also following a bite sized Bible study through the book of Daniel, which is keeping us focused on the way we live our lives, keeping Jesus at the centre.  

 

Hemingby  

Between Easter 2008 and Easter 2009, you may remember that we organised five Supper evenings at our house. We invited guest speakers from Threshold to these functions to speak about issues such as the Street Pastors movement, missionary work, art, church, conservation, health. The same group of 12/13 people regularly attended and seemed to really appreciate each session. We never saw this, however, as a permanent arrangement but more as a bridge into something where we could look more deeply into issues of faith. Given that we felt this formula worked for us, we decided to invite all our supper friends to something we’ve called T for 6! This is just what it says it is! We have tea together and then follow a DVD based course called ‘Start’, which looks at the foundation of the Christian Faith over 6 sessions. We have our 3^rd session this Sunday – and, although we are all finding the programme very challenging, we haven’t lost anyone yet and the group is still intact!

 

The Eden Project in Cornwall, in July, were encouraging communities across the country to lunch together with our neighbours. As most things we do involve food , no surprise that we participated in the Big Lunch in our garden earlier in the summer with about 50 people from the village coming. Eden have now organised ‘the Big Bulb Plant’ for this autumn which we also plan to participate in. All these events are meant to encourage a sense of community and provide marvellous opportunities to meet new folk. Check this out on line and register if interested.

 

The preparations for this years Village Christmas extravaganza are well underway; the nativity light trail has been extended and now includes 20 rope light displays. The trail will be illuminated from 7.00pm 15^th December. On the same night, the villagers will re-enact the Christmas story in a way we hope will appeal to all ages. We see this as one of our main events of the year and always appreciate anyone from Threshold who can be part of the crowd!