Wondering about the summer? Come on a holiday with a purpose!

In July, two summer teams made up of people from all over Europe (and hopefully a number of us from Emmanuel) will be gathering on the Greek island of Paros.  Based at a campsite right by the beach, we'll be working as a team, as a community, to reach other holidayers on Paros with the very good news of Jesus Christ. We'll be doing this over meals, on the campsite, during beach volleyball, in all sorts of activities on the beach, in cafes, in Bible studies, on excursions, in and around the beautiful town of Parikia and generally wherever and whenever we can.

This year, to make the most of the opportunities we've been finding in previous years, we're planning two teams, with the second time being shorter and in school holiday to allow more workers and families with school-aged kids to join in – it’s not just for students!

Team Bible Study

An excellent opportunity to:

• Get to know Jonathan and Dawn Clark, our mission partners out in Greece
• Reach out to locals and holiday makers on the island of Paros
• Grow personally as we reflect on God’s word personally and corporately, live alongside brothers and sisters and step out of our comfort zones in speaking of Jesus.
• Get a taste of the church in Europe (including on week A we’ll go to the Clarks’ church’s Sunday gathering in Athens)
• Get a taste of life as a missionary 

Ben Heasman and I are already signed up, and would love to take a team of both students and “grown-ups”/families, to support the Clarks and grow ourselves.  Details are below, but before that, here’s a taste from one year’s team journal:

“The bulk of the afternoon was again spent at the beach. We indulged in a game of volleyball, with abilities increasing rapidly, at one point resulting in a rally of 4 hits. We were literally on our way to performing at Olympic standards. At 6 in the evening, Chen, Ed and I met Morten and Jonathan at a local café to chat and look at Mark 2v1-12. There were some encouraging moments, but also some inevitable disagreements over the importance of Jesus’ claims. We ate dinner at the same restaurant in the evening and this time we were accompanied by two German girls from the camp. It was great to include them in our group and have the opportunity to be witnesses for Christ around the girls. After dinner, a group of the team went to town to chat to passers-by about Jesus and invite them to a Bible study. There were mixed reactions as anticipated but with a few agreeing to meet.”

Be there.

Team A: 9th to 23rd July, £250 + flights to Athens

Team B (which would love to welcome families too): 23rd to 31st July, £160 + flights to Athens

Email elliem@emmanuelbristol.org.uk to find out any more details!

"So I eat the tears I cry"

Following on from our time in Psalms 42-43 at Emmanuel Westbury this week, here's music to help us use Psalm 42 to manually focus back on the Lord, from The Sing Team:

I have lost my appetite
And a flood is welling up behind my eyes
So I eat the tears I cry
And if that were not enough
They know just the words to cut and tear and prod
When they ask me “Whereʼs your God?”

Why are you downcast, oh my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
I can remember when you showed your face to me

As a deer pants for water, so my soul thirsts for you
And when I survey Your splendor, You so faithfully renew
Like a bed of rest for my fainting flesh

When Iʼm looking at the ground
Itʼs an inbred feedback loop that drags me down
So itʼs time to lift my brow
And remember better days
When I loved to worship you and learn your ways
Singing sweetest songs of praise

Let my sighs give way to songs that sing about your faithfulness
Let my pain reveal your glory as my only real rest
Let my losses show me all I truly have is you

So when Iʼm drowning out at sea
And all your breakers and your waves crash down on me
Iʼll recall your safety scheme
Youʼre the one who made the waves
And your Son went out to suffer in my place
And to show me that Iʼm safe

Why am I down?
Why so disturbed?
I am satisfied in you

From Oh! Great Is Our God!, track released 03 April 2012
Written by Brian Eichelberger / E on the Eye Chart (BMI)

Students: keeping in contact with friends this summer

On the weekend away in June we decided that Christian friends are pretty vital when it comes to working out our salvation as Christians. The Christian life is not meant to be lived alone. God intended for it to be lived out in community with other believers. That’s why Paul in Philippians writes to ‘all the saints’- because he’d grasped that the call to work out our salvation is going to be made a whole lot easier with others around us. 

We each need Christian friends to point us back to remind us that we’ve been raised with Christ. To point us up to remind us that He is the King worth serving. To point us forward, telling us that our holiness, however pointless it seems now, will one day be vindicated when we appear with Christ in glory (Colossians 3:1-3). 

And that’s often why we find the summer so hard don’t we? We’ve headed home to Bournemouth and all of a sudden our Christian mates are 200 miles away in Bangor or Bolton. And our drive to be holy peters out; our desire to spend time with God’s people at church wanes; our delight in reading His Word fades. 

So let’s use the means of grace God has given us to keep going as Christians and make it our aim to keep in contact this summer with our Christian friends. 

Even if your experience of home is a doddle – you have a good church and lots of Christian mates – for the sake of your brother or sister who lives in the Outer Hebrides with a couple of sheep for company, keep in contact. 

Plan a Skype chat (put some dates in the diary now or it’ll never happen). Aim to text one member of your small group every week. Have a Whatsapp conversation when you’re sunbathing on the beach in Bangalore. Phone a friend at 6pm on a Sunday evening when small groups normally take place. Write a postcard from Paros encouraging your mate in Prestatyn to keep persevering with his local church. 

If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to get half way through August and complain that no one has rung you yet this holiday. In which case, we need to remember Vaughan Roberts’ advice in our church family book of the summer – that to have good friends, we’ve got to first be a good friend. 

4 months is a long time to go solo as a Christian. Don’t be a lone ranger. Pick up the phone.

Ben's back!

For the past 6 months or so we've been praying for Ben - who has been overseas working with local Christians in Central Asia. He's now back in Bristol - here's some reflections from Ben on his time away: 

Having just got back from my time in Central Asia, it’s been good to have some time to reflect on my time there. It was a hugely worthwhile time, not just from a language point of view, but also in terms of what God was teaching me through His word and the people He had placed around me.

It was good to learn from those who had spent many years in the country working with leaders in local fellowships as well as unbelieving locals. Seeing their faithful perseverance to local peoples’ spiritual needs, despite often fruitless periods, was a great example to follow. It was a particular challenge to start thinking about what God’s people might look like in another context, as they seek to achieve the balance of being culturally relevant (without being unnecessarily ‘western’) whilst guarding faithfulness to Biblical standards at the same time. It was also a real privilege to get alongside believers in the context of student groups, seeing many of them with a real desire to faithfully grapple with the truths of God’s word and share their faith with others, despite the difficulties they face. It struck me how the Good News we have really has changed, and indeed is changing lives, all over the world.

I enjoyed having the opportunity to get to know several locals, mainly through the language centre where I taught English and studied Russian. I found sharing the gospel is a real challenge there, mainly due to the language barrier and the fact that people are coming from a really different mindset to most in the UK. However, in God’s grace people are coming to know Him – a particular example of God’s sovereignty in people’s salvation was in the seemingly strange situation in which one local Russian friend became a believer through an Afghan refugee, who God had in turn brought to Himself through a Malaysian worker!

Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers over this past year, I am really looking forward to being back in Bristol this coming year and being back involved at Emmanuel.

Ben