The High Road Baptist Church, North Finchley, London, is welcoming to the pastorate on 17 November Robin Dowling, who was our main speaker at the FEBE conference in Malaga in 2002!
The church say: "The Church at Finchley has marvelled at God’s wonderful providence in the last few months in bringing Robin and Clara Dowling to us."
It was with joy that we welcomed Antoine Fritz as our speaker at a special service on Sunday 23 September, on the topic of “Jews for Jesus”, at a time when we were still “of no fixed abode”.
With hearts full of thankfulness to our God we took possession of our new premises on 1 October.
We opened our church with a high-quality drama evening. The play, “The Walking Man”, based on a text by Christian Bobin, was most successful. The evening gave our visitors the opportunity to see our brand-new hall and to (re)discover the earthly ministry of our Saviour.
Thank you for upholding us in prayer as we go forward into this new future.
Since the beginning of the month, then, the Geneva church is meeting in much larger and more suitable premises. This former restaurant was bought at an auction last spring and is in an excellent location.
Give thanks for answered prayer, Ben Short has accepted the call to the pastorate. Pray that he will soon be able to move to Knaphill.
Some will already know that we in Caterham have suffered the loss of a member in a fatal motor cycle accident last Monday. Russell became a believer about 18 months ago largely from the influence of his wife who came to faith some three/four years earlier. Alison's conversion, humanly speaking, was from the input of the Mums & Toddlers group leaders. There are four children of school age.
The fellowship has not faced this kind of sudden death before and to say we are shattered is a euphemism. Please pray for the continued exemplary support of the other Mums, for Keith…
Cauldwell Hall Road Baptist Church, Ipswich, U K
Formerly ‘Mount Zion’
Generally
Our buildings are fairly new. The hall, mainly for mid week activities, together with the kitchen and toilets are only four years old. There is also ample car parking for most purposes. Our premises are therefore in demand for inter Church activities across our county.
Our pastor is Malcolm MacGregor who has been with us for about six years (he was the main speaker at Gourette in ’04) and we exercise a multiple eldership system.
Present developments
We are training a younger man, who we believe God has called to a full time ministry, Mike Hitchings. He is just now completing a year with half of each week with the Church and the remainder continuing in his secular employment. At the end of the present holiday period he is to be with the Church full time for a further two years.
We were responsible for founding a new Church a number of years ago on the other side of our town (of 130 000 or so people) and the Lord was gracious in granting encouraging progress, but sadly in more recent times serious decline has followed. ‘Shepherd Drive’ as the autonomous Church became known, was again entrusted to our oversight. Much prayer and consideration has been given to this pressing situation. In God’s goodness we have been guided to appoint Simon and Christine Robinson to lead and hopefully renew the work as a viable Church. Both Simon and Christine have been recognised as having the evangelistic gifts which are thought to be appropriate to the task in hand. Simon is a former member of ours (the son of our former pastor) but in recent years has been in full time ministry with Keith Johns of Caterham in Surrey.
Please pray for all personally involved and for God’s wisdom to be graciously given as together we look to the future. May God’s name be praised and may the Evil One’s ever present designs be totally thwarted.
Knaphill
The church at Knaphill is pleased to announce that Dr Ben Short has accepted the invitation to become its pastor. Ben and Fiona are expecting a baby soon.
Derby Road, Watford
Our own contribution to international outreach, the Everyday English classes with gospel talk, was successful on a small scale. We had a total of seven people attending over the six weeks, one of whom has now started attending church regularly. We plan to run the course again in October, with increased publicity beforehand.
Our latest Christianity Explored course also finished last month, as a result of which one man has given his life to the Lord and is now preparing for baptism; please pray for others who also attended, some of whom are now coming to church too.
We also have a couple of other applicants for membership and we pray that they may be strengthened in Jesus through their fellowship with us…
At the younger end of the age-range, we are short of a teacher for Sunday school Primary Class and at least one helper for our Friday Club (ages seven to eleven). Do ask that the Lord of the harvest will send out workers to work among the children of this neighbourhood.
Walthamstow
The church correspondent writes: “Praise that we often get visitors and some stay a while. We are gradually losing our long standing core members and need strengthening here.”
Additional information: “Another long standing member is soon to leave us to move with her husband to Penzance. There is potential in the regular congregation for people in their twenties to join us, but there is little movement at present. Three of these, all young men, have a conversational Bible Study with one of our deacons once per month. They have recently gone through Christianity Explored in detail and are now going on now to Discipleship Explored.”
East Ham
Nigel Lacey, the pastor of the church at East Ham, was called home to be with his Saviour and Lord on the 14th August. The funeral and thanksgiving Service details have still to be finalised. As we give thanks for the life and ministry of Nigel, please remember Margaret, the family and the church in your prayers.
As the church at Finchley gives thanks for the faithful ministry of John and Gill Kilpatrick, it also thanks God that Robin Dowling has accepted the call to be its next pastor. Robin and Clara hope to move up to Finchley in the late summer. Robin also hopes to be involved in lecturing at a local Theological College.
The church correspondent writes: "A number of members have moved to others parts of the country in recent months. We miss them. Pray for more workers.
Ultimately more workers requires more conversions.
Pray for a young couple who attended our Easter service and telephoned this week to ask to attend our next Christianity Explored course."
March 4 saw the official opening of our new premises.
800 invitations had been handed out at the nearby market and at the doors of the supermarket round the corner, and four people came… as well as about 20 outsiders invited by the members themselves (and most of whom had already been with us at Christmas). Altogether about a third of the people attending the celebration were non-Christians!
Since then two people have been coming regularly and several have given us their email address so we can let them know about our activities. Now we need to pray…
The preparation of five young baptismal candidates has been progressing well and we are preparing for the baptismal service. That will be another great occasion to look forward to, and we feel we have been especially blessed in recent days.
We give God the praise as two recent converts were baptised and joined the church as members in June.
Conversational classes in English based around the Scriptures have just started - an endeavour to open contacts with the local ethnic communities. Pray for more to attend these classes.
In December it is hoped to start a drop-in centre on Fridays.
