Open Heaven Update

2010 has been a mixture of some really challenging times and some moments of beauty and breakthrough.

Ness and Rich’s daughter Lauren was diagnosed with cancer back in Nov 2009 and had nine months of chemotherapy and surgery. The whole journey has been marked by many signs of God's grace. When the diagnosis was first given they were told to expect to be in hospital more than they were at home, with inevitable secondary infections, regular blood transfusions and probably a nasal feeding tube. After 9 months of treatment, none of that happened. Lauren amazed the nurses by staying infection free, maintaining her weight and managing to regenerate her blood cells sufficiently enough each time to avoid any transfusions. The only thing we can put it down to was Lauren being covered in prayer by hundreds of people across the world. However, even amongst such answered prayer, Ness & Rich are obviously tired from fighting that battle. The last decade has been a tough one for Ness and Rich and as they head towards the next decade they want to enter it full of energy, faith & vision. In order to do that, they are going to heed the advice of some older wiser friends and take a sabbatical next year, probably a few months in spring/early summer.

As we look ahead there are four key areas where we want to be laying foundations:
Firstly, we are in the final nine month countdown before our France team goes to Annecy. One of the keys to successful church planting is saturating the ground in prayer beforehand. I do believe a move of God is coming to Europe and our team are a small part of that, but their experience will be bound up by the foundations we lay for them in prayer. We have a prayer wall where the church can write down any prayers or words they have.

Secondly, we are moving closer to laying some physical foundations. We have been progressing with the building project we’re embarked on. We and an Elim church in Loughborough are partnering together to see an old church of England building come back to life and once again be a beacon in the town. It’ll be a great resource to serve and bless the town and space for the church to grow. We are continuing to raise finances and in the New Year we’ll hopefully be in a place to be able to start the building work.

Thirdly, we are wanting to lay foundations for ourselves, particularly in the area of digging into scripture. 2011 is the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible and over 50 organisations are coming together to resource the church in the UK to rediscover a passion for and an understanding of scripture. We want to be part of that.

Fourthly, we want to continue to lay foundations for others. We want to continue to be a discipling community that is investing into others. This is such a distinctive of the church and we don’t want to lose it.