Return of Campus Breakout

Following the hiatus over the Christmas period, Campus Breakout is back with a bang this coming Wednesday.

We’re so excited for what the Lord wants to do over the next term, and think our times on Wednesday afternoons are going to be a really important part of that.

Here’s the schedule for this term:

Note well! The two Friday Night Treasure Hunts.
We’re going to be running a training session with the students from Christ Central on these Fridays, before heading out on a Treasure Hunt…it would be great if you could join us for either part!

Campus Breakout

Campus Breakout is a massive part of the student work at our church, one that hopefully you’re all au fait with now. It has been such a privilege to see God starting to move powerfully through these times and we’re expectant for more. The last couple of weeks especially have been so exciting and we wanted to make sure you all get the chance to hear about them. We want you guys to know, too, that Breakout isn’t just for a certain group of people, it’s for everyone – each and every one of us can be used be God! We all come with exactly the same credentials – inadequate beings who, by grace, have been given the keys to the kingdom of God! So have a read, and be inspired to joini us one afternoon if you can…

Treasure Hunting

On Wednesday this week we went out Treasure Hunting. It felt like a little while since the last one, but, as ever, God showed up massively and did some cool stuff. Here’s but a taster:
“…When we caught up to him, we asked him what had happened and he explained to us that he’s hurt his ankle and that, despite being on a load of painkillers, his ankle still hurt and it felt like a 3/10. We showed him our maps and we had headphones, pain in foot and his name, Steven. He was a bit freaked out, but let us pray for him….“

You can read the whole story right here.

‘Buckets of Love’

The Wednesday prior to this we went round campus and simply gave out some encouraging notes, sharing God’s heart with people. This idea is so simple, but its amazing just how God can move through it…
“…Then as we got close to Kro, we saw a guy on crutches (fair game). Naturally, I used the bucket as an in and casually asked if I could pray for his knee, which he’d just had surgery on. He said it was at a 5/10. After the first time, it went down to a 3/10. Prayed again and it went down to a 0. The pain was fully gone and full flex was nearly restored to his knee. He felt a slight twinge when he tried to bend it fully, but the pain was gone!…“.

Again, you can read the whole story over right here, on the testimony section of the prayer blog.

It’s so important to celebrate as a family what God is doing in our city, to thank him, and to ask him for more! Hopefully these stories will build your faith as well, and encourage you to come along and get involved. Honestly, all God asks of us is that we are available – he does the rest! So why not come join us this Wednesday, or any other during the rest of term?…

 

God Lands in Disneyland

Videos!

So it’s Breakout Sunday this weekend, where we’re going out Treasure Hunting as a family after the Vinelife morning service. We’ve really started to see God move a lot during various treasure hunts, but just to whet your spiritual appetites a little more, here are some incredible videos from when a few guys from Bethel hit Disneyland with the love of Jesus. Incredible stuff.

Here are the links to the other three parts:

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Awesome, huh?!

Welcome Week Update – Part Two

Everybody has to read this.

Yesterday was ‘Buckets of Love’. We didn’t really know what was going to happen, just a case of seeing what God was up to really. So, having spent about an hour in Starbucks writing loads of encouraging words, scriptures and prophecies, we hit the streets if Fallowfield to go give them out. Most people just took them without saying anything, but the ones who did were visibly blessed and encouraged, which is always a good thing. There was one particular guy we got to chat to about forgiveness and faith and stuff. He was well up for us praying for him, and as we did I started shaking – a new experience for me. We totally should have and chatted longer about what was going on with him, a lesson for next time!

On to Treasure Hunting… There’s loads of stories to put up but I’ll just do a few – hopefully we’ll do a bumper edition with extra detail at some point soon. Suffice to say, God did lots of cool stuff!

First off, Vanessa bumped into a guy we met on Monday a couple of nights back who instantly recognised her and got chatting with her about we had been doing and about what it meant to be a child of God. The hunt for treasure never stops!!

Today… Our team had swelled to 14, including a few first-timers, and we had a bit of fun getting filled with the spirit next to this lady on a bench. The most exciting story was from Golibe’s team. I can’t remember the specifics (will update when I get testimonies sent in) but basically they got chatting to this guy on crutches and his friend. The pain was in his hip and he described it as a ’10′ on the pain scale. After praying a couple if times it was completely healed! Golibé & steve shared some words with the guy, one of which was about it being a ‘new day’. Funnily enough he’d woken up that day and said to himself that he wanted a fresh start. Simon and Iona then came over to join them and having no knowledge of what was going on, Iona shared this word with the guy…’fresh start’. Amazing. God’s so funny!!

As you can imagine the guy was blown away and, aside from being unsure of what to do with his now redundant crutch, was well up for coming along to church. Praise God!

Finally, one of my clues was ‘camouflage’ so we stopped to chat to the guys on the paintball stand outside the SU. It turned out that one of the guys suffered from back spasms and well up for me praying for him (I didn’t even notice that ‘back pain’ was one of my clues!). There was no pain at that moment so he couldn’t tell if he’d been healed, but he was dead encouraged and the word I had for him about his friends seemed to really hit home.

Like I said, there were loads of other stories like that from all the teams, but hopefully that’s enough to get a flavour of what God’s been up to! Exciting times!! This is just the tip of the iceberg, we’re hungry for so much more!

Keep praying and join us tomorrow from 10am for 60 Minutes, flyering, and who else knows what God has in store for us!

Welcome Week Update – Part One

And we’re off! We had the first reach of term this past Sunday and our Campus Breakout kicked off with a bang yesterday.

A group of us gathered to pray in the morning, wandering around the campus releasing God’s presence and making declarations against strongholds of the enemy. It was a great time, and you can join us as we do so again on Thursday and Friday of this week (10am, UMSU steps).

We also went out Treasure Hunting in the afternoon and had an absolute blast! What was particularly great was being joined by people from 2 or 3 different churches – so good to stand side-by-side doing God’s work. Anyway, lots of fun stuff happened out on the hunt – we chatted to loads of people, prayed and prophesied over most of them, saw God bring some healing and just generally shared the love and joy of Jesus wherever we went. We prophesied over a man dressed as a cow, chatted with a lepracaun and even asked God to give one guy a free bus pass – fresher’s week is crazy!!

My personal favourite encounter was with one particular guy called Will. He and his mate was dressed in ‘horrow show’ clothes and make-up, so I thought they’d be up for a chat! One of the first things Will said was that he didn’t believe God had a plan for his life, and that sometimes he did believe n God but that the many negative experiences in his life had made him doubt. We chatted a bit more and it turned out he suffered from a number of different pains and conditions – a couple of which were clues on our maps (‘neck’ and ‘shoulder’ pain). He was happy to let us pray for him, and after two or three little prayers he said that his neck/shoulders did feel better. Vanessa then gave him a word of encouragement about how God sees him, prompting the response: “are you a medium?”!! You could totally tell that he’s had some sort of encounter. The great thing was, when we met back up to debreif it turned out that another team had met him as well and he’d shared how he’d be encouraged. I love it! There were lots of other cool stories too, ask me about them! Or better still, come out with us on Thursday!

Before then however, you can get involved with ‘Buckets of Love‘ – tomorrow, 11am, Fallowfield Starbucks. We’re going to fill a load of buckets full of prophetic words, scriptures, generally encouraging words that God wants to say over people and then just hit the streets and share. It’s going to be so much, and I’m sure God will set up lots of cool encounters. Make sure you come along!!

All the details of our Welcome Week plans are on our facebook page.

Excellent. Keep praying and keep sharing Jesus with people whenever you get the chance – it’s gonna change the world!

P.S. – If you were there on Sunday you’d have heard about how we teamed up with CCM:City on Sunday night – you can read a little thank you from Tim right here. Winner.

Welcome Week!

It’s nearly upon us! Freshers start arriving from this very day, so I’m sure you’re all dying to know what our plans are. Basically, we’re hitting it hard – lots of prayer, lots of getting out on the streets and ministering to people. Here’s an overall schedule…

Small details may change here and there, so make sure you RSVP to all the events on facebook and you can be keep abreast of everything. Exciting times!!

Outposts

Hope you’re enjoying the series so far! We’re jumping forward a few chapters to 1 Samuel 14, where we find an episode with Jonathan (Saul’s son) and his armour bearer. Phil preached on this passage a couple of weeks back – it was great, you can listen here.

Essentially it’s a lesson in how one person + God = a majority. Jonathan, frustrated that his army wasn’t making much headway against the Philistines, decided to go and make something happen. He spotted an enemy outpost and was stirred to go and attack – to take some ground for his kingdom. On paper it was a ridiculous idea, 2 men versus at least 20, but Jonathan was convinced by one truth about God:

1 Sam 14:6:
““Let’s go across to the outpost of those pagans”, Jonathan said to his armour bearer. “Perhaps the Lord will help us, for nothing can hinder the Lord. He can win the battle whether he has many warriors or only a few!““

This the kind of trust in God that we need to have if we want to start raiding outposts of our own. We have to know that we know that we know that, for God, worldly circumstances and limitations are of no hindrance – the impossible is logical.

This story also gives us two keys as to how we can a foster a similar daring attitude within our communities.

1. Jonathan had someone supporting him.

1 Sam 14:7:
““Do what you think is best,” the armour bearer replied. “I’m with you completely, whatever you decide.”“

Put yourself in the armour bearer’s shoes – he must have been bricking it! Regardless of any doubts he might have had, he agreed that Jonathan’s theology of God’s omnipotence was correct and so sought about encouraging him to pursue what the Lord had put on his heart. Not only that, he was prepared to go into battle with Jonathan as well. We saw in the last post (‘Developing Champions’) how we need to call the potential out of people who may not have recognised it yet. But we also need to back up those who are already leading the charge – and nothing says that better than “Go for it. I’m with you.” Maybe try that next time someone asks you to go treasure hunting!!

2. Listen to God, and wait for the right time to attack.

Jonathan didn’t just go charging into the fight without the first thought about what might happen. No, he was very calculated and his calculation was this: “I need to see if God’s in this before I do anything else.”

1 Sam 14:8-10:
““All right then,” Jonathan told him. “We will cross over and let them see us. If they say to us, ‘Stay where you are or we’ll kill you,’ then we will stop and not go up to them. But if they say, ‘Come on up and fight,’ then we will go up. That will be the Lord’s sign that he will help us defeat them.”“

Jesus’ over-arching principle in ministry was exactly the same: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” (John 5:19). So should ours be! For reasons we can never try or want to explain, God releases certain things at certain times. We have to be aware of this fact and so, upon starting our ‘advance’, must recognise that sometimes God says ‘Go’ and sometimes he says, ‘No’. We just need to be obedient to whichever one it may be!

Apologetics in Manchester

Morning all. A good friend of mine, Josh Thorp, is putting on an apologetics event a week on Saturday. It’s going to be on how we view the world, and how this affects the people we want to reach for Christ. I’m sure it’ll be really useful.

Check it out if you’re interested!

Miracles at School

God can do some incredible things through us if we just make ourselves available to him.

Check out the story of this guy, Owen Braaksma. He decided to start stepping out at school and praying for people…it’s incredible. And he’s 15!! Amazing. We can probably all learn something about faith from him, but more than that be encouraged about how God can move and reveal himself by intervening in people’s lives.

Coffee with Philemon

I don’t know about you, but for me Philemon has often been one of those more ‘low-key’ bits of the Bible – an interlude, if you will, wedged in somewhere between Hebrews and the big-hitting epistles. So much so that’s it’s rarely even on my radar when thinking about good bits to share.

But as I was reading this morning (with 2 Timothy 3:16 still ringing in my ears from a few days prior) I was struck by a couple of things that I thought it might be useful to whack up on here. And so I will – although be warned, it’ll be more of a drinks break than a sit-down meal. But first a bit of background:

Philemon was possibly one of the first letters that Paul wrote. The recipient was a man of least a little wealth, considering that he was able to own a manservant or two. One of those employees was a guy called Onesimus, to whom Paul was writing in reference. From the gist of the letter it appears that Onesimus had left the service of Philemon (possibly somewhat ignominiously), fallen in with Paul and given his life to Jesus. Now Paul was sending him back to his former owner, a Christian himself, asking that Philemon show grace to him and accept him as a brother in faith.

So that’s the story, but what can we gain from it today? Well there were two particular verses that stuck out to me. First:

“I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.“
Philemon v6

In the previous verses, Paul is praising Philemon for his faith in Jesus and his love for fellow Christians. But he follows it up with this, saying: “But don’t just keep your faith to yourself, be intentional about share it with others.” And why? So that Philemon would have a full understanding of all the benefits of being in God’s family. And it’s the same for us, we can have a great time believing in God and hanging out with all our Christian firends, but ultimately, if we’re not being active in our faith, then we’re actually missing out on something – we haven’t quite fully grasped what it means to fully follow Jesus. I’d venture that it’s as straightforward as that we haven’t realised just how awesome it is that we have been saved. If we are able fully comprehended the life that Jesus has won for us (and so the life that he has rescued us from) then we’ll be desperate to share our with other people, praying that God would also save them.

I love the bit about being active as well. It’s not enough to just passively float around in life, hoping that people will arrive on our doorstep beggin us to tell them about Jesus. We’ve actually got to do something about it – i.e. make an effort to initiate situations where we can share the good news of the Gospel.

“And one thing more: Prepare a guest room for me, because I hope to be restored to you in answer to your prayers.“
Philemon v22

The other verse that jumped out at me was this one – a little off-hand comment that Paul throws in at the end by way of signing off the letter. I love the expectation in it. Paul doesn’t just say, “please pray that I’ll be able to come visit you soon – I really hope it’ll happen.” No he’s a lot more certain thant that – he tells Philemon to actually get a room ready because they’ve been praying for a chance to vist, and so it’s definitely going to happen. I think we need to be a bit more like that when we pray – i.e. recognise that we have authority to ask for stuff in Jesus’ name and know that it will happen. So what ever you’re praying for – be bold. Command the Kingdom of God to come in that situation and expect that it will.

Thank you, Philemon.