Hi All
Great to be able to broadcast our service live from CLC this week. A huge thank you to Vernon and the team for the presence filled worship, to Ste, Jay, Dave, and PB for their hard work on streaming. Thank you also to Phil for his anointed preach encouraging and challenging us to live with kindness in these difficult times.
Lots to share and some things to remind us about this week:
National Day of Prayer
This Friday (13 November), churches and Christians across the UK are uniting together for the National Day of Prayer – praying for our nations and our communities. As a movement, Elim is joining with this day and we are asking our churches to commit to pray and fast throughout the day.
To help people pray, the Evangelical Alliance has published an outline schedule for the day, along with a list of prayer ideas and these have been added to our Elim Prayer website. Also, if you follow Elim Prayer on social media, you’ll see prayer updates throughout the day leading up to a live prayer event in the evening.
LIVE PRAYER EVENT
At the end of the National Day of Prayer, we will hold a united time of prayer from 7pm – 8pm. This event will be live streamed on YouTube at elim.org.uk/youtube and Facebook at elim.org.uk/facebook. This prayer event will feature special guests and contributors from across the nations, together with worship led by Elim Sound. Both streams will have a live chat to interact and share your prayers as we join together in prayer.
Lockdown Reminder
Following the government announcement of a second national lockdown we are no longer permitted to hold gathered services. We can still broadcast from our building so we will continue with our mix of online team only live stream services and pre-recorded services.
Christmas services
Our plans for Christmas services are coming together. We want to be able to meet all together for our Christmas services rather than a small number in the building and the rest online. We obviously can’t do a live Nativity or Carol Service in the current climate, so we have plans to share online services together with two great Christmas video services online. We also plan to give our streaming and worship teams a break over Christmas after their amazing effort over the last 6 months. So on Christmas day we will produce a short video message and worship for you to connect to and 27th December will also be all of us together online.
Our next in person gathered service will be January 3rd providing there are no further government restrictions. We will open bookings for this once we know that we are again permitted to meet.
People not online
We will continue to look after our people who are not on the internet with CD’s of the word from our services, weekly updates and notes delivered each week. We will also aim to do some small gatherings for those not on the internet after the current lockdown measures end.
Good news – Advent Calendar
| This Christmas we want to share good news stories throughout December on our social media platforms. Our idea is 24 days of good news to encourage believers and witness to those who are not yet Christian – 24 days of good news gifts. We will release these in the form of an online advent calendar with a new video to open every day from the 1st to the 24th of December. We will then add the link to our online Christmas Day service.
We need your help How to get involved Simply record your story in no more than 1 minute (as this is the limit on some social media platforms) on your phone (in landscape) and send them to us via WhatsApp 07742 638809 or email office@sthelensclc.com! Send your videos as soon as possible, the final deadline for all videos is no later than November 30th. Looking forward to hearing your stories and blessing our communities with good news. |
Evangelism time – sharing the good news
Our advent season and Christmas services will be different this year. Whilst we lament the loss of our passionate in person services; I believe God is moving and giving us an unprecedented opportunity. With our online Christmas services, Good news advent calendar, and gospel messages, the message could be shared way beyond our walls and our community but we need your help.
On Social media?
Can I ask you to engage with our content follow us on twitter, facebook, and instagram and become an online evangelist. Social media analytics mean our posts are largely seen by those who already like and follow our pages. This is where we can work together to share the good news. Liking our content is a great start, but sharing it transforms the reach of our message. If you share our posts they are seen by your friends and followers. If we all share our posts then the good news is preached to a much wider audience.
Simply hit “share” on our posts and engage with your friends as they comment!
Online evangelism – Online follow up
Following the Good news advent calendar and the Christmas programme we will be launching an online Alpha for those who would like to discover more about faith. We believe this will be a powerful way to engage people in their own homes and see people encounter Jesus.
Mark 16:15 ESV “And He said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
This Advent & Christmas we have the opportunity to “Go into the whole world” from the comfort of our homes. Let us not waste this unprecedented opportunity!
Love & Blessings
Craig