DECEMBER 2018
ISSUE 20
K I NGFI S H E R FAMILY Staying blessable 25 years on What a year 2018 has been! It has been a year of unprecedented uncertainty, dominated by Brexit negotiations. It has been a year of two royal weddings, of a betterthan-expected World Cup for England, of a record-breaking heatwave in the summer… 2018 is a year that will not be forgotten in a hurry. It is a year that is note-able for Kingfisher because it marks our 25th anniversary. Kingfisher was launched back in 1993 by a small group of people with a big dream to be part of a church that would be effective at reaching spiritually lost people, that would see genuine transformation as people came into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, and that would be the place where fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ were raised up. A church that would be radially different to what many of us had experienced in the past. A church that focussed, not on the already convinced, but on the sceptical, yetto-be-convinced majority, who had lost faith in church to be the place where anything meaningful happened.
beginning to get the sense that His plans were bigger than our own! Back in January of this year, we had a Vision morning, where we looked ahead to what we believed were the challenges and opportunities that God was laying before us for the year ahead. Just a few weeks ago, we looked back on that Vision morning to assess the impact of that vision over the year. We began, back in January, to talk about three particular areas of challenge that God is setting before us:
“Let your Kingdom come; let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10, NIV) We have been presented with the opportunity to experience all three of these areas of challenge this year, and will increasingly be in evidence as we head into 2019.
It strikes me that God has been presenting us with a real loving challenge this year - to come back to Him, to begin to raise our game and say, ‘Enough! Enough with accepting and expecting the • AUTHORITY minimum. Enough with living lives • JUBILEE that are really not blessable. We can • SPIRITUAL WARFARE. do better. We can live blessable lives. This year has shown we can be Authority comes out of a blessable church and what that IDENTITY. If we know who we are, feels like. we know what we are. If I now that • It feels like you can pray and see answers happen. my identity is found in Jesus Christ, • It feels like you can be honest then I know that I have authority to about brokenness and experience say, “Your Kingdom come; your will healing. be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” • It feels like you can dare to live life God’s way and discover that’s Jubilee is about release from the best way. bondage; restoration to a previous We follow a ‘more than’, not a ‘less state; rejoicing at new-found than’ God. And here at Kingfisher, freedom 25 years later, and we are still whether that is here at Tredworth, discovering the magnitude of that or at Westgate, or the Social Spiritual Warfare is about dream! Now active in eleven Enterprise, or the wider putting our spiritual authority into countries, with thousands of lost International family, we are action, understanding where the people int he process of being battle really lies: beyond the conflict experiencing more and more of that transformed into fully devoted we can see and fought with different ‘more than’ God. The God who followers of Jesus Christ, with nearly weapons than the world uses. Not longs to bless. Here’s what I think one thousand people signed up to He says: throwing insults at people over Support at the Cavern (a Treasure social media, not just getting angry Seekers Social Enterprise service) and shouting, or moaning about the Let me bless you. Live the alone, and with both the Police and problem, but understanding the life…be the church…that the NHS acknowledging that lives opens the door to the blessing authority that we actually have, have literally been saved, we are that only I can give. understanding what Jesus meant when He taught us to pray: