Fourth Article - People
This article is part of a series looking at some of the areas which we feel God stirring us to grow in over the course of 2024. 

The first three areas we looked at were Passion, Presence and Power, you can read all articles in the series here: https://jubd.uk/t7v2bG 

People 

Our next P is People and there are a few things we should consider here:

Relationships with one another 
Growth in terms of numbers of people 
Salvation - inc. Alpha in the autumn

So first things first:

Relationships with one another 
In our top 5 values, Loving one another comes in at number 2, right after loving God.

We know that the Bible as lots to say about how we treat one-another in the church, just in case we have forgotten, Jesus puts in like this in John 13:

John 13:34 (NIV)
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Jesus goes onto explain that it’s our love for others which will demonstrate to the world around us that we are in fact His disciples.

And so my question, my challenge to us is this: This year, how can you grow in this? How can we as a church family grow in this? 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful for us to be able to look back at the end of the year and see some specific ways, some specific examples of how we have grown in love for another this year?

How can we do that? What could you do to demonstrate your love for someone in our community? How could you reach out and show kindness to someone who is struggling, not just in kind words, but kind actions as well?

This is something we can all do and something we can all grow in. 

Growth
I want us to be praying as a church that God adds to us this year, it’s wonderful to have new visitors most weeks but wouldn’t it be even better if more of them stayed??

Let’s work hard together at caring well for those who visit us on Sundays, keep an eye out for people, that perhaps you don’t know, say hello and find out who they are, they may be new or they may be new to you. 

It’s so easy to get so focussed on a Sunday morning, on catching up with people we need to talk to, or organising things for a future week. However, let’s make sure we are also making time to welcome guests and to help those who are new to feel at home and settled. 

In Luke 10, Jesus says this: 

Luke 10:2 (NIV)
He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

I would love for The Lord to add more workers to us in order that we can see a harvest - more people coming to know Jesus! 

And that leads us to the final part of People: 

Salvation 
We must refocus our minds on the mission that God has give us - to see people saved and added!

This year, we want to see people saved and added, don’t you want to see that? 

Here at the beginning of the year, we’re saying that we should aim to run an Alpha course this autumn. This isn’t the only way that we’ll see people saved and added but it’s certainly one way and it’s also an easy measure of progress in this area.

So let’s commit, right now, to running Alpha this autumn

Who are you going to invite? 

You’ve got maybe 8 months to not only think about who to invite, but to pray about it and to talk to your friends about it. 

Rather than Alpha being a last-minute thing, shouldn’t this be something which is well-planned and which we’ve been praying and asking God for breakthrough for?

In our next article we’ll look at the next P ‘place’.

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