Reflections on the Past Year – 3 years of Public Worship.
In September we’re celebrating three years since our first public service. Way back in September 2021 our core group moved out of our house into Hadspen Memorial Centre, and we’ve continued to worship God together as a church family ever since.
We started with the firm conviction that God works through his Word by the Holy Spirit. We wanted our worship services to be simple and major on the main things: prayer, singing praise to God, scripture readings and preaching. We believe that this is the way that Christ grows us as his people, and it’s the way people are brought into Jesus’ kingdom.
The past year has been full of joys, with many evidences of God’s work in the life of our church. People continue on following Jesus, loving one another, and serving Christ faithfully. I find the conversations after the church service to be particularly fruitful. It’s always an encouragement for me as a pastor to hear and witness these stories of grace, seeing God’s work in our church. Praise God for what he’s done! I’ve personally enjoyed preaching and teaching through Mark, various Psalms, and Genesis.
The past year has also been the most challenging year we’ve had as a church so far. We’ve suffered loss at the start of the year, and there has been change in the church, that has been difficult to go through. Church planting has its own unique challenges, and we’ve experienced these in our church. These include the practical needs that we have with starting with a small group of people and the associated challenges with ministry teams and finances. There’s also also spiritual opposition and our own progress in sanctification. The Lord Jesus told us to expect challenges, trials, and temptations in the Christian life. We know that the Holy Spirit is with us, and that’s a great joy that we have.
If you could pray for our church, that we’d grow in our zeal for God’s glory. We’d love to grow more in our evangelistic energy and seek out opportunities to share the gospel with people. Please pray as we look to establish a Youth ministry in Hadspen. We would love prayer for a couple of outreach and evangelistic initiatives in October. We’re stretching ourselves to do this, but we want to do so for God’s glory. Please pray for people to come to know Christ. We’d love prayer for our practical needs as well, we’d love 5 more households who are keen to serve Jesus with our church family. Pray for the ministry of the word to continue, and that it would spread across the Launceston, Meander, Northern Midlands area. Please pray for faithfulness so that we’d continue to do the long and patient work of preaching, prayer, and loving people in Jesus’ name.
Nathan