MEPC: training, new Bible study & new congregation

I’m just re-surfacing after a bad bout of ‘flu. As the weather cools down, my ministry’s hotting up. I have several significant ministry projects in progress. I'll start with what I'm doing at Merrylands East Presbyterian Church (“MEPC”).

I’m running a training course on how to read the Bible. It deals with the basics of taking the Bible on its own terms – in context, paying attention to style, situating the passage within the big picture of God’s unfolding plan of salvation (“Biblical Theology”) – all that sort of thing. It’ll lead into a course on how to lead Bible studies, and then another course on preaching. I’ve had previous experience in running the first two types of training courses – reading the Bible, and leading Bible study – but I’ve never trained preachers before. I thought you had to be someone of the caliber of Spurgeon or Lloyd-Jones before you had a go at that.

I'm also helping to start a new Bible study in the Liverpool-Fairfield area. There's three young people who live in the area, and have for a while been keen to start a study. There's quite a few people associated with MEPC who don't come for Bible studies at the moment because of distance and lack of transport. Please pray that they'll come along to this new group!

Finally, I'm also involved in the launch of a new congregation at church. MEPC used to be an Arabic-language church. I minister with the English-speaking young people. At the moment, we have two parallel Sunday meetings: one in Arabic for the parents, and in the hall, an English meeting for the young people. On 3 May, we’re going to move the English-language meeting to 12pm. It’s an exciting opportunity for us to take more responsibility for running our own congregation, rather than merely thinking of ourselves as a big youth group.

Shall post about my other ministry projects. Watch this space...