May I first of all say how great it is to be back, and apologies to you that I am. It was a terribly bad idea to allow me to go off and think.

I spent June pondering Christ Church, what’s happening here and what might be happening here in the future, interviewed a number of fellow church leaders, all of whom lead larger churches than here.

I spent July on what might be called gardening leave and we spent August on holiday in Australia, visiting family and friends.

If I can be honest, it’s been wonderful to stop. It’s been wonderful to ignore my diary. It’s been wonderful to relax of an evening. I’ve even watched some television – there’s not much interesting stuff on, is there? But best of all, we’ve caught up with some friends, had weekends away, celebrated two 40th birthdays and shared good times with people.

One couple we met were Norman and Sandy Lovemore. Some of you may remember them. They came to Christ Church from Zimbabwe, fleeing the disintegration of that country, and Norman got a job as a road engineer. If I say that Sandy was the Sandy who came from Sandy, that may help you place them, and their younger boy, Michael, was baptised here.

Anyway, the English weather didn’t suit them and the boys got every cold going, so they decided to up sticks and head for Australia. We met them in Sydney for afternoon tea – a desperately wasted attempt to anglicize them again. It hadn’t been an easy move for them. They saw the possibilities of Australia, Norman applied for a job with a major construction firm, they knew the lifestyle was more akin to Zimbabwe – well, at least the weather – so they went for it.

They arrived on a Sunday at Sydney airport. They were taken to a B&B hotel. Norman went to work the next day. On the Tuesday, 48 hours after arriving, Michael, the youngest, was poorly and Sandy took him to the local doctor. The doctor wasn’t happy and sent them to A&E, where Michael was diagnosed with suspected meningitis.

For the next fortnight, Sandy stayed at the hospital, Norman had to work, Craig, the elder boy, just had to be looked after somehow. In the end, it was ok, just a scare and Michael was all right. But it was tough. The hotel room was small, renting a house was harder than they hoped – it took 7 weeks before they could move in to their own place.

Norman said to me that 6 weeks in to their arrival he seriously wondered about jacking it all in. The UK firm he had left were keen to have him back. Their container of furniture was only about to arrive in Singapore, and as he said to me, “I could ring up the shipping firm, get the container routed back to the UK, and I could return to the job I left. My hand hovered over the phone.”

Clearly, they did not return because we saw them in Sydney. They had decided to make a break for Australia and it wasn’t easy, but amazingly they pressed on. They have a nice house, they’ve found a great church, they are making friends, they have just moved to a beautiful area up the coast. They are in, they are up, they are running.

But it wasn’t easy. They had times of wanting to turn back, times of great doubt, times of needing to press on despite the circumstances, and it has paid off.

Many of you here will have similar stories, when you had to persevere, when you had to press on, when you were determined to complete what you had started. It may have been your personal self-determination that got you through, or it was that you saw something you wanted, you had a vision of something better, an image of something superior, and you pressed on to attain it.

When the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Philippi, he wants to encourage them to full maturity of faith – just as our own mission statement calls us to do. Paul in this letter is quite confident that God is a finisher and a completer and the work that God has begun in the lives of the Philippians will be finished, by God’s grace.

Unlike other letters of Paul, in which he has to chide or berate his readers about their Christian lives and the mess they are making, the letter to the Philippians breathes a confident joy and trust which we don’t always find elsewhere. This was the first church in Europe that Paul founded and he rejoices in their continuation in faith and their willingness to press on to greater maturity and to greater things for God.

Completion of faith
His first call upon them is to complete the good work that God has already started in their lives (v.6). In fact, Paul says that it is God who will complete that work. Once more we are thrown off our human resources and onto God’s grace. It is God’s grace that will make a difference and it is God’s grace that will complete what God has already started.

God has no desire for anyone of us to be stuck on the starting blocks of the Christian journey, he longs that we would have a deeper and richer appreciation of who he is and of his love for us. And he gives us this out of his grace – his undeserved love.

“When a person works an 8 hour day and receives a fair day’s pay for his time, that is a wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his performance, that is a prize. When a person receives appropriate recognition for his long service or high achievements, that is an award.

“But when a person is not capable of earning a wage, can win no prize, and deserves no reward – yet receives such a gift anyway – that is a good picture of God’s unmerited favour. That is what we mean when we talk about the grace of God.” (G W Knight)

Maturity of faith
God’s desire for us, God’s goal for us, is maturity of faith. Paul describes this as a love (v.9) which overflows with knowledge and insight into God and his ways. We need that so that the completion God is working out will be seen in our discernment, which helps us choose the godly way through life (v.10), and in our actions, which will be determined by a righteousness within us (v.11).

This is a lifetime process. Not one of us will be fully mature Christians before we die. Only Jesus led such a godly life. Paul knows that this will not be easy and so this whole subject of growing in love, discernment and righteousness is made a matter of prayer. Here’s a prayer you could pray for yourself, and a prayer you could pray for the person next to you and the one you love and so on.

Continuation in faith
For Paul himself, there is no sitting down and taking a rest, of sitting on his laurels, of allowing the world to pass him by. He is determined to press on (v.12, 14) until he gains the prize – the crown of righteousness granted by God to all, you and me, who persevere to the end.

And his pressing forward, his straining onwards, is because of all that has gone before. He is not going to let the life he has lived for Christ upto now be wasted in “what might have been” thinking or in indulgent memories (v.13). He is going to press on.

Vision for Christ Church
Why do I bring this passage from Philippians to you? I sense that we are living in a reverse of Paul’s letter. From my sabbatical reflections, I sense that Christ Church is being called to press on in our Christian journey (3:14), to live up to what we have already attained (3:16), to pray and to seek for greater love, discernment and righteousness (1:9), as we allow God by his unmerited favour, by his grace to complete the good work he has begun in us (1:6).

We can look back and see God’s gracious hand upon us. We have grown in the last few years. The morning service now fulfils that February 2004 motto I brought back from a conference – “No more empty seats”. Our children’s and young people’s work expands beyond the capability of our buildings to hold it More people join small groups to learn and to love and laugh together on their Christian journey. Ministry grows beyond the human resources of the present staff team. Praise God from whom all these blessings flow. All this is only and completely his work.

We could sit back. We could say well done. We could say we are successful, full and vibrant. But I cannot do that. Too many people do not yet know Christ Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Too many people do not know the joy and peace that Christ Jesus brings. Too many people do not know the engaging purpose of life that Christ Jesus offers.

We cannot stand still. God’s work and God’s love is still reaching out and we are called to be in partnership with God in the Gospel (1:5) – that is the privilege he calls each of us too.

If we are to be effective in allowing God’s grace and love to work through us, we will need to press on, indeed I guess raise our game so to speak.

As I look to the future, I sense a vision in which Christ Church could be like this. Our staff team has expanded:-
· we need an executive administrator to share the workload,
· we will need to split Jo’s job into a Children’s minister and a Youth minister,
· we will need to develop another congregation at another time on a Sunday – in the morning or perhaps late afternoon,
· we will need, most frighteningly of all, to develop our church buildings so that we can facilitate both Christ Church’s growth and our better engagement with our community.

Can you imagine in a few years time that under God’s grace, Christ Church could send out 100 people to start a church elsewhere in Bedford – maybe bringing life once more to a currently dying Anglican Church, which itself then grows in fulfilment of God’s grace of completion?

Can you imagine being part of God’s growing Kingdom, where the Gates of Hell are not prevailing, but the grace of God is reaching out to our families, our neighbours, our friends and our colleagues – to the glory and praise of God.

This will take time to happen, but I believe God is calling us to this challenge. We will need much prayer, much consultation among ourselves and much faith in our great and awesome God, for whom nothing is impossible and with whom we are called to minister, so that ‘he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion’.