All Change in the New Year

Well a very good New Year to all of you. I hope you're looking forward to 2008 as much as I am. Just some of the proposed highlights of the year are the HIV/AIDS conference in March, hopefully lots of baptisms on Easter Sunday, Gordon MacDonald in May, Hope08 in August, the Willow Creek Leadership Summit in October and whatever we decide to do next Christmas.

I say proposed because you can never be quite sure what is going to happen, who will unexpectedly offer to come and speak or what will change last minute. You may know that we were hoping to have Andrew White with us this Sunday morning (see his excellent recent article in The Daily Mail here) but he's had to go to Iraq at very short notice - let's be praying for all he is involved in. We were also hoping to have Andrew White, J. John and Mahesh Chavda with us on their "Three Amigos" tour on Sunday 3rd February but Mahesh has had to drop out, although we still hope to have Andrew White with us on the evening of the 3rd February.

However, "in all things God works together for good of those who love him" and the upside of these changes is that we'll be able to do "40 Days of Purpose" on 7 consecutive Sundays starting on the 13th January, without having to have breaks for "The Three Amigos" and Mothers Day. I'll also be able to speak in more detail on our preparation for the 40 Days programme this Sunday which will be good.

A few people have asked what is involved in the 40 Days programme. There are three things we're asking people to commit to:

1. Listen to all 7 of the Sunday talks, either live or via the podcast.
2. Spend 15 minutes ever day studying the appropriate chapter of "The Purpose Driven Life"
3. Commit to being part of a small group for the 7 weeks to discuss what you're learning.

I'll also do a blog post every day during the programme with some thoughts on what we're all reading together that day. If you haven't already done it why not sign up for the email updates so that you'll have them waiting in your inbox every morning.

Another exciting aspect is that all the children over 5 and all the youth will have their own age appropriate workbooks which match on a daily basis what the adults are reading, so hopefully whole families will be able to study the material together.

I'm hoping we'll have a real buzz as we all study the same stuff together and start to grasp in a fresh way God's purpose for our lives. Copies of "The Purpose Driven Life" are available from The Kerith Centre Bookshop at the reduced rate of £4.20 if you haven't already got one. We're also hoping to be selling keyrings with all the memory verses on if that would be a help to you.

Finally to let you we're going to be having communion together on Sunday evening. Hopefully that's a thing we'll be doing more regularly this year.

Hope to see you on Sunday,

Simon.