The Words of the Cooper Family |
Dear UK church,
I want to wish you all the very best in what is taking place in your church communities and your families this autumn. Next week we will have the Little Angels in town and Jack Corley and his team are doing an incredible job finalizing all the last details for what will be a very special occasion. Please keep the Little Angels, the staff and volunteers in HQs, and all the guests who are attending the event, in your prayers over the next week.
I am hoping to get better at reporting to all of you as I used to do maybe a year or so ago. Today in our Lancaster Gate community church we had a staff and volunteer training day. I am still doing my best to focus a significant amount of my attention on creatively developing our HQs church ministry with the team that we have here. Today was really about all getting on the same page in terms of understanding our mission and vision.
Tim Read gave some very good internal guidance on how life is a mission and where we stand in a historical context. He has a good balance of spiritual insight and scientific analysis. And then after we looked at an interesting question: does God have a specific vision that He wants to plant in our hearts, for our HQs church? What do we need to do to discover it? Each of our communities is so unique and different in terms of size, people, resources, etc. we really need to pray according to our predicament and figure out how our faith is able to intersect with a concrete and clear vision that is relevant to where we are.
In our situation we are blessed with an amazing church center at 43LG and already over the last several months a growing number of volunteers and staff. I am sure that for God he wants us to reach a point where we can serve beyond our own congregation. But right now we are still exploring how to set up an effective worship service which meets the needs of those who attend and gives them the confidence to bring their friends.
In our morning program today we spoke about how developing a vision often starts with a gnawing sense of how something needs to change and then feeling called to bring about a solution to a problem. When Nehemiah was in exile in Babylon he heard how his hometown, Jerusalem, was in a bad state and even the city wall had been destroyed. Despite being in what rationally was an impossible circumstance (cupbearer to the Babylonian king) he got it into his heart and head that he should do something about his lost homeland and went on an amazing course to fulfill his dream.
When you read on page 151 of True Father's autobiography what got him motivated to start the Little Angels, it was similar in that he had nothing, but he nevertheless felt something v deeply about making a change.
I think as we all grow up and as life rolls on there comes a point where we all want to fulfill a vision that wells up from within our heart, and create something that reflects what we stand for.
I hope you can see and feel God's hand in your plans for your life, your family and community.