Spring is in the air!

It’s late September and ……I really should be back at school – sorry, couldn’t resist that!

As I look back at August, it always seems to be a fairly dead time in most churches. If you look at churches in a seasonal kind of way everything seems to hibernate to some degree but September is like the Spring. You plant seeds and you start to see things sprout and grow, I suppose it is like the beginning of the church year really.

People tend to come back a bit sluggish but often with a great deal of enthusiasm and I think this year, particularly because of the influence of certain camps that people have been to, we have seen an influx and a surge of enthusiasm which has been great. Normally in September there is a sense of ‘let’s get back into the routine’, whereas this year there has been a feeling of ‘come on, let’s do it, let’s get into it’.

That has been a real encouragement to me.

Many people went to 2 main camps this year, Soul Survivor and Grapevine and there is a dynamic to being with so many other Christians. Just worshipping together with 12,000 other people at Soul Survivor – I know what an effect it has on my son who goes, and I know the enthusiasm is not just something that lasts a week. It lives in him still. Also at Grapevine, we saw the same enthusiasm. It reminds me a lot, through its ethos and the feel of the place, of Hollybush camps, that used to be held in a marquee when I was younger. Much bigger but it has that kind of inclusive feel about it. The enthusiasm of worshipping God together with those kinds of numbers is Heaven on Earth, and does us good. Also I think it frees us from the restraints of local church. It doesn’t feel rushed, time is not of the essence, you are there with your friends, you are there with the deliberate intention to hear God and worship Him – to have time together. And these kinds of things do make a difference. Again thinking back to my youth days at Hollybush as a 17 – 18 year old – we were deliberately anticipating church throughout the week, Monday to Thursday. I would get on buses and walk 5 miles sometimes just to get to these meetings, and they might last 3 hours but we knew we were going to meet with God. It was a real sense of anticipation and that is what has happened to people over the Summer.

Now we have to realize we don’t have to be at Grapevine or Soul Survivor or whatever to hear God. God is the God who speaks everywhere and we need to encourage each other in that.