Celebrating faith in action

This evening I shall enjoy a BBQ (weather permitting) which celebrates 30 years since the opening of the St. Andrew's Street Baptist Church mission centre.  Actually, the foundation stone was laid in July 1987 but the story began much earlier.  It's been memory tickling to exhume old documents, photographs, and letters which I left behind (in musty boxes) in England when we lived in the US which tell the story (or part of it - mostly from my point of view).

As I look back I consider it to have been the greatest faith adventure of my ministry because it began with so few resources and only the vaguest of hopes.  The few resources drove us to disciplined corporate prayer the like of which I have never experienced since.  Our small number meant that the vision of being a loving Christian presence every day of the week on one of the main city streets in Europe seemed absurd.  Utterly ridiculous!   Yet we held to the conviction that it is not great faith in God that matters, but faith in a great God.

At the bottom of one box I discovered a thick file in which I began to write the story of how my ministry lurched through these years.  It was never published because, even though I was invited to publish it when the church had moved on to some glorious outcomes, I thought it could be a burden to those who would write subsequent stories.  Experiencing a God-time, a kairos, when all kinds of divine surprises leap in from every side is an unusual blessing and, by definition, it is a 'time' which passes.

However, since I have this 'luxury' of a blog (that I am still surprised my friends follow) I thought I might, some thirty years on, capture some of the highlights of this adventure.  Because it was a God-time and it was glorious...and all the Glory was and is his.  So, watch out for A Cambridge God Adventure.