A Cambridge God Adventure* 33) Sultanas, currants and mission

(*please skip if you have not been following this story).  Also in June we shared in a Church Weekend Conference with Frank Cooke (of Purley) as our speaker.  Interestingly, he focused attention on the need for the whole church to grow in desire and willingness to pray. (Truthfully, I felt that this was one area that we had already focused on!)   But he described the prayer life of a church as being sultanas and currants in the mixture of church life - spread through everything. He challenged us that  'official prayer times' on Tuesday evenings and Sunday mornings were of value but it was essential that prayer cells should spring up all over the place as clusters of friends prayed at coffee, lunch and even breakfast times.

Soon a prayer cell was formed to meet on Wednesdays and at the next 'official' prayer time we committed ourselves to follow up this church conference challenge with specific areas of intercession that not only included more prayer cells and basic housekeeping needs of a new church secretary but outreach in Cambridge and wider mission still.  The last prayer item was for  mission teams of BMS Operation Agri, Red Sea and East Africa where Marion plans to serve. 

Each of these mission issues was specific, but especially our concern for Marion. A very gifted student (who had studied botany at a high level) she felt an urgent call to serve full-time in Chad.  Her academic adviser urged me to halt the process of her call because, as he put it 'she is so gifted she could make much more contribution in her work than burying herself as a missionary.'   Marion's shining witness and obedience was to prove extraordinarily powerful as, undeterred, she opened up our responsibility to world mission by personal example.  The first of our missionaries to be sent out during my ministry she was to pioneer a stream of short-term and full-time missionaries through coming years.

Sultanas and currants spread through everything.