We’d love to invite you to our first Leader’s Net session of 2011. We finished 2010 with a great time of connecting and networking when we met in Wolverhampton at St Phillips. Many talked of the great sense of togetherness and unity. In 2010 our focus in the four Leader’s Net sessions was ‘The Resilient Leader’ and we had some great times together as we considered a wide range of issues around this subject.
We feel that in 2011 we want to focus more on ‘The Fathers Heart’. How do we see God? Is He the Lord of our lives? Well, yes of course! Is He the King of the universe? Yes, He is! Is he the judge to be feared? Oh yes He’s that too. Is He the boss? I’d like to think so, I’d rather it be Him! BUT do we know Him as Father? Understanding the Fathers Heart is fundamental to discovering our true identity as sons of God! Our four sessions this year will be on this theme, The Fathers Heart. Our first session is;
February 9TH 2011, 9.30am -‘The Fathers Heart for Unity’
Amblecote Christian Centre
102-104, Brettell Lane,
Stourbridge. DY8 4BS.
In this first session we will look at the father’s heart to draw us into Himself and in doing so He draws us closer to each other. Out of this place God releases all things. We will do two sessions with a break for coffee in-between and there is the facility to have lunch afterwards for a small charge of £5.
If you want to join us please book in as soon as possible with John via admin@thenet.org.uk as usual to enable us to maximize our preparation for the morning, and please be mindful when doing so as we will assume that you will stay for lunch unless you tell us otherwise. Please allow us to remind you about this as we sometimes have to subsidise these sessions, due to people booking lunch and then changing their minds or just not turning up. So please “partner with us” in this and let us know if you book and your plans change, even at the last minute. We appreciate your assistance in this guys.
We will be having a brief 10 minute presentation from Martin Graham of Uturn.org about an initiative called Street Associations and a briefing of the initiative is below. You can also find out more by visiting www.Uturn.org Martin writes: -
A key answer to widespread brokenness is to restore true, mutually supportive, community to our neighbourhoods. But how? The ‘model’ we have developed is for “Street Associations”. These group something like 70 houses together in a street (a long street could have several Associations down its length), for intentional community building, to bring about a situation where everyone knows everyone, where no-one is left out, and where people have fun together, genuinely belong, and have every encouragement to offer something to help someone else (e.g. like going alongside a troubled teenager, helping a disabled person, doing an old lady’s lawn, etc). We have a detailed scheme for how this would work.
It would be a town-wide initiative, starting with a group of churches but being offered to the powers-that-be (council, head teachers, doctors etc) as something to do jointly. With this secular ‘mandate’, there is a huge opportunity to mobilise the church folk to get stuck into their respective streets in a way that is fully received, serve others, take a lead and be salt and light where they are.
But think of this as a heart-warming transformation, not only of a street, but of a whole town as this happens everywhere, street by street! Being almost fully delegated, there is actually not much work involved in getting it going.
Our website is www.uturnuk.org. We look forward to sharing with you more of the ‘how’ on 9rd February – and perhaps taking the first step in a process that could become truly significant for a number of towns in the Black Country.
Martin Graham
Director, Uturn UK
See you on the 9th,
Yours Together,
Adrian Lowe, Tony Wastall, John Price and Jon Grant
4 Borough Links of The Black Country
