Great Dunmow Baptist Church

We had another great day on Sunday, with Joe Hart from travelling down from Norfolk to take the services along with Margaret his wife.

Joe's messages to us were engaging and clear as always and the music was great owing to Philip and Marcus' efforts the previous week, giving the church organ a service and an upgrade. Cunningly, they made use of the Baptistry to get underneath the organ!

(By the way of background, Philip isn't only our church pastor, he is a master craftsman in wood, specifically an instrument maker, but many of you know that anyway)

We had serveral visitors during our services which was very welcome, from Chelmsford and Birmingham, which was a great contribution to the singing.

Here's hoping for a great Sunday coming, where Chris Kavanagh from Chelmsford is leading our services...

Everyone is welcome to come along, hope to see you soon :)

I've been thinking about that well-known and well worn verse in the Old Testament part of the Bible, namely Proverbs 3 and verses 5 and 6, which say:

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths." (NKJV)

It occurred to me that the "In all your ways" part means excatly that, and if there is any area of our daily lives where we cannot, or more likely, refuse to think about or see God in a particular activity or speech or thought then we should ask ourselves why ~ have a pause and consider whether we should carry on that way; that's a challenge! What about the thoughts, words and activities relating to our relationships at home, in church, in work, in the local and the wider community, in business, even in our various states of mind and various circumstances, etc.

For everything we think, say or do we need to pause and ask can I acknowledge God in this, if not then why not, is it wrong? I'm not saying be introspective, as that itself isn't very helpful, rather we should maybe try and take a moment to reflect and then either carry on, change something or stop.

Have a think about it...

Good morning,

I may be over 40 these days, but nevertheless thought I would take a look at Twitter to see what was what, so, as a result, I have created our very own Dunmow Baptist Twitter space/account/nest... (hurrah I hear you say).

I had to look up what a Tweet was, so hopefully I've got that right? I think it is "a post/entry on Twitter".

If you have any Twitter tips then feel free to post a comment to let me know!

We are now resident on Twitter at twitter.com/dunmowbaptist, so see you soon.

Thanks,

Andrew

P.S. I have just acquired my first smart phone and am boggling over what it can do, so I may be motivated to do techno some more yet...

We had a really good sermon on prayer recently. There's 2 ways of communicating with God: "praying always" and "supplication" (from Ephesians 6:18).

Praying always is walking and talking with God like you do with a friend - "Sorry, Lord" "Help me sort out this stroppy child?" "Stop me saying something I shouldn't" and perhaps if you're that close to your friend you might hear him murmur "Mind you don't trip on that".

Supplication is the detailed prayer where you've thought about what you really need and you do the "effective fervent prayer of a righteous man" bit; where you seek God's will on a subject that concerns you; where you ask God to show you specific sins in your life rather than getting to the end of the day and not being able to think of any; and where you write down what you've prayed for so you notice when its answered.

I have a nasty feeling that 90% of the time I don't do either. Its not real communication at all. At best its that polite conversation you make with someone because you think you ought to. So I'm aiming to do the effective fervent prayer bit regarding having a real, useful, best friend relationship with God.

The sermon recorded on MP3 can be found here.

Welcome to our new church blog, where various members of our church can share any thoughts, comments, news, updates, etc. from time to time. You are very welcome to leave your comments.

I should leave an opening entry, and so here it goes; we are in the middle of finishing the distribution of our first church leaflet in Great Dunmow which we have been delivering over the last few Sunday afternoons. Did you get one incidentally and if so what did you think?

If you didn't see it then click here to open the Adobe PDF version of the leaflet.

You may be asking why we have bothered at all with creating and producing our own leaflet for Great Dunmow and the surrounding areas? One reason is as part of the local community, we should love to see you from time to time, why not pop into one of our services and meet us. If you have children, then why not get them to try out our youth groups. Another reason is to attempt to start to share the thing we have to offer, which is the Good News as presented in the Bible.

Looking forward to meeting you soon...

Andrew