Florencecourt 8-10th February 2019
The leaders of Florencecourt Methodist Church invited a Lay Witness team to conduct a weekend mission inFebruary 2019
Helen Sweeney and Jennifer Hutchinson led the team.
Helen Sweeney and Jennifer Hutchinson led the team.
Weekend Reports and Photos
Mary Brown, Florencecourt, writes....
As a church, Florencecourt had been looking forward to the Lay Witness weekend since it was first suggested. The two previous Lay Witness weekends had left positive memories of times of blessing and encouragement. We knew there was great potential for faith to be rekindled and for deepening of the faith journeys of our local congregation. Prayer partners were set up to exchange prayer points and expectations of the weekend. There were a few extra meetings for prayer and planning in the months leading up to the date. As a family, we have enjoyed having team members staying in our home, an opportunity to make new friends through conversations in the evenings. Each team is a unique group of people prayerfully chosen by the leaders. Each had their own story to tell how God had affected their lives and brought them closer to Him, each story different and special. The simple message was that none of us is good enough to deserve God’s love; it is a gift from Him when we open our lives to receive. God accepts us as we are and gives us assurance of forgiveness and the promise that He will be with us always Joshua 1 v 9. We are to be lights in our world, and many on that Sunday morning responded by going to the front to pick up a tea-light to indicate this was their desire. The time of sharing on Sunday evening was special as people of all ages shared how God had touched them. A suggestion had been made after the morning service that some of our people would share their own faith story and from this prompt I decided to share my journey of faith that night. My hope is that many others will follow and the level of fellowship in our church will continue to deepen. |
Ruth Forbes, Team Member, tells it thus....
“Ordinary people, extraordinary God” was the theme of the Lay Witness Team that came to visit my own church, Glengormley Methodist, in 2018. So when I was asked to be part of a team that would go to bless and encourage the congregation at Florencecourt Methodist, I was very mindful of that phrase as we prepared and prayed, for our extraordinary God to use us untrained, unimpressive, lay, ordinary people to do extraordinary things in His name. When we arrived at Florencecourt that Friday night, I was reminded even more of just how extraordinary our God is. I was one of the first to stand up and share my story of what God has done in my life. Although I was nervous, I was strengthened by my own words. I shared about God’s faithfulness in my own life, how I have learned to trust Him over the years, and how He has never let me down and has never reneged on any of His beautiful promises. I never thought that sharing my story with others would have such an impact on me, before anyone else! It did my heart so much good to remind myself of God’s goodness in my life. There’s something about baring your own soul, that makes other feel free to bare theirs – and that’s the beauty of a Lay Witness Weekend. All we had done was share our stories, our own tangible experiences of Jesus in our lives, and gradually over the course of the weekend, we began to see the Holy Spirit moving, speaking to hearts and changing lives for the better. There is nothing extraordinary about me, or any of our team (lovely as they are), but what Christ has done in each of our lives? That’s extraordinary, and so worth sharing. |