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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE WISE WORDS FROM FRANCIS CHAN EXCITING NEW SHOW FROM IN YER FACE
A NIGHT OF TRUTH AND TEARS:
FULL COVERAGE OF THE 2014 URBAN HERO AWARDS
About the Cover Editor: Alistair Metcalfe Associate Editor: Ian Rowbottom Senior Art Director & Graphic Design: Dan Hasler – Message:Creative PICTURE EDITOR: Hannah Beatrice Prittie
Lauren Jubb was named our Urban Hero of the Year 2014 during a glitzy red carpet awards ceremony in June. Read all the coverage, including Lauren’s own story, starting on page 4.
Graphic Design: Hannah Beatrice Prittie, Matt Varah Wilson Contributors: Andy Hawthorne Andre Adefope Subscription & Supporter Enquiries: E: info@message.org.uk T: 0161 946 2300 Giving:
E: giving@message.org.uk T: Lauren Dawson 0161 946
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Contributing Photographers COVER STORY: Hannah Beatrice Prittie
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INTERNALS: P4 – Hannah Beatrice Prittie and Gavin Tickle P12 – Hannah Beatrice Prittie ILLUSTRATIONS: P20 – Matt Varah Wilson P22 – Matt Varah Wilson Contact:
E: flow@message.org.uk T: 0161 946 2300
flow – The Message Magazine Lancaster House Lancaster Campus Harper Road Sharston Manchester M22 4RG www.message.org.uk/flow
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GET ON BOARD: All about our exciting new bus – and how you can help get it on the road
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TRANSFORMED LIVES, TRANSFORMED COMMUNITY: Celebrating 15 years since Eden launched in Salford
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HERE I AM, SEND ME: An exclusive extract from Andy's new book and how to get a copy for free
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FRANCIS CHAN AT PROXIMITY: A powerful section from our Q&A with the bestselling author and church leader
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ALL IS CALM: In Yer Face's Matt Britton explains why the company are doing a show based on World War I SPREAD THE MESSAGE: Your chance to join our team of Message Ambassadors, sharing good news where you live
www.message.org.uk /themessagetrust @MessageTrust
ANDY'S RANT
Hearing God, speaking truth, writing history Dear friend, I am excited that this copy of Flow coordinates with the release of my new book Here I am, Send Me. I really hope if you support The Message in any way you’ll want to get hold of a copy. In some ways it’s been two years in the making, as lots of it is made up of thoughts I’ve shared with The Message staff in our team devotions over the last two years as we have chugged through the book of Isaiah. Plus – as you’d expect from The Message – there are loads of inspiring testimonies which are the fruit of this whole thing. Isaiah is such a fantastic book made up of three different types of writing. Prophecy, which is, put simply, ‘bringing God’s Word for today’; poetry, as Isaiah gets all creative in expressing God’s passion for his people; and prose, as he writes history and documents the way God was moving on the ground there and then. In lots of ways it sums up what we at The Message are meant to be doing – relevantly bringing
God’s Word, doing it in the most creative way possible and as we do, writing our own little bit of history for Jesus. That is what you are involved in when you pray, give and go in partnership with The Message. Thanks so much for all your support,
P.S. If you do want to get hold of a copy of the new book, you can get it half price by going online at message.org.uk or phoning 0161 946 2300. But if you are able to set up a new Regular Gift or increase your existing Direct Debit by any amount, I’d love to send you a signed copy free of charge as a thank you for your partnership. Just fill in the form at the back.
www.message.org.uk/flow
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Our seventh annual Urban Hero Awards took place on June 28, 2014 at The Point, Old Trafford – celebrating lives transformed by the power of Jesus and honouring those who work with disadvantaged young people. There were also outstanding performances from our bands and theatre company.
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NEWS
Overall winner Lauren Jubb (centre) collected her award to applause and cheers from over 650 friends, family and Message supporters, including Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy. Turn over to read her inspiring story and those of our other 2014 winners.
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LAUREN JUBB
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Urban Hero of the Year 2014 and Volunteer Award winner
NEWS Eighteen-year-old Lauren is our 2014 Urban Hero of the Year, as well as the winner of the Volunteer Award for her work sharing her faith with young people on Eden and Eden Bus. At the Awards, Lauren explained how her own story is what motivates her to share God’s love with other young people: ‘I grew up in a home with a mum who was really poorly and a dad who walked out when I was seven. Even though I knew my mum loved me with all her heart, I never felt very loved – I always felt like the loose end, really rejected. By the time I was a teenager, I was angry with the world, angry with anything that came at me. ‘I thank God for my foster parents who were strong Christians, and the Eden team in Sheffield who knew exactly what I was like back then. They prayed for me and were always so supportive, sticking by me when I was an angry young girl, a real challenge to work with. ‘The Eden team got me to go along to a gig where I heard Lindz West talking about God’s love for me. It really stopped me in my tracks. I wanted what he was talking about, that love and unconditional acceptance, because I hadn’t known too much of that in my own life. Up to that point, I used to feel like I was never accepted. I used to feel like I was really ugly and no one ever really liked me. ‘When you feel that way, and then you discover what God actually says about you and how he loves you, and that what you’ve always believed is not the truth at all – that’s incredible. It changes your life. You suddenly realise: I want every girl to know this. I want everyone who’s ever felt that way about themselves to know the truth. They are amazing. They are created beautiful.
‘The Eden team were incredible. When I became a Christian and decided to follow God, they were really supportive. They helped me to understand God more and understand the Bible more. They helped me find a mentor and they gave me so much support. They were there from day one, never giving up on me. The Eden team showed me a love that nothing can compare to. ‘When your life’s been changed in that way, that’s what you want to do for other people. You start to believe with all your heart that God’s going to change their life, too. You believe that people working alongside them are going to help change their life. God is a God of transformation. You want to scream it from the mountaintops.’
God
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Lauren started volunteering with Eden Arbourthorne transformation. and after her natural gift for sharing Jesus became obvious, was encouraged to apply for Message Academy. She joined the course mountaintops' last September and graduated this summer, with plans to move to Doncaster and join the Eden Wheatley team.
is a God of
You want to
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‘It’s so important that we do whatever it takes to show young people that God loves them. My life is a story of transformation. My whole outlook has changed. I know I’m me for a reason. My relationship with my mum is so much better. I know I have a purpose and a destiny. And it’s all because someone did whatever it took to show me God’s love.’ On the night of the Awards, Lauren said, ‘The Message Trust changes people’s lives for the better in unimaginable ways – my story is living proof of that.’ www.message.org.uk/flow
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NEWS
Jane & Simon SULLIVAN SPECIAL AWARD FOR LEADERSHIP winnerS
Married couple Simon and Jane were recognised for the excellent work they do with young men and women; Simon through his work in prisons with the Reflex team, and Jane through her two enterprises, Wedding Angels and CRM, a charity which works in Uganda. Both work to help ex-offenders discover a hope and a future in Christ, discipling them and creating much-needed opportunities for training and work. Hundreds of people have paid tribute to Simon and Jane's leadership and example over the years. But their most exciting initiative so far is one they are undertaking together. Last year, Jane and Simon had a vision to turn a dilapidated 15-bedroom house in Wythenshawe into a place where prison leavers and
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MEC apprentices can live together in a positive and safe environment. 'Young people coming out of prison need housing, they need work, they need to be doing something. But most of all, I think they need community,' says Simon. 'This house will be about taking them from maintenance to mission. People won’t be just trying to keep their heads above water, they’ll going somewhere. They’ll be expected to give – to do – not just to take. It'll be a place where there will be growth.' Jane adds: 'A lot of them have never lived in families where they’ve felt safe, so we’re going to live like a family. We’re going to give them structured living. People who haven’t had that have got no boundaries in their life, so we want to give them that structure and love they deserve.'
LAURA NICOLSON ACHIEVER Award winner Laura’s story, which we featured in the last issue of Flow, is one of dramatic transformation from a 17-year heroin addiction to a flourishing, purposeful life – all because of the freedom she found in Jesus. On the night, Abi Guttridge, manager of MEC hair and beauty salon Shine paid tribute to her: ‘Laura's achieved so much in the last 18 months that she's been with us. It's been wonderful to see how much her confidence has grown, working with customers in the shop. On top of that, to see how she's rebuilt her life outside of work and rebuilt relationships with her family has been a joy.’
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Laura’s pastor, Paul Lloyd of Victory Outreach Manchester added, ‘The most important thing is not just to come off drugs or to stay off drugs, but to become an example to other people – to be footprints for other people to follow. That’s what Laura’s become: an example. And people are going to follow her footprints into freedom.’
SIMON WRIGLEY MEssage Legend Award winner This year we introduced a surprise new award on the night: the Message Legend award. This went to the Message Enterprise Centre’s Simon Wrigley in recognition of his amazing strength of character over the last year, in the face of several serious personal challenges. Andy Hawthorne said: 'Simon has shown tremendous courage this year, battling three serious medical conditions – skin cancer, heart disease and a blood disorder – and on top of this, his daughter was taken seriously ill during the year. Yet through it all he maintained an incredible peace and confidence, rooted in his unshakable faith in the goodness of God. He’s an amazing example to the team at the MEC and all of us at The Message.’ Simon was given an all-expenses-paid weekend break in the Lake District for his whole family. www.message.org.uk/flow
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NEWS
LEANNE SMITH CHAMPion Award winner When 16-year-old Leanne’s parents broke up two years ago, the experience caused the otherwise shy teenager to rebel in school and come very close to being expelled. But all that changed when Message Associate schools band Malokai visited her school in West Wales. ‘There was something about them that was different,’ recalls Leanne. ‘They were real, I could talk to them about stuff that mattered to me.’ Attending a set they performed later that day at New Life Church in Cardigan, Leanne started to think and feel differently just by listening and speaking to the band. She gave her life to Christ and found a welcoming home in the church. People immediately noticed the change, especially her pastor, Janice Bell: ‘Leanne has become a lot more confident and positive, and she’s embraced the family life of the church. She told me that she doesn’t feel judged by the church, she feels accepted – I think for the
LUKE OSBOURNE Courage Award winner Message Academy graduate Luke is one of the courageous people currently serving the poorest neighbourhoods in the UK as part of an Eden team. But joining Eden is not the only courageous decision Luke has had to make. Shortly before joining Academy in the autumn of 2012, he'd been diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and prescribed some serious medication. Panic attacks and deep insecurities followed, with the result that Luke no longer felt he could go on. In a cry for help, Luke took an overdose that nearly killed him. After a period of recovery, he was faced with a tough decision – to give up and to return home to what he knew, or move forward. He courageously decided to face his fears and stay. Since then, and thanks to the support of family and friends at The Message, Luke completed the course, finding new purpose and confidence in serving the Eden team on a tough estate in Blyth, Northumberland.
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first time. Not only that, but her story also highlights the great work that Malokai does. She would never have gone to church if they hadn’t performed there, and now she’s been given the confidence to not just follow the crowd, but to find God.’ Leanne has become a real champion in her local community, constantly impressing people with her positive attitude and maturity. Leanne is also an enthusiastic volunteer in her local food bank, helping to demonstrate the love of God to families in need in Cardigan.
‘I came up to Blyth on a missions placement and immediately my heart just fell in love with the place,’ he says. ‘I loved what the church was doing and I really want to get involved with what they were doing with the community. If I can use what I’ve gone through to help others, it makes everything that has happened worthwhile.’
The Message Academy is ten months of training for 18-25 year olds run by The Message Trust. We have over 20 years of experience in cutting-edge, innovative mission. By joining Message Academy, you will get to share in that experience and be part of Our future!
We offer the opportunity to be immersed in a culture that creates and cultivates innovative mission. During the first four months, you will receive teaching and training (looking at topics ranging from Heart of an Evangelist to Old and New Testament), as well as workshops in Youth Work and Justice. It’s an intensive time of investment in you that will spark your imagination to the possibilities of what God can do through you.
During the final six months, you will be encouraged to innovate your own ideas and outreach projects, as well as working alongside our existing teams to share the gospel in a variety of ways through schools, youth clubs and on the city streets. Whether you are into music, theatre, extreme sports or academic sparring, Manchester is the perfect place to hone your talents and gifts and put them into practice.
teachinG
placements
Church
Team-time
Morning sessions to equip you with the knowledge of the scriptures, and to empower you to be all you can in God through the promises in his Word.
From detached work in the community, to youth clubs, street soccer or homeless outreach, to helping on the Eden buses with Message mission teams.
A chance to serve in every aspect of church life and be encouraged to use the skills learnt on the course in a community somewhere in Manchester.
Space to talk and pray through all that’s going on, with residential trips and the odd trip to McDonald’s for support through the year.
Know someone this sounds PERFECT for? Most applications for Message Academy come from WORD OF MOUTH – in other words, people who have seen the power of Academy for themselves telling others. We believe Message Academy is the best year-out there is – and over 200 graduates like Lauren and Luke agree. Please talk about us in your church, on Facebook and Twitter. And if you know any 18-25s who love God and love young people, make sure they check out:
www.message.org.uk/academy
This is the best year out I’ve ever been involved in. Send us your best and we’ll send them back to you better – more alive and ready to go. JAMIE HILL, Missions Director, THE MESSAGE
NEWS
HELP ROY GET THIS BUS OUT OF THE SHED and on to the streets!
Meet Roy. He’s our amazing Eden Bus mechanic with twelve years of service to this amazing urban mission under his belt. Earlier this year, he realised he might need to tighten that belt a little to squeeze into our bus shed – because the good people at Stagecoach put another bus in there! Roy got straight on with the job of getting this beaut into good mechanical order. The only problem is, it currently looks like this inside… ‘Our mission remains unswervingly to unashamedly preach the gospel to all the people we meet and to pray with people as they encounter God for themselves,’ comments Bus Manager Sid Williams. ‘We’re privileged to see young people and adults coming to faith and getting fed into local churches through our local church volunteers. We love the bus and hope that you can see the vision too!’
The plan is to convert it ourselves, fitting it out to the same spec as our current bus, but with some tasty new features. Imagine a mobile youth venue full of video games, a climbing wall, a karaoke and recording pod, a cinema and all kinds of equipment for dynamic children’s and youth work. The team have already started the job of stripping the bus down, but in order to fully refurbish it and get it out on the streets, sharing the good news with kids, they need to raise £50,000. Right now, the Bus team runs four projects a week – in Salford, Benchill, Old Trafford and a daytime session
in Merseybank where people come into contact with our brilliant volunteers. This new bus will double our presence and impact on the streets, and make way for some groundbreaking new work including partnerships with the police.
Please pray for this fantastic project and, if you can, why not sign up to donate one of the amounts on our ‘Pave the Way Pyramid’? You’ll be part of seeing more young people coming to faith through this fantastic ministry.
GET ON BOARD Could you commit to giving one of the amounts opposite? The pyramid assumes regular giving for 12 months. Every gift, no matter how small, helps us towards our goal. Email sidw@message.org.uk if you would like to contribute.
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SALFORD
CELEBRATIONS May 18 saw a double celebration of God’s goodness in Salford as a large group of team members past and present gathered to mark the ten-year anniversary of Langworthy Community Church and fifteen years since the arrival of the Eden team there. In April 1999, the first eight members of Eden Salford moved on to the Langworthy estate, at that time just the second Eden team to launch. Chris Lane was there and remembers it well: ‘It was crazy in those early days. Every third house on our estate was boarded up, and you could buy one for £1000 if you were daft enough. It was bleak, just such a lack of hope.’ In partnership with The Message, the team opened LifeCentre Salford, which quickly became a significant community hub and place of outreach. A few years later, Langworthy Community Church was planted to serve the community. Today both are thriving and the celebration event was a chance to stop and give thanks to God for some of the lives changed along the way. ‘Kane was one of the first lads we worked with,’ says Chris. ‘He was 8, he’d just broken into someone’s back yard and was chucking stones at windows. Now he’s training at Nazarene Theological College, training for ordination and church leadership. It was great to hear him tell his story and talk about where he thought he’d be now if it weren’t for Eden. ‘Another girl, Steph, we met at the same kind of time. She’s had such a tough few years, but she’s stuck close to our team, is following Jesus and helping others to experience God's love. She has a great job working with young people and is now one of the trustees for the LifeCentre. ‘Another lad we call Turkey was there, too. He'd got into all the bad habits of local teenagers at the time, but today he’s running a lot of our youth work and helped us start a new evening drop-in recently. It’s great to see a classic “Salford youth”, working with Salford young people and telling them about Jesus.’
Chris and his team count every such story as precious – the result of many years invested in one place: ‘What we’re seeing is the fruit of being committed to a place and opening our homes to people over many years. 'There have been countless times over that period when it’s looked bleak, and you wondered what hope there would be for some of these kids. But a decade and more of commitment, sacrifice and loving people for who they are really does bring change.’ www.message.org.uk/flow
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LEAD FEATURE
Teaching from the book of Isaiah and powerful stories from The Message Trust
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In this extract from his new book, Andy Hawthorne looks back on how God's word to us from Isaiah 43 kick-started The Message movement and explains why these verses are still speaking to us powerfully today. Turn to page 19 to find out how to get a copy of the book HALF PRICE – or FREE!
Introduction ________________________________________________________________________________ The movement now known as ‘The Message Trust’ started way back in 1987, when my brother and I had a vision for the biggest youth mission Manchester had ever seen. Our dream was to book the city’s biggest rock venue for a week and fill it with the best bands, theatre companies and evangelists we could get our hands on. We decided to write to every church in Manchester to ask them to get behind it. In short, the afternoon we had that idea, I think we were convinced revival was on its way.
But by the time I’d got home from work that night, every ounce of faith had drained out of me. I realised that we were just two guys in our mid-twenties, with no connections and not a lot of money. There was no way on earth we could pull this vision off. We must have got it wrong! Sitting in my room, alone on my bed, despondently I picked up my Bible to read the set reading for the day, as I usually did. My prayer was simple: ‘God, if this is you, please speak to me from your Word.’ Here is what I read:
‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.’ Isaiah 43:18-21
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LEAD FEATURE
The moment The Message was born______________________________________
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You know what? We might have had the idea a few hours earlier, but I think that was the moment when the movement really got started – when we heard from God’s Word that he was going to do this thing. I phoned Simon straight away and told him, ‘God is going to do this!’
We put those verses on the bottom of our first letterhead when we wrote to every church in Manchester. Today those words are the first thing you see when you enter our main meeting venue at our HQ, hanging down from the walls. In lots of ways, we’ve never left those promises, and we never will.
I love God. I love his Word. I love the way he keeps revealing new things in it, even from verses that we know well. And I’m so grateful God gave us these particular verses as our touchstone scriptures, because it’s all in there – it’s everything I want The Message to be and it’s everything I want The Message to become.
Who we are, who we're becoming __________________________________________
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We are a ‘See! I am doing...’ movement, a visionary people eagerly watching God for what he’s doing and expectant for what he will accomplish next. God says to every believer, every day, ‘See! I’m doing new things!’ Every one of us needs to be seeing God at work in our lives and in our world. God is constantly calling us to lift up our eyes and see what he’s doing. The authentic Christian life is about what he is doing through us, not what we are doing through him.
We are a ‘new thing’ movement, a pioneering, apostolic bunch of revolutionaries. There is something about doing innovative ministry that opens up a freedom and a space for others. When the World Wide Message Tribe came along, it seemed like 95% of Christian bands were all about getting in the charts, invading culture. Great! Some people need to do that. But when we came along, we weren’t about having a hit single, we were about hitting souls for Jesus. We were about preaching the gospel. And we made a space for lots of other bands to do the same thing – making it OK to shout loud and long about Jesus.
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Similarly, Message 2000 was a new thing. Back then, not many evangelical Christians were getting involved in serving their communities through social engagement and random acts of kindness. But by doing it, and showing others the enormous value of getting our hands dirty on behalf of others, we helped to make it the ‘new norm.’ We’ve seen more churches getting involved in debt relief, food banks, schools and health centres. Today there is an expectation that the gospel changes lives and changes the communities they are part of. Clearly we can’t take all the credit for this stuff, but I do believe we’ve played our part.
And we are a ‘rivers in the desert’ movement. We are a transformational people. We are about changing society. A river of life flows on the back of a people who are sold out for the gospel. These verses came alive to me in a new way recently when I watched a video a friend sent me. It was a clip of rainwater arriving in a dry valley in the Negev desert in Israel, the very desert that Isaiah prophesied about. People had gathered to see the moment when the rain arrived from the mountains and rushed into the valley, flooding everything in its path. When I saw it, my spirit jumped. I believe the life- giving water is going to flow when we see three things flowing down from the mountain of God. They are prayer, presence and proclamation.
Keeping prayer hot _____________________________________________________________________ One of my key jobs as the leader of this organisation, this move of God, is to test the temperature of prayer and ensure we stay hot. I’ve come to realise that the most important thing is not how many people you have working for you, how many people come to your events, how big your budget is, or even how big your vision is. The most important thing is how important prayer is to you. I’m excited about the prayer temperature of The Message in this season. I want everyone to be on tiptoes in expectation – because things are hotting up. And we’re beginning to see the evidence of that in the schools, in the prisons and on the estates. Which leads me to...
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LEAD FEATURE
Keeping presence central_________________________________________________________
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Prayer that doesn’t lead to presence is just piety. Prayer always leads to people being the presence of Jesus in the places that need him most. Once you’ve prayed, you’ve touched the heart of God – and God’s heart is for every broken, lost, forgotten person in your community. My experience and my heart is that Christians are not to be hermits, locked away in ivory towers – we are to be present with the poor, with the weak and with the lonely, just like Jesus was. Through Eden we’ve seen how presence means social transformation, as local areas are changed from the inside out. So prayer leads to presence, but presence must always lead to...
Keeping proclamation loud_____________________________________________________
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I often ask myself, where are the proclaiming evangelists today? Billy Graham is still preaching through the media to millions, more than anyone else alive probably. That can’t be right – a 95-year-old bloke leading the charge! Where are the young men and women, passionately laying their lives down to preach the gospel to the lost? At The Message, we are committed to raising them up. Over the next season, on the back of all this prayer and presence we’re going to shout louder than ever about the gospel. Starting in 2015, we’re planning large-scale regional missions, partnering with churches and other organisations, hopefully to put on the biggest youth missions the country has ever seen.
When we’ve got heartfelt prayer, heavenly presence and holy proclamation happening, we should confidently expect the rivers to flow. Those rivers bring new life to God’s people, his chosen, those he has formed for his praise (v.21). And, as far as we’re concerned, God wants everyone to be saved. So we are about loving everybody. We believe there is a gospel imperative to go to the poor and the most broken, to those on the margins – because it’s the way Jesus did it. We’ll go out, and as we pray, as we presence ourselves and as we proclaim, we will see ‘wild animals’ begin to honour him. We’re a transformational movement,
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seeing purposeless lives change, one at a time. We have learnt that when one life changes, the whole of society gets blessed.
In this new book, I invite you to journey with us through Isaiah together and to soak up the stories of men and women whose lives were utterly chaotic before they met Jesus; people whose testimonies speak of addiction, violence, crime and ruinous behaviour, but who are now precious men and women of God. As you do, I pray that your faith will rise and that you will see the new thing that God wants to do in and through you. What’s more, I’d love it if every one of us would give our lives over to serving Jesus afresh, saying with Isaiah, ‘Here I am, send me.’
Rivers in the desert bring renewal; they bring revival. If we see the prisons emptying and crime plummeting, the whole nation will be blessed. Great glory will go to Jesus. Our dream today is the same as it was in the beginning – to be a part of God’s revival movement. And I pray my new book, Here I Am, Send Me will whet your appetite not just to watch it happen, but to be a part of it, too.
Half PricE Offer
Described by Anthony Delaney as 'dynamite', Andy's new book Here I Am, Send Me combines 12 chapters of teaching from the book of Isaiah with powerful testimonies and stories from The Message. It's beautifully designed with all-new photography and artwork from the Message:Creative team. As a valued supporter, we'd like to bless you with a HALF PRICE copy – just £3.99, instead of the RRP of £7.99. To order your copy, visit: www.message.org.uk/shop and enter discount code 'flow' at the checkout.
OR GET IT FOR FREE!
Begin a new regular gift to The Message, or raise your existing monthly gift and we'll send you a copy of Here I Am, Send Me absolutely free of charge. Simply fill in the giving form at the back of this edition of Flow and we'll send a copy out to you as soon as we've processed your gift. www.message.org.uk/flow
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FEATURE
Francis Ch2a0n 14 at P ro x imit y
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t our conference this year, we were privileged to spend an hour in the company of Francis Chan via Skype. Here’s a brief extract from his Q&A, available in full for free at message.org.uk Sam Ward (host): In our country there seems to be a trend that the fastest growing churches are those who can provide the best worship experience. We’re trying to recruit a whole load of activists who will move into the toughest neighbourhoods of our country, serve Jesus with all their lives, living sacrificially, but I feel like we’re competing against the worship experience. Can you speak into that at all? Francis Chan: Yeah, it’s true. If I have a great worship band and I can communicate well, I will draw a crowd with or without the Holy Spirit. That’s the world we live in. That’s true of any performance – if it’s done with excellence you’re more apt to go back and there will always be a competition. It’s very sad though. I was speaking at an event, maybe a year ago, and it was beautiful. They had camels and horses and everyone was beautiful, lights, fog machines, incredible music. But my friend who drove me there is actually from India and he just laughed when we got to the door. He said, 'Wow, you Americans are so funny.' He said, 'No one will show up unless there’s a great speaker right? And no one will turn out unless there’s a great band?' He said, 'In India we love getting together just to pray. We actually look forward to praying together. We look forward to taking communion together.’ And when he said those words I thought: that is so much more honouring to the Lord. Just imagine: you are God sitting on your throne and you look down upon the earth and you see these people getting so excited because they’re going to this event, with this speaker and this band. Then you look at another place on the earth where you see a group of people going, 'I can’t wait to get together with God’s people because they’re going to pray to Almighty God. They’re going to get together and they’re going to celebrate communion, they’re going to break bread and remember the body and blood of Christ.'
If you are God looking at those two scenarios, which pleases you more? I mean isn’t there a sense of almost disgust that they’re excited about these other things and they’re not excited about the body and blood of Christ?
‘We’re never going to be able to compete with “Hollywood” but “Hollywood” can’t compete with the Holy Spirit...’ My friend Jim Cymbala says you can tell how popular a pastor is by how many people show up on Sunday morning, but you can tell how popular Jesus is by how many show up to the prayer meeting. We’ve attracted people to popular speakers and popular bands but when it comes to just prayer, just Jesus, just the Word of God, just communion, who shows up? When it’s just about the fellowship of love that God himself and the Holy Spirit created, who’s going to be there? Who really believes? But at the end of the day that’s what God called us to create. One thing that my president said when I was in seminary: ‘We’re never going to be able to compete with “Hollywood” but “Hollywood” can’t compete with the Holy Spirit.’ When we genuinely see the Holy Spirit in our gatherings, the big productions will not be able to compete with that. ‘Hollywood’ can’t compete with the blind receiving sight. ‘Hollywood’ can’t compete with the living and active Word of God that is able to divide joint and marrow. So we have to depend on those things and say, 'Lord, I am going to trust just in the Word of God, trust in your Holy Spirit, trust in communion,' and let’s see where this goes.
You can hear the whole of this Q&A session from Francis Chan, along with hundreds of other messages from top communicators, by downloading our podcast. Search iTunes for ‘Message Trust’ or listen via our website, message.org.uk
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FEATURE
In Yer Face’s new play, a co-production with HOPE, remembers the First World War one hundred years on. It will be touring the North West through November and December – and you can be a part of it.
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014 marks one hundred years since the outbreak of the First World War. Unprecedented destruction and loss of life followed, with 16 million people dead and a further 20 million wounded. And of course, it wasn’t ‘the war to end all wars’ – it merely heralded a century of further bloodshed and suffering. So why the desire to commemorate it? In Yer Face’s writer and director explains: ‘We didn’t feel it appropriate to celebrate it, nor did we want to ignore it. Instead we asked the question, “During war, is hope possible?” On the surface there seemed to be little hope, yet as we began to research letters, eyewitness accounts and personal experiences, individual stories of hope began to emerge. The new play is about that – fragments of hope in a merciless war.’ The play’s title, All Is Calm, is itself a fragment – a line from the famous hymn Silent Night which famously was sung from the trenches in the socalled Christmas Day Truce of 1914. ‘We came across numerous soldiers’ letters attesting to the truce,’ writes Matt. ‘In each you can feel the writer’s sense of the incredible. Opposing soldiers downed weapons and met each other in No Man’s Land for a church service and a game of football. They buried their dead and shared rations. For a moment there was no war.’ While grounded in factual events like this, the play is a re-imagination of what might have happened in the events leading up to this extraordinary moment. All the characters and incidents, though fictional, are an amalgamation of various accounts and real stories. The show continues and develops In Yer Face’s quest to shed new light on old stories. In the past couple of years their retelling of the nativity story (The Christmas Message), the Good Samaritan (A Town Called Malice) and the Prodigal Son (Wrecked) have drawn plaudits from audiences in dozens of schools, churches and prisons. Their most recent production, a portrayal of the gospel story in drama and dance, Smile Away, has been performed 38 times this year, in front of more than 10,000 people.
All Is Calm will tour around the North West during November and December, including performances in schools, churches and prisons. Discussions are also underway for a large public performance in a high-profile venue.
Ultimately, the goal will be to explore gospel themes of peace and hope, leaving audiences emotionally moved and provoked. We're convinced schools will be delighted with the number of crossover points with the History, Drama and RE curriculum. Churches may use it as an alternative carol service, with congregations invited to join in the climax of the play in a recreation of the famous scene in No Man’s Land. In prisons, it will serve as an educational resource exploring the consequences of violence on others, as well as promoting peaceful resolution to conflict. The hope is that every young person will also be able to take away a copy of John’s Gospel, a replica of those handed out to soldiers leaving for the frontline during the Great War. Ultimately, the goal will be to explore gospel themes of peace and hope, leaving audiences emotionally moved and provoked. Says Matt: ‘Although we will stage it in period costume and setting, the parallels with today will be obvious. Everybody can relate to feelings of loss, powerlessness, conflict, and, of course, hope.’
In Yer Face’s touring schedule for November and December is currently being finalised. If you would be interested in hosting a performance in your school, church or prison setting, please contact G e o rg i a . H o u g h to n @ m e ss a g e.o rg . u k Tel: 0161 946 2300 x218
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AMBASSADORS
Become an
Ambassador for the Message Trust o you get excited when young people hear about Jesus and have their lives transformed? Do you want to play your part in the mission of The Message, and get others excited about it too? Then becoming a Message Ambassador may be for you. We need Message Ambassadors to tell people about our mission work, to pray for the young people we are reaching, and to help us raise funds so that we can share the gospel message with more of the hardest-to-reach young people. Read on to find out more…
PEOPLE The Message Trust’s impact over the last 25 years is all because of thousands of amazing people – people who have volunteered, joined Eden teams, studied at our Academy, prayed and sacrificially given. It is so important that we continue to keep past supporters of The Message engaged, while also introducing others to our work. As a Message Ambassador, you would be responsible for organising groups to attend our
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annual Open Day and Vision Nights, where your friends can see our bands, dance crew and theatre company in action and hear powerful testimonies from our work. You would help to advertise Message Academy, Eden and MEC businesses in your church. You could also be the ‘point person’ for arranging Message speakers to come and share what we do at church services and groups.
PRAYER We truly believe prayer is the cornerstone of everything that we do. As a Message Ambassador we would ask for you to personally pray for The Message and the young people that we work with. We would also like you to encourage your home group, church, and friends to pray for us as well. This could be done by making announcements on Sunday, adding notices to your church website, bringing groups to Prayer Storm events or setting up a regular prayer group where you live. We will send you our prayer letter every two months and add you to our weekly prayer email so that you can join us in interceding for our nation’s young people and thanking God for changed lives.
POUNDS The Message receives very little funding from the government, which means the majority of the money we receive comes from people like you who long to see young people’s lives transformed by God. Therefore we ask all of our Ambassadors to consider joining us in raising funds for the ministry by organising a fundraiser each year. It could be anything from a jazz night, to a raffle, to a coast to coast bike ride, to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro! The sky is the limit, just be creative and do something you and your group will enjoy! We also ask that you try and encourage people to sign up to become regular givers to The Message, donating monthly through either a Standing Order or Direct Debit. This may seem daunting at first, but we will give you all the help you need.
YOU CAN DO IT! Some Message Ambassadors focus on achieving all three aims, some focus on two, or just one. We understand each Message Ambassador is different. If you would like to hear more or talk about whether being a Message Ambassador might be for you, please call Andre Adefope or drop him an email.
0161 946 2329
Andre.Adefope@message.org.uk
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FUNDRAISING
The Message: A ministry of
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Isaiah 60:1-3
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truth
O
ur Urban H e r o Awards this year were a real testimony of how God’s light can break into even the darkest places and situations. We heard story after story of situations that seemed completely hopeless being overturned for God’s glory. You can read them, starting on page 4. As Christians, we have the huge privilege of sharing the truth of the gospel whilst supporting people through the tears of life. Our young people need to know the truth that Jesus saves, forgives our sins through the cross, and restores us back to how God intended us to be. And they need strong Christian role models to journey with them through the heartache and tears, as they overcome life’s challenges. Jesus understood that some people need the truth and some people need our tears. We see this
tears
Your gifts help us proclaim the gospel and stand with the broken, says STUART CHELL
in John 11 with how Jesus responded to Martha and Mary who were distraught over the death of their brother Lazarus. Both of these women met Jesus broken and crying out, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died' (v.21, 32). But he gave them completely different responses. To Martha he gave the truth, 'I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even though they die' (v.25). But with Mary the Bible simply says, 'Jesus wept' (v.35). It’s this balance between truth and tears that we know works to change lives. Too much truth and young people can disengage, but if it's all tears and no truth we'll never see full transformation and fruit that lasts.
At the Urban Hero Awards, Andy shared that we are going to go for this truth and tears approach like never before and in the next year we aim to: •
• • •
Complete 50 school weeks in Greater Manchester ending with a massive arena gig. This will then be repeated in different regions over the next five years Launch a brand new Eden team every month for the next 12 months Refurbish and launch our second Eden Bus Double the number of apprentices at work in our Message Enterprise Centre
Through it all, we are believing for a culturechanging number of disciples. To accomplish all this, we estimate a cost of roughly £500,000 in addition to our regular budgets for next year. It means that we need more people than ever to choose to stand with us and give sacrificially, month by month as a regular giver. Will you be one? If you begin a new regular gift today, or raise your current monthly gift, I'd love to send you a free, signed copy of Andy's new book, Here I Am, Send Me.
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offer
GET ANDY'S NEW BOOK
fOR FREE!
Begin a new regular gift to The Message, or raise your existing monthly gift and we'll send you a copy of Here I Am, Send Me absolutely free of charge. Simply fill in the giving form overleaf and we'll send a signed copy out to you once we've processed your gift.
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GIve to A regular gift is the best way to support The Message as it helps us plan for the long term. You can set up a new regular gift over the phone right now. Please call Timothy Emerton on 0161 946 2328. Or download a simple-to-use giving form by visiting
www.message.org.uk/donate/ Thank you!
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sat 1 NOV 12PM-7pm
(Doors open 11:30am)
PRAYER STORM AWA K E N I N G A G E N E RAT I O N
A day o f p ray e r a n d fast i n g
FREE online registration required
www.prayerstorm.org Audacious Church | Unit 6 | Deva Centre | Trinity Way | Manchester | M3 7BB #PrayerStormNOV2014
facebook.com/prayerstorm