As you reflect on this months deeper service, what do you notice rising up in your own heart?  Spend some time with the following questions…ask them as a prayer to God and see if anything stands out to you.  Spend some time resting in the grace of God, which is greater than all of our running, all of our sin, all of our confession.

Where do you find control in your own life? In what ways have you thought, “I would rather be an orphan?”

How have you found yourself at the end of your rope?  In what ways are you afraid to go back to your Father?

What do you know about the character of God that might give you courage to turn back to him?

When in your life have you experienced the Father running to you?  What does this say about who you are in him?

You were given some questions to take away and think about from the last Deeper. Here are a few more to continue your thought process.

1. Read Ezekiel 36
2. What is God saying to the Israelites in this passage? What is the main point of his message?
3. What might God say to the Church (the body of Christ around the world) today, in light of this passage?
4. What might he want to say to St. Silas?
5. How can we be more open to his softening of our hearts together?

1. Do I feel as though I’ve been dwelling in a foreign land? Exiled?
What are the circumstances that have caused this feeling? What does this feel like?
Take some time to talk with God about these circumstances, to tell him how you feel.

2. In what ways is my heart currently hardened to the love of God?

3. Is there some way that God is using my circumstances to soften my heart?
Take some time to ask this question of God, stop and listen to God’s answer to you.

This may be a frustrating time. You may feel resistance to what he speaks, or you may not hear anything at all just now. Keep your eyes and ears open throughout the next week for God to answer these questions in his time.

Start of a new season under the title Renovation.  During this season of six meetings we will be looking at ways of renovating our heart, our life and our spirit.  We must desire our heavenly Father to shape our hearts and mould them to be after him; to take our lives and rebuild them into wholeness; to gather up our broken fragments and, like the artist who pieces together a mosaic, make them into something that is beautiful.

Tonight was the start of this process of looking at what is going on inside us so that we can better resemble Jesus.  Using a number of passages from the old and new testament Gordon and Jenny demonstrated ways in which God wants to change our hearts, our inmost being, from stone to flesh and how Jesus brought these promises to us and it wasn’t just promises for ancient Israel.

Download MP3 Here

During the service a heart shape was tiled onto a board at the front.  During the worship set that followed the talky bit everyone had the opportunity to take a tile, write on it and smash the tile as a symbolic step of getting rid of the hardened heart we all have.  There was also an opportunity for prayer ministry.

Resources:

• take away card
• scripture used during talk
• mp3 of talk
• photos

Deeper Returns for a new season this weekend!

From September 2009 – March 2010 we will be looking at the theme of Renovation more details here.

see you Sunday.

Last in the theme of Monsters – looking at the inner monsters of Envy, Anger and Greed.  This months meeting was also moved forward a week to make way for the West End Festival event next week.

Before the start of each of these we have been using playlists of related music, someone asked me for a track name, so here is this month’s Greed related tracks: Money (In God We Trust) by Extreme; Material Girl by Madonna; Money by Pink Floyd; If I Had $1000000 by Barenaked Ladies; Gold Digger by Kanye West Feat. Jamie Foxx; Mercedes Benz by Mercedes Benz; and Money (That’s What I Want) by The Beatles.

For a change, after a short welcome from Jenny we started with a worship set of the following songs: Indescribable,   O taste and see,   Amazing grace (my chains are gone).  Then Gordon told a story about a Hamish the Hamster – this is where the mp3 recording starts – this was followed by this video looking at forms of Greed in the media…

Most of the core team that organizes Deeper then gave some examples of Greed in their own life, then asked people to share in groups what they thought their own greed was…

Jenny and Gordon both then taught on the topic of Greed – mp3 recording – then there was an opportunity for ministry and worship (the second set included: The splendour of the king; This is my desire; Jesus we enthrone you; I’m giving you my heart and God in my living. Finishing off with Be Thou My Vision.

There is no Deeper service in July, have a good summer.

Second of a short group of three services under the title of Monsters, where we are tackling difficult topics of Envy, Anger and Greed.  Three areas that are often hidden Monsters inside us that we hide from each other and often deny even to ourselves.

To open, Lorna shared a story of a monster from her nightmares when growing up, then Gordon reminded us of the point of the series and what was covered last time.  After a short video montage showing scenes of anger from various movies JJ asked people to discuss a little about these clips, then led us through a series of searching questions to open up the topic of anger.

Gordon and Jenny then led the next section – download mp3 here

The with an invite for prayer ministry the main sung worship section began.  Here’s a note of the set list:

• Blessed be the name
• It’s our confession
• You chose the cross
• Holy God
• God in my living
• O taste and see
• Who is like you
• Let the weak say

Visualists:  we try to change the visual set up, images used and the way we mix regularly.  This month we used two verticle drapes with projectors placed close and low to skew the image in a deliberatly distorted manner. The same image was used on all three screens with the words overlayed on the centre (fast-fold) screen only.  We have been using GrandVJ from ArKaos for video mixing for some time now which among other things gives the visual team much more flexability and control over upto 8 layers of video to mix live.

First of a short group of three services under the title of Monsters, where we will be tackling difficult topics of Envy, Anger and Greed.  Three areas that are often hidden Monsters inside us that we hide from each other and often deny even to ourselves.

After a short introduction JJ lead us through some readings and quotes about the topic of envy (slides available here) and asking people to share in groups their thoughts and examples of this.  This was followed by an example of the world portrayal of Envy using the Nicklback video for Rockstar.  Gordon followed this by giving away an ipod and showing us that our issues of envy isn’t really with the people that are blessed – our issue is with the person who gave out the blessings and didn’t give them to us…
Dan 4:35, 1 Chron 29:12

Jenny then followed this with by telling us that as God’s children, we’re called to be like our Father.  The bible says God is love…  and has this to say about love:  “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” 1 Cor. 13:4-6
We cannot love if we have envy lurking in our hearts.  So how can we root it out?

• Embrace the truth that we think God owes us….
• Confess our envy to somebody….
• Make it your habit to celebrate the success of others….

Celebration cleanses our hearts of envy, so we then moved into a time of celebration and prayer ministry.

There was a break during the sung worship for a second short meditation led by JJ on the topic of celebration – slides available here.

The first part of the service was recorded and the mp3 is available from the St Silas web pages.  More photos here.

The last of our 6 ‘Organic Faith’ series which was designed to help you readdress and renew the aspects of your faith which easily get sidelined.  It was a time to remember why we believe, how our faith grows, what stifles that growth and how to overcome these things.

• Sept: Breaking the ground
• Oct: Putting down Roots
• November: Grow!
• January: Weeds, Thorns & Worship
• February: Feeding & Watering
• March: Future Harvest

It was also one of the most technical series that we did experimenting with many ways of interacting and engaging.  With a month between events we wanted to bridge that gap by keeping in touch via email and blog, we asked you to participate in online surveys and used that to inform the next event and during some meetings we asked you to send us feeback instantly by txt.  Here is some of what went on:

Lastly, for this record, this month the visual team switched to new technology to produce the live visuals during the meeting – usng VJing software instead of the usual DVDs and video mixer – this meant super-widescreen effect onto our custom built full width screen.  While this took longer to setup it gives us more space, layers and flexibilty to mix.  We hope you enjoyed the effect and, as always, that this added to the experince without turning it into ‘a show’.

timelapse of March event

Meanwhile:  Envy, Anger & Greed is what we are looking at in the next short season building up to summer.  More details soon.

This was the fifth in the series of Organic Faith series, Feeding and Watering.

If you are looking for…

• Jenny’s Teaching Notes
• Gordon’s presentation
• MP3 recording
• This Month’s Survey