BCC's Theme For October is 'Arise And Build'.. Stewart Keiller Tells Us Why..
Bath City Church's Stewart Keiller says: "One of the things we love to do is offer to the city and region training, conferences and ministries that go well beyond just our local church. Our vision is to work in partnership for mission in the city and beyond."
Here he tells us why 'understanding who we are and what we are about' is vital, in order to reach people outside of the church's walls with news of this vision.
(PICTURES: STEWART KEILLER PREACHING)
For October you have a theme of Arise and Build for your Sunday morning meetings preach, inspired by recent prophetic words for the church, What is the vision for BCC this autumn?
A number of people drew attention to Nehemiah and this seemed to fit with our plan to communicate the expansive heart that BCC carries. One of the things we love to do is offer to the city and region training, conferences and ministries that go well beyond just our local church. Our vision is to work in partnership for mission in the city and beyond. However, understanding who we are and what we are about is vital if we want to reach beyond ourselves. So this month is about articulating something of the vision of BCC as a resourcing, church planting, missional church.
Part of the theme you will be speaking on this October is stretching the vision God has for the church outside of the walls and into the city, please tell us more?
Part of our DNA is being an antioch or minister church. We are a local church community, but feel that we are called to minister beyond just the confines of the local church. Most of what we do is not just for BCC, it is open to anyone. We have been strong on the presence of God, the Holy Spirit and providing a well for people to get spiritual refreshed and healed. However, we are seeking to be missionally more effective in reaching the unsaved by whatever 'gate' we can. So I have begun to use the temple/city imagry of walls and gates to communicate something about the walled safe community of God's people, with the gates that are open to heaven and the gates that are open to the world. We are supposed to go out to reach people with the love of Jesus and allow people to enter in to find God. Church, to us, is the place of where the heavens should be open to people, where the love of God is evident, where people can encounter Him. Then those people, carriers of the presence of God, can go out to the far reaches of the world taking the Holy Spirit everywhere. That's effective mission.
How does Nehemiah - which you will be preaching on - fit in with the vision for BCC?
Nehemiah is a brilliant illustration of a leader who set himself to the task of building, galvanised the whole body to build, joined up the clans and tribes, and with one heart and motivation they got to work. I want to see an inspired church setting to the task of building.