The Same Mission and Message

Exam results season is here again for many young people and it always reminds me of the day I collected my results (yes, I can just about still remember!). One I wouldn’t be receiving however was GCSE History. I had wanted to do it but my teacher had told me I wasn’t good enough to. It’s funny then that I really still enjoy history despite that teacher's attempt (in my eyes anyway!) to crush my history career before it had even started.

As someone who moved to the North East, I love hearing about the history of God’s people in our region. A few months ago I visited Hamsterley Baptist Church, a few miles west of Bishop Auckland in County Durham. Amazingly it is the oldest free church* in our region. Whilst their current building was built a little later, the church’s roots go back to the 1650s. So it was started in a time when it was illegal to not be part of the Church of England! They were at risk of fines and even imprisonment. Some of our friends in Jubilee who have fled persecution in their nations due to their faith know what that would have felt like.

Many churches were planted from Hamsterley and there are churches in Teesside that exist because of it. Praise God for what this church did! And yet ultimately this isn’t a blog about Hamsterley Baptist Church. It’s about a God who is on a mission to restore all things to himself. A God who cares for all people, including the North East and yes, including Teesside. As men and women through the years have met Jesus, they have been caught up in God’s mission to their villages, towns and cities. By God’s grace, we get to continue this in our day!

In the coming weeks, churches in our area are working together with the Bible Society to launch ‘Bible Conversations Teesside’. We’ll be giving loads more information about it but if it’s all new to you, this video is a good place to start. We’re praying that it’s going to cause a stir across Teesside as people see billboards, bus adverts and online stuff. But more importantly, we’re praying that through the many thousands of copies of Luke/Acts that have been specially printed, loads of people will meet Jesus!

Towards the end of Luke’s gospel, Jesus calls his friends to go out and tell people that by receiving him, they can know what it is to come back to God and have all their sins forgiven (Luke 24: 47). This is the message that we take out with us through this Bible Conversations season. It’s the same message that Christians have declared for 2000 years and the same one that those believers in Hamsterley proclaimed to the people of the North East. God’s mission hasn’t changed, and neither has his message.

So to bring things back to exam results season, the only qualification you need for God to use you in his mission to the world is that you’ve met Jesus and decided to follow him. Don’t count yourself out of the most important thing happening on planet Earth right now! Let’s pray and trust God that through this Bible Conversations campaign, he will do amazing things in Teesside and in our neighbours, friends and families.