Our mission as a church is to be a gateway for the gospel to go to the nations. It's the words The Lord spoke audibly to me the first time I visited King's Lynn as I drove through the South Gate.

In our early days someone prophesied that we would be a multi-coloured church – which at the time would have been impossible as Kings Lynn was a white town. In fact the prophet said some of you are thinking how will this be – the Lord will do it.

Since then we have seen 44 nations come through the church and we normally have around 20 on a Sunday. God promised Abraham in Gen 12 that all of families of the earth  would be blessed through him. In Revelation 5 we see that there will be people from every tribe and tongue worshipping Jesus at the end. We are in between the two verses!

The hospital lift reckons there are people from 65 nations working in the QEH – they have told me it is more like 90 so we have a way to go!

If we are to be a gateway for the gospel to go to the nations – we will be fulfilling the Lord's great commission in Matt 28:19 Go and make disciples of all nations baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. What a mission!

One of the other key prophecies from before we came was that The Gateway would grow bigger than 500 and be a sizeable percentage of the town – Kees used to joke that 500 (which feels huge) is not a sizeable percentage – more like 1%!

To do it –

• grow past 500 and
• reach every nation in the area and
• send people to the nations

We will need 2 things – workers for the harvest and leaders.

Workers

In Matt 9 Jesus is walking through cities and towns teaching and healing the sick – as He saw the crowds it tells us he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless. He tells his disciples to “the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”

Got to believe – that there is a plentiful harvest out there. The issue is harvesters to bring them in. Jesus says pray. Then in the very next verse He gives them authority and sends them out!

What can we do to become better workers for the harvest?

1 Simple level – invite! Church business cards in my phone case, gave out two last week

2 Early offer of prayer – anything I can pray for? Not many refuse

3 Can I tell you my story?

Leaders

In a church like ours there's some cultural stuff around leaders that we need to navigate as we look at the Scriptures!

Westerners are often fairly flat in their attitude to leadership. The majority world are often hierarchical and more honouring often leaders.

Westerners would call me Andy – others wouldn't dream of dropping the honorific title Pastor – Pastor Andy.

Pauls letter to the church in Philippi shows us one interesting thing about us all – if you are a follower of Jesus you are a saint.

Phil 1:1 To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers (elders) and deacons.

Three terms for people in the church – saints, deacons and elders. And all those terms have some baggage!

Saint – RC you have to be dead, have performed 2 posthumous miracles and be sainted at a convocation! Bible – follow Jesus and he makes you “a holy one”, a saint.

Say I am a saint!

Deacons – Baptists scared many of us with “deacons meetings” – Change joke.

Bible men and women filled with the Spirit and faith who serve the eldership in the church, so elders can focus on prayer and the Word of God.

Previous generation didn't use the term because of the baggage, but if we are about building church NT style, lets recover the term!

Elders – Mormons give a badge to all their young guys they send worldwide on year long mission trip.

Bible – called men who embody the vision and values of the church and worthy of imitation, who guard the church from wolves, who guide the saints and govern the church so we stay on mission and true to the Lord.

When you read the book of Acts, you see churches getting planted in different ways. Sometimes scattered saints sharing the gospel, sometimes intentional apostolic planting in strategic cities, or a healing provoking the preaching of the gospel and a riot. Lots of ways. Eventually the apostolic team would visit and appoint elders

Acts 14:23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

Paul commissioned Titus to appoint elders to lead the churches in Greece in Titus 1:5.

There must be a time between planting and the appointment of elders that they begin to emerge. 1 Tim 3 tells us that desiring to be an elder is a good thing and sets out the character qualifications. Elsewhere we are told not to lay hand quickly 1 Tim 5:22. In Acts 13 the Antioch elders send on Barnabus and Saul to church plant.

So therefore we have a leadership team with some elders. Other men are exploring eldership. We have just sent the Vonks on and Kees served as an elder for 9 years. Currently David Taylor and I are elders here.

We are rebuilding the team and have added Omadachi and Esther and over the summer Cameron and Katie.

Cameron and Omadachi are beginning to explore eldership and we will God willing be asking your approval in a few months!

What do elders do?

Embody the vision and values and are worthy of imitating

That's why 1 Tim 2 contains some challenging character qualities.

Pray

In acts 6:4 the elders in Jerusalem appoint deacons so they could continue in prayer and the word!

Guard

In Acts 20 Paul warned the Ephesus elders that wolves were working and challenged them to guard the church from wolves – heresy and bad people.

Guide

Elders guide the sheep like shepherds, out in front and worth of following as vision bearers and pace setters.

Govern

Big picture people, not single issue fanatics, who set the vision, values, appoint leaders, set the doctrines and so on.

In 1 Cor Paul laments the fact that there are thousands of leaders but not many fathers – elders father the church, help us all to reach maturity!

Deacons

First seen in Acts 6 as the church was growing and the elders needed help so they could focus on what God called them to do.

Deacons are Spirit filled and full of faith – start by serving and grow in that and anointing and fruitfulness

Male and female – Phoebe in Romans 16:1 deaconess.

Newfrontiers unfair reputation – NFI stood for No Females Included

Awful! And awful that wonderful ladies have felt that. Want to see everyone released into their gifting and destiny.

Amusing though that a friend of mine was having his ear bent about women in ministry  and so he compared his church with the Vineyard guy and found he had more women serving in public ministry roles than the Vineyard pastor. Here 18 out of 36 public ministry roles done by women!

Overjoyed to be releasing men and women into their anointing and gifting.

Ladies you have a destiny in God as much as the men – overjoyed to see Kate and Amie preaching, Seun and Ann  leading the kidswork tea! More Lord!

So we have saints and deacons to see the vision come to pass in God's time and with His power

I see deacons as department heads in the church, with delegated authority to lead their area of church life so we can get the job done!

Worship Team                      Cameron & Katie Mathers

Media Team                          Matt Lymer

Welcome & Integration       Janet Moyle

Admin                                    Ann Robles

Finance                                   David Taylor, Jerole Jacob, Andy Moyle

Children                                 Seun Omidiji

Youth                                      Tobi & Kate Oderidan

Catering                                 Lucy Hartland

Hebrews 13:7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Take a moment to pray for elders, leadership team and deacons

Pray for us all to be workers for the harvest!

Take some business cards and invite someone this week!