Mission Essex | Message

And he and he moves in so we can move out on his mission. That's actually the entire story of the book of Acts, which is Luke two. The gospel, Jesus has come. He's resurrected. He's been teaching his disciples, but he's getting ready to leave.

And he's gonna send them the Holy Spirit. So now before that, they did not have God in them like we do

until this moment. And he says, I'm gonna send you the Holy Spirit. You need to stay in Jerusalem until he gets there. And they say, great. Does that means the kingdom's gonna come? Israel's gonna be free, meaning is Rome you're gonna take care of all of our political problems, that. Now it's gonna be what we wanted. And he goes, no. That's not what I'm saying at all.

I'm saying we just have a mission to go on. And in Acts one eight, he says it this way. He just says, but that's the first word. Acts one eight. But this is what's gonna happen.

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses telling people about me everywhere in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And that is that that that that

thing. He says, you will. You will. He's like, you will. You will. The question we always have to ask yourself is, will I? Because he says, you will get the power. You will. He's telling them what's gonna happen. And that last part, those areas that get Jerusalem, Judea, Samaritans, the earth,

that's not just some inspirational halftime speech with flowery words. That's literally what happened, and that is the outline of the whole book of Acts. It breaks it down by how the Holy Spirit shows up, and in Jerusalem, they start pointing people to Jesus.

And everyone talks about, why are you pushing us? Why does the church need to get big? Why are we trying to build buildings? Why are we gonna do that? I was like, guys, read your bible. They had a 120 people there on that day of Pentecost. At the end of the first sermon, they had over 3,000.

By twenty five years later, by the end of the book of Acts, the church in Jerusalem was over a 100,000 people in a city of 300,000. That's why they started to get persecuted and and pushed out because they were afraid that the Christian community was gonna take over the city. It wasn't small.

It was large. It was big, and it was powerful because when the Holy Spirit moves in and you trust it, you move out with the gospel.

And that's what we're called to do, and that's why I get passionate about it. That's why I I I talk about it. And here's what weighed it so powerful to me this week. We're 23 years old. You've watched the book of Acts. It starts with, here's what happened in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria.

The last part of the book of Acts is ends of the earth, and it has a guy named Paul who wasn't even he was trying to kill Christians in the beginning of the story. By the end, he's going to Rome to get to the to get the the gospel to the ends of the earth. Do you realize Acts one to the book end of the book of Acts is twenty five years?

In twenty five years, it went from 120 people in Jerusalem to hundreds of thousands of people and the ends of the earth from this one church. Guys, we started the last night we had a bible study before we went public, our day of Pentecost, started church, we had a 120 people there. It's now twenty three years later

and we are in the last part of Acts as a church. We currently go to the ends of the earth preaching the gospel and we get to do that. So everyone that's done that, that's come here that says, I'm all in.

I'm gonna trust God. Yeah. I give here. I serve here. I'm a part of what we're doing. I wanna do that. We've moved out, and that's what I wanted to look at because one of the most recent things we've been a part of started couple years ago when we felt led to do something in The United Kingdom, UK, and went to England just because we sent interns over there. We're just going over to check that out and go to a wedding.

All of us independently on the staff got moved, and then we kept going back thinking, God wants us to do stuff, but we're not gonna ride over there like the Americans, and we're here to save the day. And we just came over there and said, there's gotta be someone that's like us, that's believes the gospel, that is moving out, that is fighting the fight, that we can come alongside and say, how can we help?

And it took a couple years, and then we met some friends. And so I want you to watch this video, and then you're gonna meet them too.

Mission Essex is the outreach arm of Danbury Mission Church here in Essex. Our aim is to create a network of like minded, bible centered, healthy churches, and our primary strategy, our way of doing it, is by planting new churches or revitalizing old ones. In short, Mission Essex exists because Essex needs the gospel.

At once upon a time, Essex was a gospel center for England. It was the location for some of the very first church plants. It was a hub for the reformation and the purities. It was the home of missionaries who crossed the Atlantic and took the gospel to America. But sadly, today,

Essex has become one of the least churched regions in the country. Only 3% of people regularly go to church. The vision of Mission Essex is to see 10 church plants or revitalizations over the next ten years. My name is Matt. I'm the pastor here at Greenstead Church in Colchester,

is in North Essex. One of the challenges for smaller churches like this one is that we don't necessarily have people with the time or the skills to keep on top of all of their practical and operational aspects of church life. And so Mission Essex has been really valuable in providing a lot of support in that area.

The other way that they support me is through personal encouragement. Again in smaller churches, pastors often find themselves feeling isolated and at times lonely.

And so it's been a a huge encouragement to me to have friends in ministry down the road who I can pick up the phone to or meet with, and that's been a huge help to me as well.

Hi. I'm Anna, and I'm a children's and youth trainee worker here at Danbury Mission. Being a trainee means I get to get experience from other people that I work with alongside learning how to teach the bible in all its truth and fullness. Mission Essex needs more trainees like me in other churches in Essex.

Essex desperately needs the gospel and they need the light of Jesus. Biblically trained workers would make such a difference here. City Church Chelmsford was planted to spread the good news about the Lord Jesus to all kinds of people right here in Chelmsford. And that means being in the heart of the city.

Mission Essex has helped make that possible. They helped us fundraise. They've helped organize us financially, structurally, so that we can buy this amazing building that used to be a restaurant and turn it into a space for Sunday gatherings, for midweek ministries,

and even for a coffee shop to help us connect with people in our city.

Mission Essex needs partners who will come alongside us and pray for the work and help finance the work. We think that new churches require three to five years' worth of money to help get them off the ground, and we wanna come alongside churches and help in that way. So please join us on this exciting adventure

as we seek to reach the 2,000,000 people of Essex For Christ.

Alright. So you saw him on the screen. This is Simon Medcroft. He's the director of Mission Essex, which is really an outgrowing of Danbury Mission Church, the church he's been the pastor at for twenty years. And and this is Matt Palmer, and he is the the the firstborn

of the of the of the children of trying to this movement that we'll talk about here of revitalizing some churches. So he got to be the experimental model. So if he looks sad, it's because he was a firstborn. So no.

But hey, we're we're here to talk about this. But what I wanna do first is just to hear a little bit of of your guys' story. Like, how did you meet Jesus? Like, did you grow up in a Christian home? And how did you come to to know Jesus? How did you come to that moment where you put your faith in Christ and the Holy Spirit moved in?

Great. Hello, everyone. I I didn't come from a Christian home, but I did go to boarding school. When I was at boarding school, each year, they had a mission week. That's unusual in The UK, but it happened in my school. And in 1986, my two friends went along to this mission week.

And they came back Christians, and I thought, I don't know, they've gone weird on me. And I thought, that's it. I've lost my two best friends. Fast forward a year, and I realized, actually, I hadn't lost my best friends. They'd become even better friends. And so I allowed them to drag me along to the next mission week.

It happened over a series of nights. Night one, I was surprised because I learned that Christianity was all about Christ. It's about a person called Jesus. It's obvious it's in the name, but actually, I thought up to that point Christianity was all about rules and regulations. So that surprised me.

Night two, I was offended because the guy at the front said, You're all sinners. And I remember thinking, What? He doesn't know me. I'm not a sinner. In fact, I was a very, very arrogant teenager. And so I actually remember thinking, I think I've only ever done one thing wrong in my life. And

then I remember, to my shame, the next thought that hit my head which was, actually, that doesn't really count because I only helped flush that younger boy's head down the loo. I didn't initiate it. But the guy then said, I'm not talking about what you do or don't do. I'm talking about your attitude towards God.

And that really struck me because I thought, yeah. I've I mean, I have ignored God. I haven't really thought about him at all in my life. Night three, well, that's where I had a sneaking suspicion that it was all true as I learned about Jesus and the cross. And I learned about actually

there was a rescuer and I worked out I needed him. Night four was the evidence for the resurrection and that convinced me. So that night five, I gave my life to Christ. Amen. Amen. So,

Matt, what were you doing in 1986? In 1986, I hadn't been born yet. This has been like hanging out with my two older uncles. Yeah. So,

yeah. No. I I was I'm a nineties kid, and I did So, unlike Simon, I I did grew up in a in a Christian home. I I went along to all of the kids work, and the youth work, and the Sunday schools, and church, and all that kind of stuff.

I happily went along, but I didn't really believe any of it. It was just something that we did as a family. It got dragged along each week, and that was fine. What I didn't want to happen though, was for my friends at school to find out that's what I did. I wasn't a Christian, like I said, I just went to church. And the last thing I wanted was for my mates to discover that. So I did everything that I could at school to kinda hide that, and cover that up. I joined in with all the stuff they were getting up to at the weekends,

and hanging out with them. But I did not want them to know about the kind of churchy stuff. And so I did that in the week with my school friends, but then when it came to Sundays and the weekend,

I kinda switched into Christian mode. And so, I'd grown up in the church. I knew all the right answers. I knew the kind of bible stories. I could do a good job of pretending to look like all the other Christians around me. And so, for quite a number of years, pretty much through my whole teenage years,

I was a bit of a chameleon. One thing in the week with my schoolmates, one thing at the weekend with my churchmates, and that's kinda how I did it. That that kind of became increasingly uncomfortable for me as I got older. And it all kinda came to a point where,

when I was about 17, I went on a sports camp, a Christian sports camp in the summer. And being a Christian sports camp, picture, the illustration, the guy I remember the guy used when he was speaking, was he said that the Christian life is like a race.

And he said that you're either in the race, or you're not. There's no sitting on the fence. And he said, some of you are gonna be here, and you're it's like you're in the stands. You're watching, you're interested, but you're not in the race.

And you need to know that being in the stands, just being here, just being at church, or being on this camp, that doesn't make you a Christian. What makes you a Christian, what gets you in the race, is believing in Jesus. It's following Jesus.

And so, I remember realizing and thinking, yeah, I've been trying to do both. I really need to decide. And so, the next few months, decided to follow Jesus and join the race from that point. That's powerful. And you yeah. You know what's cool about that is very different stories. Simon and mine is similar,

and Matt's is like Daniel at Echo's. He's still that way. He hasn't really given his life to Christ yet. But I hope he watches this service just now. No. You got very different. Grew up in a Christian home, but wasn't really you were just coming and going through the motions,

thought you didn't need the Lord. I I I just wanted you guys to hear their heart in that because you might relate to this. Because if you're newer here or if you're understanding, you're like, oh, here we go. These guys bring them up. They're gonna talk about money again. They're gonna talk about getting guys,

the Holy Spirit moves in, then we move out. It's we don't live for God's love, we live from it. I know everything we're doing, how his life, how they ended up in the ministry, how I ended up up here was because we understood how much God loved us. We surrendered to that.

And then he became Lord of our life because we trusted his love.

And I'm hoping that's what you see when you sit in church. I hope that there there's probably a lot of mats in this room right now that that you think it's this thing. You come. You try to be a better person. I hope if you could get nothing out of this. If you're new to that, I don't care what we say after this moment. I want you to hear that.

I want you to sit there and go what am I gonna do with the truth of who Jesus is and realize I need a rescuer, not just a rule giver. And put your faith in him. That's the most important thing, because that's what we're doing. We're we're what we're talking about here is how to point people to Jesus.

Because what happens when you get a lot of churches filled with people that think of it that way and never really go in and then stuff happens,

you end up with the current reality in The UK right now. So, Simonian wise, what's the current reality of church life in The UK? And out of that, what are the obstacles? But really, what's been the opportunity that we see that we're we're we're going after? Yeah. Thanks for asking.

Many of you all know that England had a great Christian heritage. But over the last hundred years or so, that's been completely squandered, nearly all lost. Churches grew complacent. Liberalism swept through and secularized the country and most of our churches.

Churches haven't completely disappeared, but the average church size in England is 30 or 40 people. And they're isolated and somewhat defeated. They're sort of circling the wagons, as it were, just trying to survive rather than push out. I think I said on the film,

Essex is a particular example of that. If you can look at the map on the screen now, you'll see Essex is just Northeast of London. It's one of England's larger counties. And actually, it's one of its fastest growing counties.

Living in London is expensive, so more and more people are sort of moving out to the suburbs, a bit like moving out to Queen Creek, and living in dormitory towns or as you might call them suburbs, and then commuting in. So it's fast growing. But sadly, it's one also of the least churched counties in England.

I said in the film it was about 3% go to any church whatsoever. But actually, if we were just talking about churches with evangelical beliefs, churches like this, then we're actually talking less than 1%, which is shocking when you think about it. England, 1%. Most missionary organizations would describe 1% as an unreached

people group. And that's sort of where we are. But actually that gives us an opportunity because it means that for a large number of youngsters, in fact pretty much anyone 30, they haven't actually rejected the gospel because many of them haven't even heard the gospel.

And so we have an opportunity to proclaim Jesus to them without the prejudices that they the older generation might have. And we found just in the last five to ten years, that's really showing as people are sort of coming into church with no background whatsoever, just saying secularism isn't working.

There must be more to life. And they're wanting to come and find out about Jesus, which is tremendously exciting. And at Danbury Mission Church, where I'm the pastor, the leadership there felt, this is exciting. There's a real opportunity and maybe we should take responsibility

for going out to the rest of the county and doing something about reaching people. Our church is about 550 people. Lessons in this room at the moment, so that's not very big by your standards. But just to show you The UK's situation, we're one of the largest churches in Essex.

And so we thought that if we weren't doing something, no one would. And so we started by thinking about moving to the city. If you look at the next slide, you can see Danbury is the cross. It's a We're in a village, unusually. We're in a village outside Chumford, which is the capital city of Essex.

And we were bigger than any church in the city. In fact, Chumford has very few churches whatsoever. And so we were inspired by a man called Steve Packham to plant into that city. Steve Packham was the city manager. He was also an elder in our church. Steve had a massive influence on the city of Chelmsford, improving

the facilities. He made it a much better place to live and work in. But he also had a longing to see all the young people that were flooding into the city hear the gospel. To find out the life saving news of Jesus. And so he kept badgering us to plant a church into Chumford. Sadly, Steve got cancer

and died before we were able to plant. But he remained committed to that project right to the end. And I remember in the week before he died going and speaking to him, he was still strong in the faith. And he was just still pushing me, You won't give up on this project. You will plant into chancellor, won't you?

We did, shortly after he died, 40 people. And that has grown over the last three years and is now over 150 which is exciting. And that a 150 are yep. It's great. Yes. But we're we're as excited about that. We're very excited because it being the capital city is quite a strategic place to go out into the rest of the county.

As such, because of its growth and its strategic nature, we decided to buy a building for them. You saw it in the video. It's very attractively placed along the canal that runs into the city centre. There are thousands of condos being built just behind it. And you have to walk past the church in order to get into

the city centre. It's a fantastic place. Actually, it's costing us about £4,000,000 $5,000,000 to be able to build that. And in God's goodness, nearly all of that money has been raised. So the builders are employed and we hope that that building will be finished in August. All that's remaining is

for us to now find the money to furnish the place so people can sit down. And that we think that's about a $125,000. But we're excited that that's all we've got left to do. So wait. Wait. Let me let me stop there. So when he says we, the funding, we raised basically $5,000,000

in a little under three years. Yeah. And he's talking about it's just his church of five it was $5.50 now, but you went to two services. Yeah. So when you started this, it was 400 people? 450. Yeah. 450 has raised $5,000,000 in under three years. There's probably 1,300 people in this room right now.

We're trying to raise $6,000,000 in two years. Just saying. Not trying to be pushy. But well first of all, he's another one of those guys that got a million dollar check from somebody, so I don't wanna punch him. But well, was a million pounds, so that's like $1,200,000.

But no. But the truth is it shows that what he has happening here is you got the people that are left in this church, they've they've let they know. If not them, who? And they're a church that still had some juice in it as we would say here. And they decided they're all in.

And what I realized getting I've learned from from Simon is over there, we're going, hey, we this our culture is heading quickly towards where they have landed. Quickly. The average church oh, only thirty, forty people. The average sized church in The United States is down to 75.

And and people are turning in and there's more people there. We got more there's a lot of mats that'll go to church and they're just they're they're starting to I'm not into it. And yes, it's why I'm hollering at us. It's why I'm challenging us. I go, guys, we have to get in this game.

Their back is up against the wall. They're like, hey, if we don't do it, no one else will. We're still at a phase where we look around, oh, someone else will do it. We have an opportunity. Yeah. And and they've gotten to this point. That's one the things I think we can help with, that last 120,000.

And I know it's crazy. I know it's crazy for me to talk about us doing that when we're in the middle of I'm asking us to give to this building here. We need a tithe. We sent a couple million dollars or so out to Echo's. We sent all those people. It seems crazy,

but I think the whole point that you're saying here before we get to the opportunity, because the opportunity's gonna show that he said 10 churches in ten years. God's opened a door that it's bigger than that. It's bigger than them. That's why, you know, as as we came to to to meet each other and

and and in doing that is that's what God calls us to is something that's bigger than ourselves.

And that's even why we're up here. Matter of fact, why was that? We never even talked about how we met. No. We didn't even talk about how we end up together. So before we jump into where we're able to go with this opportunity, why don't we we talk about how you met Jesus, but more importantly, how did you meet me?

Do No. You have it written down in here but see, he's like me. I don't look at it. So I forget the questions. Yeah. Well, that was random meeting you. Yes. It always is.

Matt knew an American pastor in London and that he introduced him to me. That American pastor one day, rang me up from London and said, Look, I've got some friends from Arizona, Rock Point Church who are in The UK. They'd like to meet some UK pastors, find out what life is like in The UK, maybe encourage you a bit. I

Would you be prepared to meet them for lunch? I looked at my diary. I just couldn't come up with an excuse, really. And so, yeah, I said, Yeah, look. I'll meet. And so I found myself in a restaurant. Bill and the team came to our home city, Chelmsford, and I found myself in a restaurant listening to this incredibly

talkative man. In fact, I couldn't get a word in Edgeways for ten minutes solid. I keep telling him that shows you how much I respected and really connected with him because it's usually I don't let people talk for about twenty minutes. So I thought I thought I had done well actually. Despite the difference though.

Actually, I found increased very quickly that we had a lot of similarities. I think the first similarity was that we both had a heart for reaching the lost with Jesus. Making a difference for eternity. I think secondly, we I just realized that the ethos for ministry that Rock Point had was very similar to our ethos

and similar values. And that probably told in one way in particular. And that was that, you know, Bill likes to tell jokes, doesn't he? But one of the things that really warmed our hearts were that he actually made fun of himself more than anybody else.

And that just resonated with us because our value is we can't take ourselves very seriously. Jesus, we need to take seriously. His work, we need to take seriously, but not ourselves.

And that we felt was exemplified. And we get that That's one of our cultural values on the wall in our office. And so we we realized we connected that way. And

matter of fact, we joke around all the time like like what when when you came out here, you're staying at our executive house and he what did he make the code for you to get into the house? Yes. Very warm welcome. We arrived late at night. We're tired, and the code to get in the house is 1776.

And then we realized I told everybody how to get into our executive pastor's house yesterday. So so he changed it. I think he changed it to 1812 or something like that. But

Yeah. So so that's how we end up connected. And and and I I forgot that part. Really key as as we connect. It's the same. But what I meant to say is he's about to share the opportunity.

The like mindedness of it's just what we do. I mean, Rock Point guys, the heart that I love, why we we are where we are in twenty three years, and why I invite if you're newer, and I invite everyone to get involved is because the heart of most of the people in this church

is is as the ranger's motto, the the army ranger's special forces is rangers lead the way, that could very well be Rock Point's motto. Rock Point leads the way. God has always let us be the tip of the spear. He's always invited us into something that is beyond us, but he just says, hey, go. And

being in England and then and meeting Simon, this was one of those moments that this is beyond us. We just wanted to help,

and and that's what I think Simon sensed. We just hey, we just we know that you probably I've met another guy that he's did the same thing, dived in way over the head of of what they could do, doing amazing things because his people are all in. But it's like this is gonna go beyond him,

and then we got involved and it's quickly gone even beyond us. And I think that's where God has us right where he wants us. Matter of fact, I think I looked at you. You have those Mission Essex hats and I go, I kinda feel like God's gonna have to change those to Mission UK before you can blink an eye. But

And that's what led us to this, the opportunities of where we're now. Yeah. Let me show you a few of those opportunities. If we turn up to the map again, you can see there Danbury and then Chelmsford. So that was our first one three years ago. But very quickly, Colchester came in. That's the second big city of Essex.

Colchester was different. It's not a traditional plant. There was a small church there with a building and about 25 people. And we they made contact with us and asked if we could help them find a pastor to help revitalize

the church. And that's where we put them in touch with Matt. And that gave us a new a new angle, not just planting new churches from nowhere, but also revitalizing, strengthening, giving new life to smaller churches that already have buildings. I've already said that those roads in Essex and train tracks

are basically being filled up with dormitory towns, as there are literally

thousands of new houses being built. And we found that there were small little churches like Colchester around. So if you look at the next slide, you can see on the next slide there's near South End, the third city.

One between Chelmsford and Colchester, a place called Witham, with thousands of homes being built. And then if you look at the next slide, you can see their future potentials. So suddenly, all of these churches are in contact with us and we're having an opportunity

to put in pastors and get Jesus out to the region of Essex. I wanna hand you over to Matt. Yes. Because Matt, you tell us a little bit about Colchester, what it's like there, And maybe a bit about again how Mission Essex helped. Sure. Yes, so like Simon says, I started at the church in Colchester just over two years ago.

Took it on, it was a small church. 25, 30 or so people. All who love Jesus. All who want people in their community to know Jesus. But for a number of years hadn't had a pastor. That was over the kind of Covid years as well. And so, the church over those years has kinda declined. It was pretty small, pretty discouraged.

Looking for someone to come and help for some leadership and that sort of thing. I joined the church a couple of years ago. And as well as doing the kind of the basics, guess, the fundamental things. Teaching the Bible. Leading

the people there. Serving and loving them. One of the big things we wanted to do in a church like that is help them with something that's actually a big value for you guys here at Rock Point. And that is do church in a way that makes sense, and is accessible for people who don't normally come to church.

People like Simon has already said, who have no church background. Who have never opened a bible before. But who for one reason or another, have found themselves walking into church and saying, I

don't know why I'm here, but maybe you've got the answers that I'm looking for. And so we wanted to do church in a way that spoke to them, that was understandable to them. And that's been a big focus, a big aim for us. That has led to people coming in, and the church growing. So,

those couple of years, the church has grown from around 30 to around a 100 or so people. That 100 or so people is a big mixture. So that the church itself is on a low income housing estate. We call it a council estate. And so people come from the local area. But also, because of the lack of churches just in the county,

we also have people from the suburbs driving into our church as well. The church is also a military town. There's a big military base. As we have a number of guys from the military that come too. So there's this kind of great diversity of people in the church. But probably the biggest diversity comes from the university.

The university campus is right next door. That has the highest proportion of international students in the country. And so, we have a lot of international people from all over the world coming into our church.

That presents a really great opportunity and a challenge at the same time. The challenge is that these people come and go quite quickly. So, whilst we've grown to around a 100, there's probably been another 100 or so who have come and left pretty quickly. I hope that's not to do with me and my preaching.

More to do with the fact that they're not in Usually it does with me. Yeah. In the city for very long. But like I said, they've come from all over the world. And so, we have them for a year, maybe two years. And lots of them come from countries

that are, we would say, very close to the Gospel. Countries that would be very difficult to send British or American missionaries to, or to plant churches in. And yet, we have the chance for these people as they come. They can come and hear the gospel, we hope, become Christians, and then return to their home countries

we And taking the gospel with them. And so, the Sunday just before I came here to The States, we baptized a young girl from China. She had arrived a year previously with her family. Her family, her parents were lecturing at the university. They turned up at our church. She wasn't a Christian.

She came to our services. She came to our evangelistic bible study group. Over the course of the years, become a Christian. Was baptized last Sunday, and then in about a month's time, she will be moving back to China.

And so, are sending somebody back to their country now with the spirit in them, ready to move out and share Jesus with the people in her home country. So Yeah. Amen.

And it so like I say, it's a yeah. It's a brilliant opportunity. That that that's just an example. There's there's people from all over the world that we get to do that with. But it also presents a challenge. The challenge is that

those people plus others that are coming in, it's great to have them, but it means that the core of the church, those that are staying, that are serving, giving, discipling others, that core has stayed quite small. I'm the only

staff member on the church in the church. And so, we have a small core team with me kinda leading that. Trying to meet all these opportunities, and serve all these needs. That's where Mission Essex has been a huge help to me

on the ground in my church. You heard in the video, but Mission Essex helps in all sorts of different ways. It helps fund me as a pastor to be there. It helps support me practically

with all of the kind of admin, and ops, and legal, and finance, and all that stuff that I could spend all my time doing, rather than talking to people about Jesus. Mission Essex helps with that. And then it helps me personally. Again,

I'm kind of, although I've got really great friends in the church, I'm on my own in terms of staff. I'm on my own in terms of leadership in that sense. And so having other people in full time ministry, other pastors down the road who can

support me, mentor me, people like Simon, and help me as I keep going in my context. It makes a huge huge difference. So that's a bit of a picture of where I'm at. Yeah. That's awesome. So as you heard me saying, it's like what's happening is with this whole thing since we we got connected to he's already started. But

he's doing international missions. He's sending missionaries. So it's like, the cool thing with Matt's scenario is the ends of the earth are coming to him, and then he sends them back. And and but he's alone. So we brought him up here to give a sad face so we can play a Sarah McLaughlin song

and say, it's too late for Matt, but we can help the other Matts out there. No. No. Just kidding. But getting guys like Matt, the younger generation that they'll they'll speak. The what then what's happening is when we said plant churches,

God opened a door. When he says all these churches are calling us, like, up to six. Like, if we had people like Matt and a team, like, wanna send them in pairs, not alone. And and if we we if we had the the leadership, you could start six more churches.

Then they would have a facility. They could just go. And what's happening is they're learning from from you like, hey, how do we establish a church that actually is prepared and expects these young people and goes out to them and invites them in instead of an old church like, hey, we love people. We love Jesus. But we either don't have a pastor or they're really old and like it doesn't relate to anybody.

So they're they're they don't find anything. I guarantee these churches are all gonna get larger. You're gonna see a church plant move, and you're gonna start to see it happen in in a dynamic way.

And and that's what's gone beyond. Like Simon and I realized what God's called us to is we've already met with a couple boards that fund stuff like this because it's gone beyond us.

But we still need to to need to dive in. And as you look at the list, it's so broad of what we can do. Simon, we're just following him. This guy's the leader and and we need to pour into some younger leaders like Matt because Simon's not getting any younger as you can tell, you know. He's older than me. Yeah. It's true.

But as as we

as we look at it, I mean, you've had a plan as we've talked to you about, hey, how can we help where we at? And and so you've prioritized. Like, there's a couple things that if we wanna help go, what could what could get the ball? Like, we're at short yardage positions on some of these things that how can we running back this thing and knock this into the end zone? And there's two things you said that's like, so let's listen to what Simon says.

That's a bad joke. I get worse the more that goes on. I've Yeah. Noticed. Yeah. Look. Thanks thanks so much for listening to us. I think in terms of priorities, there just are sort of two immediate needs. I've already talked to you about the waterfront building.

If we could get the furniture in so that we can get that open and going as soon as possible in the summer, that would be great. That's a $125,000. That's the need there. We're so close. We just want to get over the line for that one. And then secondly, with Chunsford, we managed to get the money to do two pastors.

And it's grown faster. And the pastors are in good shape. What we wanna do with Matt, who's not know that. What we want with Matt is to see if we can get another partner. Now that's Bill's already said it's not it's not cheap in England. It's about $62,000 to be a year for a pastor.

We wanna do that for three years, but if we can just maybe get the first year, that would be fantastic. So they're the two needs to start with. So about a 180,000. Yep. If we did the whole three years, it'd be about 300,000. If complete, just a 180 to 300,000,

we'll be able to do it. Yep. And that's kinda what I want us to to pray about, guys. I I I know this sounds nuts. I know I'm always talking about this. We're we're stretched in so many ways, but I think that's I think there's certain people in this room that

God has grabbed your heart about what's going on here just like he grabbed our team's heart when we went over there. And and I know that. And so I would ask you guys to pray about two things. One, the the resource, the money resource, but also maybe you're one of the people. Because part of our plan is to find

like, I wanna say indigenous, but it seems weird when you talk about The UK because it's it's it's first world, it's like native Brits. Like, the plan that we're working on is finding a guy that can come out of church, that can be the lead guy,

but maybe we can supplement with some some people that are I feel hard to go spend a year or two or so over there that might be wired to to kind of partner with them, and then see what happens and and and do that. So we're looking basically what Simon's saying is we need people in pounds in the British vernacular.

Dollars and dudes, I guess, and dames, I guess, in our version of English, which uses less use in words, by the way. But what

we're asking is is can we do that? Can can we start praying about it? And and if if if if you're moved by that, we I wanna put up a couple QR codes here. The one on the left, that's to learn more. If you wanna read about Mission X six and see more.

The one on the right is if you wanna give, it takes you to give through us. It makes it easier for you to give here, and then it it can go there. Or if you're old school and you wanna write a check or something, you go out into the offering box, pick up a check, write on the check, Mission Essex. If you have a million dollars cash in your car, can just back it up and pour it in there.

And and and you can do it that way. Or if you wanna just give online the normal way, you can go down to the rockpoint.io

give tab and there's an actual Mission Essex. We're gonna leave that open for you all too. If you need to pray about it, think about it. It's just gonna leave that as one of our our line items to help us

get this church planting movement going over there. And I would I would just challenge you to think about and pray about it. And I know it's crazy, but it's it's the rock point thing. It's what we do. We just we feel like this is beyond us. We're reaching out. We're trusting God. We're we're we're doing that. And and and the coolest thing to close-up I'm gonna ask one of the guys with the British accent to pray because I think God listens to that accent more than ours. Mine, because I'm just the loud American who talks to him about money all the time too. So the

coolest thing when I was over there, all these little dormitory communities as they call it, it reminds me about here how young families are moving there and they are open to the gospel, but there's no church there.

And people are coming to Simon now and saying, here's our building. Here's what's left. Do something with this. And the coolest thing for me, I'm a history geek. You know that. And if you don't get moved and get goosebumps by this, then we can't be friends.

But one of the towns we were in that he showed us was Manningtree. And and we're looking at this church that they're just gonna say, here, take the church, do something.

And the the the guy, the gentleman that showed us, was sitting there and he started telling me the history of the area. And he goes, manning tree means many trees.

You look around, there's not many trees. He goes, this was a heavily timbered, like, lumber area where they bring in the resources to build boats and build buildings and all that, came from this area for for a long time. And a matter of fact, he goes right down the street here is where the lumber came

to build a boat that you Americans might be familiar with. It was called the Mayflower. Because as he shared, the Puritans came, the Pilgrims came from Essex. The boat, the resources to get them there and come here came from Essex.

And we are sitting here in our culture and having the gospel because they were moved by the spirit and they took their people and their resources and they came here. And it's so cool to me that God's called us to return the favor. We

get to go back and bring the gospel back to a land that that is pretty much non existent at this point in this area. Amen? So hey, why don't you pray for us my friend? Thanks so much for your support. Do come and say hello to us. We'll be on the stand out in the lobby. Please do come and say hello. Let's pray together.

Dear heavenly father, we do thank you for Jesus. We thank you so much for the offer of salvation. We thank you that you have saved us from hell and for heaven. And we thank you that in your mercy, you give us the privilege not only of being saved, but being involved in your work, able to

be in mission and tell others about Jesus. We thank you also, heavenly father, that you don't save us in isolation, but you save us into your family. And that, therefore, we have brothers that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. And that, therefore, despite the the many miles apart between The UK and The US,

we are united together in Jesus' own mission. And we pray, heavenly father, that you might so inspire us to be wholehearted in that mission, Both in telling people about Jesus who live around us, but also in supporting work further afield. Thank you so much, heavenly father, for Rock Point's commitment to this mission.

I pray, heavenly father, that with their support, we might see you moving in Essex. We might see the kingdom advancing. And there might be we might be able to rejoice in eternity that more people are there because of our partnership. And we pray all of this for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

Hey. Let's thank them as they Benny Hill it over because they have a table out there. And if you wanna go talk to them, find out more information, you know, whatever, and give him a huge check, that would be great.

Hey. Thanks for joining us for service online this weekend. Be sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the Rock Point Church app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.