I have always cared about the people I lead! I care deeply about you! But I want you to know that I don’t rest easy in reference to your journey of faith. I watch, I pray and seek to offer words of encouragement when I can.

1 Thessalonians 2:11-12, “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”

I still care and pray and feel responsible for you as a church and family but not in the same manner as I once did.

Now listen with great care; hear what I am saying and don’t hear what I am NOT saying. It’s not that I care less but I’ve had an epiphany a revelation and it has made my life easier. I don't feel as responsible FOR people as I once did but I feel more responsible TO you as our church family and friends.

Let me show you the difference; when I felt responsible FOR every person my failure or success depended upon your steps towards maturity; my success depended on your journey with Christ. If you failed I took that very personally.

I felt profound guilt when people left the church; I had failed in my responsibilities FOR them. I took it very personally.

When people were going through a tough time, I stayed up late at night praying for them. When people were in conflict with each other; if a marriage was on rocky grounds, if someone was unhappy about their life, their jobs or their relationships I felt a deep and profound responsibility for them and saw their failure, their crises as my failure and crises.

This was no way for me to live; I was either going to die loving the church or something needed to change. I needed to grow personally and in turn it would facilitate the church’s growth too. I would enlarge my capacity as a pastor and leader and in turn the church would move towards maturity.

In my regular reading I got a hold of a book called “Lasting Impressions” by Mark Waltz the Connections Pastor at Granger Community Church. It was quite literally a life saver for me. It was to me the missing piece of the puzzle in pastoral care and leading a growing church.

Mark talked about being responsible FOR people and being responsible TO people. Being responsible TO people is very freeing! It’s a point of view that leads towards maturity. This view enlarged my capacity; I believe made me a more mature person and a better pastor. Let me explain.

1. When I am responsible TO people I understand they have choices. When I am responsible FOR people I feel I should decide for them. Intervene and make them see the point.
2. When I am responsible TO people I know they must figure out the next steps. When I am responsible FOR people I try to tell them what their next steps should be.
3. When I am responsible TO people I know they must bear the consequences of their own choices. When I am responsible FOR people I assume the guilt – or worse the shame – for them. Makes it hard to sleep at night especially multiplied by 500!
4. When I am responsible TO people I share their journey, offering encouragement and teaching. When I am responsible FOR people I try to direct their journey, never allowing them to wrestle, mess up, or make a wrong turn. I try to protect them from the mess, the fight and they end up weak and without confidence – there’s nothing like a win to help us understand our own maturity.
5. When I am responsible TO people I talk to God a lot on their behalf. When I am responsible FOR people I talk to people a lot on God’s behalf.

As your pastor I have responsibilities. My responsibility is TO you to teach and lead the local church. Paul puts it this way – let me quote the Message Bible Translation: Ephesians 4: 11-12, “He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christ's followers in skilled servant work, working within Christ's body, the church, until we're all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God's Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”

Paul say I have a responsibility TO you as a group, as a family together; that responsibility is TO train Christ’s followers in skilled servant work until we all move rhythmically and easily with each other efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults. This is through my leadership, my teaching, my example, my training, my work with you to see maturity.

I love the way Owen and Gemma in their recent message, have outlined our goals for our church. (You can find a copy of it on our website under “recent messages”)

They begin each goal with the words “Take responsibility for ...” It’s only as we grow in our understanding of what we are responsible for that we grow into maturity.  Growth is all about transformation, the renovation of our heart, our attitude, our behaviour and our feelings.

Imagine a church that has he goals outlined in Owen’s and Gemma’s message!

To take responsibility for...

1.      Develop a growing relationship with God

2.      Become relationally connected into the life of the Church

3.      Serve in some capacity contributing to the health, life and expression of the church

4.      Contribute financially through tithes and offerings

5.      Help someone somewhere less fortunate than you:

6.      Help someone in your world connect with God and His church

Imagine the impact of a church like this on a city, a county or nation! Can I inspire you today to not just take these words as rhetoric, or just words but to desire passionately to make them lifestyle! A world in great need waits with baited breath for us to be the church.

I love you, Tom Rawls

I am so thankful to the committed and professional kids team that we have here at Proclaimers. This week I have invited the leader of our Kids and Families Department, Mark Hodder, to share his thoughts on why it’s so important for men to be a role model to what’s been dubbed ‘the fatherless generation’:

We are living in a world filled with huge uncertainty, dangerous insecurity and fading integrity; a world where children need their fathers more than ever before, and yet, it is this generation that has been labelled as 'The Fatherless Generation'. Statistics prove that divorce rates are rocketing, single-parent families are becoming far too common and fathers are simply abandoning their children.
 
A devoted father encourages, supports, protects, nurtures, guides and loves. Without these things, how can a child overcome life's challenges, grow with confidence in who they are and fulfil their God-given potential?
 
Never before has there been such a need for men to rise up within the church and lead the way as role models for the next generation. I believe that we can be those role models. Men of faith, strength, love and compassion, prepared to reach out and be an influence for good in the lives of those who desperately need someone to demonstrate what true masculinity is. Men, passionate about the next generation and committed to doing all they can to help these children become all that they can be.

We are delighted to announce that we are partnering with Metamorphic International to run the Water 4 Water Campaign in the UK. This is something that your church could get involved in too so I have asked our Executive Pastor Owen Morgan to let you know what it’s all about:

We’re teaming up with Metamorphic ahead of World Water Day in March to raise money for to provide pump wells for clean water in developing nations. Lindsay Clark (Metamorphic International) and his team have come up with a great way for lots of churches and organisations to get involved. They will provide bottles of water (500ml) which are branded as Water 4 Water. People donate £20 for one bottle of water. That £20 will result in 6 people having clean water for life. We intend to run this to coincide with World Water Day on the 22^nd March.

We will be running one or two church wide events but on the whole we will be encouraging connect groups and teams to create opportunities to raise the money. We will also be encouraging people to get their workplace involved as well.

Did you know that 1 in 6 people don’t have access to clean safe drinking water, that’s 1 billion people. 1.8 million children die of diarreah as a result of contaminated water each year. The goal is to plant wells through local churches primarily in Cambodia, Laos and Kenya.  This is part of a world wide initiative to help over 100,000 people gain access to clean safe drinking water.  The gift of a community well will transform the lives of families and will open the door for local church leaders to build relationships.  In both Cambodia and Laos pastors are persecuted and in many cases jailed for their faith, past projects have shown that the wells can lead to these pastors becoming key and respected leaders within the community.

One of the things we love about Metamorphic is the way they combine Aid and Development projects such as this with Church Planting. All the wells are provided through local churches. Lindsay Clark has been a great friend and advisor to our church for many years and to Tom and Denise personally for even more!

Last year we partnered with Metamorphic and saw 30 wells planted in Cambodia. Our church loved rising to the challenge of putting on creative and fun social events which resulted in people’s lives being transformed.

If you are interested in partnering alongside us please get in contact with our missions team leader John Lee

Johnlee@proclaimerschurch.com
Mobile: 07746855114
Office:  (+ 44) 1603 740064
www.metamorphic-water.org/

Acts 17:16, “… [Paul] was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.”

We are often times distressed by what we see in our world today. Separating ourselves from the world is though is not a choice we can make. In fact it is opposite to the words of Jesus, who said,

John 17:15, “My prayer is not that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one.” And again He says John 17:18, “As You sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world”.

God is not calling us to a monastic life of silence and separation from our fast paced and ever changing world. We are not called to be so busy that we miss opportunities to engage with our fellow travelers. Church is not a place for us to retreat to from the “big bad ooga boogga” world around us. In fact the church was never designed to become a refuge from the world.

The desire of Jesus the Master Builder and Architect of the church is exactly the opposite! His design is that we find ourselves right smack in the middle of society, our generation and the world at large!

When it comes to feeling distressed … I think it is actually good for us to feel this kind of distress and allow our hearts to be moved by what moves God’s heart.

Look at the word “distressed;” In the Greek this word implies that Paul was stirred, sharpened or stimulated. It is an old verb used only once here in the book of Acts. What Paul saw stirred him, and sharpened his ability to speak. It was in fact an irritation that moved him to action.

21^st Century church people are also distressed and stirred by the hardship they see in their community. 21^st Century Christians are vitally aware of the desperate needs of people around them and regard their journey as a mission. The 21^st Century Church are a people motivated by the very cause of Christ.

A prayer …
May our lives, our intellect and our emotions be stirred and distressed. May our communication skills be sharpened and our attention to the world around us be stimulated so we see and hear as Christ sees and hears.

May we become irritated with church baggage from decades and centuries ago and be stimulated by the Spirit of God to reach out in genuine love accompanied by authentic actions.

May we be galvanized into radical love to touch and impact people around us who are worshiping unknown gods and introduce them to the God of all ages Maker of Heaven and Earth. 

If you hire venues for your church, you could be paying VAT that you don’t need to pay. We saved £500 a month when we found out!

We recently discovered that the venues we hire for weekend and midweek events and services can actually ‘disapply’ the option to charge us VAT on those hires. Up until that point we had been paying over £100 a week in VAT. I’ve asked our Executive Pastor, Owen Morgan to explain the details.

A Landlord/Property Owner has the option to tax the facilities they let out. Most Landlords/Property Owners choose to apply tax because it means that they can reclaim the VAT they pay up to the amount they charge. However there is an option in the VAT on Property law that says if a room or building is being hired for charitable purposes the option to tax can be ‘disapplied’.

It is at the discretion of the owner as obviously the less tax they pay, the less they can claim back. We asked the hotel where we regularly meet if they would ‘disapply’ the option and provided them with the relevant paragraphs from the HMRC Guidelines (see below). They agreed to ‘disapply’ the tax when letting the facilities to us. They are able to do this as the amount of tax they usually charge is greater than the amount the claim back.

We hire the hotel for one day every week but it is also possible to disapply the option to tax on a whole building for example our administrative offices. However it is not as easy to convince the Landlord/Property Owner to do this they are not able to offset any VAT paid out on repairs and maintenance.

All that is required is for you to inform the company which you are hiring from and provide them with the relevant HMRC information and they can ‘disapply’ the tax. We saved nearly £500 per month – that’s £6000 per year!

Unfortunately, the law can only be applied from the present time forward. That means that we were unable to claim back VAT retrospectively. We looked into pursuing this but found that there was case law from where someone had tried to claim it back. Our friends in Newcastle our still looking into it and we’ll keep you posted if we hear of any success stories.

Click here to go to the HMRC website for Notice 742A: Section 3.5 is the relevant bit.

For further queries contact the HMRC Charities Helpline on 08453 020203.

Denise and I are resting in a Bangkok hotel! We've done some shopping (bought a really nice coat!) and eating some great Thai food. We've slept in both mornings, walking a lot each day and just spending some good time together. Bangkok is a great place to just take a break.

I know a few pastors who hardly ever take holidays and hardly ever take a day off each week. When Denise is present during a discussion like this she goes for the jugular vein. No one gets off the hook. She says it isn't fair on your wife or your children. You can’t work every day and every week with no time off. You're breaking a "Sabbath" principle established by God in Genesis.

God thought it was a great idea to rest and review His work. Resting for us mere mortals is to renew our strength and re-create. It is an opportunity to spend valuable time with our spouse and children. They need us to have undivided time to concentrate on them exclusively.

Time away is also great to see things from another perspective. It is a time to work ON the church and not IN the church. It is a time of review; we tend to see things differently from a distance. We will see some things we'd never see if we weren't separated by space and time.

We're here in Bangkok until Sunday morning when we board Thai to Sydney. Hillsong Conference starts on Tuesday and we're excited about being there!! We'll arrive rested and relaxed ready to receive revelation and inspiration. We won’t be trying to overcome jet lag or getting over our tiredness from work.

Sometimes you just need to take a break!

Bless,

Tom Rawls