Faith for the Future
Part 4 of 4
by Jon Sidnell
Over the last few posts, we have shared the story of how God took a family from Andover, and moved them to Swindon. A global pandemic threatened to block the Trinity Life Church before we had even started. But God has proved faithful to what He promised! He has formed a people who love to worship Him, who celebrate grace, seeking to be faithful to His Word and to move in the power of the Spirit. At 30-35 people we’re still small, but filled with faith for what God wants to do in us and through us.
As we entered 2023, we sensed the Lord calling us to cultivate boldness and courage, but not based on mere bravado and gumption. We believe He wants us to open our eyes to the reality of the Kingdom of God where King Jesus rules and wants to bless Swindon. Where He reigns, we can expect salvation, forgiveness, healing, and God's presence through the Holy Spirit. The trouble is that the world trains us from an early age to only trust and believe in what our physical senses tell us. We can often miss what He wants to do. Jesus is calling us to repent and believe that His Kingdom is ‘at hand’ - close enough to touch and impact our lives and those around us.
We believe God is calling TLC to be a people who cultivate courageous faith, but that doesn’t mean that we breeze through life without fear. After all, if we didn’t feel fear, we wouldn’t need courage! Courageous living means that we don’t let fear control us. As we look to enter the reality of the Kingdom, we’re called to overcome fear with faith. The order of the day is feeling the fear and doing it anyway! Like Peter walking on water, we may succumb to fear and doubt for a moment, beginning to sink as we take faltering steps of faith. Like Peter, all we need to do is to cry out to the Lord and we will be lifted above the waves once again. This will be our way to defeat fear and start taking steps of faith. We will fix our eyes on Jesus and follow Him when He calls us to join Him where it seems impossible.
To help us cultivate boldness, we are building a culture that celebrates courage more than success. We all like a good success story and love to hear about the occasions when faith “works” in bringing healing and salvation. We think these stories will encourage and inspire us to step out in faith, which they certainly can, but strangely they can also have the opposite effect. Instead of spurring us on, they raise the bar beyond our reach.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d like some success stories! But we’ll also share stories of taking chances that didn’t pan out. Stories where we risk looking a bit silly, even if the story didn’t end as we hoped it would. Stories where we share a word of knowledge or offer to pray for someone, but get it wrong or nothing seems to happen. In this way, we can lower the bar and encourage one another to have a go and God can do a lot through people willing to have a go!
TLC is called to bold courage, but in some ways, our plans for this year may seem ‘common or garden’ if you are used to church life. We will continue to gather on Sundays for worship, teaching, fellowship, and time in the presence of God. We have struggled to build momentum with mid-week gatherings, so we’ve hit the pause button on these for now. Instead, we gather monthly for prayer and worship to seek God’s face and favour on us as we move forward on His mission. We’re continuing with men’s breakfasts and ladies' meals, as will our monthly lunches together on Sundays. We’re also encouraging organic ‘one-anothering’ in the day-to-day stuff of life. Taking a walk, catching up over coffee or with pints in hand, and eating together. This low-and-slow approach is all part of building the rich and deep community we need. It is this deep community that nurtures bold faith and inspires each of us to reach out with the Gospel. This sort of community life is needed even more in a post-COVID world.
Alongside building deep community, we are forming teams to share out ministry and serving roles amongst those who call TLC home. We’ll initially focus on mobilising people to help with things like worship, hospitality, Trinity Life Kids, Sunday setup, and AV/presentation. We are also forming a group of prophetic people. This group will help us keep our hearts and ears open and continue to encourage deeper life in the Spirit and raise our faith for God’s work in and around us.
One area we are looking to recapture from our earlier days of meeting in gardens is engagement with the communities God has placed us amongst. We’re sticking with our model of gathering for equipping and scattering to authentic and faithful presence with others in our daily lives. But there is value in the world seeing the beauty of the church and not just individual believers. One way we look to do this is by participating in community events and fetes. We have already booked one over the summer and are looking to book more throughout the year. Taking part in these events will allow us to love and bless the part of Swindon we belong to. We will provide some fun and games, as well as offering free books sharing the gospel and the opportunity for people to request prayer. A further community initiative is an Egg Hunt we will run on Easter Saturday. This gives an opportunity to invite friends and neighbours for fun, plenty of chocolate, and a further invite to our Easter Sunday service.
Another new thing for us is running Hope Explored in a local pub. This is a short three-week course based on Luke’s gospel which looks at how Jesus offers us hope, peace, and purpose. It grounds this on all He has done through His life, His death on the cross, and His resurrection. We have already run the course once this year, operating as a dry run to give the church a taste of what the course is like. We had one guest join us for the first session. Sadly they didn’t return, but we pray that God will water the seed planted that week. We plan to run Hope Explored at least once more this year and are praying for God to draw people ready to hear and believe the gospel.
We are excited about what God has in store for Trinity Life Church in the months and years to come. We believe that people will hear the gospel of King Jesus, believe it, and find salvation. We hope to see our first baptisms as a church community. We are praying for an increase in the depth of our experience of God's glorious presence. We are planning to go deeper in His Word. We’re in faith to see signs and wonders amongst us as we take small steps of faith. This is a big adventure, requiring great courage, fresh faith, and deep community.
There’s room for more to come and join us in the adventure He has for us, and now is an ideal time to get involved in the early stages of a new church. We came into 2023 with a sense that there are others living outside Swindon who the Lord would like to call to be a part of TLC. Maybe reading our story over the last few weeks has stirred and inspired you. Why not pray about whether the Lord is calling you to join us? Feel free to get in touch, come and visit, and explore if there is life here in Swindon for you. You’ll be most welcome!
Jon and Laluna Sidnell lead the team planting Trinity Life Church in Swindon. If you’d like to get in touch, you can visit their website (trinitylifeswindon.com) or email hello@trinitylifeswindon.com.
If this has provoked you to consider church planting, and you'd like to speak to someone about it, then please email Chris Kilby from the Commission UK Team on chrisk@commission.global
