Expecting God to Speak

"We are a small church throwing out a very very wide net, so we really need God to help us."

Tomorrow (Saturday 3rd July) we are having a prayer meeting at 9am at Kingsburn Hall in Burnage, South Manchester. I wanted to remind you because I am really looking forward to it. I am expecting God to talk to us! We have loads to ask God for and we have many things that only God can change.

I am desperate to see us grow. I want to see more people Join us from Hyde, Denton, Dukinfield, Ashton, Oldham, Chadderton, Reddish, Levenshulme, Gorton, Burnage,and Fallowfield. That list of locations is where many of you live and I know that I have missed out a whole bunch of places! We are a spread out group of Missionaries. So I want to see Good bring us new people.

In September we start CCM:City (evening meeting in Fallowfield) and we also have CCM:East (every Sunday at Hyde Town hall), both of these venues need to grow not because we are all about meeting attendance but because who we gather on a Sunday is a fair indication of who is part of CCM!

We are a small church throwing out a very very wide net, so we really need God to help us.

So 9am, Sat 3rd July at Kingsburn Hall (Map is here). We will start promptly and finish promptly (I promise). We will pray hard for an hour.

It would be awesome to see you.

Christ Church Manchester News - 30th June 2010

I hope you are fit well and spoiling for a punch up. Here are some vital pieces of info for you -

Prayer Meeting -  On Saturday at 9am we are meeting at Kingsburn hall in Burnage to pray. Click here for a map. We are meeting to pray because we want CCM to grow. We want it to grow numerically, in discipleship, in mission and in Gods power. So we need to pray.

You maybe thinking Saturday morning is a ridiculous time for a prayer meeting! You maybe right! We are going to start promptly at 9am and finish at 10am on the nose. We are going to pray hard and expect God to answer.

So July 3rd 9am at Kingsburn Hall in Burnage (814 Burnage Lane, Burnage, M19 1RS). You maybe thinking that Burnage is a long way from where you live and you are probably correct. However, CCM is so spread out that a meeting anywhere in Greater Manchester will be miles away from someone! Remember, it is an experiment to see what works. Show up and see what it feels like!

Prayer requests - Minan is now out of hospital. The family still need prayer and support. So keep them in your prayers.

Ian Collinge - Ian strained his throat a few months back and it seems to be getting worse. He needs to be able to speak and sing at a number of important events over the summer. Please pray that his throat heals quickly.

Lisa Upton - Lisa has a dodgy back. Recently she has been experiencing sever pain in her back that is quite debilitating. Pray that God straightens and strengthens her spine.

Faith Purcell - Faith also has a dodgy back. Pause right now and pray for these guys.

So have a good week and always remember that chasing a mouse in the dark with a carving knife is not big, clever or ultimately successful.

Students at Christ Church Manchester

"We are at the very heart of where all the students live, study and party."

Manchester has a large and influential population of students. At CCM we want students to feel they can quickly get involved in who we are as a church and help us to grow and improve as a community.

From September 5th 2010 we will be running a meeting (CCM:City) at Luther King House in Fallowfield. This is a 10 minute walk from Owens Park Halls (massive student halls) and is just off Oxford Road, south of the curry mile. It is easily accessable from the Universities, the city centre and the south of Manchester because it is on a very busy bus route. This venue is at the very heart of where all the students live, study and party.

Until June 2010 we met in a vodka bar in Fallowfield but we outgrew that facility so are moving up the road in anticipation of further growth. The meeting will start at 6pm on a Sunday evening and we fully intend to have passionate and authentic worship, as well as relevant and challenging Bible teaching. We also run mid week community groups where we hang out, consume cake, disciple each other and probably eat some more cake.

We also have something called The Chapel. The Chapel is very much a work in progress and currently is a creative community made up of musicians, artists, bloggers, tweeters, consumers, creators and anybody who loves culture. Manchester is an incredibly creative and entrepreneurial city so we want to reach out into these communities by creating, supporting and outputting culture.

So far we have run club nights and open mic evenings. Our intention is too broaden this out to a wide range of culture activities depending on the creative talent that we have available to us.

So if you are student in Manchester or if you are soon moving to this incredible city then please contact Tim Simmonds on 07961 233 768, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or find me on twitter or facebook.

Christ Church Manchester News - 22nd June 2010

I am back from two weeks of relaxing holiday and I am still tired. "Why are you tired? You have just been on holiday AND you work for the church, you lazy so-and-so" I hear you cry. Well lets just say that Battlestar Galactica is very addictive. Wowzers.

So what been going on? I go away for two weeks and nothing happens! BORING!

Here are some Sci-Fi blasts of News joy -

Sunday Food - This Sunday we are going to hang around after church eat food, put some horrible disney kids film on, and be friends. If you havent been, you should. fact.

Anyways, once again I forgot to organise the food. So please email/text/carrier pigeon me with offers of food. That would be awesome. (Do it now, before you read the rest of this blog) (please)

Prayer Meeting - We are putting on a few prayer meetings because we want CCM to grow. We want it to grow numerically, in discipleship, in mission and in Gods power. So we need to pray.

I heard good things about last weeks prayer meeting. The next prayertastic meeting will be on Saturday July 3rd at 9am. Thats righty people, a prayer meeting at 9am on a Saturday morning!??!!?? Whats wrong with me? Well it is an experiment. It is notoriously difficult to get people to show up at prayer meetings even though they are often the most powerful and important meeting a church can have. So we are doing meetings at a bunch of different times to see what works.

So we next meet to pray on July 3rd 9am at Kingsburn Hall in Burnage (814 Burnage Lane, Burnage, M19 1RS). You maybe thinking that Burnage is a long way from where you live and you are probably correct. However, CCM is so spread out that a meeting anywhere in Greater Manchester will be miles away from someone! Remember, it is an experiement to see what works. Show up and see what it feels like!

Prayer requests - Minan is now out of hospital. The family still need prayer and support. So keep them in your prayers.
Ian Collinge - Ian strained his throat a few months back and it seems to be getting worse. He needs to be able to speak and sing at a number of important events over the summer. Please pray that his throat heals quickly.
Lisa Upton - Lisa has a dodgy back. Recently she has been experiencing sever pain in her back that is quite debilitating. Pray that God straightens and strengthens her spine.

If you are sick, or know someone I have forgotten, please email me and I will let people know.

Anyways, have a cracking week and remember that it is incredibly difficult to chase, catch and kill a mouse with a BBQ fork… (those little monsters can really shift)

Christ Church Manchester News - 31st May 2010

So yesterday was a sad Sunday at Christ Church Manchester as it was the Mawson families last Sunday with us! Booooooo.

They are moving to Plymouth. I hear rumor that living by the sea, in an area with more sunshine and less rain than Greater Manchester is deeply rubbish. So I give them a couple of months before they decide that living in the Glorious North of England is by far the better option. Everybody repeat after me “SUNSHINE AND SEA IS RUBBISH. HILLS AND RAIN ARE AWESOME.” repeat this every morning 10 times and I promise everything will be ok…....

Prayer - We are going to run some prayer meetings. Why? Because prayer works and we have a bunch of stuff to ask God for and even more stuff to thank him for. We will have a series of three meetings at a variety of times and locations. You may see one prayer meeting at a time and place that is difficult for you but this shouldn’t cause you to panic. We are conducting a small experiment of running these meetings at different times to see what suits people best. This is not to say that we will then fix on one time and location for all prayer meetings until Jesus returns. No. We are flexible like a very very bendy thing.

The basic theme of these meetings is Momentum. It seems to me that as a church we are gaining some momentum (visitors, growth, salvation etc) and we want this to carry on and increase. I am expecting God to move, speak and blow our minds. You really don’t want to miss these. Seriously.

So the first Meeting will be on June 15th at 730pm. This will be held at a venue in the centre of Hyde. Stu Gosling will let you know more details as soon as he has them.
The second will be an early-ish Saturday morning thingy on July 3rd. I (Tim Simmonds) will let you know the time and location.
The third meeting will be an mid week early morning affair on July 12th. Alistair Metcalfe will let you know the time and location.

I honestly believe that when we pray God listens and gets involved.

Minan - Keep praying. She is making progress, but it is slow and painful. We want to see her healed and we want her Mum and Dad (Alex and Anna) to know God’s presence with them.

There will be no emails or blogs from me for a couple of weeks as we are going on holiday. We are going to Dorset and Cornwall where it is warm and sunny. I fully expect this warmth and sunshine to be really annoying.

SUNSHINE AND SEA IS RUBBISH. HILLS AND RAIN ARE AWESOME.SUNSHINE AND SEA IS RUBBISH. HILLS AND RAIN ARE AWESOME.SUNSHINE AND SEA IS RUBBISH. HILLS AND RAIN ARE AWESOME.SUNSHINE AND SEA IS RUBBISH. HILLS AND RAIN ARE AWESOME.SUNSHINE AND SEA IS RUBBISH. HILLS AND RAIN ARE AWESOME.

Christ Church Manchester News - 25th May 2010

"So always remember that Dubstep is a style of music that sounds like R2-D2 being beaten up by a Rubbish Lorry"

Usually I post this blog on a Monday and the brighter ones among you may have noticed today is Tuesday. So what was I doing yesterday? Well let me tell you a story.

On Sunday night we had The Chapel (it was our biggest night ever. Woop Woop!!). The Chapel usually finishes at about 8pm which means I am usually home and unpacked by 9pm. This week however was a little different. This week we ran The Chapels first club night - The Crypt. It was a great night. The DJ dropped a number of incredible tunes (I think that is the correct terminology…), Chapelites brought their mates along, people wandered in off the street and we generated a whole bunch of interest. We probably had 50-60 people through the door.

Anyways at about 10:30pm I realized a number of different things - 1) I am 33, 2) 10:30pm on a Sunday evening is quite late for me, 3) Parties in Student land kick off at about 11pm, 4) Christians always go home early, 5) The basslines that DJ B+ was playing may well have shifted my spleen about a foot closer to my head.

So on Monday morning I stared blankly at the people I was meeting and tried to look like I could even hear what they were saying over the ringing in my ears!

Anyways, The Crypt and The Chapel were both successful and I need a holiday to reorganize my internal organs.

So here is some spleen-shifting news for you -

Minan is improving. The prayer and the treatment is working. She has been eating and playing which is very positive indeed. Does anyone have children’s chair with a low table or attached tray that they could borrow? Minan is a little weak so it needs to be sturdy to support her.

I am sure there is more news than that but that’s all I got at the moment. If I have forgotten something that is vitally important then send me an email and I will make the necessary arrangements.

So always remember that Dubstep is a style of music that sounds like R2-D2 being beaten up by a Rubbish Lorry.