Jars of Clay! Just Jars of Clay!

Last night at St Helen's we had our 'Annual Parochial Church Meeting' at which William Taylor and a number of others laid out the vision for the church over the next ten years. The venue is pretty sizeable but even so it was packed out!

The numbers on the electoral roll at St Helen's are currently 895 people - although I am sure that many more actually attend our range of services. This makes us one of the largest churches in London despite having lost a significant number of people in recent years to our various church plants around the city. We have a thriving Mandarin speaking congregation and on-going work among other communities within London. St Helen's continues to support work in the French speaking world and Sub-Saharan Africa. But William was very clear to emphasise that the continuing growth of the ministry here is not down to our abilities. It is the power of God's Word alone - it has to be - because we are just jars of clay! It is in our very weakness that God's power can shine through.

By God's grace our vision is to see 20 gospel hearted churches planted by 2020. We also want to develop a French speaking congregation from among the many such people based in London.

There is also a plan to beef up our 'Digital' ministry. The whole internet social networking thing is a vast new area we need to grow into. Our web page gives the impression that St Helen's is all about programmes rather than people and we hope to redress that perception by drawing on the individual stories of the people within our church family. So watch this space!

After the public business was wound up there was a brief meeting of the PCC - the Parochial Church Council - of which I am now formally a member. It is a real privilege to be part of this 20-30 strong group especially with such a fantastic strategy in place. It is comforting to be reminded that it is in our weakness that God's power will be demonstrated - I am very conscious of my own inadequacy, but I'm sure I'm not alone. Jars of Clay! Just Jars of Clay!