Ashford Congregational Church (ACC) in Middlesex is a fellowship which has been featured on this website several times – as they have worked with us both in evangelism and evangelism-training in the past. We’ve assisted them with Confident Christianty events as well as their Passion for Life evangelism initiative with two other local churches. Keith Wilson was their pastor until recently, he wrote this for us, and has now moved on to work for Christianity Explored Ministries – you can see him in action here. Additionally, ACC is also the church where I grew up and through which I came to faith in Christ as a teenager!
I was invited back to Ashford to speak at their Pentecost service a few weeks ago – which was a great privilege. Living in Scotland means that I rarely get back there, so several other members of the Solas team have been there far more recently than me. I was interviewed about the work of Solas and then preached on Acts 2, the coming of the Holy Spirit and what that means for us today. The sermon audio is here:
It was a real joy for me to be back in the place that was my spiritual home for almost twenty years, where I have so many significant memories. There were even a few people I remembered from the old days, too!
The greatest joy of the day turned out to be a special gift that the church had prepared for Solas. The church has its weekly prayer meeting on a Sunday evening and they invited me to go and say a few words about Solas there. I shared a little about our evangelism work, the wider context, evangelism-training, and resources we make – and after each section the church prayed for our work. For example, I spoke about Short Answers videos and the people who see them online. Hearing God’s people calling out to Him to bless this ministry and use it to call more people to Himself, was really very moving. The fact that for an hour the church gave themselves to pray for Solas and our work was the most wonderful and unexpected gift. What a huge encouragement!
We’d love you to join in praying for our work – it means more to us than you can imagine. The best way to do that is to get our prayer letter here, and our WhatsApp prayer channel is here. Come and join in!