Hugh Pearce, Redeemer Church Colchester, reflects on North Essex’s response phase
We have not long finished the responding phase of Who Cares? in the Colchester area and I am sure there will be much more fruit to come in the months ahead as people opened up about their pain, built relationships and have ongoing contact with many who have responded to their questions.
The overriding encouragement for me has been seeing people released to engage others in spiritual conversations. Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful and we need to pray for workers…for many the struggle is how to start a conversation about their faith and love for Jesus. Who Cares? enables everyone to do that - asking the question ‘What hurts you the most?’ Inevitably leads to queries about why we are doing this in the first place, or letting them know our church is running this initiative…these conversation can simply be letting people know we are Christians, and many lead to further conversations of greater depth and fruitfulness.
Finding out the hurts of our own church community and the arenas our members are involved in has been sobering and helpful - it has meant we can equip our people, care for them and their friends better.
This is initiative has been so helpful, above and beyond the areas we thought it would be.
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