Page 4 - Contact Summer 2020

ANNU AL
K IR K SE S SION R EP OR T 2019
As I sit in the middle of the current Covid
shutdown, I’m having diculty remembering
what I did last month never mind what we
as a church achieved together, during 2019!
Then as I looked through the on-line diary it
became more and more obvious to me that
God is still on His throne; He is still in control
and He is keenly interested in all we are doing
to extend His kingdom in not only our part
of Ballymena but also in the wider world and
the activities that He has involved us in. It
has been quite a year for my rst as Clerk of
Session.
As we entered the new year and the
opportunities that God would introduce us to
it was never more important to be clear
on our vision – ‘to be a church creating fully
devoted followers of the Lord Jesus Christ
who are Loving, Learning, Serving and
Reaching in His name’ – if we wanted to
become more eective in our walk with
Jesus Christ, to be more Christ-like in our
daily living and to unashamedly be disciples
of Jesus. That is easier said than done and so
we are grateful to Norman once more, as he
has been directed by the Holy Spirit, for the
way in which he has guided us through God’s
word to enable development of our walk, we
continue to thank God that He has placed
him in this leadership role. Together with
Norman and Keith, we started the year
looking at ‘the Trinity and Us’, and as we
moved through Lent we explored the
relevance of the teaching in the Psalms to
our everyday living, before tackling what
‘Being Human’ actually means in the run up
to our summer break. Our winter series saw
us ‘Journeying with God’ and bringing us
through areas of our faith and living for Christ
which encouraged us to mature as Christians
and to understand the truths essential to
being fully devoted followers.
But 2019, while being a really valuable time
of nourishment from God’s word was also
a time when God asked us to be more
deliberate in our witness through the
reintroduction of an Alpha course just after
Easter. Much has been said about how God
blessed us during this time with many being
added to His kingdom, many rekindling their
love for our Saviour through the work of the
Holy Spirit but for all of us, as the church
family in HK, a lesson that God has a plan for
each one of us (valuable for us as I write in
mid-2020) and what we are asked to do is
scatter the seed, to be witnesses to what He
has done in our lives and He will provide the
harvest.
As evidence of God’s continuing providence
to the witness of HK on Saturday 8th June a
number of the current membership ventured
out to the site of the original establishment
of HK on the edge of Buckna village to
commemorate the 250 years of God’s
continuing blessing. A small service was
conducted and prayers of thanksgiving for
the willingness of our forebearers to trust in
God’s plan for HK – of which we are now a
small part. On the weekend of 5th and 6th
October we welcomed Tim Matthews, the
senior pastor at St Swithuns Bournemouth
for our Word and Spirit conference. Using
examples from his real-life experiences in
leading his church plant Tim challenged us to
‘Advance’ as a fellowship and seek to be risk
takers for Jesus and proclaim His love to our
community.