We've now moved to a little village called St Erth a short distance away from my not-so-new job.

So now we're looking at a new mission field and seeking God's will and purpose for us here!

Pray with us that we'll grow links into the community and see God do great things here!

First of all it's been a couple of months since I last updated you all and secondly, it appears I failed to ever mention that I had been made redundant mid-December!

So first, update on the last couple of months:

The prayer group have continued to grow with another couple being called into Looe meeting two of our existing members by "accident". It appeared that they both moved into the same street within a few weeks of each other. Praise God for His divine "accidents".

We're also continuing to grow spiritually. The last few months we've really been aware of several lessons that God has been and is teaching us:

The Rusty Bucket (a Christian Coffee Shop & Community project) which was dreamed up by a couple in our group 4 years ago and is now fast approaching opening day. It should be open at the end of the month and, thanks to a little prayer and patience, is so much more than any of us could've imagined it would be a year ago.

Now an update on us and the work situation:

Firstly, Lucy is pregnant. I never mentioned that, either, did I? We found out on Christmas Day and she's now 15 weeks, a mere 25 weeks to go!

My search for work has been largely fruitless. Since finding out I was going to be made redundant I have had 3 interviews, despite apply for countless roles. 2 of those were based in Wales and would involve me travelling up a couple days a week and were before I finished working. Then it all went quiet.

Eventually a job came up in St. Ives. It was a bit far away but I figured I need to keep my options open, so I applied. Lucy and I prayed about it and asked the Lord to be in complete control - should He want us to move I would get the job, should He want us to stay He should intervene and close the door to me.

As time went by I also felt the Lord put Self-Employment before me as an option, so we again prayed and felt that the options were now two: St. Ives (and moving) or Self-Employment (and staying). Both seemed to feel right, but selfishly I wanted Self-Employment. I wanted to stay here, but we had put it before God so we had to wait on Him.

Today I attended a second interview, was offered and joyfully accepted the role in St. Ives. I'll be starting in April and commuting until the probationary period is up, at which point we'll be moving.

Prayer points:

It was an excellent night, really very quiet but probably about right for our first patrol to settle us in. None of us had ever done this before (in fact no one within the whole Liskeard and Looe Street Pastor group has ever done this before) so we were just finding our feet.

During the course of the night we had a few good encounters with people, Spikeys turned out to be a really good conversation starter with women. But most of all it seemed that the 4 of us dressed the same was too much for people to ignore.

Two of us had a particularly encouraging conversation with a group of 4 (2 young ladies and a couple of lads) who asked us all sorts of things about who we were and what we were doing. It turned out one of them believed she had been spiked the week before so was particularly keen to make use of a spikey or two. The whole conversation, how we were received as well as the encounter with a recipient of a spiked drink just seemed to reinforce that we were on the right mission.

In the end, though, it was a really quiet night. Every one seemed to be looking after themselves alright (not that there were many left out), and there were only so many times we could walk around in a circle and introduce ourselves to the same people. So our team leader took the decision that we should call it a night and after one last patrol around the town, including the areas that the underage drinkers generally hang around (nobody there), we headed back to base for a debrief and then we headed home to bed.

I doubt very much that every week will be as easy as this week, particularly as the weather warmed up, but it was really encouraging and I can't wait to go out again.

Please pray for the Street Pastors of Liskeard and Looe. Pray for more volunteers particularly, as we don't yet have enough to adequately cover one area, never mind both. We need at least 19 more Street Pastors to be able to do both places on a Saturday night.

Today we met with a couple who lead a local group of Christians called the "Looe Christian Fellowship" - they have been in Looe for over 20 years and have been praying for it all that time, and were not aware of all that God has started here the last 5 years.

It was a privilege to meet with them and tell them of all that God is doing, and to invite them to join with us on a Wednesday for prayer.

We have no intention of absorbing their fellowship into our "group", and especially not to absorb it into the Grace family. Nor do they have any intention of stealing us away. But they may well turn out to be one of many interconnected groups which form the Church (big 'C') in Looe.

Their mission is their mission, our mission is our mission; the battles may be different but it's the same war, and we're on the same team. Gradually our small band of dedicated prayer warriors are starting to reach out and build links with the other Christians in Looe, it's incredible to watch it happening.

Please pray for tomorrows prayer group as we introduce Bob and Hilary to the rest of our rag-tag band of Jesus people, it will be an important step in the building of God's Kingdom here.

Please also pray for wisdom, that as we start to reach beyond our own circle and connect with those of different backgrounds that we express on the one hand love and mercy and on the other die-hard dedication to God's word. Pray that we will become all things to all men without ever watering down the gospel!

Been a while since we've updated you all on what's happening here, so thought we'd update you on all the exciting stuff!

Both of us have been involved with the Street Pastor training, I'll be becoming a Street Pastor (Commissioning on the 5th December!) and Lucy will be backing us up with prayer as a Prayer Pastor. Preparations have gone well, with the exception of the key founding member and group coordinator being struck down with cancer and passing away last week.

If you want to help financially towards the Street Pastors in Liskeard and Looe, feel free to add a pledge to http://fundraising.twinklebob.co.uk/index.php?id=2 and I'll chase you up for it later. Anything in excess of the £300 I need to cover my costs will be added to their funds.

Some of our friends have progressed with their plans to have a Christian coffee shop in Looe (I think I mentioned it before) and now have a property. Check out therustybucket.co.uk and therustybucketcoffeeshop.co.uk. These are exciting times, a big Christian presence right in the heart of Looe and a fabulous meeting space.

The church at Morval recently had a meeting where they revealed a plan to invest into Looe big time, so we're looking forward to working with them in that respect. Hopefully this will take the form of a network of small groups, rather than empire building. If they don't go down that road, we certainly will.

So, few quick prayer points:

"Becoming a Body - Rethinking Church" is a quick introduction to my current thoughts on Church, on being Church and doing Church. It's an introduction to the way that I'm going to do my future thinking about Church. Finally, it's an invitation to others to also think differently about Church.

The content of this document is going to seriously impact what we're looking to do here in Looe.

To take a look for yourself, please visit it online here: https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AShn8L9WHtTlZGM2azMydjZfNjdjdmR6NzlnNA&hl=en_GB&authkey=CLq8qr4B

Please feel free to make constructive criticism or to comment on the content - but if you don't agree, let's be grown ups and talk about it, rather than hurling insults at each other ;-)

God bless and happy reading!

Friday just gone marked a year of us being here in Looe. I have to be honest it's been nothing that I expected! My problem is, I'm impatient - I wanted everyone to be saved in the first week...

When we came here, we had very new and developing ideas about simple (or organic) church that we felt would impact the church we felt we were sent here to plant. The existence of a strong (and large) bible-based, Jesus-centred church on the outskirts of Looe really through us (as did the fact that God had seemingly sent so many people here over the last 3-5 years).

It turns out, God really wants to start a simple church network here and He wants Grace Community Church (and all the people He called here) to be involved. It's exciting, but it raises some challenges.

We came here with no ties to a specific church to cause political issues, but we're now engaged in helping the Christians from Grace break out of their church without politically breaking away. It's not exactly fun, but we're making progress. God is good!

In the meantime, as an introduction to the concepts of simple church, I have been writing a document since March (on and off) which is finally nearly ready. I've just got a few people kindly proof-reading it for me and should be able to publish it soon.

One thing the document highlights is that as Christians, we should be careful not to set too many limits as these often limit the growth of the body - one such important limit is the uncrossable border of denominations, so in light of that I'm going to start looking at networking with as many local Christians as I can get my hands on!

On a different subject, Street Pastor training has finally started! The Liskeard and Looe Street Pastors should hit the streets shortly before Christmas!

A couple of prayer requests, if you wouldn't mind: