Rob Peters begins our journey through the gospel of Luke
Author: beechwoodchapel
A small church of people who live and meet together on and near the Beechwood estate in Birkenhead. We exist to disciple and make followers of Jesus Christ for his glory. We are by no means perfect, but we believe that God's grace is enough to change anyone's life. The lives of the people who are in our church family bear witness to that! Whether you are a local or a visitor, young or old, rich or poor, male or female, christian or not, you are always welcome to come along and find out more. We will blog about events and news on this page so you an keep updated.
Wirral Gospel Partnership Event: What would stop someone going to heaven?
Last night, a group of 20 were able to go to Port Sunlight to hear Roger Carswell interview David Hamilton at a Wirral Gospel Partnership event. It was a great evening, and David’s testimony was certainly very challenging! Despite the things that he has done in the past, as a member of the UVF in Northern Ireland, David said he is now completely confident that he will go to heaven when he dies. He said that it is not good people that go to heaven, but saved people – referring to those that have put their trust in Jesus and been saved by God’s grace.
We are all tempted to think of ourselves as better than other people, as good people; even David said that before he was a christian he used to think of himself as a ‘good terrorist’. The reality is though that we are seperated from God, cut off from him because of our sin. That is why he sent Jesus to die in our place, to take the punishment that we deserve so that we can be right with God, no longer seperated but in his family, so much so that we can call him Father. Was David just forgiven by God for all that awful stuff he did? No. Jesus was punished on the cross for all that awful stuff that David did.
That is why David was so confident that he is going to heaven. Going to heaven is not about being a good person. It is about putting your faith in Jesus, in the fact that all our sins were put on him by God and that there is nothing left for us to pay. Christians like David are not arrogant about going to heaven – they haven’t done anything to earn their place – but they can nonetheless be confident that they are going to heaven because of what Jesus has done.
If you want to know more, come and find out at church or get in touch with Tim.
Reflections on our vision day
On Saturday, we had a morning together to look back on what we have done in the past, what’s going on now, and what we want to do in the future.
We started off looking back from 1973 to today, remembering what has gone on at Beechwood Chapel since the day that the congregation first started meeting at the Manor Primary School on the estate. It was great to look back and remember many encouraging times, to see what God has done to bring us to this point.
Next, we looked at what the Bible says about church – what is it for? Why do we meet together? We came to the conclusion that there are three really important things the church is to do according to the Bible. They are to worship God, to teach one another and grow as christians, and finally to share the message of the gospel.
After that, we thought about the future. In light of what we had just discussed, what did we want to see happen at Beechwood Chapel over the next 15 years? We wanted to be ambitious and bold, thinking of what God might do within our church and in peoples lives on the estate and the local area.
Finally, we spent some time coming up with a vision statement to help direct our strategic planning in the years to come. We came up with the following statement which describes what we exist to do:
Introducing people to Jesus and growing together as his followers for God’s glory.
See our Who we are page to find a breakdown of this statement.
So, we are now ready to face up to our current challenges, encouraged by what we had time to look at, directed by the message of the Bible, and equipped with our new vision statement.
Beechwood Chapel 