'Red Folk': A poem about our children's workers

At Redeemer Church London, we have a series of children’s groups on Sunday mornings for those aged from three months up to 11 years.

The four different sessions - split by age brackets – help teach youngsters about Bible stories while their parents get to hear the sermon in the main service.

The groups are run by a team of dedicated volunteers each week - and you can find them wearing red T-shirts.

Church member STEVE PAGE wrote this poem all about them. We hope you enjoy it!

RED FOLK

The Red-Folk are well known to some, but less well known to others.

You see, the Red-Folk do their reddy-ness in the background with the smallest folk.

This means that bigger folk will only notice them if they have small folk friends.

The Red-Folk are quite distinct; I don’t mean their tomato redness, I mean their ability to fold themselves small.

Now, you may know that small folk are very used to legs and knees and big feet and are they are very, very good at winding their way through a forest of trousers and skirts to get to where they need to go.

But this can be tiring, and sometimes small folk misjudge the sway of a leg or a knee and bounce off them, falling back onto their bottoms.

This can sometimes be funny, but it is often painful and can spark small folk tears.

So, when small folk find that the Red-Folk just love to fold their legs and knees away and come down to small folk level, you can imagine the sheer joy the small folk feel.

Some Red-Folk don’t last long because their legs and knees begin to ache and the small folk noise becomes too loud and the Red-Folk miss ‘Big Conversation.’

But there are some Red-Folk who are excellent at folding their legs and knees away and who love nothing better than small conversations with small folk.

You see they have discovered that this is where small and precious truths are first planted to later become stronger big truths and they have seen that this is also where small folk plant big love in the Red-Folk’s big hearts.

So, if you are looking for the Red-Folk, you need to look down to where the small important conversations are taking place with the small important folk.

If you want to find out more about our children's groups on Sunday mornings, please contact our family worker Abi at: abi@redeemerlondon.org.

My testimony - Esther-Maria Cornford

ESTHER-MARIA CORNFORD, who is part of Redeemer Church London, reveals in her testimony how God broke the shackles of her past and will never let her down.

Jesus Christ came into my life unexpectedly in 2017 and transformed me and my life in the most wonderful ways. Through Him, I have found love, freedom, and grace.

I grew up as part of an atheist family in Germany. My childhood and adolescence were largely marked by a series of traumatic events.

I witnessed the difficult breakdown of my parents’ marriage and several of their subsequent relationships, experienced physical and emotional abuse and neglect, and lost family members in a variety of different ways.

Often, I was left feeling hopeless, unworthy of love, lonely, and depressed. The lack of stability in my life caused me to be untrusting and confrontational. I felt that I could not possibly forgive the people who had hurt me. These negative feelings caused inner turmoil within me.

Yet, something changed when I was 13 years old. A friend invited me to go to church with her one Sunday and I went along, not expecting or wanting to meet God, but I believe I did. When I walked into this church, I felt a sudden rush of warmth flood my body.

In that moment, I felt secure and loved. I did not understand the feeling or Who or what was behind it, but I felt a clear presence.

From this day on, I took classes about Christianity for a year, got christened and confirmed in the Lutheran church, and started reading the Bible and praying sporadically.

This year was simultaneously one of the hardest years of my life, as I experienced abandonment and violence, got bullied at school, and lost my aunt and uncle in a car accident.

At 14 years of age, I stayed with my cousin, who had lost his parents in this accident, in hospital while he was undergoing operations and recovering from the crash. The hospital we stayed in had a chapel, which I visited to pray and ask God for help and strength, which he gave me.

But as the years went by I became more and more withdrawn. In order to deal with the memories, feelings, and more unfortunate life experiences, I turned to self-destructive methods, such as self-harming.

In 2017, I moved to London to study Musical Theatre. Within the first week of living here, I was once again invited to church by my dear friend, Reuben.

When I attended my first service at Redeemer Church London, I met Jesus Christ. For the first time, my eyes and ears were opened and I understood what I was actually saying as I was singing and worshipping.

I truly understood the Gospel. God revealed to me who He truly is: not some positive spiritual force, but a person who I can have a relationship with.

Jesus revealed Himself to me as a Brother and Friend. For the first time, I felt God the Father welcome me into His loving arms. More than anything, I felt grace, freedom, forgiveness, and love. I physically felt a weight being lifted off my shoulders and the shackles of my past breaking.

Jesus has changed how I view myself and my purpose in life because I no longer want to live for myself, but for Him. Firstly, entering into a relationship with Jesus has taught me that while humans have let me down, hurt me, and left me time and time again, He never will. Only Jesus can truly satisfy, heal, and make us whole.

Through spending time with Jesus, I have been able to start my healing process, grow, and forgive those I never thought I would be able to forgive.

Where I was once self-seeking, obstinate, and closed off, I am now open, humbled, and wanting to love everyone. I have found inner peace.

While I came to this country specifically to pursue a career which would allow me to act as someone else and entertain people with my abilities, I now want to always show others who I truly am in Christ Jesus, and use what God has given me to help others.

Therefore, I have even changed the career I am pursuing to fit my new purpose in life because God is worth it and my heart has been transformed completely.

No one’s life is perfect. Having Jesus in my life has not fully taken away all of my pain and grief. What He has given me though is a new perspective. He is my ever present help in trouble, my Lord and Saviour, who I can speak to and lean on.

However, more than that He is a holy and praiseworthy God. He has saved me from the disasters in my past because He is good and to bring glory to His precious Name.

Wherever you come from and whatever circumstances you have faced in your life, God can use them for your good and His glory, and He can bring healing even to the most broken of hearts.

Throughout the years since I've become a Christian, Jesus has continued to be faithfully at work in my life. Growing up I did not have positive male role models to teach me how men and women should relate to each other healthily. Yet now I get to give glory to God for the wonderful husband He has given me.

Together we have welcomed our first child and our expecting our second. Our daughters are a blessing and gift that I can only humbly praise God for.

God the Father has drawn me into closer relationship with Him every year - revealing Himself to me ever more graciously, sanctifying me, and showing me more of Who He is.

He has answered prayer upon prayer, He has been with me through some highs and lows, He has grown me, and He has blessed me.

I continue to give thanks to God for the way in which He has taken me out of brokenness into wholeness, joy, and a life I can live to the full through Him and by His grace alone for His glory alone.

Redeemer reads Ephesians 6

Welcome! Here at Redeemer we believe that the Bible is the word of God, that it’s alive, and that its words can and should shape every aspect of our lives as Christians. But we also know it’s not easy to get into the habit of reading it every day! So we are following the CBR Bible Reading plan - which can be found below - to help us read the bible together.

We are currently reading the book of Ephesians, and every week day we will be releasing a video on our social media & YouTube accounts, with a member of our Redeemer family explaining what they feel God is saying to them through the passage! 

Today we hear from Mandy as she shares with us from Ephesians 6.

If you have time, and a desire to know more, you’ll find ideas for further study of todays passage below.

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When Gaye Clark asked her 22 year old daughter to offer up some advice on how she could continue to be a good mother now that her kids were all grown up, she found the advice sounded a lot like Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 6. You can read the article - 9 Things Adult Daughters want their Mothers to know - below.

Hey! I'm your new family worker!

Hi Redeemer!

I am your new family worker!

I am so excited to be here with you, at a time such as this! We are experiencing a truly unique time in history. So it’s all the more fun to start a new job right now, don’t you think!? Our community circle recently asked how I felt about beginning my role with Redeemer. My answer? Nervous! 

But I’m not nervous for the traditional reasons. I’m not worried about getting along with the others in the office. I’m not nervous about the responsibilities of the job. I’m not even worried about starting a new job virtually during a pandemic. 

I’m nervous because this has been such a long time coming.

I came to Ealing in 2010. When I was here that first time, God whispered to my heart. He set a call on my life, and in my soul, to serve him in London. He told me I had some growing to do first, but promised me, that one day, I’d be back. 

In the ten years since then, I have grown, bargained, pleaded, worshiped, prayed, hoped, and surrendered. I never lost sight of God’s promise to me, but I learned to value God’s timing over my own. And I’m so glad I did, because here’s what I have gained in the waiting: A husband. Valuable ministry experience. Training. And the final piece that has landed me here: I became a mother. And little did I know ten years ago, that the driving force of my passion in ministry, the very thing God designed me to do, was to serve parents and their children. 

Becoming a mother has stirred in me a passion to see children fall in love with Jesus. I want to equip other parents to disciple their children. God has grown a ministry in my heart, and graciously given me a church to serve with it.

So why am I nervous? Because this role represents the fulfilment of God’s promise to me. I’ve waited for this for a very long time, and now that it’s here, I want to do it well.

So now it’s my turn to make a promise!

Redeemer, here is my promise to you. As I begin this role as your Family Worker, I will follow God’s guidance in serving your families well. And I will remain driven by the God-given dream I have to see parents’ hearts made whole, and children fall in love with Jesus. This is my rally cry, for our children: May they know Jesus truly, and love him deeply, as we help them to build a foundation of faith for the rest of their lives!

Thank you all, for your warm welcome. I am thankful and humbled to be here. 

Sarah xx

'Take this opportunity to read more......'

As you will no doubt be aware, the recent covid-19 outbreak has changed everyone’s lives to a greater and a lesser extent. As a church we know that many members of our family will be self-isolating, working from home, or practicing social distancing over the coming weeks. We are hoping that through a series of blogs we can encourage you, and others who might be reading these blogs, to fix your eyes on Jesus, and respond to the crisis in a way which honours his will for our lives.

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One of my new year’s resolutions this year was to read more, and given that I am currently consigned to my house for the near future, I am hoping not to turn to the nearest screen and see how much of Netflix’s back catalogue I can get through, but instead to actually act on my resolution!

This has not been as easy as I thought, as there is still lots going on in my life, and many things I need to be doing to make sure church still happens (albeit online) on a Sunday morning! But one thing that’s helpful is the many deals which have subsequently appeared on book selling websites! So, if you, like me are using this time to try and read more, then detailed below is many ways in which you can pick up your next page turner for free (or at least at a discount).

First up, Audible, who recently released the following statement on their website:

For as long as schools are closed, we're open. Starting today, kids everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories, including titles across six different languages, that will help them continue dreaming, learning, and just being kids.
All stories are free to stream on your desktop, laptop, phone or tablet.
Explore the collection, select a title and start listening.
It's that easy.

Their titles are varied depending on age, but include stories from Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, and Rudyard Kipling, as well as C.S. Lewis’ ‘The Screwtape Letters’, and classics like Frankenstein, Jane Eyre and Romeo and Juliet.

There are also a number of titles available for $4.99 on LifeWay, such as ‘Steadfast Love: The Response of God to the cries of our Heart’ by Lauren Chandler, and ‘Running From Mercy: Jonah and the Surprising Story of God’s Unstoppable Grace’. LifeWay is also offering their Gospel Project curriculum for free during this time, which is the resource we use for our kids work on a Sunday morning.

Crossway is also offering the basic subscription plan on ESV.org for free until the 31st of May 2020. With the plan you can access 9 different study bibles, the Greek New Testament, and the ‘Knowing the Bible study series’ which covers every book in the bible across 45 volumes.

Most books at The Good Book Company are also discounted up to 40% off, books such as ‘Where Is God in a Coronavirus World’ by John Lennox, and ‘The Friend Who Forgives: A True Story about How Peter Failed and Jesus Forgave’ by Dan DeWitt.

Finally, Moody (A Christian book publisher) is also offering several of it’s titles at 50% off, including The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. While everything on the site is at least 40% off until the end of March.

So, if you’re looking to get into reading during your time of self-isolation, or if you have always been a lover of books, there’s lots out there for you!

We're Moving! - Pause & Praise

Redeemer Church is moving! From the 2nd of June we will be meeting in Weston Hall, at the University of West London! We will be releasing more information about the practicalities of the move over the next two weeks, so that you have all the information you need about the move before it happens. As part of the move we’ll be publishing 3 blogs, the first of which is this one!

In this first blog Pete Cornford looks back at our time in Ealing Town Hall over the last 5 years, and encourages us to pause and praise God for what he has done in and through us as a church!

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London is a fast paced and vibrant place to live. What a privilege it is to dwell in this city!

I am so aware in my own life that I love the new and the next: pressing on for what today holds and getting excited about the future. I would like to consider myself an ‘enthusiastic optimist’, with a mindset that says ‘we can do it!’

However sometimes it is good to pause. 

To stop. 

To reflect. 

To look back and be grateful, recognising all that God has accomplished.

Redeemer Church, London was launched on Sunday mornings, at Ealing Town Hall in January 2013. 

The iconic, central location has served us so well. From the small downstairs basement we have expanded into the main Hall as you enter the building. There has been space for the children's work to expand from 1 child to regularly getting over 50 children in attendance. People have decided to follow Jesus, many have got baptised, couples have got married and families have celebrated the arrival of babies. Visiting speakers have inspired and taught us, people have been healed and there have been powerful encounters with the living God. We have dreamed, cried and laughed together as community….. 

And I am very grateful!

If you have been part of the journey - THANK YOU.

Why don’t you pause now - reflect and be grateful for all you have!