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This Sunday is our annual Celebration Sunday when we'll gather together to encourage and be encouraged by the many candidates who will be baptised or confirmed. This year will be a little different to previous events. Rather than one large gathering, we will remain in our congregations but cross each other's paths when it comes to the baptisms, which will all happen outside in a pool. As congregations move outside, we'll get to share in each other's events. So please come expecting not just to be with your regular congregation, but also staying longer (or arriving earlier) to get to see what God is doing across our wider St John's family.

What exactly is it that we are celebrating? Over the past weeks we've looked at God's Global Mission - a story told across the span of the Scriptures rooted in the promise to Abram that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. We've seen Israel's particular vocation to be a holy kingdom of priests to the world (a role that the church naturally fulfils. We've thought about Israel's task of being a light to the world, and, most of all, how Jesus gathers all these complementary themes in himself and then invites us into the same task.

More than 30 people will be baptised or confirmed because members of St John's took up that invitation to tell others about the goodness of what God has done in Jesus. Each candidate has a story of being told the gospel by someone. We did it as a church, and we did it as individuals. We did it together.

This is what we're celebrating on Sunday - not just that God has graciously brought people to new life in Jesus, but that we had the enormous privilege of being part of it. We're celebrating Our Place in God's Global Mission!

Of course, this doesn't stop on Sunday. Each year's Vision Series is a call to renew our energy and investment in these things. Our Vision webpage this year helps us shape those thoughts.

If you're excited about what will happen this Sunday (and I'm sure you are) then please channel that excitement into a renewed commitment. This year we're encouraging everyone to open up two things: 

  • Our mouths, as we ask God to further his great global mission and as we tell others about the goodness of Jesus 
  • Our wallets, as we think about what more we could do together if we all explore giving a little (or even a lot) more!

 Please visit our Vision 26 page and consider what your part in all of this could be as we, together, celebrate Our Place in God's Global Mission!

See you on Sunday as we celebrate together!

David Ould
Acting Senior Minister