Fire in our hearts - Jesus Army

FIRE IN OUR HEARTS
NEW GENERATION
The next move was to post ‘friendship cards’ introducing us
as their friends and offering help and prayer (plus a video
and a New Testament). Many people had deeply felt needs
and were much more open to prayer than we had imagined,
as one sister found when she followed up with doorknocking:
A junkie woman invited us in and poured her heart out. Another
lady burst into tears on the doorstep. God is widening our hearts
and it’s painful yet beautiful as these ones become dear to us.
When we got home we just wept. 137
The vision was to build up six distinct congregations in the
town, one for each of the Pray Northampton districts. We began
this transition slowly. On just one Sunday a month the
large Northampton congregation divided up into six ‘neighbourhood’
gatherings of around 100 people.
At first the Sunday morning meetings held in various halls
and community centres were not well attended by new friends.
Young people, after a long Saturday night in pubs and clubs,
were hardly geared up to morning meetings however informal
we might make them. Sunday mornings didn’t register
with a comatose youth culture!
However I thought the smaller groups were an excellent
challenge for those of us in the central church who’d grown
used to a platform-directed programme on Sunday morning.
Neighbourhood meetings provided another fresh experience
of being church.
The evening celebrations were held as usual in the Spinney
Hill school theatre in Northampton. The atmospheric meetings
were becoming very popular. New friends (now wide
406