Come and celebrate Christmas with ACTS Community Church

I had it my Heart 20-11-11

Congratulations to everyone involved with Foodbank

Rhondda Foodbank - Winners

RHONDDA_FOODBANK_UPDATE_MARCH_2011[1]

We have also seen Rhondda foodbank in the news this month with an article in the Rhondda Leader about our ‘Foodbank Heroes’ at Ynyswen Infants School. Cleick here to read it – Generous youngsters boosted Foodbank

Why not come along on the day and cheer them on? The race starts and finishes in Cardiff Bay so it should be a  fun morning…for those watching!  Here are the intrepid runners, looking rather happy considering the task that lies ahead.

Each of the runners has put in hundreds of miles in training in order to raise money for CAP, if you are interested in supporting the work of CAP visit their you can do so here.

On your marks…………………….

I think this image says so much about how our attitude towards God. You see in the image that God is straining down towards Adam, yearning to touch his creation. Then we see Adam, leaning back almost not bothered by God’s attempts to reach him.

If only we were to be as passionate for God as he is for us. Passion can be conveyed in many different ways – with long intense silence, an embrace, one word or one million words.  However we do it this week, I wonder if we can evoke passion for our God and allow God to touch us in our worship of him.

I guess this about you finding what enables you to be passionate.  We have covered scripture, music, poems, prayer, nature, physical demonstration – there are so many more things, do not limit yourself.  Just create a little time and space for God in your week.

We are going to be trying something new in Acts to develop our worship.  Below is an explanation depending on whether you’re a ‘Ready to Eat’, ‘Home Cooked’ or ‘Grow your own’ sort of person.

Ready to eat (“I just want to get on with it!”)

We have put some worship ideas together that we hope will stretch people in their individual worship time and then will facilitate the use of some of those ideas in the following Sunday service. We want to be creative in our worship expression. The links to the resources are below.

Home Cooked (“Tell me briefly!”)

Recently one of the areas that we have really felt God calling us to ‘do better’ is our corporate praise and worship.  We understand that this holds equal importance with all that God is calling us to do in other areas of his church. But when our worship life flows easily, every other area of life seems to flow more easily also. God does not call us to a place where we can adopt an either or position when it comes to living a Christian life, he would have us live “life to the full” and in that we must strive for balance in our lives.

When people visit our Sunday service the praise and worship must reflect how worthy the person we are worshipping is, and that worship is an integral part of every day Christian’s life.  That when we worship God we find most enjoyment in him and he sees most of himself in us.  The weekly resources will hopefully help you  develop your praise and worship life.

Grow your own (“Explain a little more…”)

How someone understands the words that we say is most affected by the things that we do.  If you are a part of Acts, you are contributing consciously or not, to what people understand praise and worship to be – that is quite a responsibility. We need to be modelling relevant and contemporary worship to a community.

To help you understand a little more about praise and worship it may help to take a snapshot of how the Bible sees both those things being demonstrated.

Verses On Praise:

By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, this is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. – Hebrews 13:15

Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. – 1 Chronicles 16:8-10

Then David said to the whole assembly, “Praise the LORD your God.” So they all praised the LORD, the God of their fathers; they bowed low and fell prostrate before the LORD and the king. 1 Chronicles 29:19-21

The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang: “He is good; his love endures forever.” Then the temple of the LORD was filled with a cloud. 2 Chronicles: 5:12-14

You can see from these 4 verses how large the scope of what praise really is. We have:

* A sacrifice of praise

* Singing

* Telling of his wonderful acts

* Bowing – being prostrate

* Musical instruments

That is from 4 verses on praise. However praise is mentioned 351 times in the Bible and gives us a lot more ways to praise God. The reason for this is because of our English language. The English language has one word, praise, for 7 Hebrew words – each giving a different definition for praise. They are:

* Hallal: “to laud, boast, rave, to celebrate” – It is used approximately one hundred times in the Old Testament.

* Yadah: “to worship with extended hands, to throw out the hands” – It is used over ninety times in the Old Testament. (Yad means “hand.”)

* Barak: “to bless, to declare God the origin of power for success, prosperity, and fertility” – It is used approximately seventy times in the Old Testament as praise to God.

* Tehillah: “to sing or laud” – It is derived from hallal and is generally accepted to mean “the singing of hallals.” It is used over fifty times in the Old Testament.

* Zamar: “to pluck the strings of an instrument, to praise with song” – It is used almost exclusively in the Psalms and occurs approximately forty times in the Old Testament.

* Todah: “to extend the hands in thanksgiving, a thank-offering” – It is used only a few times when translated “praise” but occurs many other times in connection with thanksgiving.

* Shabach: “to commend, address in a loud tone, to shout” – This is the exclamatory form of praise in a special sense and is found only about seven times in the Old Testament.

You will notice ‘Yadah’ which actually means to worship with extended hands. Does this mean that worship as we know it is actually just a form of praise?

As we continue to discuss the difference between praise and worship lets take a look what the Bible has to say about worship.

Verses On Worship:

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. – Romans 12:1

Then the man bowed down and worshiped the LORD. – Genesis 24:25-27

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” – John 4:23-25

I guess when we are looking at the difference between praise and worship from a worship service perspective that praise seems to be more an outward showing with hands raising, clapping, dancing, bowing and singing. Whereas worship is something much deeper. It is where we are offering our bodies, and ourselves, giving them to God to have his way.

As you can see there are lots of different ways that we can offer praise and worship, I hope that as you go through the weekly resources they will help you develop your relationship with God, and also how you contribute to corporate praise and worship.

Continuing the “eating” theme, having a variety of worship expressions is like having a variety of food. life would be boring if it was porridge every meal.

Resources and activities: week 9

The picture below shows Mr Thomas, along with Julian Harris and Robert Morgan of Foodbank, standing behind the first of six trolley loads of donated food.

In total, just over half a ton of food was donated throughout the day and can be seen filling our van for transport to our storage facility.

To date, the Rhondda Foodbank team have been called on to provide emergency food supplies for nearly 300 members of our community who were in crisis situations that prevented them having access to adequate food supplies.

The foodbank is alerted about these clients by referral agencies such as Health Visitors, Communities First teams etc.

The customers generous donations help us ensure we have food available to meet these needs.

If you would like more information or details of how to participate, then contact us via:

ACTS Community Church c/o The Old Library, East Road, Tylorstown

Via Communities First Offices.

Via Rhondda Radio.

Or ring : 07928 451374

On Thursday 18th March 2010, fourteen members of the Rhondda Foodbank team including two volunteers from Oasis Church collected food at ASDA Tonypandy between 9am and 7pm. Over the course of the day an impressive 382.6Kg of food was donated by members of the public! ACTS Community Church would like to thank all those who gave generously to help the work of Foodbank within the Rhondda and to ASDA Tonypandy for allowing us to hold a collection day.

Well done to the Foodbank team, keep up the good work!

For more information about the work of Foodbank please click here

Gaynor Morgan, Suzanne Matthews, Wendy Davies and Hannah Bowman with some of the food collected

The Advent Conspiracy asks us to take a fresh look at our attitude to Christmas. The concept is simple - Worship Fully, Spend Less, Give More, Love All. You can visit the website by clicking here and check out the video below to see the difference we can make.

Advent Conspiracy are working with Living Water International to provide clean drinking water for some of the worlds poorest communities from Africa, South America and beyond. Last Christmas ACTS Community Church was able to donate over £450 to this cause and we hope to better that in 2010. You can learn more about the projects by clicking here.