Well the weather has not changed much, but we believe the " spiritual climate " ( to borrow a phrase from Ed Silvoso ) has! It was on 29th October 1997 that Medway Celebrate first began, and to the surprise of all but an assorted handful of optimists, faith filled folk and lunatics ( ! ) about 120 people actually turned up for a midweek lunchtime service in someone else’s church led by yet other people! We have consistently strived to be faithful to the overriding emphasis on worship, reaching those outside the Kingdom and being " one body " - a message conveyed at that first meeting by our guest leader for that
day - Wes Sutton from The Loughton Vineyard. Our deliberate policy of bringing in different leaders each week was designed to reflect the wide ownership we wanted for Celebrate and to avoid any typecasting. This has in fact given a platform for a number of local worship leaders to share (and grow in) their ministry and many well known leaders have come to our Towns for the first time to lead us. We have in fact used over 40 different worship leaders ( 9 from Medway congregations ).

          It is true, though, that the Chatham town centre shopping and business community remains largely untouched and indifferent to our presence. Have we failed then? Well in one sense yes. The vision for Celebrate comes from the lunchtime services run by where the church serves those who work around it who come each week in their lunch hours and ( hopefully! ) bring along work colleagues as part of their reaching out. We do still aim to facilitate the coming together of Christians from their Chatham work places, to encourage them in their missionary role and to see prayer and CU groups established in the larger firms.

          Unlike the Square Mile, we recognised that there are also many Christians who are around at this time of day and we have looked to serve them with the same type of lunchtime " oasis " vision. It is at this level that there has been a genuine coming together of many from across the denominations and streams.

          In all that we have done through Celebrate it has often been impossible to distinguish the Baptist from the Independent from the Pentecostal from the Anglican etc. Equally ministers have come and worshipped together which has in some way helped with the forming of relationships which have been responsible for many of the larger events held across the Towns.

          Our desire to see a prayer net across Medway remains undiminished-we have tried prayer triplets which at one time linked over 200 people in a form of co-ordinated prayer. The door swung closed on this venture but the seeds were sown for such a city-wide approach to prayer and the subsequent introduction of prayer evangelism / lighthouses.

          It is still a mystery to many ( including us! ) how Ed Silvoso and Sergio Scataglini from Harvest Evangelism came to Medway for 4 days last year and shared the thrilling story of the ongoing Argentine revival in a mocked up arena in a warehouse on Medway City Estate. Over 1,500 people were there on that Sunday night and the challenge to relational unity, neighbourhood prayer and holiness remains before us. Once more we have yet to fully embrace this in our churches here in Medway though many lives have been transformed. We believe a framework is in place for the prayer lighthouses to function but the testimony of Harvest is that only as the churches moved forward together on these things did the breakthroughs come, though all acknowledge the grace and sovereignty of God on this issue. We will continue to seek God and pursue this vision.

          The half nights of prayer were also greeted with a burst of enthusiasm before settling down. Over 40 prayer leaders from every part of the Body of Christ in our Towns have led us in prayer for most aspects of Medway society including touching on historic church and city issues. We feel we are barely scratching the surface of praying for the needs of our city. The half nights have ceased whilst we meet together on the first Wednesday evening of each month at Emmaus at 8pm.

          There is so much more, radio ministry, praying with the council, school prayer groups etc. that are only just beginning. Links with Uganda have seen a church planted in the town of Agwata, ministers and folk from the Towns have visited and shared in the moves of God in both Argentina and Uganda and received reciprocal visits. Oh-and most wonderful of all-a number of folk have given their lives to Christ during these 157 Celebrates. Yes it is 3 years on, it has not been an easy ride by any means but we praise God for His goodness and the hope that still lays before us. May God richly bless and keep you and we look forward to continuing our partnership as fellow members of the one body.

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