SERVING BEYOND: The Parkers visit the Sheppey Gospel Plant
SERVING BEYOND
At the core of what Redeemer is about is that we are ALL ‘SENT ONES’ - the reason Jesus has not taken us to glory is that we GO to those who do not yet know him so that they to can one day join him and us in glory! We love to invest in and celebrate what God is doing ‘beyond’ us through our members. Sometimes we GO to do a specific activity, or to serve a particular event - at other times to serve as needed, learn, build friendships and bless in any way we can.
Ben & Mikka Parker
Ben is one of the Elders at Redeemer and works full time at the local University. Mikka is on staff at Redeemer coordinating administration and Student work. Together they lead a Life Group
This was back in March…find out more about the Sheppey Gospel Plant HERE
On a fairly grey Sunday morning in March, Ben & I left Colchester for equally grey Sheerness, specifically the Isle of Sheppey to visit our friends the Spocchias. Matt and Helene moved to Sheppey in July 2018 with their two children Martha, 5 and Edie, 3 to start a church plant following a prophetic word given to Matt, 12 years prior!
It was great to spend time with them in their new home on the island, getting to know the kids and hearing about all that’s happened in the last 9 months. As we ate brunch, they shared about the amazing opportunities God has already provided them with, particularly in the area of work for the Canterbury diocese - they’re both working part-time, together running a Food Bank where they’re encouraged to pray with the people who use the service + Matt’s been going to the same cafe most days to prepare sermons for Sundays and meeting people through that plus a whole host of other ways of integrating within the community.
Their Sunday gathering started at 3pm - it was lovely to be back in a living room situation with the rest of their core team (Josh Glover and James & Becky Cole from Canterbury), a visiting couple from the City Church Canterbury and a guy called Alli who’s local, from the island and has been a Christian for a long time but has been without a church family until now! It was great to sing and worship together, a couple of encouraging prophetic words were shared before Matt opened the word. Having heard Matt preach a couple of times before, it was so good to see him adapt to this new situation, especially in honouring this new congregation where the talk can’t be longer than 20 minutes - he can expect to be interrupted and have questions asked by both the kids and adults.
After he talk it was feeding time at the Zoo - spag bol for all, the footie was on the TV, the girls got us to join in with their games and a bit more time for catching up. And I’ll be honest it was a late one, we almost hit 12 hours with the Spocchs and what a delight that was to see this wonderful gospel plant in action. Please join with us visiting, supporting and praying for them, see the video below to meet them for yourselves.