Riding the crest of a wave.

As a church, we try to have at least a couple of half-night prayer meetings a year (7.45pm to midnight). These are usually good times of worship, prayer and often have a strong prophetic content. Our next one is this Friday, the last was in January.

At the January session I was praying with a smaller number of guys when I saw a 'minds eye' image of Bicester with a huge wave above it - if it was real, we'd be talking a thousand feet high type wave. The wave was in the act of breaking, but was moving imperceptibly slowly above the town.

Now we (both Chris and I, and the other guys we were with) have heard all kinds of words of 'revival is coming' and 'God's going to do it now' over the years, and certainly for us, we've passed the point of predicted revival fatigue. But at the same time, it seemed there was an element of authenticity about what I saw, so I did mention it, together with the emphasis that the wave we've been waiting for was about to break over us - or somesuch.

Now in the church, we have been working hard preparing for this autumns Alpha course. Alpha is a great way for people with or without any kind of faith to explore the Christian faith without anyone getting religious, pressurising or even trying to convince them as such. Most of the guys in our housegroup have been really committed to it, full of faith that God is going to touch a lot of people this year, and have absolutely worked their socks off.

Well, it seems that God is honouring that. We had a bit of a strategic meeting last night, with all the various leaders in the church. There are 30 signed up for the BCC alpha (as well as lots with the other churches) which means that there is a need for lots of stuff, like housegroups, being laid down to serve the alpha course. It's really good to see the church re-shaping itself to take up the challenge, and it IS a challenge. 30 people is about half the committed church, so it will be interesting to see what shape the church finds itself in come January 2009, who will find themselves going from being mentored to mentoring, taught to teaching.