Steven D chats with Bob Goody from Rural Missions

So I think we've been building up to a moment and we've across our last 12 weeks, we've been exploring the church and some of the things it does well, some of the things it doesn't do so well.

So I thought being the last one, I thought the theme of why am I still hopeful for the future of the church?

Okay, why there is still hope for the future of the church.

I think oftentimes I've heard it said, and some people seem to believe, that the church is dying or that Christianity is a smaller religion.

Some people seem to allude to this, but I think from what we said in some of our earlier conversations, that is most definitely not the case.

So, I mean, the broad question is why do you have hope for the future of the church?

So I think there are lots of reasons why we should have hope for the future, because the church is still in the job of changing lives for the first point.

Like, if I just take my own story that I shared last week and the countless stories of churches that have done stuff to engage their community, have helped people find Jesus across these last 12 weeks that we've been chatting, I think just simply that it changes lives.

There is nothing as powerful as the gospel.

like what it really means at its heart and this uh the last few weeks as a church so i help lead a church in my spare time ashwood church here in kirkby and ashfield we've been doing the god's book course by andrew oliton that works for the bible society and it's basically exploring the seven toughest topics in the bible and this last week when we were discussing it we were He was getting us to explore that the Bible is bookended.

Peace at the very start.

So we have Genesis, God creating everything perfect and luscious.

God creating us in his image and this perfect state of peace.

where the lion and the lamb lay down together and there was just God walking in the gentle breeze of the garden alongside Adam and Eve and this perfect peace moment and that at the end of it all there will be peace once more and we're in this turbulent period in the middle where things aren't as God would intend for us.

But it really does give me hope knowing that peace is coming, that there will be an end to war and enter suffering and enter pain and hurt and disease and famine.

And in the midst of that, whilst we're in this waiting period, we get to see glimpses of it today.

Yeah.

we get to see story after story of people meeting Jesus and being set free from addictions, being set free from past hurts and regrets and experiences and actually being transformed into a much better place.

This place of hope and joy and peace and strength and fulfillment.

So number one, The church has a powerful thing and so it will remain because nobody transforms lives like Jesus does.

Yeah, that's the thing.

Every bit of conversation we've had around reaching out into the community, we talked about Jesus, who God is, and how he can transform lives.

And that is kind of the heart of the matter, that God transforms lives, that God is God, and we are serving a very real God.

So this isn't something made up, we're not just gathering for the sake of it, there's something real going on.

I think we talked about that before, actually, how there's something very real behind this, And that's what brings hope.