All Souls Anglican, Cherry Hill, NJ

January 2018 Prayer Letter

We greet you in Jesus’ name. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Every month or so we will send this prayer email to you, letting you know the most effective way you might pray for us. We do hope you will consider All Souls Anglican for your personal prayers that this new mission for the gospel may continue faithful to the gospel.

We do so need and thank you for your prayers

Please use the buttons at the bottom of our newsletter to share with your network(s) among the saints of God to increase our prayer support.

Join us this month as we raise our voices in THANKS and in PRAYER to our heavenly Father:
   •    Last month we asked for prayer of our united Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve. Give THANKS to God for the countless ways he helped us in this event. PRAY for the non-Christian husband and sons of a congregation member to return to the church. They came with her to the service.
   •    At the end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (28.18). This includes authority over all financial resources. As God says in Psalm 50.10, “Every animal in the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.” We have seen this in God's steady provision of financial donations throughout 2017. THANK God for what he has already provided, and PRAY that he would move people, both members and friends of All Souls to give generously so that we're in a good position throughout 2018.
   •    We're hoping to begin using recorded accompaniment instead of a musician in light of budget restraints. Give THANKS that we have a member who is trained in choral music and computing to prepare and to begin to collect an mp3 music library. Please PRAY for God to oversee the process of getting it underway. PRAY for a smooth transition in our worship.
   •    I've resumed preaching our sermon series of the Gospel of Luke in January. I’m intending to start a sermon series in Lent of the six psalms used by Jesus in the last hours before the crucifixion (113-118), but that's not yet final. Please PRAY for God to give me a good day of sermon preparation throughout Epiphany, and for heavenly correction if a series on the Psalms isn't the best idea.

From time to time we have a look through our back catalogue to volumes that may have become a bit moribund and ask one of our governors to reread it with the thought to reintroduce it in our catalogue. I asked Sinclair Ferguson to read this and he came back with a warm recommendation. He told me how impressed and humbled he was by the quality of the discussion among these ministers in what were ordinary fortnightly meetings. It really would put our modern meetings to shame. When we were all set to relaunch the title, we discovered that we had so few left in print that we would have created a real problem in selling out quickly, never meeting the demand we would have that would be frustrating to people. So, we decided against it. There aren’t many volumes left. Here it is.

I picked up a discounted copy, but not as discounted as the original price, just £4.50 in 1978, and began to read it this year. I can understand what Dr. Ferguson meant. All the godly men of the era of the evangelical revival are represented here. Both conforming (Church of England) and nonconforming minsters (Presbyterian, Baptist, Calvinistic Methodist) were members. They discussed biblical exegesis and application, ministerial duties, the impact of national events, and the theology of the gospel as it impacted the local church. The Eclectic Society was not just a “talk-shop”. From them came the Church Missionary Society (CMS) that took the gospel all over the world.

My plan is to have you read along with me this year as I share a section of their discussions and the spiritual insights they bring. I hope you will find the time to read further around the section, so I have found the original volume for you in Google Books/Google Play. You can find the text by clicking this link.

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