26 people ticked a box to say “I want to make the prayer my prayer” at City Church, Newcastle on Sunday 11th November. Everyone had been given a feedback card & pen, and I didn’t ask anyone to put their hand up or come to the front. This was a low-key way of inviting a response to the gospel that I’m enthusiastically exploring. There were around 380 people there, which one of the elders told me is around 60 to 80 more than a typical Sunday.
Ken Riley (formerly front man for Y Friday) led worship brilliantly. And I was really impressed by how Ian Galloway, who leads City Church, hosted the Remembrance Sunday element, where he watched a slideshow set to a Coldplay song. I liked the fact that the images weren’t only from what I’d call just wars, like WWII, but it also included the messy and perplexing forays into Vietnam and Iraq. So we saw the horror and moral maze of war. Ian did another brilliant segway into an interview about conflict, and conflict resolution, and I preached off the back of that.
It seemed to go well and I was happily engulfed by Newcastle United fans on their way to a home game as I boarded the train back to London.
City Church meets in the CastleGate Centre, in Melbourne Street, a vast venue, which once housed the turbines that powered Newcastle’s trams.