Thurrock Pentecost 2017 – The Report

Tim Harrold

Thurrock Pentecost 2017 took place on Saturday 3 June at Gateway People’s Centre in Stanford-le-Hope.

Around 60 people attended from a variety of fellowships from across the borough’s church family.

The third such event, the idea of these Pentecost gatherings is to gradually build an altar in the calnedar and community of Thurrock that will become increasing visible to all. This was originally inspired by Jonathan Oloyede when he visited the borough as part of his Join The Dots national tour in November 2014.

The event was open by one of the elders at Gateway People’s Centre, Debbie Amusun, who led with a prayer that aptly set the mood and direction of the evening.

This was followed by a video sourced by Colin Baker. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt16nVZ0qSQ

The atmosphere became quite charged with a sense of the presence of the Lord. We then revisited the Declaration of Unity that 20 churches joined in with at Thurrock Pentecost 2016. Tim Harrold led a communal re-reading of the final passages of the declaration:

• We commit to unity of Purpose
• We commit to unity of Doctrine
• We commit to unity of Fellowship
• It is with this attitude and humility of heart that we commit to each other,
  • so that in unity,
    • Jesus will be glorified,
    • Holy Spirit will have free reign,
    • and Father will restore and renew Thurrock, for His Name’s sake.
• “Jesus is Lord!” One Church, one Lord!
• We stand together to declare that we are committed to the church of God and to celebrate the unity that He has given us,
  • and to seek continued and even greater unity between all the church communities represented in Thurrock.
• We turn from and refuse all things that bring division,
  • all things that block the flow of blessing across our borough,
  • and we release the blessing for life evermore over Thurrock.
• We thank Jesus that He is joining our hearts and hands together in even greater measure, and that we are seeing the Kingdom of God coming in increasing fullness in Thurrock.

(This was written in 2016 by David Bareham of Community Church based on the Evangelical Statement of Faith.)

This was followed by a time of worship led by Tom Brown of St George’s, Gravesend, and Global Legacy based at Eastgate, Ebbsfleet. He was accompanied by Chantil Thomas from from Eastgate. This was a hugely deep time of intensity and freedom, which became extremely charged with the poignant and prophetic presence of God.

After this, Colin Baker read the whole of Ephesians 1 and led us in prayer.

He introduced Pentecost: The Play – a reading of the Pentecost story from the Old and New Testaments by three people (who hadn’t rehearsed together but performed the piece straight off). The performers were Vera Harrold, Sandy Nye and Robb Harman.

This was complemented by a video of The Message’s account of Pentecost – see https://youtu.be/nOm1DMZJITs

Three sections of prayer came next. The first was led by Sally Harman from the Stanford Boiler Room. Inspired by the national and international prayer initiative Thy Kingdom Come, she created an inspired interactive activity that had everyone praying for the young people of the borough. For a full account of this, please go to the link to the left of this post.

Niyi Olujobi, pastor of House Of His Presence in Grays, led a powerful section of prayer for the General Election, both locally and nationally.

Roy Edworthy and Tim Harrold announced the launch of the Thurrock Watchmen prayer network and gatherings, and led everyone in reciting the recently rediscovered Prayer for Thurrock from 2007. Please see the link to the left of this post for a separate report of this.

Tom and Chantil led a final section of worship and Colin brought the precedings to a conclusion with thanks to Debbie, Dapo Abati and his mate Morris at the sound desk and Steve Trott for his site management and wry humourous heckling. We enjoyed a good 45 minutes of fellowship together afterwards.

With further thanks to GPC for their generous hospitality and to Ati O’Dowd and the teamaking team.