Out of the Ghetto into the City

If you'd like to have your Bibles open, the reading today is from Matthew, Matthew chapter 5, and I'll be beginning at verse 11. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world, a city on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl, instead they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

Thanks to the Lord for his word to us. Now Bronwyn is going to lead us in prayer. Let us pray.

Loving Heavenly Father, who brought everything into being in this world and beyond, the whole universe, our wonderful Creator, we praise you. You created everything to work together, held in fine balance. Everything about your creation is known to you, Lord.

You know when even a small flower comes into life, you give life to everything, and when it dies, you know, and all that goes in between with everything in your creation, all your creatures. You are truly awesome, Lord, and we praise you. You know each and every one of us, every thought, every feeling.

With you, there's no pretense, no role, no proper face, just ourselves. Lord, help us to just be ourselves as we draw nearer to you in your presence now. The mystery is, Lord, that you love us.

We thank you for your grace and mercy to us through the Lord Jesus. We don't understand it, we just humbly and gratefully accept it. Thank you for bringing us here today, for all your goodness and protection during the last week, for your provision.

Lord, forgive us for those things that we've done and said and thought that that is not pleasing to you, and the things that we didn't do or say or thought that we should have done. Lord, forgive us. Lord, we thank you that we are here today.

We thank you that you have protected us and kept us, and Lord, the news that we have had today that is so tragic and so sudden of the death of Princess Diana and Mr. Al-Fayed and the chauffeur, Lord, it just brings into greater focus how you have been keeping us and looking after us, and Lord, our hearts and our prayers do go out to those families affected by these deaths. We pray for Prince William and Prince Harry in particular, but all the families. Lord, there are others here and known to us who are also suffering grief and bereavement, and we want to pray for them.

Pray that they will know your closeness, know your love for them and your care as they go through this. And for others who need to know the touch of your healing physically, emotionally, or if they're in mental turmoil, help each of us to know how to respond to suffering, Lord. Not to be indifferent or scared, worried about not knowing what to do or say.

Help us to trust that you will show us your compassion and how to be compassionate and to know what to do. Help us to be like the Good Samaritan, thinking of the ones suffering and not of ourselves. We thank you this morning that we have Dr. Patrick Dixon with us, and we pray for him as he brings your word to us, Lord.

We thank you for the work he's involved with, and we look forward to finding out more and to hearing his message, your message to us through him this morning. We pray for your anointing on him, and we pray for ourselves that we will be attentive and our hearts, our ears, our minds will be open to your challenge, your guidance, your teaching this morning. In Jesus' precious name, amen.

Father, I pray that you help me as I speak to speak only the words which come from you. I pray that you help those that listen to hear a message which comes only from you. And I pray that you help us all, Lord, to follow what it is that you say to us.

In the name of Christ, amen. It's a real pleasure to be here today. Thank you for inviting me as part of your centenary celebrations, and I look back with you over the last 100 years, and I'm faced with a fundamental question, which is, will this church be here in 100 years' time? If so, what kind of tab will it be? Will you have changed your name 10 times between now and then? What kind of congregation will you be? And most importantly of all, will Worthing, will a historian in the year 2097, assuming the Lord hasn't come back by then, when that historian records the local history of Worthing and the surrounding area, will you feature in it? Will you be anywhere in it? Will the sum total of all the Christian witness, the drive, the energy, the enthusiasm, the social action, the involvement of every layer of society in this area, coming out of this church, will it have any impact whatsoever? Or will you just be recorded as some dumb statistic in the back of the book, that following churches grew or shrank by the following statistics through that year, through those years? Or the 40 evangelical witnessing communities in Worthing became five during that period? Because one thing's for sure, Jesus Christ did not come to this earth so that you could have nice meetings on a Sunday morning.

I'll say that again. Jesus Christ was not sent by his heavenly Father so that you could have nice prayer meetings in a room at the back. Jesus Christ did not come, suffer, die and rise again from the dead simply so this church would be packed nearly to bursting Sunday by Sunday, even in the middle of a, basically a post-bank holiday weekend.

Jesus Christ came to fulfil the words of John the Baptist to bring in the kingdom. John the Baptist said, repent for the kingdom of God is near. Jesus Christ came not to fill your church but to see people brought into the kingdom.

You may think it's the same thing, it's a subtle difference. See the thing is this, if you carry on for another hundred years, just Sunday by Sunday doing more of the same, we'll miss it all. Jesus himself said this, you are the salt of the earth.

Let me phrase it again, Worthingtown, you are the salt of Worthing. You say well we're not the total salt of Worthing, no that's true. God doesn't recognise the denominational differences, for him there is one body, Jesus has no body here today, Jesus has no hands, he has no feet, he has no voice.

We together are the body of Christ, is Worthingtown the body of Christ? No. The totality of the Christian witness of all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in an area are that totality of the body of Christ which God himself sees. So it's true you aren't the totality of the body of Christ here in Worthing, but you are sure are one great dollop of it.

500 people I gather in membership here, how many are there in fringe membership? How many I wonder are associated with this church? Another 200? I would think so, I'd be most surprised. How many children involved in some kind of church activity? Hello? 200? So probably with the fringe and then people come to mums and toddlers groups round the back and things like that, you have a total extended family in the broadest sense of around 1,000 people, absolute minimum. OK, let me ask another question, how many people live in Worthing? 100,000 live in Worthing and the surrounding area.

You have 500 of them in membership here today, but it isn't enough. Jesus said, you are the salt of Worthing, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how do you lose your saltiness? By not making a difference. And in fact the salt ain't no good in the salt cellar, you've heard that before.

See let me tell you this, Satan himself ain't too fussed about you meeting here on a Sunday morning. In comparison with what you might do on Monday morning. Because if all we do as Christians is enjoy ghetto life, enjoy more of the same within a family.

Listen, I'm all for ghettos, has anybody here been to Spring Harvest or some kind of Bible week or camp or anything like that? I love it, I love community life. I love ghetto life, I love being a part of the family of God's people. Sheila and I have four children of our own.

We have shared our home with up to five single people living in community together. Why? Because we love ghetto life, we love being part of the community of God's people. But I'll tell you this, if my church, the church I'm a part of, Brits Church, a new plant in an inner city area of London.

If all we do is meet and serve each other's needs, I'm part of the leadership team. If most of the time of our leadership meetings is consumed with the buildings, the running of the Sunday school, the running of the clubs, the infrastructure and all the rest, all we are doing is building more of the same. But Jesus didn't come just to build a nice ghetto, he came to bring in his kingdom.

And what I want to ask is this, are you doing that? You are the light of worthing, a city on a hill cannot be hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it in a bowl, instead they give it a stand. And we live in strange times. We live in a time when more people are finding faith in Jesus Christ than has ever happened in a week in the whole of history, worldwide.

It doesn't matter if you have the privileges I have had of travelling to places like India, I haven't been to Latin America but many of my friends have, or Africa, Asia, Korea, China, Russia, Romania, Czech Republic, you will find the body of Christ is exploding with life. The world population is growing at 1.7% per year, that's a lot. That's enough to fill the earth to bursting.

But faith in Jesus Christ is growing at 2.7% every year. You may not feel it necessarily in Britain yet, but there is a tremendous spiritual awakening happening in many parts of the earth. And in the last gasp of this century, this church was built in the terminal gasp of the 19th century as a church for the 20th century.

We are at the last gasp not only of this century but also of the whole millennium. And if you look around every area of even this nation today you will find the same cry, which is summarised by four or five words, something has to change. It doesn't matter if you look at our political life, that's why we've had such a revolution in Parliament, the reaction against sleaze, something has to change.

It doesn't matter whether you're looking at the divorce rate, which doubled from 75,000 a year in 1971 to 150,000 a year in 1979, and is now relatively stable and fell last year, why? Because something has to change. It doesn't matter whether you look at children in care. This nation spends £1 billion every year putting children into care almost entirely because of the breakdown of the relationship between mum and dad.

Something has to change. I calculated the cost of the sexual revolution in one of my books as £9 billion every year. It made banner headlines in the British press.

Something has to change. One radio interviewer gave me a real hard time. I was at home, he was in Edinburgh, and he was sneering away at my values as I was talking about the need for a rethink in the whole of our society as we go into the next millennium.

And I was getting so much flack from him, I thought, huh, I'm going to interview you instead. So I said, well, sir, what's your great idea for the happiness of the human race? Silence. I thought, I'll carry on now.

Every marriage ending in divorce, every family a broken family, every child the product of a broken home, is that your idea of heaven? Because that is my idea of a living hell. And if you want to see a taste of it, come to the estates near where I live. Well, there's a tremendous breakdown of relationship where sometimes in a street you seem you can hardly find a family that is still intact, where the children are growing up with their two genetic parents who are in love with each other.

It's a taste of living hell, asked the police. A judge friend of mine sits on the court. He tells me that he hardly has seen a case of a repeat juvenile offender that has not come from a broken family.

Half of all crime in Britain is conducted by those under the age of 20 years old, 10 to 20 years old. And many, many of them, the precipitant cause, and of course people have to be responsible, but a major cause is unhappiness at home. In the estates near where we live, there's a Christian policeman who will tell you with tears in his eyes of rounding up youngsters at three in the morning who ought to be long in their bed, 10, 12 years old, who are not wanted at home in their bed because mum has another man in the house and doesn't want them there.

So what are they doing? They're stealing cars. Something has to change in our society. Then you look at drug addiction and the rest, which fills the empty void.

The Bible says, do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, recognising that when we lose touch with God, there is this void which people fill with intoxication. Something has to change. We can't go on like this.

There is a millennial restlessness in our nation. And we're seeing a change. The politicians saw it, and so have people working on the streets and evangelism.

If you go out on the pavement outside this church, perhaps you've done it, and you were to conduct a survey, I'd love to work with you to do that. Draw up a simple survey and do a survey and say, ask questions like, do you believe in God? Would you like to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? If London is anything to go by, in our most deprived areas of London, we are finding up to six out of ten adults in Britain, in this part of Britain, are saying yes, they would like a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Statistically, out of 100,000 people in Worthing this morning, 10,000 of them are in church, or were last week, or will be next week.

It's more than you think. 50,000 people in Worthing out of 100,000 believe that Jesus rose from the dead. National survey Sunday Times one year ago.

That means that half your neighbours, your friends, and your work colleagues believe that Jesus rose from the dead. That's quite a big belief. It does not make them a disciple of Jesus Christ, but it makes them quite a lot.

Jesus said, to many people, you're closer than you think. Think about it. If your next door neighbour believes that Jesus rose from the dead, then presumably they believe, she believes, let's say, that Jesus is unique because, of course, no one else rose from the dead, that Jesus is uniquely belonging to God, if not God's son, that Jesus must be the greatest teacher and prophet that ever lived, if not God himself.

They are a tremendous long way down that way to being a disciple. Of course, obedience makes someone a disciple, but if you think you're surrounded by a bunch of atheists, agnostics, you're very much mistaken. If you were to ask the people in your street in Worthing whether they pray, 85 to 90% would say yes, even though 5% of them would say they didn't even believe in God.

But they still pray, and we have a nation which is open and hungry. Has anybody here been on, or knows anyone, that's been on an Alpha course? Okay, Alpha, you may not particularly like the packaging, you might, if it was you, want to rewrite certain bits of it in a different way, that's fine, this is an Anglican evangelical discipleship course for those interested in being Christians. But the fact is this, that in the last two years alone, a quarter of a million British adults have chosen to put themselves through 12 evenings of instruction on what it means to be a Christian, and the majority of those do not belong to Jesus Christ as disciples.

That is a staggering event. It's a sign of our times. Jesus said, you know, he's to criticise the people of his day, he said, you don't know how to interpret the signs of the times.

You look out of the weather, you judge the sea, and you judge the sky, and you say it's going to rain. Why can't you interpret the signs of the times? This is a sign. It's a sign.

Another sign is events like Spring Harvest. Did you know this year around 280,000 adults and children will have chosen to spend an entire week together, spending millions of pounds of their income and chunks of their valuable holiday for the simple purpose of celebrating that there is one Lord Jesus Christ, there is one God in heaven, and there is one route of salvation, and a wonderful thing it is to bring them together. Isn't that amazing? That we take it for granted because we're so close to it.

It's a sign of our times. Things like March for Jesus. 12 million people who belong to Jesus Christ agreed to pray on the same day a simple prayer.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done. It's a sign of the times.

12 million across every time zone. I'll tell you the biggest prayer meeting the world has ever seen is going to take place in the year 2000. And you will find, I predict, some 25 to 30, 40 million believers will be uniting every hour across every time zone with a simple prayer to see the communities they live in changed with the good news of Jesus Christ.

You may think, okay, world revival. Okay, Spring Harvest, Alpha, bits and pieces and a nice full church here. But it doesn't add up to a major trend.

Well, the politicians think that it does. The last election was almost unique in recent memory. I remember 15 years ago, no politician would have been seen dead saying, I'm a Christian, that's why I'm in politics.

Very few. Reverend Ian Paisley might have, but then some people might have had a problem with Reverend Ian Paisley. And unfortunately, the sectarian crisis in Northern Ireland has created a negative image of the gospel, particularly in politics.

But something has changed. There has been a shift in the mood and the psyche of our nation and it affects wording and it affects what you can do as a church to be salt and light, as Jesus said, beyond the year 2000. I think it was Tony Blair who broke the silence first, went on public record as saying, the reason I'm Labour, he said, is because I belong to Jesus.

That's basically what he was saying, because my life has been changed as a result of faith in Christ. You might, I'm not asking you to judge his spiritual state. I'm asking you to listen to the words he used to describe his own understanding of his spiritual state.

As far as he's concerned, sincere believer, deeply and profoundly affected by the teachings of Jesus, becomes converted, therefore, to the politics of the Labour Party. Howls of righteous indignation, as you can imagine, from the Conservatives. People like Harry Greenway, my local MP, saying, well, the reason I'm a Conservative is because I'm a Christian.

And then the Lib Debs came out and did the same, or one or two did, and so the ding-dong went on. Then we had an amazing book by Roy McLaughlin, interviewing many politicians as to why they prayed, and even, I say even, even John Major confessed that every day he prays to God. What I want to know is, okay, you say, well, what kind of God? I'm not getting into those issues.

I just want to listen to the words that these people have used. What I want to know is, why didn't he say that before? Either it wasn't true, or there was something must have changed. I happen to believe it is true.

I happen to believe that out of office, John Major prays every day. But why tell us today? Why did Tony Blair decide to break silence? Why is it that we have seen the extraordinary spectacle of politicians seeking to outdo each other in public Christianness? I'll tell you why. Because politicians are populists, and they sensed the mood of the nation was on the move.

They sensed that in a sleaze-driven world, faith in Christ could actually be a vote winner. That's a fact. That's why it became mainstream political thinking to say that you have faith, that your faith affects you, that you're not ashamed of it, to say you have convictions that drive you through political life.

But it still isn't enough. The tragic death of Princess Di shows us one thing today, which is our desperate need of heroes for tomorrow. The fact is, for the next seven weeks, you won't even be able to think about anything else if you turn on the media other than Princess Di and all the ramifications of her life, and all the implications of being driven off the road by paparazzi or whatever else happened.

Who knows? Because she became a figurehead, a much-loved figurehead for our nation, and we're about to see just how much loved. I predict the funeral will be one of the largest ever in British history. It will be.

There will be millions of people either watching, or on those streets, watching the cortege go by. But what it shows, if anything, was the desperate lack of leadership in our nation, and that has to change. Something has to change.

So what can you do in Worthington? A tap. Has to be salt, to be light. Well, I believe that if Jesus is calling us, as I believe he is, out of the ghetto and into the town, that's going to hurt us, because it's going to cost us.

It's going to cost us financially. It's going to cost us in every sense. See, we live in an age of words.

People are sick and tired of words. You hear millions of words. My words, if I'm not careful, can be ones that just make you sick and tired this morning.

Because words are cheap. Words mean nothing unless they're backed up by lifestyle, right? If I preach about faithfulness in marriage, and I'm an adulterous hypocrite, what kind of platform have I got, right? If I preach about generosity, and I'm the most tight-fisted man in the town, and I'm also one of the wealthiest, what platform have I got? But if I preach of the unconditional love of God to all people, and in the afternoon go and visit someone dying of AIDS, and take him a drink of water, because he's too weak to get out of his bed, and he lives across the street there, I have a platform. That's not why I do it.

God, deliver us from conditional love. God, deliver us from a mentality that says, I'll only get involved in the soup kitchen because it's kind of a good witness. God, deliver us from that.

That kind of false pity is the sort of pity that speaks nothing to a world. God, deliver us from the kind of conditional love that only loves someone so long as they look like they're about to join the tab. The unconditional love of God goes out and out and out and out to the poor, to the destitute, to the marginalised, to those who have no parents, to those who are in a desperate fix of their own making, to those who are stewing in circumstances almost entirely of their own design.

Nevertheless, God's love goes out and out and out. And that is the kind of self-sacrificing love where there is no agenda. The agenda is not, oh, we take a cup of water so someone becomes a Christian, then they'll join the tab.

Or, here's a gay man who's dying of AIDS. Well, God could deal with all kinds of lifestyle questions if we were to go and take him love. If that is your attitude, you might as well forget it.

That is not love. Love is when you go to those who are not your friends. Jesus said, even evil people love their friends.

But love is when we go the extra mile to people outside of the family, to the unlovely, to the people we would not normally relate to, to the people who cost us, quite frankly, an arm, a leg, and most of the rest of us to get involved. That is the love of Christ. But I'll tell you this, that a gospel without that kind of love is an obscenity to Christ.

Do you know why? Because it denies the very basis of the gospel itself, which is unconditional love. Why did Jesus come? He came to bring in his kingdom. God so loved the world that he sent his Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

I was dead once, but God saved me. I was dead, but Jesus saved me. Ephesians 2 verse 1, he did more than that.

He brought me to life. He raised me up. He enthroned me with Christ.

Not so that I can stand in this uncomfortably high pedestal here today and point the finger at some woman who's got some illness, sexually transmitted disease or whatever and say, ah yeah, it's your own fault. Or to point the finger at Princess Diana and say, well if you hadn't got yourself in some of those kind of relationships, you wouldn't be alive, you would be alive today. What kind of gospel is that? God deliver us.

If Jesus had pointed the finger in that kind of way, you'd all be dead today. Not a single one of you would have salvation. The only reason we are in Christ at all is because of his grace.

It is because of his grace that we are saved through trusting him. Ephesians 2, 1 to 10. There is nothing for you or I to boast of.

See what has stopped evangelicals from really pushing the boat out on social action is judgmentalism. It's a feeling, well it's their own fault. If they didn't spend so much money on the lottery, they wouldn't be in debt.

If she hadn't had five affairs, she wouldn't have bust her marriage. I'm afraid I can't have much sympathy for that. God deliver us.

Do you know where Jesus was? He wasn't in with crowds like this all day long, I can tell you. He was down the town. Do you know where you'd have found Jesus if he was living in Worthing today? On the streets where he'd be sure to be able to pick up a woman if that's what he wanted to do.

To be able to buy a woman commercially in Worthing, that's where Jesus would have been. Why? Because you found him with the prostitutes, right? You found him in communities where people were in those kind of situations. But it doesn't fit our evangelical niceness to be involved with this kind of question.

Now with notable exceptions. But I'm saying that if we are going to make a difference in Worthing, if we are going to be salt and light, we cannot just be more of the same. We need a fundamental rethink of where it is that this great town is hurting.

And to go and find people, please don't expect them to come in. Oh sure, white, well-educated, middle-class, aspiring young professionals, and people who had some kind of connection with the church may well come into big evangelistic events like The Vision. And I thank God for The Vision.

I pray you'll see a harvest. But don't think you'll reach the town by bringing the whole of Worthing into this building. It won't happen.

We've had to plant new congregations in London because there are people who will not even come into a building like this. I come from a very informal church. We had to plant another even more informal kind of church to be able to cope with a massive culture shift on some of these states where we're working.

And some of the people with us, by the way, we've planted from a church of 120. You're a church of 500. You could plant three effective evangelical witnesses in areas where there's a real struggle for the gospel with no problem within two or three years.

You have the resources and the muscle to do it. And by the way, you're going to have to. Can I see a show of hands if you were sitting next to an empty seat before everybody went out? Before everyone went out.

If you were sitting next to an empty seat, let's count them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Well, I did my own calculation.

I reckon you could get 20 more people in here comfortably without people thinking, God, it's a bit of squish. Or people sitting behind a pillar where they can't see anything. So if you're thinking about the future and you're going to be relevant and involved in the community and get into grips with some of the big issues, earning the right to say something, not just insult.

Insult is invisible. Light is powerful. It's directional.

It's controversial. It's targeted. And you know exactly where it's coming from.

I see that spotlight out there. I could take an air gun and shoot it out right now. Light is when you take a stand in the town.

Light is when you encourage someone to be involved in the council. Light is when you write to the newspaper. Why? Because you put the light on a lamp stand where people may see your good works.

Why? To give glory to you? No, to give glory to our Father who is in heaven. So light is a public thing in your work, in your families, in your streets, that you are campaigners for change, that the world is a better place because you are in it, that Worthing is a better place to live because of the witness of Worthing Tab. Isn't that your prayer? Hello? Don't you wish that to happen? You know, in the 19th century, crime rates fell.

Do you know why? Because of the sweep of the Christian faith. Just come back from Cornwall. Smuggling, wrecking and drunkenness fell dramatically in the mid-19th century with the rise of Methodism.

Why? Because people were impacted with the good news of Jesus Christ because people realised in the 19th century, before the police was even created, something had to change. And something has to change in this city, in this town, and you have the keys of the kingdom. You have the means of providing people hope, dignity and the supreme power of God to change their lives.

There is a power within you, each of you, which is more powerful than heroin. It's more powerful than nicotine addiction. It's more powerful than the bitterest family feud.

It's more powerful than a gang warfare. And it's the power of Jesus Christ. And you have it and I believe we can change the city.

And whole areas can change. We've seen it before in history and we can see it again. But it will involve tremendous cost.

It will involve a questioning of every aspect of what we do. Instead of living for ourselves and for the church, we're living for the community in which we live. Living to serve, looking out instead of looking in.

I almost have a picture today of us all standing and looking out instead of at each other because that is what God has called us to be. A people who will live for the rest of the world. A people who will be sent for every last one to be brought into unity in Christ.

I'll say more about the AIDS epidemic tonight and just a couple of things before I close. You might think it's over. It isn't.

Some 30 million people carry the virus worldwide. I've just been to Bombay where 800 people a night are becoming infected. Any of you supporting missionaries in places like Africa, a person comes to me and says, I'm a doctor.

I'm going to Africa. I'm interested in AIDS. Where should I go? I say, go anywhere.

A fifth of all the workers in South Africa mines are HIV infected. Up to 60% of all pregnant women in a clinic my friend runs in Zimbabwe are infected. Infection rates are falling in Uganda, thank God.

After a situation where up to a third of a Christian congregation was infected. Why? Because HIV survives conversion barring a miracle. And if you have a congregation this size where most of you have found faith in the last 10 years, then a third of you would have HIV.

And that is a problem. Huge pastoral issues. In Britain, the Christian community has made a response.

We have a work asset is just one part of that. We have a booklet here. 1.1 million of these have gone into British schools.

That's great, isn't it? Why? Because it's a sign of our times. People are hungry for Christian values. Do you know who paid for 850,000 of these? The insurance industry because they believe that Christian values save them money.

Parents of teenagers today are dead scared that their own 14 year old daughter will inherit the values they grew up with in the 60s. And they want something different. And they're looking to the church to help them.

That's care has a wonderful video in use in 60% of all the schools in Britain. Absolutely fantastic. Wonderful.

It's part of this hunger. And we have a responsibility. And we are caring for people in your area around Brighton.

Brighton is one of the highest incidences of HIV in the whole of Europe. I said, how to work there? Volunteers, ordinary people, trained for a few evenings, going into homes, providing the love and the compassion of Christ. We've been doing that.

I tell you, it's spoken powerfully. Do you know something? Social services really respect our work. They buy it.

They think it's one of the best services around. The health service really respects the work. We are overwhelmed with referrals from the community of people with very different lifestyles, perhaps, than yours.

They'd be people who are coming to the church for unconditional care. It's a challenge to us. Just going to sit in the ghetto or going to get out into the city and make a difference.

It's only one example, but it's quite a good one. Because I'll tell you this. It's not the sort of illness that your friends expect your church to get involved in, is it? Do you think, oh, it's a load of gays and drug users and all the rest.

And the majority of people in Brighton, for historic reasons, who have HIV are people who've had same-sex relationships, okay? But it's not the true worldwide. 90% worldwide are heterosexual. And in London, we are overwhelmed by women, African women and their children who need care.

We have up to 100 children in our books at any time represented in the families we care for, just in London. But we can make a difference. And as we do that, we speak powerfully of a God of love.

And many people do find faith. But that's not the reason for doing it. We do things because people are worth it, made in the image of God.

And through this combination, I believe in the next millennium, we will see an awful lot more of social action on the one hand and church planting evangelism on the other, going hand in hand by church planting. I don't mean necessarily planting outside this building. I mean, finding groups of worshipping people, witnessing people that can relate to groups, different kinds of groups of people within the town relating to each other, finding each other, finding faith together, sometimes meeting in schools and semi-redundant church buildings in this building, wherever they can be found, wherever there is a hunger for the good news of Jesus Christ.

In Bridge, in London, as a result of a mission, we took our church walls off the church. We took great tents into a local park because people wouldn't come into a building. We took the church out and we rolled the sides off the tent and the community came in.

We have been overwhelmed. We cannot cope with the number of people who are asking questions about the Christian faith from every age group. There is a hunger in this city, I believe.

A real hunger. And we have a moral responsibility to respond to it. In fact, of all the churches in Worthing, because you are the largest evangelical witness, I believe that Jesus will hold you more to account than any of the other churches in Worthing for what happens in this city.

Don't you believe that? You have a responsibility before God. To shake off the old and to say the 1990s were nice. We had it all sussed.

The meetings were full. The church money was coming in. We have a pastor.

I know we'll have another assistant pastor soon. We have all these things running and everything feels just so. And then the Lord Jesus Christ throws down a wild card.

He says, yes, but what about the people I came for? And that is a major challenge for us. Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you will help us respond to the great challenge, not just to witness to a friend or two, but to really take hold of the gospel of good news, the gospel of the kingdom.

Father, we pray for this wonderful church celebrating its witness over a hundred years. And we pray that this church, when the history books are written, will have been at the very heart of a great awakening in this town. Amen.