Phil Went To A Club!

I want to start this with a question, what were you doing last Friday?

I found myself at a place called Batchwood, which is a club close to the base. I am helping to run some of the outreach from here that focuses on reaching out to the people who go to the clubs, basically handing out water and lollies’. It leads to some really interesting conversations, as the clubbers try to understand why a group of people would come and spend time at the club and give out stuff for free. We do this at least once every two weeks (on Fridays) and I took with me a group from the new DTS (Discipleship training school) that started here at Harpenden two weeks ago, for which I am full time staff. It is always so much fun, and the guys who came with me all came away raving about it, which is always nice!

The guys who own the club always enjoy having us come and spend time, and you get to have some really deep conversations with the bouncers and taxi drivers about who God is and what life is. I reckon they think we are a bit crazy heading down and spending our night round the club, but they really enjoy the lollies. One of the girls who came with me ended up in an amazing conversation with a girl who had recently come down from Durham. She had been going to a church there that does similar things at some of the local clubs in that city. We got to chat with her about where she was at and encourage her. I love it when God brings people together, so we invited her to come to the church that meets on the base on a Sunday evening. The night was full of other conversations ranging from drunk people thinking we were crazy to the girl above, and one of the bouncers asking some really deep things about what it is to be a Christian, but most are short, kind of double take passing chats about why we are doing what we are doing, most people think we are nuts, but at the same time tells us they have a lot of respect for what we are doing.

I always enjoying going, chatting and sharing with people, as it really challenges me in my faith, and where I am at with God, and keeps me pressing into him.

A quote from Phil Jones (one of the DTS trainees) – “I thought that it was a fun way to serve people, and one where it is love that is received. I initially thought it would be fairly pointless, but now I think that doing it consistently will see that love go deeper for the guys who are meet regularly, especially the staff. Even just going once I was asked by a lot of people why I was doing it, which both challenged and encouraged me to want to go again.”