Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped tonight down at the church. Great to see all the comments on the blog about the service. It was also encouraging to see Stuart Sharp the minister of St John’s Camelon with us tonight. Stuart is interested in finding ways where we can work together. I do hope that we will be able to attract the support of more churches as we develop Sanctuary First.

The video we used got a very good crit as did the prayers of intercession. People felt engaged getting up and praying and lighting candles. We intentionally made sure that there were a variety of mediums through which to engage with worship.This was a good night and Lilias must be delighted to see such a good number of young people turning up.

We live in an image driven culture. Everybody is so conscious of their image, you know - the way we look. Tonight at Sanctuary First , our new alternative worship service, we are asking the question what does it mean to be made in the image of God?

Its not really about your shape and size. Its not about your brilliance or lack of it. Its about other things that shape our lives and our attitudes. You see deep down in our beings, some might say our souls, all of us have a desire to experience feelings and attitudes that make us act in positive way to ourselves and the world around us. we want to feel good about ourselves and the world. We like it when we get oon with our friends and family.

The strange thing is that many of us feel negative about our image because we are judging ourselves by a very superficial standard. we have bought into a philosophy that says image is all about looks.

You don’t like your nose, you don’t like the lump or the bump that sticks out from under your jumper. There is an unbelievable amount of young people who commit suicide because they feel bad about themselves. Its also because we feel we can’t always be the people we’d like to be. There is an answr to all this God is in the business of helping us see ourselves in a new light. He is in the business of helping us see that image is not just about shape and size. Image is about being free. Above all that is what it means to be made in the image of God. God is the freest person I know. Our problem is that we don’t know how to handle freedom and what we think is freedom becomes our prison. So the question tonight is do you want God to break you out of your “image prison”and be free! You see worship is all about getting free, feeling forgiven,feeling ready to experience communion. Now thats another word I’ll blog about another day.