Dear Friends

As we enter into another year, I wonder how you are feeling?  I think it is a time that can fill us with many different thoughts and emotions.  There can be a sense of hope and anticipation, a desire for change and new opportunities, but there can also be a sense of fear, regret, disappointment, disillusionment and grief; or perhaps simply a sense of everything carrying on regardless.   It seems to me that we experience many if not all of these conflicting emotions at different times and it can be hard to know how to carry them within us.  The greeting of a ‘Happy New Year’ we know will not change our reality and happiness may not be our primary emotion at this time.  Yet my prayer is that through this year in the very midst of all that you experience, you will know in increasing measure something of this mystery of Christ in us the Hope of Glory - He who has become to us our wisdom and sanctification.

The New Year always gives us that divide between the old and the new. It is an opportunity for us to reflect and glean from the old in order to move on to the new.  I wonder what for you have been some of the highlights from the year passed, those moments when you were most alive? Where were the discouragements, and those times that you were drained of life?

As a ministry I think we look back on our first full year of ministry in Sussex with a profound sense of excitement and gratitude.  Some of you will remember the postcard we sent out this time last year, put to print with quite a sense of trepidation.  Like you I imagine, the year has not seen the answers to all our hopes and prayers.  We continue to face challenges and uncertainties, but we have seen God encounter individuals in different ways that have been transformational and I think that must be one of our greatest privileges.

So in this looking back it has been thrilling to see different aspects of the vision of Transformational Leadership Centre come into fruition.

Personal development for missionaries
We have longed to gather missionaries from the field in order to see God refresh, rebuild and renew them and we saw this in wonderful fashion for four weeks in June as 7 families gathered from 6 nations for our 2/20 Encounter, in order to then return to their sphere of ministry.

Our heart for the International
At the heart of our ministry is a desire to create a safe place for folk to stay with us for a season, but also for us to visit others in their own location so it was with excitement that we travelled to South Africa in March, to a region Charlotte had spent many years pioneering, to run a conference.  As a result we hear great stories of God’s involvement in individuals’ lives.

In October this year we attended meetings in Budapest that bring together similar ministries from across Europe.  As a result we are now looking at ways we can take our training perhaps in modular form to Romania and forge stronger links with those working in that country.  There are other invitations to travel but I think we need to see an increase of staff for this to happen.

Sharing truths
After two great conferences earlier in the year (one in South Africa and the other here in Sussex) it was disappointing to have to cancel the one we had planned for October.  It serves us as a reminder that we are new in the area and that it does take time and effort to develop relationships here.

Developing the contemplative through retreats
Our Signpost days were a new initiative this year and it has be exciting to see these days develop with people discovering the richness of taking time out in the midst of a busy month to listen to their lives and encounter God with them.  Some people will join us every month, some may plan in two or three a year.  Now is a good time to think about that and get the date(s) in the diary, whether it is with us or somewhere else.

We continue this ‘fixed point’ in the calendar this year with one important CHANGE:
  Signpost Days are now 2nd THURSDAY of every month.

We thoroughly enjoyed our Advent Retreat this year: the church calendar gives us great opportunities in the year to ‘pause’, and the season of Advent provides us a particularly fitting occasion to ponder on the mystery of Immanuel, God with us.  Those of us that gathered had a special time personally and together.

Coaching and personal development
This continues to be a most essential part of our ministry.  As good as it is to share the truths of Christ as Life through conferences, teaching and retreats, nothing proves as effective in the life of an individual as a tailor-made process of one on one coaching.  We set aside two days of every week for this and it has been profoundly encouraging to see the changes that take place in people’s lives as a result.

Building of community
We have shared before that the ministry of Transformational Leadership Centre goes beyond the ‘events’ themselves.  There is something alive in the relationships that are forming as God gathers people who are hungry to experience and encounter the Christ that came to be our very source of life, who are not afraid to own their pain and brokenness but are willing to exchange their own resources for that which is theirs in Christ through surrender and trust.

We marvel at these glimpses of Christ breaking through - the light shining in the darkness, but I long for more. We covet your prayers and your involvement along the way.  Many of you have journeyed faithfully with us on the path that God has had us on and we write to you as friends and fellow travellers.  It is an immense privilege to know your involvement, interest and support as we continue to see God’s unfolding story.

We enclose this year’s ‘diary of events’ and look forward to see you at some or indeed several points in the year!

In the meantime, I pray that God Himself will be your courage and your hope, enabling you to walk into this New Year with eyes of faith, and confidence in that which is unseen but sure, because of the character of the God in whom we trust.

"Listen to your life.  See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.  In the boredom and the pain of it no less than in the excitement and the gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." Frederick Buechner

In Christ,

Val Smith