Blog:
Welcome to Living Hope

Posted by Mez Carter
on 8th March 2024

'Living Hope Church' - This is the name God has given us for the East Leeds church plant.

We spent a lot of time sitting with and praying about ‘Living Hope’ being our church name. As we prayed God continued to bring it before our eyes and ears through scripture, songs and books, often at key times when we’ve wondered whether we were on the right track or indeed if we should remove the ‘living’ part and just go for ‘hope’. Each time we opened our hands for God to take it away he would speak again to us and affirm its inclusion through some unexpected means. At Christmas we even had a homemade card through the post which read inside ‘ Take heart, we have living hope in Jesus!’ The name also really resonates with our spirits for East Leeds and what we’d love to pray people will be saved into in this place.

Another reason we feel drawn to Living Hope is that we would love our church name to be a conversation starter and contain words that are understandable to people who aren't familiar with the bible. Our English language is often limited and we use the word ‘hope’ so often for things that are largely out of our control, fragile or that have been unfulfilled and ultimately left us disappointed. (I remember at a certain time in my life my doctor quoting the first half of Proverbs 12:13 to me ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick.’ Of course, the second part is ‘a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.’)

With the community we are going into, making a distinction between fragile hopes that may fail and the confident hope we can have in Jesus, and therefore build our life on, is important. 1 Peter 1:3, where Jesus is spoken of as our living hope, is beautifully rich and many parts of this chapter really resonate with our hearts and mirror things that God has spoken to us these past couple of years. We also look forward to making Romans 15:13 a prayer that we pray over each other as a church:

‘May the God of hope fill you will all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.’

As for our vision, we wanted this to be really simple. Simple in its core message and simple enough that we can remember it…

‘To grow in our relationship with Jesus and to show his love to those around us.’

We wanted a vision that, in a sentence, really encapsulates what we believe God is calling us to as Living Hope Church. We long to see God’s love impacting the community of East Leeds. We want to learn of his heart and partner with him as he draws people, saves them by his grace and transforms them as they grow into who he created them to be.

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