LAUNCH! One Word Changed Everything For Me.

“LAUNCH out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch.” Luke 5:4 Peter was a Type A who had been doing everything he knew to do. Working hard, tiring himself out, much effort, little effectiveness, he was pretty much always mending his nets, but that didn’t mean he was successful. The nets were empty and he was frustrated and exhausted. Then the landlubber he calls Lord stands in Peter’s boat as if he owns it and says ‘Launch out into deep water’ That word LAUNCH changed everything for Peter, and reading this passage a few years ago it did so for me too. It has become the name of the multiplication event I helped found, which has now been challenging and equipping hundreds of leaders from around the world to dream bigger and adventure further, to go where God is sending them to reach those he wants them to reach. “Launch” is from epanago, which means “bring up”, “stir up”. “excite”, “lead back”, “elevate”, “exalt”, “bring back”, “withdraw”, “retreat”, and “put out to sea”. That’s what we will do […]

REFRAMATION – A Great Book To Get ASAP

I wouldn’t usually review a book half way through but I was given an advance copy and it sat on my ‘to read’ pile until a couple of days ago – then it grabbed hold of me. I’m definitely going to get lots of copies available for LAUNCH this year as this book is so needed. Amidst all the books on church techniques, strategies and goals (which I love) comes one which asks so many challenging questions and provides great insight into what the heck it is we are actually even doing. And why ‘it’ isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. Reframation – what’s that? Well Alan likes to make up new words when old ones don’t fit, or add a couple together to make a new one – which I think is cokay.  The basic idea of the book that is everyone sees through a frame, and we need to reframe our understandings of God, people and the church – which needs to keep on reforming rather than say ‘Oh yeah we did that 500 years ago.’ (See what they […]

At 10:02am – Join In With Jesus’ Prayer

Some years ago a friend of mine invited us as a family to come and spend some time on holiday at his villa in Spain. I was delighted to accept, but this turned out to be a far cry from a little apartment on the beach. When we got there we found we were inland, farming country, and the place we stayed was full of olive trees.  It also happened to be harvest time. We ended up getting involved, using hand held machines to shake the branches to catch the olives in nets, which were then sorted by various local people hired in to help sort them before I went with him to have truckloads weighed and bought. I worked up a sweat, but it was a great adventure and memory.  Others had done the hard work, we were there to reap! This was a window of opportunity to gather in the crop. Eddie told me, ‘The size of the harvest is all about how many workers you have out in the fields.’  I thought, ‘That’ll preach!’  The Message version […]

The Church Will Be Sunk Without This

I am so grateful for the insights of my friend Alan Hirsch – particularly for the gift that he has given back to the church to reignite its missionalDNA and particularly reclaim the need for apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers (APEST) to operate, for the church to be optimal. As he says, the systems we are presently running are perfectly designed to give us the results we are seeing. So I’m fully convinced and committed that it is almost the silver bullet the church needs. When we activate the 5Q ministries of Ephesians 4 through the church, everyone will see Jesus coming and the world will be changed like it has not since the beginning of our movement before it became an institution.   Yet as I read through the NT I’m reminded that there are other lists of gifts and ministries in various places, and as a church planter, network leader and coach I’m increasingly convinced that they are also vital for this to happen.  Paul wrote to the highly gifted church at Corinth, which despite its charismatic glories […]

Movements Start With You! NewThing Global Gathering.

Tonight I was one of a group of leaders meeting upstairs in a cool pub in the East End of London to meet, eat and catch up on plans that began to be hatched back in 2015 in Nairobi for what was the inaugural global NewThing gathering. The real work starts in earnest tomorrow but the first of NewThing’s 4Rs in Relationships and it was fantastic to connect and reconnect with faith-filled, fired up, entrepreneurial  movement makers from around the world and we were addressed by Dave Ferguson to remind us of the vision that brought us together. This is from my notes on his talk:  NewThing is a catalyst for movements of reproducing churches We believe God has given us something of a unique calling, something apostolic -a gift to steward and also to share around the world.  The word the Lord seems to be speaking over us right now? FAVOUR! Ps 90:17 God has shown us his favour! We have the stats for that.  But more important is that there are stories behind the stats.  We are changing lives!  That’s […]

A Global Gathering Of Leaders Agreed – Only ONE Thing Will Change Our Cities. What was it?

I was privileged this week to be in Manhattan as the guest of Alan & Deb Hirsch – facilitated by Rich Robinson to form a small collective of global movement leaders through a ‘communitas’ exercise (Alan likes to make up words). We were hosted in Tim Keller’s church offices at Redeemer City to City. Our purpose? To look at how the church can step outside the models, mindsets and habits that have brought us to where we are – because they will no longer move us forward. We have to change our paradigms – and then our practices.  One day was spent looking at NYC as an example city. What would we do to see the gospel saturate this city of more than 8m? I’m going to blog again with some more of my thoughts as a result, but as we rolled paper across the tables and discussed with marker pens in hand, I was fascinated to hear from kingdom change makers as diverse as Danielle Strickland and her husband Steve, leaders like Christine Caine, Dave and Jon Ferguson, Hugh […]

Four Ways You Can Find And Develop Leaders – Oscar Muriu

So much of what I’m learning about finding and developing leaders has been by observation and connection with world class practitioners, and nobody does it better than one of NewThing’s Global leaders, Bishop Oscar Muriu of Nairobi Chapel. He aims to plant 300 churches by 2020; with 210 of them in Kenya; 60 in the rest of Africa; and 30 off the continent of Africa in the gateway cities of the world. Oscar has spoken on a number of occasions at Willow Creek GLS and also at Exponential (he’ll be there in Florida again in 2020). I am thrilled that he will be one of our keynote speakers at LAUNCH this year, particularly as it was a conversation with Oscar that gave me the idea to start LAUNCH in the first place. We have once again assembled an incredible line up but it would be worth the price of admission and travel for you and your team to just hear from him! As a foretaste (and for free!) here are some of his thoughts on how to find and develop […]

Learn to be a Collaborative Leader with Tom McGehee

STOP TRYING TO DO IT ALL YOURSELF 9:30am-4pm BST Saturday 15th June, Ivy Central, Manchester M20 2GP “No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isn’t my fault.” ― Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage:  I have been rereading Lencioni’s fantastic book recently. He describes so well how what we think of as teams are often really just groups – more like a bunch of golfers who each go off and do their own thing, and then compare results at the end. If like me; You want to know how to move from that toward environments that bring out the best in everyone. You’re wondering how to build and empowering a winning team. You want to create lasting change through a self perpetuating leadership culture You need to join us here in Manchester on the 15th June for our Launch One Day with Tom McGehee and bring those you work with. It has been my great pleasure to get to know as a friend someone who has been a hero to me for some years, Tom McGehee. I […]

Invest For Eternity

Here’s the video talk I put out across Ivy sites last Sunday to encourage people to invest in our Firstfruits offering next week. Feel free to contribute at https://ivychurch.org/giving/ if it speaks to you!