One of the most popular Ivy teaching videos ever! Filmed at Alderley Edge, it’s a bit silly at times, but with a serious message from the life of King David for when you’re going through a scary time. Who needs Bear, when you have Ant?
“If you’re interested in church planting, if you’re interested in multiplication, in mission or movement making – this is the place that you will meet with other people who love and are passionate about the same thing, where you can also learn and share best practices with each other. Make sure you’re there this year!” Dave Ferguson: President, Exponential. Book now and bring your team before the best deals go! 13-15th November at Victoria Warehouse, Manchester Leaders from across the world are gathering for LAUNCH Church Multiplication Catalyst in partnership with Exponential where we learn to multiply disciples, leaders and churches in Europe and beyond.
I blogged the morning of the bombings about how as I discovered the news about the brutal attack at the Manchester Arena I realized I was walking around with my fists clenched, and how it’s hard to pray with your hands like that. Later after we opened the church for prayer to the community and as I looked at the cross, nail pierced hands opened mine to grace. But as more details emerged, my heart began to clench. Ivy is a church with many medics, some very senior. I kept in touch as well as I could with our guys. They have worked 16 and 12 hour shifts “saving lives and limbs” as first priority but nothing but a warzone could prepare many of the staff, though used to appalling injuries. Extracting the nuts and bolts of evil, trying to convince wounded parents to receive treatment themselves when they only wanted to be patched up and be with their injured children. The calculated manner and premeditated maliciousness of deadly intent to maim the most defenceless young families. I hate it. […]
I’d booked one of our guys to come and video some things here at the church today, but nothing is business as usual, so I took the opportunity to put a few thoughts on this short clip.
I go to bed early. But through the night the phone in the corner kept buzzing away at an unusually high rate. Then this morning the phone rang and I was asked by someone in the press what I thought about what has happened here in my home city Manchester. Within minutes I had read all the texts, had all the information, and all the questions, but so few answers. How can this have happened here? I love this city that I lead Ivy Church in so much! My year started at the Arena as over ten thousand of us gathered to pray in the New Year for Festival Of Praise. Now I hear of this carnage in the same place. One of our friends, an Ivy member, was there with his kids last night at the concert there, he says a last minute mess up with the tickets put them away from the seats they should have been in right where the blast was, so they were saved. I thank God for them, but then so many […]
While on a short city break in Barcelona I was suddenly taken ill with excruciating pain in my stomach. I’d been pushing through since it started at 5am, telling myself it was indigestion, and I just had to ‘man up’ and it would go away. At 7.30am I went for a run just so I could have pain in other parts of my body and take my mind off it. It didn’t go. By 10am it was so bad I said to Zoe please could she go to the chemist. Then I rang her on the way and said ‘I think we need a Doctor.’ An emergency doctor was called, who called an ambulance after giving me morphine. They put a blue light on and I ended up spending 3/4 of my city break in a hospital bed, with gallstones – thankfully I’m now back in the UK. But while I was there they fasted me, so I thought I might as well use the (enforced – does it count?) discipline to pray while in another part of Europe about the […]
How often have we gone to church or heard some teaching at a seminar and maybe we even thought, ‘Okay this is good stuff’ – but not changed anything? Why is that? How many times like in the parable of the sower does the seed get put down, or in some of your work you’re going round throwing it out there and it’s getting pecked away, choked out, trampled down and NOT producing the kind of fruit it should? Last week I read a fascinating book called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. He looks at how a tiny Tennis club in Russia has created more top 20 women players than the whole of the USA, how one woman has taught Jessica Simpson, Beyonce and loads of other pop stars, how one island in the Dominican Republic produces the world’s best baseball players, South Korea all the best women golfers, how do we create talent, learn anything better and grow skill? It’s all to do with myelin, whether it’s learning a language, swinging a bat or playing a violin. Every […]
I just had time to read a recent short paper on church membership and attendance by the wizard of stats, Dr Peter Brierley and I am DISTURBED! He does the church in the UK a great service by holding a mirror up to us in terms of how things really are, though I suspect the reflection is such an ugly one most leaders will take a glance, then look away quickly and go back to business as usual. The paper relates as I say to measuring church membership and attendance. He starts off by saying that attendance – ‘bums on seats’ is not of course the only thing we want to measure and I agree, though often it’s the leaders who are putting the most people off church who voice that argument most strongly. We make ourselves feel better by finding other ways people are ‘connecting’ with church because they are not coming any more. Membership is harder to define because some churches may set a high bar for membership (I think we do at Ivy) whereas in other churches […]
I just came back from church where we saw a group of men, many of whom have served time in prison and coming from the most broken backgrounds being baptised. I was so excited as I heard their stories and then we were privileged to see them take that step, that sign of a whole new life. One of them (Michael) read my book Rough Diamonds when he was in prison for 17 years and had asked me to go in the water with him. What a privilege and what better day to celebrate new life in Jesus than Easter Day? Then I came home and my grandson wanted the TV on, and a movie is on about the Easter Bunny, who apparently goes all around the world today making everyone happy in a single day. Wow, never heard that one before! I’m not upset that a bunny tries to compete with Jesus, but when he’s stealing Santa’s job – that’s crossing a line! How do we see and make sense of what Easter is really about? Here are some […]
Last year 250 leaders from a phenomenal number of streams joined us from around the world to fill the venue in Media City for our Exponential Conversation. This November (14-15th, with a pre-con in Salford for church leaders only the day before) we are growing into a much larger venue for 800 to join us for LAUNCH. We are grateful that the conference is sponsored by Compassion UK and the additional workshops by Stewardship. Our partners list now includes RCCG, New Wine, Salvation Army, Fresh Expressions, The Message, NewThing, Forge and Broadcast! BOOK NOW! Take advantage of the great deals on prices now, even better for teams by clicking HERE. Watch the video and share it with others who believe the best is yet to come for the church in Europe HERE