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 […]

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!

5 Steps Of Leadership Development

SO CHALLENGING! Jon Ferguson who wrote Exponential has been teaching us on this core competency for leaders to multiply their impact as part of our NewThing Catalyst Community. The 5 Steps of Leadership Development Conversation – “I think you could be an outstanding leader of…. would you be up to apprenticing?” YES  Great! Let’s work together  (This has to apply to every area of leadership and ministry.) Qs at every stage – “What worked? What didn’t work? How can we improve?” Step 1. I Do. You Watch. We talk  Just watch me.  2. I Do, you help, we talk  Get in the mix, ask them to help at some level. How could they help?  3. You do. I help. We talk  Transition to taking on responsibilities for the group. You run the sound board… 4. You do. I watch. We talk  They are getting increasingly confident. I’m a safety net.  5. You do. Someone else watches.  The former apprentice is now leading another and apprenticing them.  We always need new leaders. Not just for a new location, but for where […]

BRO UP!

I’ve been reading and listening around issues of why it’s hard to be a man these days. Because the pressure is on, as I wrote about in my book Rough Diamonds. Most of the men I now connect with are not struggling so much with being a tough guy as I worked with (or arrested) in the Police – but rather they’re struggling as they try to be a ‘nice bloke‘. That sounds okay, but it’s not the authentic masculinity Jesus modelled and its pursuit can lead to the creation of passive aggressive, approval seeking, manipulative wimps. This leads to frustration, giving to get, fixing rather than listening, avoiding conflict, constantly seeking approval and hiding mistakes. The ‘nicest bloke you’d ever meet’ can also be dishonest, secretive, controlling, passive-aggressive, isolated, and addictive. I’m convinced that trying to be a Christian nice bloke can compound and collude with this rather than help it. As a man who’s moved from tough guy to recovering nice bloke I want to meet up with other men more, as both scripture and psychology affirm this […]

The Shepherds Were The First Church

In the time of the Roman empire, whenever a VIP family had a baby, they didn’t have Facebook but to get the word out but they’d send out a herald. The emperor would send out heralds to let all the other VIPs know, announcing the ‘good news’ of the birth. If this was a first son, even better because the family name would continue! “A child is born!”  So when we read the God sends a herald angel, to say ‘Hark! Good News!’  Notice – who does God send heaven’s heralds to? LUKE 2: 8There were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. 9 Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, 10 but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. 11 The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! 12 And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, […]