Anthony Delaney - Leader

"A short but insightful read that can change lives forever – Anthony proves again that deep truths don’t have to be complex."

Dave Ferguson President, Exponential

"Anthony is the real deal, a leader full of keen insights into how to unlock the gift and calling God has placed in you. Read this, then get hold of a bunch for your friends."

Carl Beech The Message, CVM

"Anthony Delaney is a gifted communicator and leader. He has an infectious passion for God and is making an outstanding impact in his community."

Dr. Krish Kandiah Founding Director, Home For Good

“Delaney is 'above all' a follower of Jesus: he has successfully utilised his engaging, measured manner to grow Manchester's Ivy Church to more than four times its size since he joined as leader five years ago. So significant today is the congregation, that events are now held several times a week at venues across the city, including Cineworld, a warehouse and even a nightclub...”

The Independent From 6 page colour feature on Ivy Church. Read it here

“Anthony Delaney is one of those amazing leaders who loves Jesus, loves the mission and is truly authentic in his faith. I love how Anthony is impacting his community and putting into place a network of reproducing churches to reach the UK. I'm truly inspired by his get-it-done attitude while totally depending on God.” 

Dave Ferguson NewThing USA, Exponential 

“Anthony is a rare kind of man. He’s a great leader but he’s honest about his weaknesses. He’s a charismatic personality, but he’s surprisingly self-effacing. He comes from an ordinary background but has never settled for mediocrity. He’s a strong man with a tender heart.”

Mike Breen 3DM Global Team Leader

“So many people talk leadership theory but are not leading in significant ways. What Anthony brought to the TLG managers was so directly from his personal leadership experience. We were inspired to bring who we are to the leadership opportunities we have, to overcome opposition and build passionate teams who are focused on achieving goals. Inspirational and practical – a great combination!”

Tim Morfin CEO of The Lighthouse Group

Thinking about leading...

Update on NewThing Europe

(I’ve been asked by the guys in the USA to do a snapshot report of the ‘story so far’ and thought I’d share it here for those of you who are interested. This Sunday at Ivy we have another of our monthly days set aside to pray for NewThing and this will help you)  I was just coming to terms with being challenged already from NewThing’s LARN process to step out of my comfort zone as Pastor of a growing network of Ivy churches taking ground here in Manchester and consider the whole of my nation of Great Britain: how to create systems to reproduce networks to attract, train and deploy apostolic leaders? Many of you will know from the Exponential book one of the main ideas is that you draw your vision on a napkin? That was one of the biggest challenges because I’m not very good at drawing (Manchester’s easy, just draw a circle for the M60 and drop a few dots all over for churches: Britain’s a lot harder to draw and always ended up looking like two pieces of […]

Stuck In Jerusalem? It’s Time To Move!

I’ll never forget my time spent in India and Sri Lanka with some of the most beautiful, bold and fearless Christians I ever met. Hearing their stories of persecution puts much of what we moan about in context and changed my mindset forever. I’m reminded of that and challenged to the core reading the post (below the photo) from Exponential. As you read it, ask – what stage are you at? I like to think Ivy is getting to stage 4 right now, but so grateful we do not at this point have to pay the same price at Stage 2 as our brothers and sisters in many parts of the world. What do you think could be the reason so many in the West stay settled in Stage 1?   As director of training and leadership development for India Gospel League (IGL), Benjamin Chellapandian (“Pastor Benny”) oversees 7,000 church-planting pastors in rural India and Sri Lanka who over the past 25 years have planted roughly 70,000 churches. Recently, Chellapandian spoke to a U.S. church about God’s plan and purpose […]

Want To Grow A Great Church? Do Nothing!

The Bible says if you want a great church – do nothing!  The Bible really says that. We are in a series at Ivy right now called the Summer of Joy, going through the New Testament letter Paul wrote to the Philippians. As I continued to study it, something he wrote to that church (which we learn later had false teachers coming from the outside and fall-outs on the inside) jumped right out at me. What you have to do, to build a great church, perhaps the best thing you can do if like the people he was writing to you have disunity, dissensions and factions starting to develop – DO NOTHING. It really is! Maybe some of you are really glad I say that because that’s what you want to do. But I don’t mean what you think I mean. Maybe some of you Type As are mad now,  and you think that can’t be in the Bible. But it is. The Bible says if you want a great church, Do Nothing. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself. […]

Wanted: Jason (and Jane) Bournes for the Kingdom – NewThing Global

I am reflecting back on the inaugural NewThing Global meeting in Nairobi earlier this year and thought a summary post might help answer some of the many questions I get asked about NewThing Europe right now. We met there because of an initial connection between two leaders; Oscar Muriu of Nairobi Chapel was speaking at the Willow GLS and his message impacted my friend Dave Ferguson. They later reconnected through the conference Dave helps lead, Exponential – where Oscar in his amazing keynote from 2 Corinthians 5:14-20 he asked, ‘What are you living your life for that is worth Christ dying for?’ That led to our partnership discussions, and the idea of NewThing Global (of which I am now leading NewThing Europe) developed from that. We wanted to get a small group of friends to gather from the corners of the world to become part of a network, because trust can be communicated through all the relationships in that network. We’ve all been part of groups. There are groups that meet to train, or to talk, but a network is there […]

Ivy Church Becomes A Movement! Check the Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUdWHoXi9pQ Because we all danced to ‘You got to move it, move it’ and because you have to get moving or don’t call yourself a movement – that’s what #IvyKinetic was all about. The whole church got equipped for the call – and hit the streets! To find out more or connect with us, check out the Ivy Church website or Like the Ivy Manchester Facebook page after you watch the video. If you’re a leader who wants to turn the church inside out to help people find their way back to God, you can connect with me after investigating NewThing to find out how we can together catalyse more reproducing churches that help people find their way back to God in the UK, Europe and around the world.

Mustard Seed Faith to Change The World @OscarMuriu at #Exponential NewThingGlobal

Incredible talk by my friend and partner Oscar Muriu of NewThingAfrica and NewThingGlobal just now at Exponential. As I watch now many are responding, and I’m here praying ‘Me too, Lord! Make me brave!’  If you are resonating and responding to this and interested in planting reproducing churches and starting movements in Europe with NewThingEurope get in touch with me here.  There is sustaining faith, enough to get by today… and then there is mustard seed faith What is it? If your faith is small, you can say to a mountain – move, and it will be done for you. It’s the faith that moves mountains. It does not depend on my networks but on God alone. It begins where my abilities and resources end This is the faith that puts me in the place where nothing will happen until God moves. Mustard seed prays prayers so big there is no hope they would ever come to be without God. The sad thing is, 95% of Christians pray with that prayer. We ask for too little We are too easily […]

Life in Black and White

There’s a whole lot of work being done on my blog right now to update it and make it look fantastic and more user friendly. There will be various sections for you to be able to navigate and go deeper with regards to learning about leadership at different levels, whether it’s for church, life or business. Right now though  as you will notice it’s just black and white. Funny how we get used to all singing all dancing isn’t it? I remember the excitement in our house I think I must have been about eight years old when my Dad brought home a colour television and I got to see colour TV in the house for the first time. The first program We watched was called, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home funnily enough, because we couldn’t wait till Dad got home and put the plug on and then we could see a whole new world. Once we’d seen it in colour – there’s no way we’d ever have wanted to go back to Black and White again. Gone were […]

Immeasurably More! @RabbiRogers HIGHER.

Ephesians 3 This is the reason we kneel. God is higher & more glorious than we can imagine. Picture of a beach The beach is good But there is an ocean to step into. Go in deep enough to trust the waters to hold you God wants to lead us into deeper waters where we are immersed – where we are out of our depths but the Spirit is in control Col 3 Look up – that’s where the action is We look down a lot. We get focused shuffling along Look up to where Jesus is God is bigger Higher But we shuffle along. Look up! See the stars He’s bigger than you can imagine! 98% of the universe are invisible to us The heavens are his playground The earth is his footstool We are made of 7 billion billion billion atoms 99.9% of an atom is empty space. If you got rid of all the empty space you could condense everything to the size of a sugar cube Don’t shrink God Don’t control & contain him in a […]