“Anthony Delaney speaks the language of our friends, neighbours and co-workers. Using eye-catching illustrations and thought-provoking stories, he brings spiritual truths to life.”
Jon Ferguson
NewThing USA
“It is essential that young men of God rise up and carry on the greatest task given to anyone, the teaching of God’s precious Holy Word. To aspire to such a calling is one thing, but to fulfill it is another. As one who loves God’s Word and is passionate about the continuing faith of the Church, I am thrilled that men like Anthony Delaney are one of God’s chosen vessels. He is surely one of tomorrow’s men!”
Dr. R.T. Kendall
International speaker and author
“Anthony Delaney communicates in a way that is grounded in honesty, reality and integrity. He smashes every religious stereotype you've ever come across whilst remaining passionate about his faith. A beer, a Bible and a Balti shared in the company of Anthony would be a great way to spend an evening.”
Paul McGee
The SUMO guy, bestselling author
“We in Willowfield Church had a great week of outreach and mission with Anthony Delaney and a team from Ivy. Anthony himself was used really effectively in his preaching and people are now in the Kingdom who responded to his invitation to follow Christ. He is a gifted evangelist and it is so clear that nothing excites Anthony quite like seeing people become Christians. The quality of the young men and women in the team from Ivy who accompanied Anthony also testified to Anthony as a leader who is obviously able to raise up disciples who make disciples and who are very effectively discipline the next generation of radical young Christian leaders. We were blessed so much by Anthony's ministry in Belfast.”
David McClay
Senior Pastor, Willowfield Church, Belfast
"Please pass on grateful thanks to Anthony for his contribution at Flourish. I have been reviewing what he taught again and again with individuals since then and I am sure that it will influence our future at my churches, so am confident that it will be a similar blessing in the other churches that were represented at Flourish this year. THANK YOU"
Lisa Battye
Revd L. Battye, Rector, member of General Synod
We invited Anthony to Immanuel to help us put sharing our faith back at the heart of what we are about at Immanuel. He spoke at a men’s breakfast and our main Sunday gathering. He is a passionate and relevant communicator of the gospel. He uses language that is easily understood with many great illustrations and stories. Anthony not just shared the good news but encouraged and equipped us to continue with mission. The feedback from our church family has been incredibly positive and we are hoping he will visit us again.
As we spoke after the service his heart to invest in church leaders was evident.
Tomorrow evening I start a new series at Ivy Central, Didsbury 7pm I’m calling FIRST LOVE. When I was on holiday this year I had a dream that when I woke up I felt like God was saying we should look at the whole area of sex and sexuality and relationships, friendships, marriage, singleness, gender and so on. I’ve never really gone into these things though it seems everyone else talks about them all the time but my reason has been ‘I want to keep the main thing the main thing and just focus on Jesus and the good news.’ But who is the good news for? And how come the world does not see the church as its purveyor? It would be hard to disagree that one of the main reasons is for how we’ve gone about this. I’d planned a one off teaching on singleness and dating but I felt like we had to go further and deeper into messy areas the church has traditionally made such a mess of discussing, where there’s an incredible amount of hurt […]
My notes from a master communicator at Spring Harvest 2018 God can use anyone to communicate – that’s a given But we can all get better You’ll lose people’s attention for two reasons you’re boring you’re good – so they’ll lose track of what you want them to focus on; change it up and tell a story Eyes matter; look in sections at people, even if you can’t see them in the lights they can see you. It includes people Minimise the distance between you and the people as much as possible Sound matters. It doesn’t matter how good it is, if the sound is rubbish. Do a sound check, the way you actually talk. Try to minimise distractions. Shut the doors. Don’t have people wandering round. Don’t have coffee being served while you’re doing it. Don’t waste the start. Get into it. Aristotle on persuasion; Ethos – the character, establishes credibility and credentials Logos – the reasoning Pathos – the heart. Which should we focus on? It depends who and what we are speaking on and to. Pathos is connected to […]
The preaching class at my theological college ended with an Egyptian monk called George telling me, ‘If God could speak through the mouth of a donkey I suppose he can use you.’ Since then I’ve read thousands of books and learned from everyone I can on public speaking and preaching, because I always want to get better at something so important! The Bible says not many people should step up to be a teacher, because we’ll be subject to a stricter judgement. How much more for if you presume to teach others to do it! Despite that, the Ivy staff team have asked me to put together some teaching to help them to preach. I might do more than one of there’s a good turn out, and this one’s open to all not just Ivy people. 7.30pm 24th November at Ivy Didsbury I’ll also touch on how to lead services well, and a lot of what I say will help anyone in business who has to stand up and present. I’ll have fun talking about something I love – you’re […]
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 […]
Every day for weeks we have been bombarded with horror stories. Orlando and then various cities in the USA, Baghdad, Syria (of course), then Nice – a place where Ivy has mission partners that I have visited so it feels a lot closer to home. It really wasn’t that long since Zoe and I sat on the Promenade des Anglais, looking out at the sea and praying together. A beautiful place – and then irrational, unfathomable evil is unleashed and the innocent suffer again. How are we supposed to deal with it? And whether you believe in God or hate the idea of God, you have to deal with it. Sociologist Peter Berger said we all have to come up with a solution to this for ourselves in some way, or we’ll find the world unbearable. We’ll crack up. That’s one reason the world is so hopeless and fearful right now. People are still trying to figure it all out, and they can’t… Last night at Ivy I addressed the issues in a talk entitled How can God be good, when […]
My notes from Ivy’s latest ‘Equipped To Lead’ event: Lucy Peppiatt Crawley – The Bible’s Five Fold Teaching Gift Teachers are those who believe they have truths to impart. There’s something they want to pass on. Jude talks about ‘the faith that was once and for all entrusted to the saints.’ You have been entrusted with something! Part of your calling then is to learn how to teach. And there’s more than one way to do it. Teaching has to do something. Impartation for action – that leads to change. All real teachers want to see that. Teaching is at the heart of the Christian faith. Because Jesus was a teacher- he came as a Rabbi. He gathered disciples to teach them, to teach others to obey all he’d taught them. You can’t make disciples without teaching. In the early church they would have around three years teaching before they’d be baptized people. Proverbs 24:3,4 By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures. You can’t get knowledge […]
Tonight at Ivy Didsbury Andy Smith blew us away with an incredible talk about the Magi, those outsiders from the East who found themselves in Bethlehem shortly after Christ was born, and on bended knee gave the best of who they were and had to him. There was so much great stuff there I encourage you to subscribe to the Ivy podcast and listen to the talk in full when it’s up later in the week. But something Andy said almost in passing at the end really grabbed me. It was an epiphany at Epiphany! Here it is, as I recall what he said: “The wise men got there, and saw… a baby, an infant, a little child. But God says in Zechariah 4:10 despise not the day of small beginnings,’ and this child grew into the Saviour of the world.” As I sat there I thought about those VIPs. They came looking for the King of the Jews, right? What would that look like? They’d know what Kings look like. And they are somehow looking for God there, the […]
WHAT’S HIS NAME? Any Josephs in the place tonight? Mary? Carol!? Anyone called Jesus? No, it used to be common – but he’s pretty unique… he kind of cornered the market on that name. It means ‘God to the rescue.’ Does your name mean something? Do you know what it means? Years ago I asked a bunch of school kids who Christmas was really all about. Someone said Father Christmas of course. Then, a little boy put his hand up…’Oh, It’s… it’s wassisname!’ I want to start by telling you about a vision a man called Isaiah had, we heard something of the words he wrote earlier. By the way the Jewish people made sure their names meant something. Isaiah means, ‘God is salvation.’ He was a prophet, he spoke & wrote around the C8th years BC – what does BC mean? Before Christmas! Every time you write a date it’s saying something about that event that spilt time in two halves forever; the birth of Jesus Christ. But centuries before he was born…. the nation of Israel was living through […]
(My Talk Delivered at Ivy Kingsway This Morning) I sometimes wonder, what would my life have been like if I hadn’t become a Christ follower nearly 30 years ago.It’s a long story and you have already heard it but it started when I opened my mind and opened my Bible, then Jesus Christ showed how real he is, so I opened my life to him and he changed everything. I don’t know whether you’d say you are near to God or far away, but the Bible says ‘Draw near to God and he will draw near to you’ and that’s a promise and that’s what I did. And that’s what He did. And He will do it for anyone here today, so today I want to invite you – like we do all the time round here at Ivy and over 50 people have done it since September – to pray with me to fully give control of your life and come back to God. To receive his love, believe his promises, turn from everything you know to be wrong […]
