Save souls, make them into disciples.
That is the purpose of every church and every Christian.
Do you believe in the Great Commission?
Yes, we’d say of course we do!
Well do your systems back that up?
Do we put the responsibility of the weight of the Great Commission on every believer?
It’s true we don’t know the future, but that fear can mean the moment we are in pauses the mission we are on – which is to make the name of Jesus known.
I don’t want to tickle your ears, but this might tickle your fancy
I think you’ll love listening to this wide ranging and prescient interviews as we discussed subjects including but not limited to Quiet Quitting in Church, Yoga, CS Lewis and what makes great literature!
Is the Bible the result of human endeavour or a divine/ divinely superintended book? How do we unite the history of it actually being written by real people in time, then edited etc., with the claim that God inspired the canonical texts?
When I first read it, I got excited and highlighted the passage, but it’s good to get confirmation. It was something I wrote by faith in my journal, but I couldn’t shake that I should share it with you
I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend – to fight – for the faith that was once for all delivered to God’s holy people.
You can’t put Jesus on lockdown.
He healed the sick, still does. He raised the dead! Remember his friend Lazarus? How he called him out of the graveyard by name, because if he hadn’t been specific everybody would have come back to life at his command there and then!
What a privilege to host New York Times #1 best selling author Dr Gary Chapman at Ivy Church yesterday for two services and then a special afternoon event focusing on children and marriage at Ivy Sharston. Here are my notes from the morning talk. He told some great true stories to illustrate each point but if you want to hear those too please listen to the podcast which we’ll put up later in the week. Gary said that ever since writing the book a question he’s been asked time and again is What’s God’s Language? The short answer is, he speaks all 5 of them! When you look through the Bible you see that because God is love, people come to him because he spoke their love language. We are all unique, so he speaks our language to connect with us in unique ways: Words of affirmation Genesis 1: God blessed creation, and when he made people, he blessed them too… A favourite piece of scripture for many of us who are Words of Affirmation types would be Is 41:10 ‘Do […]
A while ago I called my friend J John and he said, ‘Hey I was just talking about you! I’m here with Michael Harvey – do you know him? You should connect!’ We did, and it was very enlightening, so much so I had him address our team this morning. He co-founded Back To Church Sunday and I urge you to check out his site. He’ll join us as a guest at Launch 2018 and I’d love to hear more from him in 2019 too as I believe his message is vital for the church to grab hold of and implement. Here are my notes from his presentation. How does invitation play a role in how people find their way back to God? How would you rate yourself as a church in welcoming? How would you rate yourself as a church in inviting? A lot of the time we have been intentional about the first, but not the second. We can make invitation around certain points of the year Christmas… Easter… And what about the Sunday after? It can sound […]