Tag: Church planting

Church We Can All Do

I follow Rachel Held Evan’s blog and I’m grateful for her pointing to this church in New York (a city I’m so excited to be visiting at the end of the year with Zoe). [vimeo 42866194 w=500 h=281] What a great idea – Dinner Church! Who do you think they got that from? I can see this working brilliantly here in Manchester. Sounds, looks and tastes a lot like how church started, and grew – and maybe it holds a big key to how we can once again build movements that don’t depend on ‘Who’s your Pastor?’, but rather ‘How’s your Pasta?’ More about St Lydia’s here. 

#NTGlobal, in Nairobi. Day One, Session one – Who’s In The Room? New Thing Global

Pastor Oscar Muriu from Nairobi Chapel introduces his team and various movement leaders: Nick – Executive Pastor Bejee – she leads the leadership development program for NC Esther – hosts teams and conference Pastor Morafi – leads a planting movement across Africa (9), ready to plant in Burundi, Ethiopia and now in Germany (with Chogo and Kevin) Pastor Collins – slum churches in Nairobi (36) – 14 planted this year. 16 ready to start soon. Pastor Luke – oversees planting from Nairobi Chapel Tobias – in Mombasa Steve, Richard, Ngari, in Nairobi, Albo too – but he’s going to Milwaukee soon. Lamaz – in Botswana And they are looking to plant in all 54 capital cities in Africa, at the moment they have planted in 3. And are working to plant into London & Germany. Oscar: God has placed his power in us. This is an important international meeting – heaven is watching! Joe Wilson – started 34 churches so far, 15 on the way, in former Soviet Union. Great work happening – especially in Albania. With him is Altin, […]

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE HISTORY OF IVY CHURCH

I spent a little time this evening looking through a little piece of the history of our church, as I read extracts from the Minute Book of “Ivy Cottage” Mission Hall. It started as a record of the ‘Womens’ Bible Class,’ then was unused from 1913 to the 50s. There are some fascinating insights into how Ivy saw itself as a MISSION from its inception, church planting, evangelism, and then that movement became a church as it formalized and hired Pastors to lead it (I’m in danger of doing myself out of a job here) and then started looking at various rules and regulations; and when that happened the pioneering and evangelistic work of women was also truncated. The record speaks for itself and there are some funny things to note along the way. Many of you will know Ivy started as a men’s Bible study group meeting in a house in 1893. I’ll have to look at their records some time too! Oct 5th 1908 – Women’s Bible Class held monthly business meetings and had 218 registered members who […]

WHAT MORE COULD HE HAVE DONE FOR US?

(This is from last Sunday night’s talk at the Ivy AGM – Awesome Gratitude Meeting) One of my favourite author/ speakers died last year – his name was Brennan Manning. If you have ever read ‘Ragamuffin Gospel’ you’ll never forget it. I have read lots of what he’s written and listened to many of his talks, but it was only this week I heard the amazing story about how he got the name “Brennan.” Because his real name was Richard Xavier Francis Manning – a good Irish catholic name, to be sure. While growing up, his best friend was Ray. The two of them did everything together: went to school together, bought a car together as teenagers, double-dated, and so forth. They even enlisted in the Army together, went to boot camp together and fought on the frontlines together in the Korean War. One night while sitting in a foxhole, Brennan was reminiscing about the old days in Brooklyn while Ray listened and ate a chocolate bar. Suddenly a live grenade came into the trench. Ray looked at Brennan, smiled, […]

I’m Starting To Think Bigger!

I know that will annoy some people. Some people who know me think I already think big enough – but I don’t think God agrees. He’s been growing my vision and faith recently. Other people think small is beautiful. I agree. But bigger is beautifuller, when it comes to thinking. Some years ago I read a book called ‘The Present Future’– and I hated it. Why did I hate the book? It was like going to the Doctors and hearing that while you may look okay, just about everything is wrong with you, you’re really unhealthy and on the way toward slipping off the plate; then being told various obvious things that if you did them, would avoid that fate; but not being allowed to do them. It was like a mechanic looking at the engine, ‘Here’s what’s wrong with your car and here’s what you need to do to fix it,’ but while you really want that to happen, you know you can’t. It’s not possible. At the time I was leading an institutional church, with great people, meeting locally […]