Tag: Church

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. 

What Wise People Do At New Year

The story can tell us a lot about the company we keep and how that can make or break us, it can warn us about who we should listen to as we head into our future, too.

But as the year closes out and a new one gets ready to start, I’m thinking about various wise people I know and those I have read about and how they finish an old year really well, to start a New Year better – and what they do and say lines up well with what these wise guys did too.

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 […]

STAND IN THE GAP

 Notes from talk by @PastorChoco Wilfredo De Jesus Prayer is necessary, but it’s not a crutch not to do anything. You cannot let your budget dictate your faith. You have to trust God that he will meet your needs. We must MOVE to action Ezek 22:30 God’s looking for someone to stand in the gap. Found NOBODY! Who would stand there. A gap = place of danger, vulnerability and danger. These days the gaps are wider. God’s still looking for those who will engage the gap. You must engage your community. See your city as your church. Jesus sat with the lost. People who didn’t look like him. Demon possessed men, Samaritan women. He went to them. He wasn’t afraid. What is sacred is the MESSAGE, not the METHOD. We can use all kinds of methods to reach people. Fear is the absence of faith. Nehemiah is living large, then he asks a question that changes the course of his life: ‘How’s Jerusalem?’ If you are not going to do anything, don’t ask! Nehemiah had to do something. With revelation comes […]

When Jesus Got Mad @glynbarrett at Ivy Church

Glyn is a great friend doing an amazing work at !Audacious Church in our city and it was an honour to host him at Ivy Church (Kingsway) this morning. Here are my notes on a fabulous talk. Mark 11:15ff ‘My house will be called a house of prayer – but you have made it a den of thieves.’ This is that moment – when Jesus gets mad. When my wife gets mad I get nervous When my mum gets mad I get nervous But here’s where Jesus got mad – because he’s come to the house of God, expecting one thing – gets another. Like when you turn up to a holiday hotel, expecting something fantastic – and get a B & B. When the expectation is high, but it’s terrible when you get it. You buy the car and it breaks down in the first week. May our church, our house, never be a disappointment to Jesus! Church is a house, not a ceremony Royalty expects a ceremony. But Jesus calls this a house – it’s a place you […]