Tag: Church

The Biggest Challenge Of My Life So Far – Please Help Me Out!

I’m WAY excited! Carl Brettle from UCB recently challenged me, “If you wrote an evangelistic resource that will connect to 21st Century people, I think we could make thousands of copies available to give FREE to churches.” Woah. I met him a week or so after to see if he was serious or whether that was just a rush of blood. We discussed an idea I’d had about a year before that I’d been thinking and praying about and following that I’m just about to start writing and producing what will be at least two resources. I can’t give you the titles etc yet but there will be… 1) A short, punchy booklet and DVD resource linked to a website full of amazing testimonies challenging people to follow Jesus Christ 2) Another free resource for those who have done so (or are still on the edges of it) to help disciple them to make disciples. Both resources will have dedicated websites to really help people who engage with the material at every level and we are planning on having tens […]

Dream Of A Coming Revival

Anyone who knows my wife Zoe well will know over the years she has a great prophetic gift in dreams, really insightful and occasionally scary! The wonderful thing is how they come true in detail. It’s no exaggeration to say that every major move in our life has been foretold in a dream she’s documented. So the other night she had a dream – about a move of GOD that’s coming our way. This ties in with an increasing excitement I have been feeling, many reporting a palpable sense of the presence of God last Sunday in our service at Kingsway, a number of miraculous answers to prayer here at Ivy recently; and reports from various sites I’m connected to of outpourings in various churches. It seems the spiritual temperature is being turned up!  Here’s Zoe’s dream, from her notes. The bits in brackets are my explanatory notes. I was with a few others (women friends/prayer partners) were in an upstairs room – when a storm was coming up outside. I told someone there how bad it looked but they […]

Successful Succession

Bill Hybels on Succession The person who helped him think through the tough questions around this asked – Do you ever see yourself dying? The death rate is 100% Do you see yourself being Senior Pastor till your last day? Or when you’re walking slow and drooling?  PLANNING PHASE Every important matter to do with this needs to be asked. Who decides? How long will they have approximately What role will the pastor have afterwards How will their contribution be honoured? PHASE 2 Is there an internal successor? Give this a time frame. If not.. PHASE 3 External successor PHASE 4 18 months transition to new person.   This is a GOOD process! It gives security to the church.  But it’s tough on the pastor and needs to be handled with great sensitivity. Don’t assign a person with low Emotional Intelligence to handle it!   Some senior pastors hang on too long. Leave a great legacy! Trust God to guide you on the journey. Set the church up to be stronger as you go.  

The most tragic verse in the Bible?

I believe that this Saturday, God is going to do something supernatural in the lives of the men who come to the Diamond Geezers Day here in Manchester, releasing our potential for supernatural greatness. If you’ll come along to the Message building and connect to God’s presence there, hearing His Word and doing what He says, I believe that God is going to raise up from the day some spiritual leaders to make a massive difference in this world. And the reality is that this is so important because there’s a huge shortage of godly men in our nation. In the church men too many men have relegated themselves into passivity, or fallen to compromise and shame. One of the most tragic verses in the Bible is Ezekiel 22:30: I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it… God said: I looked for a man like that… How many did He find? The Bible tells us: […]

SOW MORE SEED – BILL HYBELS

From DVD of Willow Creek GLS last year – watched with staff team today. Parable of talents. – Luke 8 Despite how bountifully the seed is sown (the good news of God’s love). Some people reject it- but don’t get discouraged. Some of it will land on good soil, too. The maths of this is amazing for the seed rejection ratio – he says there’s a 75% rejection rate. But then look at the maths of the tree that represents someone who says yes and has their life changed.  How much is produced by a transformed life. We want to see more trees! So – what must I do? PLANT MORE SEED! To overcome the rejection maths. Don’t just complain about the rejection rate! Plant different kinds of seed. We have to sow a lot more seed in our communities. Alpha Course Just Walk Across The Room Experiment!! You will see more trees. Leader – this depends on you. The church takes its cues from you. One of the fundamental requirements of a leader is to learn, experiment and stay […]

Why the Great Commission has stopped me ‘Evangelising’ and ‘Discipling’ people.

I’m disturbed that the church has made DISCIPLING a new kind of industry in the last 5 years or so. Everyone’s doing conferences or writing books with plans and formulas to ‘disciple’ people. As if it’s a verb – not a noun.

CROSSED OUT – Carpenter worth less than the wood and nails?

The cross, crossed people out. They didn’t matter anymore. It was a death that deliberately stripped all dignity. You were belittled. That means you were being, littled. Jesus’ cross was inconsequential. The sign above his head ‘King of the Jews’ – a bitter irony. He was nothing. Crossed out.

‘COULD YOU NOT WATCH ONE HOUR?!’ – (My struggles with learning to pray. part 2)

Occasionally I’d have a bit of an energy burst and do some journalling (ever done that?). Some of the conferences I went to had experts saying if you didn’t journal every day you had to doubt your salvation. I got a journal. The ‘MAN’ type, leather, with a cross on the front, not the girls one with flowers. Some time later I got another one because I’d hardly written in the first one. It had ‘MY PRAYER JOURNAL’ written on the front. But there’s still not much written in it. Actually though, Jesus didn’t journal. It really wasn’t me. I love writing, I hate journaling. I’m not even sure journalling is a word. How many ls should it have if it is? Spellchecker doesn’t like either. I read somewhere that CS Lewis STOPPED journaling when he became a Christian, because he’d done it for years before, and found it made him too self centred. I was doing really badly from the outset at how I thought you were supposed to be growing spiritually. It never got better. It’s not like […]