Tag: Church

Make This Sunday’s Message RESONATE!

I’ve been a Nancy Duarte fan for years, highly recomending her books as a great investment to anyone who communicates (that’s you) and especially preachers. How fantastic to discover that one of the world’s leading authorities on getting your message across in a way people will hear it is also a Christian and passionate about THE Message that changes lives forever and the world for good. Invest 20 minutes on this video, and take notes! (I have the structure line on my office wall now together with some other prompts to help as I pull messages together).

Watch LeCrae Explain What ‘A Real Man’ Is

Then if you live within striking distance of Manchester book in here NOW for the Diamond Geezers Men’s Day on Saturday April 13th before it’s too late. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/59965923] (If you have any trouble watching the video here, go to http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/lecrae-explains-true-manhood)

CHOOSE to Change Your Mind!

I promised to put on here the fantastic jpg put together by one of our churches (Ivy Fallowfield) on how they want to live differently. This is a predominantly student area with a rep that’s hedonistic to say the least. Check out the challenge and invitation to live differently by this fantastic church community that meet every Sunday for worship in the 256 Bar on Wilmslow Rd. (And as I speak are going out every night in Lent to bless people on the streets into the early hours).

REST – Part 2 of my talk last Sunday at Ivy Kingsway

Hebrews 4, the writer says this about God: “…his work has been finished since the creation of the world.” The rest came out of the finished work. Then it says to us, ‘while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should fail… to reach it…’ It goes on to tell of a whole generation of people who SAID they were God’s people, but NEVER entered into His rest.Why? Because they didn’t have FAITH. They didn’t really believe HE could do it. That means it takes FAITH to enter into the REST that God has for us. You have to TRUST God, to REST in God. You have to trust God, if you’ve ever going to rest your soul.

James White – The Christian Mind (iDisciple conference WCAUK)

There are few Christian warriors of the mind these days. Most retreat into personal piety or good works. We follow someone who died at 33. Don’t live a life that doesn’t offend people, if we don’t live as if we don’t care if we die, we will be impotent.

Building Life Changing Churches – Gordon MacDonald at WCAUK iDisciple

He was invited to speak at West Point. Saw that it was a place to train and qualify top people to go anywhere in the world and immediately get the job done, whatever the job is. How do you train people like that?   Do we show any interest in developing leaders? Not just the ‘anyone can come’ one. A West Point for church? The number 1 job for a Pastor = training the bext generation of leaders. It’s more important than preaching.   Heschel – We don’t need text-books but text-people.   Titus 2:1-8  Your job is to speak out on the things that make for solid doctrine. Guide older men into lives of temperance, dignity, and wisdom, into healthy faith, love, and endurance. Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s […]

J. John puts down Darwin the dog (humanely)

    I met with my friend @canonjjohn this week and was interviewed by him on my life story for UCB TV. The guy is a force of nature! Always a great encouragement. I subscribe to regular updates in my email from him (available free from the Philo trust) and was amused, informed and challenged by this one that arrived today – New Year, New Atheism, New Challenges 12 Jan 2013 It’s rather a scary thought that we are already over one eighth of the way through the twenty-first century. And even though year seems to follow year at an increasingly rapid rate, our culture changes even more speedily. One feature of the last decade that shows no sign of going away has been the rise of the ‘New Atheism’. It’s easy to dismiss the New Atheism as no more than a warmed-up version of old-fashioned humanism and in terms of substance there is little new. What is truly novel and troubling is the movement’s aggressive and bitter hostility to religious faith in general and Christianity in particular. A fascinating revelation […]