Despite what many people in our culture may think, anyone who reads the Bible will soon discover that Christianity is NOT a system for Good people trying to live good lives. When people say, ‘I don’t believe in God or Jesus – but I’m just as much a good Christian as you..’ You can be sure that probably through no fault of their own they either missed the point or were given a description of Christianity that was about religion and rules and quite rightly rejected it. But the REAL gospel – the good news, starts with the bad news that you’re not good. You’re more sinful than you ever dared believe; and more loved than you ever dared hope. Because of the cross of Christ, if we exchange our own messed up record, we get his spotless one. That’s how we end up being ‘counted or reckoned as good.’ Justified, the Bible says. Because of Jesus taking the punishment for my sins, I’m justified – it’s ‘justasifI’d’ never sinned. If that’s all news to you, please get hold of […]
Tag: discipleship
The Joy Paradox – Krish Kandiah at @myivychurch @krishk my notes on a great talk
Everyone on the planet is on a search for joy, but paradoxically most of those searching for it end up with broken lives and disappointment. Bertrand Russell had lots of money, sex and power, yet said ‘The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain – a curious wild pain – a searching for something beyond what the world contains.’ Where do you find what he (and everyone else) was looking for? Well CS Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Do you find yourself longing for home? Lonely in a crowd? You were made for more! You were made for joy! Joy that’s not dependent on circumstances. Krish once lived in Albania. He saw an eagle – the national bird – but it was in a cage, slowly disintegrating itself because of being bound in its circumstances. The apostle Paul was not confined by his circumstances. We can learn from him. Paul was in prison when he wrote […]
Wanted: Jason (and Jane) Bournes for the Kingdom – NewThing Global
I am reflecting back on the inaugural NewThing Global meeting in Nairobi earlier this year and thought a summary post might help answer some of the many questions I get asked about NewThing Europe right now. We met there because of an initial connection between two leaders; Oscar Muriu of Nairobi Chapel was speaking at the Willow GLS and his message impacted my friend Dave Ferguson. They later reconnected through the conference Dave helps lead, Exponential – where Oscar in his amazing keynote from 2 Corinthians 5:14-20 he asked, ‘What are you living your life for that is worth Christ dying for?’ That led to our partnership discussions, and the idea of NewThing Global (of which I am now leading NewThing Europe) developed from that. We wanted to get a small group of friends to gather from the corners of the world to become part of a network, because trust can be communicated through all the relationships in that network. We’ve all been part of groups. There are groups that meet to train, or to talk, but a network is there […]
Ivy Church Becomes A Movement! Check the Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUdWHoXi9pQ Because we all danced to ‘You got to move it, move it’ and because you have to get moving or don’t call yourself a movement – that’s what #IvyKinetic was all about. The whole church got equipped for the call – and hit the streets! To find out more or connect with us, check out the Ivy Church website or Like the Ivy Manchester Facebook page after you watch the video. If you’re a leader who wants to turn the church inside out to help people find their way back to God, you can connect with me after investigating NewThing to find out how we can together catalyse more reproducing churches that help people find their way back to God in the UK, Europe and around the world.
Life in Black and White
There’s a whole lot of work being done on my blog right now to update it and make it look fantastic and more user friendly. There will be various sections for you to be able to navigate and go deeper with regards to learning about leadership at different levels, whether it’s for church, life or business. Right now though as you will notice it’s just black and white. Funny how we get used to all singing all dancing isn’t it? I remember the excitement in our house I think I must have been about eight years old when my Dad brought home a colour television and I got to see colour TV in the house for the first time. The first program We watched was called, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home funnily enough, because we couldn’t wait till Dad got home and put the plug on and then we could see a whole new world. Once we’d seen it in colour – there’s no way we’d ever have wanted to go back to Black and White again. Gone were […]
Ben Jeffery at @MyIvyChurch – Esther 6 ‘The Man The King Honours’
There are 2 kinds of pride. One says ‘I am superior to others.’
The other kind says, ‘Everyone’s better than me, I couldn’t do this or that – because people will look at me.’ Pride is your world revolving around yourself.
Humility is you revolving around someone else’s world.
Your Mind Controls Your Life – And Why That’s A Good Thing
Let’s spend some time ‘contemplating thinking about thinking’, to quote Robbie Williams.
FULLY ALIVE! My notes from @erwinmcmanus teaching day at WCA UK
Everything this guy says is tweetable 🙂 I started tweeting some but I couldn’t do that and take good notes so I stopped tweeting… I have seen way too many people not reach their potential, but it’s unthinkable that Christians do that. Christians have been taught that the future was set, by the same people who taught that the world was flat. The words we use most end up having the least meaning for us. Beautifying the bride? If you put a beautiful white dress on a bride with a leg cut off and bleeding, she’s not looking too good. He is from El Salvador – which means ‘The Saviour’. Great address! But he grew up without much religious connection. God was an unreal object of frustration for his mother. He was interested in mythology, to try to work out what it was to be human, which led to a psychiatrist from 12. The psychiatrist asked him, ‘What do you see?’ That clued him into how people see differently. He began to want to escape from a reality he didn’t […]
GROWING – How different people change us into different people. Brad Jersak at Ivy Church Didsbury @bradjersak #Bgbg2
What if you don’t make particular people your target group for your church- but make the Trinity your target group, then God will come, and bring His friends.
TIME TO KICK THE ROOF IN!
In Luke 5 Jesus is in a house teaching, the crowd checking him out was so large inside and out that some friends bringing a paralysed man couldn’t get into the house. No disabled access! No way in, nobody moving to make a way through. It says there was NO WAY TO DO IT. So what did they do? ‘Sorry pal, we’ll have to take you home again?’ No! There was no way so they made a way. They got creative. Dangerous even. They climbed up on the roof and kicked the roof in so they could lower their friend down on a bed in front of Jesus! This appeals to me from ex police days, where one of my favourite jobs was to be ‘Donger man’ on raids. The Donger was what we called that battering ram which provided a useful key for the majority of locked doors with 14 stone behind it. I’m terrible at DIY, but if you want something smashing, I’m your guy. What those guys did to the roof and how Mark’s account says when Jesus saw […]