Tag: discipleship

STOP PLANNING, START PREPARING

(Thanks to Dan Reeves for working on the blog – looks a lot better now!) Jesus indicated that it is more important to be ready than know what’s going to happen. During World War II General MacArthur called one of his engineers and asked, ” How long would it take to throw a bridge across this river?’ ‘Three days’ the engineer told him. ‘Good,’ said the general, ‘have your draftsman make drawings right away.’ Three days later the general asked the engineer how the bridge was coming along. “It’s all ready Sir,’ he was told. ‘You can send the troops across right now, that is if you don’t have to wait for the plans – the plans aren’t done yet.” Look at the world around you with open eyes. The only thing that’s certain is that we live in a world of radical and acute uncertainty, so we need to be ready to see what’s working and what isn’t working, to adapt and change and be flexible and if it doesn’t work one way we go, go another – or […]

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, […]

Life’s 3 Options #bgbg2

One of the things I have often been challenged about by God, and it draws close to me every day in terms of what I worry about or get concerned about, is the issue of WHO IS MY PROVIDER going to be? Who do I see as responsible for providing for what I need? Your answer to that will have you living in one of three ways. You’ll be a BEGGAR, A DIGGER, OR A GIVER. Jesus told a parable, a story with meaning, in Luke 16:1-13. It’s a bit of a weird one about a man who suddenly finds himself in financial difficulty. The major point, which it’s always safest to go with in parables, is that he thought he’d always have enough, but now the future’s closing him down fast. And the internal dialogue the guy has with himself there leads me to these three ways to live. Have a read yourself. He says ‘I’m too proud to beg, and I’m not strong enough to dig,’ so he ends up getting very creative in the area of generosity […]

Leadership Network Interviewed Me…

about our experience of connecting to their High Capacity peer learning group for Europe, which has been fantastic; their notes from our telephone interview have just been posted widely and I reproduce it below.   In September 2014, Leadership Network will launch a High Capacity peer learning group in Europe. Anthony Delaney, Team Leader of Ivy Manchester (UK), tells his story of participating in Europe’s Rapid Growth Leadership Community. When Anthony Delaney took over as leader, Ivy was known as ‘Ivy Cottage’ and he reflects, “I saw great potential, but we needed to move out of the cottage and into the city.” With the help of Leadership Network, that’s where Anthony has been leading Ivy over the past five years. In this time they’ve planted three churches and started several missional projects. For Anthony it began when his friend Andy Hawthorne (founder and director of The Message) invited him to join a Leadership Network Leadership Community. Within a few months Anthony was at his first meeting. It was at these meetings that he began to make great friendships and was introduced […]

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 […]

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.