GP Taylor visits Ivy Manchester this Sunday – as his blockbuster Hollywood movie is filmed. I’m so excited that this Sunday Ivy Manchester will host a fantastic guest for interview at 7pm at our Didsbury site on Barlow Moor Rd, one of Britain’s best selling authors. We recently hosted the author of The Shack, Wm Paul Young. Now it’s time for some home grown talent. GP Taylor is the author of the best-selling novels Shadowmancer, Wormwood and Tersias. Like myself he has been a police officer and Anglican Vicar, but is also a former rock band roadie and motorcyclist. He worked in the music industry with such bands as The Stranglers, Sex Pistols and Adam and the Ants. He became involved in the occult and lived a life that was, in his own words “into all sorts of weird and wonderful things and wasn’t leading a godly life”. He goes on to say, “I was promiscuous: I was a liar, a cheat and a drunk,” We will learn on Sunday how he then turned to Christianity. This is a great […]
Tag: Ivy Manchester
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.
Opportunity To Rest (part 1) – from my talk at Ivy Kingsway this morning
In our Year of opportunity as a Church, I’ve called this talk, ‘Opportunity to rest,’ this is from the NT book of Hebrews, chapter 4. It says.. Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you fail to experience it. For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not add faith to hearing it. But we who believe do enter that rest. (For) God rested on the seventh day from all His works… “Today, if you hear his voice,(are we listening) do not harden your hearts.” So… there remains a rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort – to enter that rest… (PRAY) I read this week about a trip to the supermarket that ended with a high speed chase, a frantic call to the police, a border […]
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 […]
How can say we belong to Him when all our longings are for more belongings?
This is the Ivy Grow Group Notes for this week. I rounded off the Colossians series last night but only spoke on one verse of it so not really much point in me going over that again… Well what an amazing day yesterday was at Ivy MCR Here are a few highlights from the things I personally witnessed, and I’m sure Ivy Fallowfield was great as always; 1030am service at Kingsway – I had more than a few people come and tell me, ‘We’re getting full again…’ There were some spare seats – but the received wisdom I’ve found to be true is that when your meeting room is 80% full, you’re full! SO… Do we need to hire another screen? When? What’s the answer? Please THANK GOD for growth and PRAY for wisdom and provision. 4pm at Ivy Sharston This service is getting more than 70 people a week already. Emily Bowyer did a great talk on ‘TOUCH’ and then an outbreak of hugging happened! SUCH a great time! . One new first time visitor […]
Ivy MCR GG notes on Colossians 3
Dead and Alive – Colossians 3 Read Col 3:1-3 If your version starts with ‘If’ in verse 1, I think the versions that start with ‘Since’ make more sense, following the flow of argument from the previous chapter. ‘SINCE you have been raised with Christ…’ Discuss: You only get raised with Christ if you died with Him first! Do you know or are you aware of anyone who had a ‘near death’ experience, a close shave with death etc (like Fabrice Muamba for instance) and got a second chance at life? Anyone in the GG had that kind of experience personally? How would you live after you experienced such an incident? How might your perspective, priorities and plans change? Read Col 3;1-17 Paul is probably referring to baptism here as a symbolic experience of ‘putting to death’ the old life and passing from death to life. The early church actually gave baptismal candidates a new set of clothes to symbolise the new life they were entering. Discuss: This is a very dramatic picture If you were baptised as an […]
TRUE MATURITY Colossians 2 – Ivy Grow Group Notes
Would the people who know you best say you’re becoming more like Jesus in that area now than you were a year ago?
GG notes – from CVM & New Wine Men’s Day Bristol. @MarkMelluish
Jesus says don’t define yourself the way others do, but define yourself by who is your true Father.
Containers for living water
Ivy Grow Group notes I’m going to be talking this Sunday about church (surprising eh?) Specifically I want to focus on membership Being apart OF not apart FROM the Body. Read 1 Cor 12, then pray together What parts of the passage are hardest to understand? What parts go against how we naturally think and live? Let’s think a bit further on this: The gospel is like ‘LIVING WATER.’ (where does that phrase come from? Find out and read around it). What does water do? It fills any receptacle – without retaining the form of any. The container isn’t what’s impt. The CONTENT stays the same, the CONTAINERS change. We are individually containers, and we meet together in containers. List what containers Ivy presently meets in that you know of. Pray for the new outreach starting soon- Ivy Sharston – and the team led by Matty Hawthorne getting it going. Are you called to help with this on Sunday afternoons? Contact the office! The body looks like it does because of its DNA – that’s what makes us what we […]