My friend Patrick O’Connell is the Global Director of NewThing, the network which I and Ivy Church are privileged to be part of, which exists to partner with movement makers and catalyse reproducing disciples, leaders, churches, networks, and movements. Here he tells the story of how he came to faith, having met his wife in a punk rock mosh pit, joined the army, he went into business and while finally successful in worldly terms when he finally after 4 years accepted an invitation to go to church and everything changed! He went from church goer to church planter, now serving thousands of church leaders and planters worldwide through NewThing’s dream – to see a church planted in every community around the world. We discuss, among other things – How might we help connect people far from God so they don’t just learn to cope, but receive hope. What army life taught him about teams and sacrifice, and how that applies to the army of God and ministry ‘in the blood and the mud.’ How do we collaborate and form networks that are all […]
Tag: NewThing
Following The Apostle Paul’s Pathway: Josh Howard
Your harvest is in direct proportion to the amount of seed you sow. Farming principle!
Are We Producing Disciples And Churches Worth Reproducing? Josh Howard
If there were lots of you, or your churches, would that be a good thing? Would it make a great deal of difference?
Don’t Be A ‘Wannabe.’ Be One Of The Others.
The ‘higher’ you go in leadership actually means going lower. Rights go down and responsibilities go up. It means to serve more, and doing the things you don’t always like. The one who serves most, leads most.
At 10:02am – Join In With Jesus’ Prayer
Some years ago a friend of mine invited us as a family to come and spend some time on holiday at his villa in Spain. I was delighted to accept, but this turned out to be a far cry from a little apartment on the beach. When we got there we found we were inland, farming country, and the place we stayed was full of olive trees. It also happened to be harvest time. We ended up getting involved, using hand held machines to shake the branches to catch the olives in nets, which were then sorted by various local people hired in to help sort them before I went with him to have truckloads weighed and bought. I worked up a sweat, but it was a great adventure and memory. Others had done the hard work, we were there to reap! This was a window of opportunity to gather in the crop. Eddie told me, ‘The size of the harvest is all about how many workers you have out in the fields.’ I thought, ‘That’ll preach!’ The Message version […]
A Global Gathering Of Leaders Agreed – Only ONE Thing Will Change Our Cities. What was it?
I was privileged this week to be in Manhattan as the guest of Alan & Deb Hirsch – facilitated by Rich Robinson to form a small collective of global movement leaders through a ‘communitas’ exercise (Alan likes to make up words). We were hosted in Tim Keller’s church offices at Redeemer City to City. Our purpose? To look at how the church can step outside the models, mindsets and habits that have brought us to where we are – because they will no longer move us forward. We have to change our paradigms – and then our practices. One day was spent looking at NYC as an example city. What would we do to see the gospel saturate this city of more than 8m? I’m going to blog again with some more of my thoughts as a result, but as we rolled paper across the tables and discussed with marker pens in hand, I was fascinated to hear from kingdom change makers as diverse as Danielle Strickland and her husband Steve, leaders like Christine Caine, Dave and Jon Ferguson, Hugh […]
Learn to be a Collaborative Leader with Tom McGehee
STOP TRYING TO DO IT ALL YOURSELF 9:30am-4pm BST Saturday 15th June, Ivy Central, Manchester M20 2GP “No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isn’t my fault.” ― Patrick Lencioni, The Advantage: I have been rereading Lencioni’s fantastic book recently. He describes so well how what we think of as teams are often really just groups – more like a bunch of golfers who each go off and do their own thing, and then compare results at the end. If like me; You want to know how to move from that toward environments that bring out the best in everyone. You’re wondering how to build and empowering a winning team. You want to create lasting change through a self perpetuating leadership culture You need to join us here in Manchester on the 15th June for our Launch One Day with Tom McGehee and bring those you work with. It has been my great pleasure to get to know as a friend someone who has been a hero to me for some years, Tom McGehee. I […]
LAUNCH 2018 IS FULL – AND I’M TEARING UP MY ‘DREAM NAPKIN’
If you’ve read Dave and Jon Fergusons’ book Exponential (if not why not?) one of its main ideas is that you draw your vision on a napkin. (Check out Dave’s artwork from a recent tweet on this) I’m not very good at drawing (and in the UK we call them serviettes which doesn’t have the same ring), but as a Manchester church leader drawing my ‘dream serviette’ used to be easy – circle for the M60, drop a few dots around for new Ivy churches. I was running that plan until I went to Chicago in 2014 where God challenged me through coaching and friendship with Dave, Jon and other NewThing leaders to draw the UK, and help, partner with and encourage others planting here (we’re going to roll out that same coaching community in the UK in early 2019, first details and application opportunity will be revealed at LAUNCH). In 2015 I met again with other Dave and a few others in Nairobi Chapel, where its incredible leader Oscar Muriu drew the whole world (rather well), parcelled it off […]
Could The Question This African Pastor Asked Me Hold The Answer For Dying Churches In Europe?
I’m writing from Kenya, having already been here a week as part of the Viral church planting conference hosted by NewThing apostolic leader Bishop Oscar Muriu of Nairobi Chapel. Sometimes because ‘a fish doesn’t know it’s wet’ you have to step out of your own context for God to help you see it better and that just happened here for me. After some of the most challenging yet encouraging talks I ever heard, the three days concluded movingly with a stage filled with the church planters Nairobi Chapel are now sending out this year– all held a blazing torch as they were introduced and we heard their story, they were then anointed with oil, prayed over passionately and commissioned. It was an unforgettable moment. The rigorous leadership training process outlined to bring these men and women to that stage would be the envy of any church or movement – now they’ll be released to plant churches. Most will be in their own nation where 93% of the nation are poor by world standards. There they will plant all kind of […]
Intentional Prayer and Planting
I’ve been here through NewThing in Nairobi Kenya at the Viral conference the atmosphere is prayer soaked and the results are very evident! I have not been able to blog too much as I just want to wrestle with the implications of such an incredibly rich time though I will share some more thoughts in the weeks ahead as I remain doing ministry here, writing and teaching and learning from leaders in other cities here. One line is resonating as I write now from a talk from Bishop Philips Katutu, who said he stopped planting churches in 2016, then came to the Viral conference put on by Nairobi Chapel and subsequently became very intentional about it and has planted 23 since! He took us through the action in Antioch from Acts 13:1-5 13 1 Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. 2 While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul […]