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THanks
Mike
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Fresh wave of Church planting
I am becoming convinced that we are on the verge of a fresh wave of church planting across not only New Frontiers as a whole in the UK but in our area of influence extending as it does across the east of England, into Europe and now small new doors of opportunity into totally new settings; Turkey and Canada for example.
There is nothing so honouring to the cause Christ than to saturate all people centres with New Testament flavour churches. There is nothing so damaging to the cause of Christ than for communities to be familiar with churches that are weak, frail, lacking in biblical conviction and practice, theologically flawed and culturally hopelessly out of touch with people. Weak Churches are not new. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth ‘your meetings do more harm than good’. Who would have wanted to be an elder in that situation!
We have a responsibility to make as Arthur Wallis said a ‘diligent attempt’ to recreate New Testament church values and life in our day, in our churches.
Each generation must hold onto key New Testament values and faithfully replicate them in their own generation, in turn passing them on to the children of their day.
Church planting gives scope for more gifting to emerge, more communities to be reached, more preachers to emerge, more pastoral gifting to grow, more of everything. Church planting is not the only activity to be involved with as some churches need to consolidate and grow large to punch into a bigger weight of impact in their communities. Jesus has a unique plan and season for each church and each fresh new season. I am convinced though that all churches need to be involved in planting churches.
The short video I have attached to this might just stir some who watch it to think about the adventure, risk, challenge, excitement of church planting into Europe. If we do not seize the day who will?
There is nothing so honouring to the cause Christ than to saturate all people centres with New Testament flavour churches. There is nothing so damaging to the cause of Christ than for communities to be familiar with churches that are weak, frail, lacking in biblical conviction and practice, theologically flawed and culturally hopelessly out of touch with people. Weak Churches are not new. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth ‘your meetings do more harm than good’. Who would have wanted to be an elder in that situation!
We have a responsibility to make as Arthur Wallis said a ‘diligent attempt’ to recreate New Testament church values and life in our day, in our churches.
Each generation must hold onto key New Testament values and faithfully replicate them in their own generation, in turn passing them on to the children of their day.
Church planting gives scope for more gifting to emerge, more communities to be reached, more preachers to emerge, more pastoral gifting to grow, more of everything. Church planting is not the only activity to be involved with as some churches need to consolidate and grow large to punch into a bigger weight of impact in their communities. Jesus has a unique plan and season for each church and each fresh new season. I am convinced though that all churches need to be involved in planting churches.
The short video I have attached to this might just stir some who watch it to think about the adventure, risk, challenge, excitement of church planting into Europe. If we do not seize the day who will?
Saturday, 2 May 2009
The journey into effective corporate prayer
For some time I have felt a nagging feeling that something is just not quiet right with prayer in church life. Not just the church I am privileged to be part of but most church leaders I speak to express something of lament things in the prayer life of the church are not quite what they should be.
It is not that people do not see the value of prayer or want to pray, it is often life just seems to squeeze it out of the mainstream.
When reading biographies of great men and women of God we find often these were people who gave hours to prayer. Wesley for instance saying he was so busy he would have to pray more to fit it all in! Praying Hyde who prayed so much his knees were calloused!
Great moves of God are recorded as sweeping through churches and nations. A feature of these many of these moves was inevitably people praying either before the events and producing them, or in them to sustain them.
For some strange reason for many years I always seem to hear prayer spoken and preached about as being a hard thing to do. Due to this the prayer meeting or indeed personal prayer was seen as like training for the London marathon, expect it to take a lot out of you and you may not make it to the end! If you do the temptation to see how long you lasted is there.
This cannot be right. It is not right. I have found a surprising thing in recent years; prayer is not hard. In fact it is the most natural and easy thing to do for the Christian. Agreed our flesh often finds trouble concentrating etc. But as Jesus observed in a prayer meeting of sleeping disciples. ‘The spirit is willing the flesh is weak’.
We have begun to experiment in church life this year. For a start we cancelled all prayer meetings! Why?, because I do not want a church with a prayer meeting but rather I want us to be a praying church. Prayer meetings in most churches have the reputation as being for the ‘keen ones’. This should not be.
I had a hunch that for most people even being in the atmosphere of a prayer meeting was foreign to them and the thought of praying out loud in such a setting, quite scary!
So we moved the prayer meeting to the people. For a number of months now we schedule into a Sunday morning main meeting a 5-10 minutes prayer slot called ‘Touching heaven / changing Earth’. As encouraged to do in 1 Timothy 2:1-4 we pick items of local, national or international news or concern and pray about one such item each week, all together. We use various structures for prayer for example asking different folk before the meeting to lead us from the front.
Having done it for some time now, I am convinced the atmosphere and connection with prayer through the whole church is growing and becoming more familiar and comfortable. Additionally we have seen numbers of prayers answered.
We also now run weeks of prayer quarterly which are a mixture of hourly prayer slots people sign up for and corporate evenings of prayer. These have been growing in numbers and participation.
Our latest addition into the adventure of prayer discovery corporately started this Friday past. From 6-45 to 8-00am we pray together, and then from 8-9am we have breakfast. I decided that this setting gave us as elders a chance to share our hearts for what we see God doing and hear him saying at present and pray into it. 25 came to the first one and we had an excellent time.
What does all this mean? Well, we have not arrived to the level of prayer mountain in South Korea just yet but to lead God’s people into greater confidence and participation in prayer can surely be one of a local church leaders highest callings and objectives. Prayer is like a businessman finding a line that always sells; he then invests all his cash and energy into promoting this one great line of business. I want to keep up the investment!!
It is not that people do not see the value of prayer or want to pray, it is often life just seems to squeeze it out of the mainstream.
When reading biographies of great men and women of God we find often these were people who gave hours to prayer. Wesley for instance saying he was so busy he would have to pray more to fit it all in! Praying Hyde who prayed so much his knees were calloused!
Great moves of God are recorded as sweeping through churches and nations. A feature of these many of these moves was inevitably people praying either before the events and producing them, or in them to sustain them.
For some strange reason for many years I always seem to hear prayer spoken and preached about as being a hard thing to do. Due to this the prayer meeting or indeed personal prayer was seen as like training for the London marathon, expect it to take a lot out of you and you may not make it to the end! If you do the temptation to see how long you lasted is there.
This cannot be right. It is not right. I have found a surprising thing in recent years; prayer is not hard. In fact it is the most natural and easy thing to do for the Christian. Agreed our flesh often finds trouble concentrating etc. But as Jesus observed in a prayer meeting of sleeping disciples. ‘The spirit is willing the flesh is weak’.
We have begun to experiment in church life this year. For a start we cancelled all prayer meetings! Why?, because I do not want a church with a prayer meeting but rather I want us to be a praying church. Prayer meetings in most churches have the reputation as being for the ‘keen ones’. This should not be.
I had a hunch that for most people even being in the atmosphere of a prayer meeting was foreign to them and the thought of praying out loud in such a setting, quite scary!
So we moved the prayer meeting to the people. For a number of months now we schedule into a Sunday morning main meeting a 5-10 minutes prayer slot called ‘Touching heaven / changing Earth’. As encouraged to do in 1 Timothy 2:1-4 we pick items of local, national or international news or concern and pray about one such item each week, all together. We use various structures for prayer for example asking different folk before the meeting to lead us from the front.
Having done it for some time now, I am convinced the atmosphere and connection with prayer through the whole church is growing and becoming more familiar and comfortable. Additionally we have seen numbers of prayers answered.
We also now run weeks of prayer quarterly which are a mixture of hourly prayer slots people sign up for and corporate evenings of prayer. These have been growing in numbers and participation.
Our latest addition into the adventure of prayer discovery corporately started this Friday past. From 6-45 to 8-00am we pray together, and then from 8-9am we have breakfast. I decided that this setting gave us as elders a chance to share our hearts for what we see God doing and hear him saying at present and pray into it. 25 came to the first one and we had an excellent time.
What does all this mean? Well, we have not arrived to the level of prayer mountain in South Korea just yet but to lead God’s people into greater confidence and participation in prayer can surely be one of a local church leaders highest callings and objectives. Prayer is like a businessman finding a line that always sells; he then invests all his cash and energy into promoting this one great line of business. I want to keep up the investment!!
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Impressive people
I have of late had the great privilege of being in the company of truly impressive people. I had the joy of being again at the recent international forum of New Frontiers where men who oversee emerging apostolic spheres across the world. Some of these men are truly affecting nations now with the gospel through planting and growing significant local churches and impressive acts of mercy into the wider society around. At the UK team leaders meeting many of those present are seeing significant breakthrough for God. Often the people seeing the greatest impact are doing so at enormous hidden personal cost; against a backdrop of poverty, personal danger, demanding and exhausting personal circumstances. I am reminded of Hebrews comments on some of the heroes of the faith. The world was not worthy of them.
I have reflected also that it is often not only the profiled that are impressive. It is the faithful and the full of faith. The people who cling onto God and what he has said against insurmountable obstacles. These people can slip in and out almost unnoticed from local church week by week. God sees, God notices and God is aware of the cost many people pay in serving him.
I am blessed to be surrounded by impressive people of God locally and wider afield. It is a truly inspiring thing to be around great people. If I can become half of what I see in these giants I will be a happy man!
I have reflected also that it is often not only the profiled that are impressive. It is the faithful and the full of faith. The people who cling onto God and what he has said against insurmountable obstacles. These people can slip in and out almost unnoticed from local church week by week. God sees, God notices and God is aware of the cost many people pay in serving him.
I am blessed to be surrounded by impressive people of God locally and wider afield. It is a truly inspiring thing to be around great people. If I can become half of what I see in these giants I will be a happy man!
Sunday, 22 February 2009
God's recruitment agency
God’s recruitment agency.
There is a misconception that Christians are just miles away in just about every aspect of life from those who are non believers. What we fail to realise is that for most people who become followers of Christ. We were all once un-believers and thought and felt exactly like those all around us now who seem to show little or no outward interest in the Christian message. Nothing however is what it seems and no-one is quite as far away as we might first think. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes ‘there is nothing knew under the sun…what has been will be again’. One of the greatest intimidations to the church about sharing our faith is the lie out there that says we are facing a kind of ‘post-modern’ set of values, thinking and lives that are so out of touch with anything to do with the Gospel that to get anyone to know Christ is even harder than ever. I think this is a huge deception. The complexity and technology and information surrounding daily life is I agree vastly different form any other time in history. People however are basically the same and always have been and always will be.
Psalm 107 comments on four kinds of people God brings to himself
V2 ‘let the redeemed of the Lord say so’….. God brings people to himself they do not find him he seeks them out
V4 ‘The wanderer’ - ‘Some wandered in desert waste, finding no way to a city to dwell in; hungry and thirsty….’ We are surrounded by people looking for something to satisfy the cravings for fulfilment, contentment, satisfaction, meaning, fulfilment. Somewhere they can reside ‘a city’ something permanent that makes sense of life. People like this are all around us. God wishes to recruit such as these to himself
V10 ‘The Rebel’ – ‘Some sat in darkness…in affliction…. For they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the most high’. Some people have heard the gospel, perhaps in childhood or through a friend and in spite of knowing how God says to live and his appeals to them for relationship with him Through Christ, they have deliberately chosen their own path against God’s counsel. These are not people who do not know any better. No these are people who have ‘tasted’ the things of God as Hebrews 6 talks of then have chosen to walk away from the clear and known truth. The result is a prison of broken relationships, addictions, emotional torment, fears, phobias, chains that have become patterns of life now unbreakable despite many tried options. Year’s later bitter regret for wasted years often brings on hopeless feelings of despair. God wishes to recruit even those who have spurned him in full knowledge of what they were doing.
V17’ the pleasure seekers’ (Hedonists) ‘Some were fools through their sinful ways’ – We are all actually created to be hedonists. The reality though is that the only pleasure that can fulfil us is pleasure in God and knowing him. Most people want pleasure. Most find even the latest bought gadget fills the gap for hours or perhaps days, and then an upgrade is required to get the buzz back. The next relationship, drug, drink, sexual encounter, achievement, holiday, party. It is foolish to think a limited passing activity or relationship can be the meaning of life. God wishes to recruit those who have looked for such trivia as their hope
V23 ‘The rich and successful businessman’ – ‘Some went down to the sea in ships doing business on the great waters’. Success and making of money whilst not wrong in itself can become a drug and a master instead of a servant. Ecclesiastes again says, what is the point of earning loads of money, building great houses and businesses only to then die and leave it someone who has not even worked for it! God wants to recruit those who have spent their years on making money and creating business. He wants to show them where true riches are.
All of these people are all around us. All of them are prime candidates for God’s recruitment agency. Many of these dear people will find themselves coming to know Christ. God is on the case. This is not a time for Christians to feel intimidated by a Godless society. Rather this is a time to go after the very people who God is looking for. You might even be in one of these categories. You might get a surprise that God is looking and longing to reach you with something better than you ever thought possible.
There is a misconception that Christians are just miles away in just about every aspect of life from those who are non believers. What we fail to realise is that for most people who become followers of Christ. We were all once un-believers and thought and felt exactly like those all around us now who seem to show little or no outward interest in the Christian message. Nothing however is what it seems and no-one is quite as far away as we might first think. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes ‘there is nothing knew under the sun…what has been will be again’. One of the greatest intimidations to the church about sharing our faith is the lie out there that says we are facing a kind of ‘post-modern’ set of values, thinking and lives that are so out of touch with anything to do with the Gospel that to get anyone to know Christ is even harder than ever. I think this is a huge deception. The complexity and technology and information surrounding daily life is I agree vastly different form any other time in history. People however are basically the same and always have been and always will be.
Psalm 107 comments on four kinds of people God brings to himself
V2 ‘let the redeemed of the Lord say so’….. God brings people to himself they do not find him he seeks them out
V4 ‘The wanderer’ - ‘Some wandered in desert waste, finding no way to a city to dwell in; hungry and thirsty….’ We are surrounded by people looking for something to satisfy the cravings for fulfilment, contentment, satisfaction, meaning, fulfilment. Somewhere they can reside ‘a city’ something permanent that makes sense of life. People like this are all around us. God wishes to recruit such as these to himself
V10 ‘The Rebel’ – ‘Some sat in darkness…in affliction…. For they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the most high’. Some people have heard the gospel, perhaps in childhood or through a friend and in spite of knowing how God says to live and his appeals to them for relationship with him Through Christ, they have deliberately chosen their own path against God’s counsel. These are not people who do not know any better. No these are people who have ‘tasted’ the things of God as Hebrews 6 talks of then have chosen to walk away from the clear and known truth. The result is a prison of broken relationships, addictions, emotional torment, fears, phobias, chains that have become patterns of life now unbreakable despite many tried options. Year’s later bitter regret for wasted years often brings on hopeless feelings of despair. God wishes to recruit even those who have spurned him in full knowledge of what they were doing.
V17’ the pleasure seekers’ (Hedonists) ‘Some were fools through their sinful ways’ – We are all actually created to be hedonists. The reality though is that the only pleasure that can fulfil us is pleasure in God and knowing him. Most people want pleasure. Most find even the latest bought gadget fills the gap for hours or perhaps days, and then an upgrade is required to get the buzz back. The next relationship, drug, drink, sexual encounter, achievement, holiday, party. It is foolish to think a limited passing activity or relationship can be the meaning of life. God wishes to recruit those who have looked for such trivia as their hope
V23 ‘The rich and successful businessman’ – ‘Some went down to the sea in ships doing business on the great waters’. Success and making of money whilst not wrong in itself can become a drug and a master instead of a servant. Ecclesiastes again says, what is the point of earning loads of money, building great houses and businesses only to then die and leave it someone who has not even worked for it! God wants to recruit those who have spent their years on making money and creating business. He wants to show them where true riches are.
All of these people are all around us. All of them are prime candidates for God’s recruitment agency. Many of these dear people will find themselves coming to know Christ. God is on the case. This is not a time for Christians to feel intimidated by a Godless society. Rather this is a time to go after the very people who God is looking for. You might even be in one of these categories. You might get a surprise that God is looking and longing to reach you with something better than you ever thought possible.
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