LICC Imagine day at Central

There was a good turnout of local church leaders from Shropshire for the Imagine day at Central yesterday.
The day was led by Neil Hudson from LICC who spoke helpfully, and with engaging humour, and very helpful power point slides about how churches can equip,envision and support their people to be fruitful on their daily front lines wherever they are.
There was a tremendous emphasis on the importance of making disciples and I particularly appreciated  the very practical nature of the teaching.
We were being challenged throughout the day as to exactly how we could put the teaching into practice in our own local church context in order to equip people for the time they are not in church
It was also great to spend time with other local church leaders ,some of whom I had not met before

It was an excellent day and if you get the chance to go it is well worth the £15 that it cost per person.
LICC IMAGINE details here

I was personally encouraged to see Central used for this day .It really lends itself as a building to this kind of event and 6 months on from the opening is becoming an increasingly busy place to be.;

Resources

      

Discipleship Day tomorrow .Some resources to look at at your leisure

(New Testament) Prayer for Everyone – Tom Wright
Revolution of Character – Dallas Willard 
Hearing God – Dallas Willard
The Divine Conspiracy – Dallas WillardIn Search of Guidance – Dallas WillardS
Virtue Reborn – Tom Wright
The Radical Disciple – John Stott
Re-Jesus – Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch
Too Busy Not to Pray – Bill Hybels
Celebration of Discipline – Richard Foster(New Testament)
 Prayer for Everyone – Tom Wright
Revolution of Character – Dallas Willard &; Don Simpson



 BELLS  Bless x 3 – Everyone in the community has to do three acts of blessing a week, how and why they do it is entirely up to them.
One to a person inside the community of faithOne to a person outside of the community of faithOne to either sideEat x 3 – You’re going to eat with people at least three times.
One to a person inside the community of faithOne to a person outside of the community of faithOne to either sideListen 1 hour/week – One hour a week of contemplative prayer, just listening to God.
Learning reading each week:
1 Gospel1 Other Book of the Bible1 Other Book – Doesn’t matter what kind of book, but it has to be a good book, the best you can find in any given category.Sent – Everyone in the community spends at least 10 minutes reflecting on their day, answering 2 questions:
Where did I work with Jesus today?Where did I resist Jesus today

5 things Team GB could teach Church UK part 2

Olympic Park at night

The importance of Discipleship

Okay, Team GB don't use the word discipleship, but that in effect is what they do. I was listening to a radio interview when one of a pair of young gold medal winning rowers had said how inspirational it was to have the more experienced rowers to look up to "I learn from her all the time ,I listen to her ,I watch what she is doing and think if she can do it then so can I ".I heard another medal winning member of the cycling team say we have learned so much from watching Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton,from seeing how they do it and following them."  To me that is a pretty good description of discipleship in action.

I can think of some examples where that sort of learning takes place in church but probably not enough,
Too often young Christians with great potential are not given enough opportunity to use their gifts We are quite good in the UK church at giving people a great theological education and plenty of colleges of all kinds do that very well.it is important that they do.
Do we though mentor people well enough ?Do we coach people well enough? do we simply expect young Christians with embryonic gifts but real potential ,to simply sink or swim?
There is no doubt young Christians have plenty to give ,and should have the opportunity,perhaps in a group setting, to learn from those who have been on the road a long time

The Importance of perseverance

It has been said that sport does not build character ,it reveals it.
Plenty of members of Team GB have big characters. There have been plenty of races where they have had to dig deep .There are times when it would have been easier
to quit rather than finish.

One of the first of the cycling events was the road race ,a tough, arduous ,hilly course .Bradley Wiggins was riding it in order to set up Mark Cavendish for a sprint to the finish .it was days after the Tour de France ,Bradley must have been exhausted. Miles before the end, it became evident he was not going to achieve his goal ;Bradley could have quit but he kept going to the end.
Perseverance is a very underrated Christian quality,it it is one Jesus demonstrates again and again in His ministry.He has a goal in sight,a task to fulfil, he keeps going to the end .He goes all the way to the cross,where he exclaims" it is finished." The task is done!
Many of us human beings have a gift for starting something but not finishing it.Like the apoostle Paul we should seek to finish the race.
I am much closer to the end of life than to the beginning.I am much closer to the end of ministry than to the beginning .God give me grace to finish well.

God give us all grace ,when the times are hard ,when criticism comes ,when people seem uncaring and apathetic to the message of God's love, to keep on going on as the Bible urges us to do.

To be continued

New Wine Leadership 2012 -part 3

 Alan  now moved onto suggest a way forward  I have captured the bits that spoke most to me but it was a really interesting session


Firstly he said we need to focus on discipleship because if we fail in discipleship we fail everywhere. (-"if we dont make disciples we cant grow 
movements" ) Alan suggested the church in the west is generally not good at this but it is important because discipleship is the way we show people what God is like "If you hold to my teaching,you will know truth and truth shall set you free"
Christian leaders therefore need to raise the bar on discipleship and lower the bar on ecclesiology as if we don't disciple are leadership is not Christ like - because Jesus did disciple.

HIrsch then went onto suggest one or two ways we might do this including setting up small groups with this intent. Alan  spoke specifically about acting our way into a new way of thinking 
Alan finished by describing an example of a group he knows that uses  an acronym


BELLS as a focus for action 
They
Bless x 3 – Everyone in the community has to do three acts of blessing a week, how and why they do it is entirely up to them.
One to a person inside the community of faith
One to a person outside of the community of faith
One to either side
Eat x 3 – You’re going to eat with people at least three times.
One to a person inside the community of faith
One to a person outside of the community of faith
One to either side
Listen 1 hour/week – One hour a week of contemplative prayer, just listening to God.
Learning reading each week:
1 Gospel
1 Other Book of the Bible
1 Other Book – Doesn’t matter what kind of book, but it has to be a good book, the best you can find in any given category.
Sense – Everyone in the community spends at least 10 minutes reflecting on their day, answering 2 questions:
Where did I work with Jesus today?
Where did I resist Jesus today?

I think this would be difficult to do in a large group but very possible in a small grouo. If we were  committed itself to this kind of accountabilty and intentional discipleship we  should really grow in Christ

I am attracted by the idea!

Movement over Mega- Mike Breen

 
A quite long but fascinating post by Mike Breen  that is well worth reading see here

Why the missional movement will fail!

As someone who talks about mission a great deal ,I found this a very challenging post indeed!
Why the missional movement will fail

Looks as though it's a book I should read

Are you a trader?

I am very grateful to Philip and Christina for not only pointing out this great  video to me but for inspiring me by the way they are seeking to live it out.

Perseverance

http://sallysjourney.typepad.com/sallys_journey/2011/04/he-knew-pondering-palm-sunday.html

Enjoyed worship yesterday morning. We celebrated Palm Sunday with a baptismal service.I spoke though on Luke's account of the crucifixion
Read this poem out (with permission) from Sally's blog  which speaks to me of the perseverance of Jesus  poem
I always think perseverance is a very underrated Christian quality, but it was something Jesus demonstrated throughout his life and especially in the first Holy Week as he goes through Gethsemane to Calvary.
 Perseverance is  something all of us who call ourselves his followers need to demonstrate as well.
There are times when it is not easy to follow but that is exactly what we are called to do.

Time to pray and a time to plan

I managed a rare night away the other day

With the other church leaders we went to Shallowford House, a diocesan retreat centre,not far from Stafford, which I had first visited on the Fresh Expressions course. It makes an excellent venue because it is in a beautiful location,serves excellent food,has comfortable meeting rooms,and even its own bar.It must be said though that the main railway line is rather close to the house.

The purpose of the 24 hours we spent together can be summed up in 2 words Praying and Planning

It was good therefore , away from the demands of busy lives, to have the opportunity to talk about the joys and the challenges we face,and to be prayed for individually.It was good too, to share communion together and to experience Gods presence .There appeared, to me at least, to be an authentic hunger to know God better alongside an acknowledgment of our own weakness.

I wont go into great detail here about decisions we made, but we certainly recognised that 2011 is a vital year for our church.

The new town centre building is being built, and meanwhile we have the chance to lay solid spiritual foundations for our new church.

Among other things this means

We need to deepen our prayer life

We need to be prepared to be not just believers but disciples.

We want to put down deep roots in to the two communities we feel God has given us a particular responsibility for.

We are all totally determined to put mission at the centre of all that we do as a church

There is no doubt these will be big challenges but we feel they are not so much our priorities but Gods

We can so easily be distracted from keeping the main thing the main thing but we have not merged two churches and founded a new church in order to empire build, and we are not building a new church building to make ourselves more comfortable

This must be about building the Kingdom of God

We were very tired when we left Shallowford on Saturday afternoon but we sensed Gods leading,and aware aware of just how much work there is to be done, but also very hopeful for the future and determined to lay strong foundations.

These are challenging days for churches but also days of great opportunity

Discipleship

Powerful and challenging words on discipleship from Alan Hirsch authour of The Forgotten Ways Handbook - Sorry the screen is so big I will work it out one day

Helping people grow

I am now turning my thoughts away from boxes,foxes and chickens towards discipleship!

One of the most challenging changes the missional church needs to make, is to help people grow.This will be one of the great themes of our new church in 2011 and one I am thinking about now!

One shift we will need to make is to allocate more time to people development ,(both our own and other peoples, for the two are powerfully connected)
I honestly believe that I need to focus more on developing myself and other people rather than supporting more meetings or programmes.
If I am going to do that some things will have to be given up and I am thinking and praying about what those things might be .Of course giving things up may not make be universaly popular, but I need to demonstrate in my own life the things I want to see happen in the whole church.( ie people discipling each other and helping each other grow in Christian maturity.This has to start with the church leaders but it must not end there

For some time now people have asked the reasonable question " What are we going to do with our buildings?"
It is a question that deserves some thought but its not the key issue. Our buildings will not dictate the sucess or failure of our church ,nor will the events or ministries we put on- but our discipleship will
The big question for our leaders, and utimately for us all, is this; Are we helping people towards Christian maturity?, If we are then prayer will increase ,evangelism will happen and people and the church will grow.