Standing between the living and the dead

Intimacy and involvement is a much used phrase within 24-7 prayer, it's the phrase that gives real life to our movement. I believe this is a really exciting time. God is still looking for a people who are both intimate with him and involved with the world. 

There is a call upon each one of our lives to be an intimate prayerful people, who touch the Father’s heart and experience the transforming power of his presence. There is also a call upon each of our lives to be an involved people, who prayerfully take the Fathers heart to the world and introduce others to Jesus and allow them to experience the transforming power of His presence in their lives. Thats what I love. 


24-7prayer then by default is not a tabernacle model of prayer, it's an incarnational model.
We must be careful that we don’t try to spread the gospel without the back up of prayer, the power of the Holy Spirit and the transforming power of having been in His presence. Likewise we must be very careful that we don’t pray, experience the Holy Spirit and become transformed by His presence without ever being compelled to fulfil the biblical mandate of spreading the gospel.

We need to be a people who do both, it would be completely wrong to say “I pray, others reach out” or “I reach out, others pray” a Christians life needs both intimacy and involvement. I think even the phrase prayer missionary leaves a little bit to be desired.

My faith is two pronged and I don’t think we can choose to go for just one prong! Read Matthew 22: 37 -40 we are called to do both,"love the Lord your God with all your heart and Love your neighbours as yourself." 

We can’t just be presence seekers; we also need to be presence bringers. We need to be striving to do both together at all times.

I heard a guy called Bill Wilson speak once he talked from Exodus 16: 42 – 50. in which a deadly plague is spreading throughout the children of Israel, they are literally dropping like flies in front of Moses and Aaron, Aaron runs to the Altar, the place that represents the presence of God, he gets some incense and fire from the Altar and runs into the middle of the people and stands with the incense and the plague stops. It says that he took the fire and “stood between the living and the dead”.


We must be a people who get fire from the presence of God and then stand in the middle of a dying world and bring life. We are called to stand between the living and the dead but we can only do this if we have got the fire from His presence.Aaron carried something that he had got from the presence of God into the middle of a very dark and desperate situation and the plague stopped. One man ran into the presence and then ran into the dying world around him and made a difference. The fact that he ran suggests urgency, lives depended on his speed, on his commitment and his awareness of how dreadful the situation was.

My prayer is that I become like Aaron, that I am filled with a desire to run to the presence of God and that I am also filled with enough compassion for the lost and dying to run with His presence into the world.

Intimacy and involvement. Prayer and action. Faith and deeds. They kind of all go together.

Baptism

We met Danny at the beginning of the summer, he would come into the centre and just hang out. The team became really great friends with Danny, who worked at a little shop just up the way from where we are based. They invited him for meals, took him on little photography trips around the island, listened to him, laughed with him and generally did what normal people do and became friends.

In September time Danny left Ibiza for the UK and then towards the end of September, he messaged me to ask if he could come out and help us for a month. We said yes, Danny stayed with some of our team and got involved in the street work and centre work.

He wanted to be somewhere were he belonged! Then somewhere over the last month whilst living with our community and working as part of our team, he believed!

Danny heads back to the UK today, but yesterday upon the confession of his faith we baptised Danny.

This is Danny coming up out of the water, there was joy in the house.

What a great thing to happen on the final week of our season here?

As you can see by the expression on my face moments like these make life here so worthwhile.

Be the prayer, the new vomit van

Well here is the new vomit van, the only disturbing thing about it is the slightly effeminate ankle sticking out from under the door!

I love that line in Exodus, where God says to Moses "what have you got in your hand?" when we first started to spot drunks we prayed and I feel that is what God said to us. All we had was our normal cars, so we used them to pick people up.

We noticed the mess and then became the answer to our own prayer. Be careful how you pray.

Then of course someone else became the answer to our prayers by donating money for the first van and then when it broke down someone else stepped up to the mark and donated money that we could keep going. It's funny but they in many ways became the prayer.  I love that the church is so wide and that someone sitting at home in another country can become the prayer and by doing so they buy us a van that enables lives to be saved on the streets. In the last 2 weeks we have already got about 6 people home and we know that this will increase.

One last thought on being the prayer: Don't pray if you don't expect it to change your life, don't pray for your community if you are not willing to be led out of your comfort zone into your community, it can sound harsh but I am convinced that if you take your prayer life seriously you cannot help but become the prayer.

Persistence and Perseverance

We live in an instant world. 

I want to change the channel on my TV I hit the button it happens, I want to book a flight I do it, I want to buy a book I can find it in seconds, I wait for more than 3 minutes for my coffee at Starbucks and I am stressing, if a web page takes more than 1 minute to load I am tapping my fingers and thinking about going elsewhere, I can take a photo and everyone can see it in minutes, we receive live news updates and events streaming from anywhere in the world almost as instantly as stuff happens.

We live in a culture of immediacy. 

Freddy Mercury once sang "I want it all, I want it all and I want it now". Has this culture of immediacy permeated the church? I am pretty sure it has. Sometimes in subtle ways other times in blatantly overt ways.

I believe immediacy affects discipleship, it affects our worship, it affects our acts of service and at a very deep level it affects our prayer lives.

The persevering prayer and the persistent prayer are one of the hardest prayers to keep going. Year after year here in Ibiza, even night after night I pray repetitive prayers, sometimes I find it very hard. Yet I understand that I need to keep going. I sometimes struggle when you get people on a two week team here in Ibiza and after the 1st week they will say "I don't know what to pray anymore" I understand where they are coming from but normally just encourage them to pray the same prayer again. There is power in repetition.

We did not have a single connection with a prostitute here for 4 years, but we kept praying. We have been wanting to develop a Spanish speaking community mixed with an international community for 7 years, it only started this year and it's only been happening for 7 weeks, but we kept praying.

If we don't learn to grow in long persistent and persevering prayer we will not grow in certain areas of our lives. We will be conformed to the pattern of this world and live with only the immediate in mind.

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, there is a race marked out for you you need to run it with perseverance. There is a race in prayer that is marked out for you, sometimes that race will be a sprint but often it will be a marathon. We need to persevere in prayer, we need to not give up, to keep knocking.

I believe that being part of a community is one of the greatest helps to persevering persistent prayer, we need people to stand with us and encourage us not to give up, to keep running, to keep knocking.

So please don't give up, keep running, keep knocking.

History and Haunting

A number of years ago we had the privilege of listening to the wisdom of wonderful man called Ken McCreavy, Ken passed away last year which was very sad.

However one of the statements that Ken made really sticks in mind and helps us as we look at prayer and mission. Ken said "For every history that is seen there is always a secret history, a history that is unseen" I really liked that. He said that for every revival that breaks out there is always a church or leader who goes down in history as the centre to travel to or the leader of the moment. Behind all of these there were probably people who prayed for years for break through in their town, or some ladies who prayed faithfully that God would bless and anoint their leader. For every history that is seen there is a secret unseen history.

We have it here, I got to baptise a guy, 24-7 prayer got to befriend him, someone got to pray the prayer of repentance with him, but his mother had prayed for him all his life! For every story that is told there is another story that we don't see.

I love the fact that as we walk the streets and pray with people we get to be involved in their secret history.

A friend of mine in the 80's was in Amsterdam smoking weed with his girlfriend, they stopped to listen to a band play, whilst they listened a guy approached them told  and them the band was a christian band and offered to pray for them. They were very reticent and at first they refused, he persisted and they eventually let him pray for them. He prayed and they left. 6 months later through a whole set of circumstances they gave their lives to Jesus and still follow him to this day. The guy who prayed for them knows nothing of this, yet he is involved in their secret history.

We live in a results driven world, if we don't see results we can feel that we have failed. Yet so often prayer is the long haul, or prayer is the secret place. When we pray with people on the streets we get the opportunity to become involved in their secret history.

We get their name, we take it back to the prayer room we start to pray for them we get involved in their secret history. This is also where haunting comes into it!!!!

In Ephesians 4:27 Paul says "do not give the devil a foothold" 


I believe that every time someone agrees to let you pray for them they give God a foothold. 


Once we have prayed with someone we get really on it, we pray that God would haunt them, that they would meet people who are christians, that friends would find faith, that people at work would talk to them about the Lord, that they would have dreams about Jesus, that they would start to ask questions about their eternal security, that they would find a strange interest in the bible, that they would start to see God in nature, that they would want to visit as church, basically that God would haunt them. They have given him a foothold, their was a chink in their armour of resistance the minute they agreed for you to pray with them. We pray that chink would widen and they would invite Him in. 


We get involved in their secret history and ask God to haunt them. 

Cultural relevance is a red herring

Does culture change the church or does church change the culture?

Or should we be adapting to culture and working out the best ways to be affective christians within the culture?

I am not always convinced it is the churches job to change the culture, we need to adapt, change and modify to really have an impact on it but do we need to change it. But then again "kingdom come" is a form of imperialism, maybe we do? What we definitley mustn't do is withdraw from the culture around us and create our own little culture.

I once heard Pete Greig say this of the church "We are not called to be culturally relevant but we are called to be culturally present"

Cultural relevance is a red herring. We do however need to be present in culture, light in darkness, salt in a saltless world!

Thats why the Christian worship band culture really gets under my skin, because it further highlights how far removed the church can be from the culture that surrounds us! Instead of being present in culture we absent ourselves from it and create our own one. I think part of this happens because it is easier. For a new artist the path of least resistance is to work in a ready made market who are crying out for the next song to give them goosebumps and make them feel good about their lifestyle choices. It's lazy, not very biblical and breeds a reclusive church culture.

A real artist would break into the culture not remove himself from it.

Light in light, salt in an already salty environment, it doesn't work for me.

Resigned to slavery

We have Maria here this weekend who works with prostitutes in Barcelona, we are trying to find a more joined up approach to how we work with prostitutes.

The girls that we work with are for want of a better word "seasonal workers" they are based for the majority of their time on the mainland. Maria works with these girls on the mainland so we are hoping for more insight and maybe a little strategy to develop.

How does slavery happen?

I can tell you this story because we have heard it first hand.

Girl in village or town in Africa gets offered job overseas, she has probably fallen on hard times and the person who offers the work is probably not a close friend but someone she loosely knows. There is a promise of work looking after children or other domestic work and it generally involves being located in mainland europe. The girl may have children of her own and desperately wants to provide for them.

She is then transported illegally to europe, upon arrival she is told that there is not the work she expected, but that she owes a large sum of money for the costs of getting her here. The average figure is somewhere between 45,000 - 65,000 euros. She is told that she cannot go until the debt is paid. A number of issues then come into play and they are all based on fear.

1. She is in the country illegally.

2. Her family is used as leverage, threat of harm if she runs away without payment.

3. Some have sworn a witch doctor oath (juju); if they don't pay the debt they or their family will be cursed and die.

4. She is placed with girls whose debt is nearly paid off; if she flees they will be responsible for her debt.

At a ground level, the girls are usually controlled by a madam, not a pimp.

On the back of all this deception and fear she is forced into prostitution, she has little option but to accept her lot and so she gets on with it. When you walk the streets and look into this girls' eyes, if you stop long enough, if you look closely you will see that there is a deep sadness a desperate longing for a different life, this is not what she expected and not what she wants, she is trapped, enslaved.

She is resigned to slavery.

What happens to these girls is sad, despicable and wrong it needs to change.

The church must not remain silent on this issue. But neither must the church become a place where lots of people talk and pray about this issue without ever actually getting involved in working towards its abolition.

"And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God". Micah 6

Pray for us this weekend as we chat and pray about the best way forward with this whole area.

Third Places, part 4.

"Third places are the most significant places for christian mission to occur because in a third place people are more relaxed , less guarded, more open to meaningful conversation and interaction" Michael Frost

For me this is the crunch we need places for christian mission to occur, in and of itself a building isn't everything but it will help if used right.

The one danger I see in an over emphasis on third places is that a communities energy and time could be absorbed by the building and it's maintenance to such and extent that it takes them away from their primary focus which is to reach out to the lost. This is a balance to be found.

If at any point the third place is not an incarnational representation of the body of Christ it is starting to lose it's way. If all our energies are absorbed in the attraction of people to a third place we become invitational and not incarnational. The primary focus of the bride of Christ and it's members is the representation and carrying of Christ into the world, being Christ and moving into the neighbourhood!. Third places should only enhance this, in fact a well developed third place could greatly help incarnational christians as they seek to outwork their faith in the neighbourhood.

I read this once "The structure serves us, we do not serve the structure" in all we do we must watch for this, if what we create starts to dictate our pace and take us away from our true calling of reaching the lost we are serving the structure and it is no longer serving us.

A lot of mainstream churches have become trapped in this kind of thinking, programmed based church (with all it's positives) has become a structure that is served!

Was I right in hearing that once someone has become a christians, within 6 months of joining a church they have no serious non christian friends?

The structure takes over, before we know it all our energies are giving to maintenance instead of growth. You find yourself at a worship practice on a monday, a children's club on a tuesday, a small group on a Wednesday, you see your family on the weekends, and maybe hang out with your wife and kids, you have a stressed out charging around Sunday and before you know it 5 years have slipped by and you have no space in the diary for the lost!!!!

Third places should facilitate incarnational living, not hinder it.

Hope you like the snap I took last night?

I'm going

24-7 prayer are having there international gathering in Edinburgh this year.

This should be fun, if you haven't already booked you should. There are some great preachers this year, especially George Verwer of Operation Mobilization, I like him a lot.

Actually thinking about it I haven't booked in yet, must do that this week.

Edinburgh is not the cheapest city in the world but there are some ok accommodation options on the 24-7 prayer site.

It would be great to see you there....

Bibles for Ibiza

For the last couple of years we have given out "Jesus Loves Porn Star" bibles in the west end of San Antonio. They have gone down a treat and people have been very keen to receive a copy. More importantly people have actually read them which is very encouraging.

I may have mentioned before but we had one guy come up to us and say he had torn his favourite bit out to keep in his pocket. We had bouncers and bar workers openly reading the bible, people popped into our centre just ti pick up bibles. For me it was real eye opener that the bible is still popular, and I guess the thing I found most interesting is that presentation, packaging and style are important when it comes to people picking up a book and actually reading it.

So heres the big idea, this year we want to get our own message new testaments printed "Jesus Loves Ibiza" bibles. I have had a word with Navpress and they can only do a minimum print run of 5000 bibles, we get out own custom made covers, write our own blurb on the back and inside the front cover. A fantastic opportunity to spread the word and get people engaging with God's story.

Got a way to go, need to raise some funds, find a designer who will work with us on this one and get it all in place by mid May. So if you know of any foundations or organisations that are interested in funding a project like this giive me a shout. Also if you are designer and feel you could help I would love to hear from you.

Another thought I am having is that I could sell 2500 at £5.00 each, which would enable me to give the other 2500 away for free. Something along the lines of "for every bible you buy we will give one away".

Thoughts on a postcard please?

Intimacy and involvement

Intimacy and involvement is a much used phrase within 24-7 prayer, it's the phrase to me that gives real life to our crazy movement. I believe this is a really exciting time. God is looking for a people who are both intimate with him and involved with the world. Which excites me as the summer approaches, not that I don't live this way all the time but it is heightened during the busy summer months.

There is a call upon each one of our lives to be an intimate prayerful people, who touch the Father’s heart and experience the transforming power of his presence. There is also a call upon each of our lives to be an involved people, who prayerfully take the Fathers heart to the world and introduce others to Jesus and allow them to experience the transforming power of His presence in their lives. Thats what I love.

We must be careful that we don’t try to spread the gospel without the back up of prayer, the power of the Holy Spirit and the transforming power of having been in His presence. Likewise we must be very careful that we don’t pray, experience the Holy Spirit and become transformed by His presence without ever being compelled to fulfil the biblical mandate of spreading the gospel.

We need to be a people who do both, it would be completely wrong to say “I pray, others reach out” or “I reach out, others pray” a Christians life needs both intimacy and involvement.

My faith is two pronged and I don’t think we can choose to go for just one prong! Read Matthew 22: 37 -40 we are called to do both, "love the Lord your God with all your heart and Love your neighbours as yourself." The Christian organisation YWAM sums it up beautifully in their mission statement “To know God and make God known”.

We can’t just be presence seekers; we also need to be presence bringers. We need to be striving to do both together at all times.

I heard a guy called Bill Wilson speak once he talked from Exodus 16: 42 – 50. in which a deadly plague is spreading throughout the children of Israel, they are literally dropping like flies in front of Moses and Aaron, Aaron runs to the Altar, the place that represents the presence of God, he gets some incense and fire from the Altar and runs into the middle of the people and stands with the incense and the plague stops. It says that he took the fire and “stood between the living and the dead”.
We must be a people who get fire from the presence of God and then stand in the middle of a dying world and bring life. We are called to stand between the living and the dead but we can only do this if we have got the fire from His presence.Aaron carried something that he had got from the presence of God into the middle of a very dark and desperate situation and the plague stopped. One man ran into the presence and then ran into the dying world around him and made a difference. The fact that he ran suggests urgency, lives depended on his speed, on his commitment and his awareness of how dreadful the situation was.

My prayer is that I become like Aaron, that I am filled with a desire to run to the presence of God and that I am also filled with enough compassion for the lost and dying to run with His presence into the world.

Intimacy and involvement. Prayer and action. Faith and deeds. They kind of all go together.

Psalm 141: 2 May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.

There is responsibility that is invested in us from heaven itself to be a people who pray and keep praying in order that we can be a people who witness and keep witnessing.

A little video of summer 2008

Check this out, it's a little video that was made about our work here this summer.

I think it helps explain what we do a little better, than all my written words...........



The best bit is at the end..........

I'm off

If you're in Ireland you should get along to the day advertised above, it's the first time that we as a whole team will have traveled and done stuff together. Even my boys are coming it will be a great day. Saturday 25th 10am - 10pm.

We also have another thing happening in England it's on Wednesday 29th at a great restaurant called las iguanas at lakeside in Essex. £20 for the ticket which includes a great menu, it will be a bit of a fund raiser for all we do. I will post more details for that one shortly.

All the details are on my laptop which has charger issues, the charger broke this morning, I tried to fix it but forgot to unplug it! My Mac in general is dying, it doesn't hold it's charge, it's very slow, it's cracked, the hinge is bent, it's 3 years old and when I put it on my lap it makes my testicles hurt! Now I can't even use it until I get a new flipping charger.

I fly to Canada tomorrow doing some stuff with 24-7prayer Canada I am also speaking at a conference which should be fun, check it out here the best bit is going to be hanging out with Chris Jones and his family for thanksgiving, they have a shack up in the woods which should be fun. I didn't realize Canadians did thanksgiving but it turns out they were doing before their American neighbours.

On January 31, 1957, the Canadian Parliament proclaimed:
“ A Day of General Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed … to be observed on the 2nd Monday in October."

I am only away for 6 days, hopefully I'll keep you posted.

The Poor

I know many of you will have seen this before but I still think it is great

Missional Communities 5 My conclusion!

So, I'm trying to bring some conclusions to my thoughts on this whole thing although someone once said "A conclusion is what happens when you get tired of thinking"

In my mind I have a picture of missional community, so what I write below is what I am living for and exploring at this present time, once you put something down on paper it can seem like you have a fixed opinion, what I am writing about is my discovery and exploration of community so far!

RELATIONAL

A community has to be relational, it has to relate well to other expressions of church "if you knock the bride you're going to have to deal with the husband"cynical, critical undercurrents are not good for any community, large or small. It has to relate well to the world, culture, sociological, geographical area in which it is birthed; if it is not engaged with the world beyond it's walls it will fail. The community has to relate well to each other, smaller communities are a tougher place to be because you can't be invisible, more tension, more challenges but more depth. The community has to relate well to God; a healthy holistic balanced understanding of our Maker, His Son and the Spirit that guides us. A good relationship with God sounds obvious but needs work. Boiled down at it's core a relational community should be one that is: under-girded with love.

LED

We should not fear leadership, that is excercising it or being definite with it. Leaders in communities should consider themselves as gardeners rather than CEO's. Leadership should be plural and inclusive although I am happy with one person standing uo and taking overall responsibility. Leadership teams should find the heart of God together rather than just trying to implement one persons vison. Paul says WE have the mind of Christ, note the plural! Leadership should be humble enough to accept advice, direction, correction and challenge from servant hearted apostles but also from the community they are leading.

VISION

You've got to have an idea of where you are headed. I'm not a great one for short term, medium term and long term goals. I don't really like the phrase "purpose driven" however in shying away from some of the more business minded models we have to be careful that we don't throw the baby out with the bath water. A picture needs to be painted, a direction needs to be set. The power of vision lies in our ability to imagine an alternative reality, I am living for an alternative reality, we have vision here and believe me it helps.

PRAYERFUL

Arthur Wallis once said something like "revival is born out of prayer, sustained by prayer and brings forth prayer" or better still the bible says "Pray without ceasing" I am convinced this is the key underlying factor to growing communities. Fast more than you do right now (I'm speaking to myself here).

HOSPITABLE

Open, welcoming food orientated communities feel good to me. I believe in the power of the circle. Hospitality is not just about sharing food it is about sharing lives. Give clothes away, buy gifts for people in your world, have parties and barbeques as much as you can. Burn certain chunks of your diary and give yourself more time to be proactive rather than reactive. We have been living in a cash rich and time poor society, make more time. This is not the season to add more to your life rather it is the season of pruning back.

LEARNED

Without a commitment to life long learning we will only ever stay as baby communities. A commitment to discipleship and growth are a necessity. Read together, listen to pod casts together, have accountability groups, do a bible study. Whatever works but remember to stretch and challenge your behaviour as well as your mind. Be disciplined both privately and corporately.

WORSHIPFUL

If it goes well give the glory to God, if it goes badly still give Him glory. We can't make anything happen we just have to be obedient. Worship as a lifestyle is such a pat phrase but if we truly understood that phrase our communities would be richer for it. I worship Him by wiping puke of a drunk! I also like singing........ Break bread often. Live thankful lives in fact "in all things give thanks."

JUST

Whatever it takes: feed the poor, sponsor a child, don't shop at Tescos, lobby an MP, start a facebook group, whatever it takes be just. Watch the planet be good stewards. Be just with your money and allow generosity to permeate your community, give, give and keep giving.

I haven't said missional because if this is all done around the principle of "We do this for those who do not yet know you" it will work, we will be missional to the core.

That will do for now......

Missional Communities 4

I never intended to do all this on missional communities, but I am enjoying it.

Apostles! Well I will give you my own perpsective on what I think about the apostolic role within missional communities.

Firstly I don't think apostles are necessarily fathers, apostles are "sent ones" Paul was a father in a number of situations but the whole idea of titles and position which some how give status and power and an unatural right for someone to manipulate another grouping is wrong.

Matthew 23: 8- 12"But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."

So when I think about the word apostle I think servant.

Romans 1: 1 "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus...."

I have my own issues around this, where I have seen apostolic ministries basically going on a territory hunt and it has almost been about "how many churches can I gather to me to feed my ego." I have also seen them put on a pedestal and treated like superstars, not necessarily because they wanted it more because our church culture is often looking for a king!

So you end up with these extremely gifted church consultants who roam the planet, get treated like Gods and live very unaccountable lives, sadly for me that has been some of my experience of apostolic ministry. Thankfully this style of apostolic ministry is dying out.

You then have the recent Todd Bentley mess, where a band of mature christian leaders who have apparently abandoned the gift of discernment and are seeking to get a bit of the lakeland glory, set a guy apart as an apostle to the nations and get it very very wrong. This further undermines the roles of the apostolic today. Believe me despite their explanations and apologies these guys have something to answer for.

Anyway putting all that aside, I have to get over my own issues and recognise that missional communities need apostolic input

In 1 Corinthians Paul talks about laying a foundation as an expert builder, in Ephesians he talks of God's household being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. When you read the epistles they were foundational. This is where we need apostolic input to ensure the foundations that we are building on are strong.

There has to be a humility on the part of small community leaders, they have to be willing to ask for help. If they don't ask for help or receive apostolic input they leave themselves vulnerable.

What does it look like? For me it could work in two ways

1. The person who travels in regularly from outside, keeps in regular contact, offers support, correction and training. They don't necessarily do it all themselves they can be a sign post and connector as well as a consultant. This is close to the old school method but done out of servanthood and held lightly it can be very effective.

2. I would like to see more like this one: older church leaders who have got their congregations ticking along nicely being financed by their church to go and live with small communities for 6 months and help them put some foundations in place, love and encourage the group without leading it then step back into the role mentioned above. Sent ones.

One of my concerns is that most of these new communities are so far out on the edge that they don't know who to ask for help. We also come up with the question, who appoints the apostle? especially if they are a very disconnected group...

Anyway please don't read this as a set of conclusions, just thoughts I haven't fully landed yet.

Missional Communities 3

Henri Nouwen says this of christian leadership.

"We looked in to the eyes of the young fugitive and found him inward, fatherless and convulsive. We wanted to prevent ourselves from handing him over to the enemy to be killed; we wanted instead to lead him to the centre of our village and to recognize in this coming man the redeemer of a fearful world. To do this we are challenged to be articulate, compassionate and contemplative.
Is this to much of a task? Only if we feel we have to accomplish this individually and separately. But if anything has become clear in our day, it is that leadership is a shared vocation which develops by working closely together in a community......"

I think that this is great, leadership is a shared vocation which develops by working closely together in community.

How would I see leadership in missional communities? in reality not a lot different to how I see leadership properly excercised in larger communities. It would be articulate, compassionate and contemplative and it would be relational. Leadership still has specific roles to fulfill within the guidelines of new testament teaching, leadership within small communities is entirely necessary. However we would be kidding ourselves if we don't end up seeing little kings building little kingdoms in missional communities.

Damaged leaders will bring their baggage from other churches they have been part of and try to mould new communities that reflect the opposite of their previous negative experience. Communities formed in contrast and negativity towards other communities will always be slightly warped. Leadership born out of contrast, negativity and pain can be disastrous.

I do think their is a role for apostles in the birth and formation of new communities, we need servants who bring wisdom, guidance and help to ensure that the foundations upon which we are building our communities are healthy. I am increasingly seeing a need for apostolic wisdom and servanthood in new communites because some have started building on weak and damaged foundations. Humility will be needed to admit we need apostolic help and the shape of that apostolic help will need remodeling.

An apostle would help deal with the foundational and embryonic issues I have been talking about over the last few days.

Who are the new apostles? What do they look like?

Missional Communities 2

I read this from an interveiw with the Spanish painter Joan Miró on his thoughts about surrealism:

"What counts more than the painting itself is what it exudes, what it spreads. Little matter if the painting is destroyed. Art may die, but what is important is that it spreads its seeds on the soil. Surrealism pleased me because the surrealists did not regard painting as an end. A painting should not cause concern about remaining what it is, but rather that it should produce seeds, that it spreading sowings from which other things will grow..."

I wonder if in todays culture we are more concerned with how things look than what they produce?

Take church for instance if the building of the central congregational model of church is an end in itself, we become much more concerned with how that picture looks than what it produces. Our energy, focus and time can be all about the Sunday morning show. Yet the majority of larger churches I am aware of are definitley more concerned with producing seeds and spreading those sowings so that other things will grow.

I actually think there is a greater danger that small missional communities become more concerned with the painting. Creating a beautiful picture of community becomes more important than spreading seed that grows. If you are growing a small community you need to note one word "Growing" If something is growing it won't stay the same. I am concerned that missional communities haven't properly thought through what they would like if they were successful and actually can be critical of what they may one day become.

If history is cyclical we should note that most larger churches started as small missional communities, it's just that term wasn't around when they began. Success meant growth.

I see a worrying little tendency for smaller communities to be little exclusive, sometimes intentionally other times accidentally. They can be hard to get into and aren't particularly open at the edges they appeal to certain social and educational groupings and have a distinct lack of sociological diversity. Larger groupings are definitely more socially inclusive.

“Love community and you will kill it. Love your brother and you will build it.” Deitrich Bonhoeffer. I think we have people out there who have fallen in love with the idea of community and not the idea of reaching the lost.

Or the Shane Clairborne paraphrase “If you love the vision you have for community, you will destroy community. If you love the people around you, you will create community.”

In the creation of community we have to expect growth, we have to not be overly fixated with the picture we want to paint but totally focussed on the seed we want to plant and the growth we want to nurture.

I've been blessed by GOD TV!!!!!

Last night an amazing thing happened I was channel flicking and ended up watching GOD tv, just before I flicked on to another channel the man talking caught my ear. It was a guy called Rick Warren he was talking about Moses and the question God posed him about "What do you have in your hand"

He explained about his massively best selling book called "Purpose Driven Life" not a book I am overly fond of in fact I started to read it and gave up. The word "driven" is a real turn off for me, anyway I hung in there. Rick talked about how he takes no money from the profits of the book, how he reverse tithes (gives away 90% and keeps 10%) how they work with trying to find solutions for HIV and support orphans, how he paid the church back everything they had ever paid him, he wasn't showing off, just talking. At one point the crowd started to clap he just stopped them and said "I am not telling you this to impress you, I am telling this to teach you" I loved it.

He then talked about how this declaration he made with his church, personally I am going to try to memorize it, it's good:

"Today I am stepping across the line. I’m tired of waffling and I’m finished with wavering, I’ve made my choice, the verdict is in, and my decision is irrevocable. I’m going God’s way. There’s no turning back now!

I will live the rest of my life serving God’s purposes with God’s people on God’s planet for God’s glory. I will use my life to celebrate his presence, cultivate his character, participate in his family, demonstrate his love, and communicate his word.

Since my past has been forgiven, and I have a purpose for living, and a home awaiting in heaven, I refuse to waste any more time or energy on shallow living, petty thinking, trivial talking, thoughtless doing, useless regretting, hurtful resenting, or faithless worrying. Instead I will magnify God, grow to maturity, serve in ministry, and fulfill my mission in the membership of his family.

Because this life is preparation for the next, I will value worship over wealth, “we” over “me”, character over comfort, service over status, and people over possessions, position, and pleasures. I know what matters most and I’ll give it all I’ve got. I’ll do the best I can with what I have for Jesus Christ today.

I won’t be captivated by culture, manipulated by critics, motivated by praise, frustrated by problems, debilitated by temptation, or intimidated by the devil. I’ll keep running my race with my eyes on the goal, not the sidelines or those running by me. When times get tough, and I get tired, I won’t back up, back off, back down, back out or backslide. I’ll just keep moving forward by God’s grace. I’m Spirit-led, purpose-driven and mission-focused so I cannot be bought, I will not be compromised, and I shall not quit until I finish the race.

I’m a trophy of God’s amazing grace so I will be gracious to everyone, grateful for everyday, and generous with everything that God entrusts to me.

To my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I say: However, Whenever, Wherever, and Whatever you ask me to do, my answer in advance is yes! Wherever you lead and whatever the cost, I’m ready. Anytime. Anywhere. Anyway. Whatever it takes Lord; Whatever it takes! I want to be used by you in such a way, that on that final day I’ll hear you say, “Well done, thou good and faithful one. Come on in, and let the eternal party begin!”

Good old GOD TV!!!!

Check this out, it was filmed in September 2006 it gives a snippet into all that we do. Click this link Prayer as mission

Our community has changed Fiona, Steve and Dawn have all moved on, we are now in a different prayer room and we have the van to take people home in, I am also 8 kilos lighter now.

Hope you enjoy it