Category: Planning
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Don’t Take A Census?
Leaders want to assess their strengths – but when King David called a census it was an offence to God, resulting in an awful judgement for the community. What lessons can we learn from this today?
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Arise With New Confidence
Church leaders confidence has taken a bit of a hit as a result of the changing landscape we are ministering into. But what have we really been putting our confidence in?
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We Are Too Strong
We are too strong! But like me I suspect you think you are not strong enough. After all, I have weaknesses, shortcomings, lack, inabilities and blindspots. These weaknesses can easily intimidate and confine me – but my main problem is not that I’m too weak. My main problem is I’m too strong. We generally buy…
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The Shaking Is Not Over
I don’t believe the shaking is over. The recent impact of COVID19 has caused many nations, institutions and individuals to be significantly shaken – and although we are seeing countries incrementally open up again, the new practises we have been asked to adopt would have been unthinkable 12 months ago. This global ‘earthquake’ has had…
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How Wrong I Was
As 2020 approached I had such an expectation in my spirit about the impending 12 months ahead. It felt like I was bubbling with a prophetic sense that something ‘new’ was about to happen in the church and this theme was reinforced by a number of respected and trusted guest speakers we had invited. I…
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Who misses our singing most – us or God?
Our worship is for the audience of one – but is that ‘one’ me or God? My last post entitled ‘losing our song’ found much resonance but also evoked some debate about the rights of the church to express our worship in song. I don’t want to recycle that conversation but instead build on it…
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Losing Our Song
I lost my sight once. I couldn’t see anything. This highly valued sense which had helped guide me through many adventures had temporarily left me. In a similar way churches have recently lost some abilities which we greatly value. The inability to meet together is gradually easing but now we are facing restrictions on singing…
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Fully Charged For The Season Ahead
I have found recent months to be really tiring and I don’t admit this lightly. I don’t really like talking about my own tiredness as a ‘shepherd’ – I want to focus on the needs of the ‘sheep’ and they have all been through so much this year, but I think it’s important to be…
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New Opportunities For Discipleship
How many books have you read about discipleship? If you are a church leader then you have probably read quite a few. I have – I’ve loved them all (well maybe not quite all) – but I’m aware of a frustrating gap between many of their idealogical concepts and practical implementation in our lives. Are…
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Restoring What We’ve Lost
There is much for us to grieve. We’ve lost so much. There is much that we should have had that has sadly been lost – it’s an absolute tragedy. I’m not talking about the impact of the lockdown. No, I believe we lost so much before the coronavirus became a thing on our news channels.…
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