applications for the tbcYouth mission trip is closed - we've had 14 forms back & we'll be getting in touch with those in the next day or two 12 hours ago
The weekend that was: Friday was an awesome night, some of the young people from my previous church came to run som dance workshops and share their testimony to the 11-14 year old girls I presently work with. It was great catching up with the young people from Essex, and reflecting on how much they’ve grown and developed in the last 5 years.
Saturday was a day of jobs around the home, listening to Fighting Talk, and going to friends for a great big dinner.
Sunday I went to Kings Hill Christian Fellowship in the morning to help them think through how they grow and develop their youth work. It was great see the huge potential they have. The afternoon was church meeting, which merged into an evening of church and lots of pastorals.
On my task list this week: lots of meetings, pastoral 1-to-1s, hoping to release publicity on a number of events – summer camp, ministry apprentices, and the Christmas party, and I’m off to Youthwork the conference at the end of the week which I’m really looking forward to.
Procrastinating about: not much, this week is fairly full on but I’m sure there’s something I’m not pushing as hard as I should.
Whilst bored by the football I finished reading So You’re Going to be a Dad by Peter Downey. Hannah bought me this book, following how much I enjoyed Everything a Bloke Needs to Know: About Getting Married and this book did not disappoint. I feel like I’ve learnt things, but also laughed lots, it’s not one of those overly seriosu books about pregnancy, birth and fatherhood, but one that makes the key points whilst allowing some humour.
If you’re about to become a dad get hold of this book.
Justin Taylor blogged on Shai Linne, rapping through the Bible at the WorshipGod conference, something I’m going to use with some of our young people, check it out:
Here are the lyrics:
It’s the greatest story ever told.
A God pursues foes whose hearts turned cold.
The greatest story ever told.
Restoring all that the enemy stole.
The greatest story ever told.
The glory of Christ is the goal, behold.
The greatest story ever told.
It’s the greatest.
Alright check it: let’s go back in time, brethren. Divine lessons always keep your mind guessing. The glory of the Triune God is what I’m stressing. The origin of humankind was fine. Blessings were plenteous. God is amazingly generous. Crazy benefits in a state of innocence. God told the man what he could taste was limited. Not long after came our nemesis in Genesis. He scammed well, man fell, damned to hell. The whole human race—he represented it. Fooled by the serpent, man through his work, woman through birth—even the earth ruled by the curses. But instead of a wake immediately. God said her Seed would be the One to crush the head of the snake. Yo, wait what is this? Whoa, a gracious gift! In Jehovah’s faithfulness He clothed their nakedness. This was so they would know their Savior’s kiss and bliss. But first, many growing pains exist suffering in the worst form, ugly deeds. Eve’s firstborn seed made his brother bleed. Indeed things got progressively worse. Every section of the earth is been affected by the curse. And though God’s judgments against sin were gory, praise the Lord! It’s not the end of the story.
Next scene: man’s sin was extreme. God gets steamed, man gets creamed. The Lord is so Holy that He drowned them in the water. Fire in the valley of slaughter – Sodom and Gomorrah. But at the same time, He’s so gracious and patient that from one man He created a whole nation. Eventually enslaved by the mentally depraved, they cried out to the only One with the strength that He could save. He brought them out with signs and wonders – satisfied their hunger. Then He appeared on Mount Sinai in thunder. Where He laid down the law for God-ruled government. Commonly referred to as the Mosaic covenant. Sin was imputed. So for man to know he’s unrighteous, God instituted animal sacrifices. This was to show our constant need for atonement. And when it came to sin, the Lord would never condone it. And when His people disobeyed and went astray, He raised up prophets and kings to lead them in the way. But they would get foul with their idolatry—wet and wild prophecy—send them into exile. To take their punishment like a grown man. Then with His own hand He placed them back in their homeland. And while in their forefather’s land they dwelt, they awaited the arrival of Emmanuel.
After 400 silent years filled with sighs and tears. In Bethlehem the Messiah appears. God in the flesh—Second Person of the Trinity. At thirty begins His earthly ministry. Baffling cats with accurate, exact facts and back-to-back miraculous acts. A stumbling block to the self righteous. But the humbled—His flock, said “There’s no one else like this.” He came from heaven to awake the numb. Demonstrated His power over nature, son. A foretaste of the Kingdom and the age to come. But the reason He came was to pay the sum for the depths of our wickedness, our wretched sinfulness. Bless His magnificence! He is perfect and innocent. Yet He was wrecked and His death. He predicted it. Next He was stretched, paid a debt that was infinite. He said that He finished it. Resurrected so the elect would be the recipients of its benefits. Through faith and penitence we get to be intimate. His grace is heaven sent, it never diminishes. Now the Holy Spirit indwelling is the evidence for heaven’s future residents who truly represent Jesus, the Author, Producer, Director, and Star of a story that will never, ever end!
My hope is that this conference will be a conference that truly listens and allows dialogue rather than just hearing from some big name Christian leaders. It has real potential, my hope is that the leaders who are invited to attend, attend with a heart to listen to one another and be ready for change.
If you’ve been invited do drop me a comment, it’d be great to link up.
These fountains are amazing. It uses 6,600 lights with 50 coloured projectors and is able to fire the water into the air at as astonishing 150m or 490ft!
Kasabian, the British rock group have made an interesting video. It begins with craftsmen creating enormous buttons on the wall of a London warehouse. These and additional visual effects make a giant version of Guitar Hero. Participants play by kicking soccer balls at the buttons in the right order to the tune of one of Kasabian’s songs:
Our last iGroup went off the programme and back to the discussion the previous day on how the relationship between church and mission agencies could be improved.
There were some bigger issues, for example, is it appropriate for some mission agencies to merge/partner more with one another so as to stop the replication of resources – this to me needs greater accountability across organisations, and a greater sense of honesty.
We were challenged by Andy from Micah Challenge to think of one or two things we’d be taking home with us, here are my two:
To partner mutually with mission agencies
To encourage and push my youth team to research and share more with young people to encourage them to participate in local, national and international mission.
Eddie Arthur from Wycliffe was on the next VT clip, looking at The Gospel in Different Contexts, go check out the clip on Eddie’s blog.
Eddie gives us a background to the idea of contextualisation of the Gospel and also reflect on what it means for us. I found it interesting to hear some of the history of linguistics, but most importantly I was stirred again by his call for us to not just find a new way of presenting the gospel, but to find new ways of being a Christian – ways of worship, prayer, art and so on; a big challenge I want to dwell on.
iGroup session 3 was potentially the most useful. We started by spending some time identifying key things that influence church leaders:
Congregation
Buildings
Too many meetings
Denominational leadership
The need to conform
Other evangelical churches
Groups such as New Wine, being Purpose Driven etc
Informal relationships with other leaders
Fragmented society and faith
We were challenged on how there is a lack of clear leadership in the evangelical movement, and that in a sense, no one has really taken on John Stott’s mantle piece – who will be the next leader to define the UK?
We then had 3 church leaders and 3 heads of mission agencies share some of the successes and frustrations with the relationship between church and mission agency. It was really helpful, although we ended with no time for discussion or debate.
John Azumah from London School of Theology spoke on The Whole Gospel. He reminded us of how far the world had come from the Edinburgh conference of 1910, highlighting how the choice of him and Elaine as speakers for the conference – a black man and a woman would never have happened then.
He highlighted how the world is full of news, but not good news, the church is full of good, but nothing newsworthy. We need to create good news.
His second challenge was our narrowness on how we define the gospel:
Christians say the gospel is Matthew to John
Theologians often say the gospel is Genesis 3 to John
John says it should be Geneses 1 to Revelation 22 – the whole of God’s word
John’s last key point was that the distinctive of Christianity is grace. For example, Islam accepts that Jesus is word, and that he became flesh. It’s the action of the cross and the grace that is proclaimed and demonstrated that makes Jesus unique.
iGroup session 3 spent time identifiying the barriers to a transformed church and how we could break them down. Key thoughts included the need for:
Leadership
Vision
Identifying and responding to community need
Partnership and working strategically – churches working truly together
Making choices and focussing on the God thing not just good things
Making the most of God opportunities
Having flexibility and avoiding burnout
Richard Tiplady from the ECM then concluded our session with a 10 minute overview of church history, leaving us with the question what can we learn from previous movements of the church.
For one of the video slots Jonathan Ingleby spent time scanning the 20th century looking at key themes. He centred on communism and nationalism, which he described as
“initially hope filled, the freedom of nations”
His other big point centred on how the 20th century heroes went from being white, Western middle class people to people such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela who were all non-white, and mainly non-Western leaders.
Dewi Hughes from Tearfund started our second session as an iGroup exploring the historical relationship between mission and ecclesiology and how the challenge for Lausanne 2010 is to develop a better ecclesiology in the context of a bigger mission.
The key for me was the transformation has to equal both an individual and corporate transformation.
We then spent time looking at what makes Christians and the church stand out.
My group came up 3 things for an individual:
Selfless in contrast with being selfish
Prayer in contrast with being self-reliant
A Christ centred hope in contrast with a short-term hope
For the church we suggested:
A serving community
A ‘family’ unit
A beacon of hope
I struggle slightly with our conclusions because I’m not sure you have to be a Christian to be serving or to create a family atmosphere, but I’m not sure what we could write instead.
The theme across all the groups was instead of running bigger programmes the church needed to be the church in the local community, it was about giving time to those in our community, being in our local community.
Elaine Storkey who is President of Tearfund and Director of Training for the Church Army spoke tonight on ‘The Whole Church’.
She started by outlining the many Biblical metaphors we can find for church, finishing on the metaphor of the body as found in Romans, 1 Corinthians and Ephesians.
Having stated the biblical vision for church she went onto to look at the obstacles to wholeness, things such as brokenness, ignorance, abuse, and how these obstacles could be addressed – most clearly through the teaching in 1 Corinthians 12.
For the Global Connections conference we’ve been put into iGroups. The group I belong to is entitled: “The church as transformed and transforming community” and it’s being led by Dewi Hughes and Martin Lee.
The challenge for our first session was to think of the biggest question we’d like to answer on this topic. My question was:
How can we transform church to be a group of worshippers and missionaries who are transforming their local and global community?
The 3rd Lausanne Congress is due to happen next year in Cape Town, and I’m privileged enough to have been invited as a delegate, so I’m spending this week at the Global Connections conference meeting some of the other delegates from the UK delegation. They started their conference looking at how the world has changed since the wonderful 1910 meeting in Edinburgh.
Apologies for light blogging recently, I took time off during half-term to buy baby bits with Hannah in preparation for February, and then spoke at a youth weekend away and youth groups at TBC over the weekend, and I’m now at The Hayes Conference Centre for the Global Connections conference.
I’ve found the internet connection so I’m hoping that in the rare spare minutes I’ll be able to post on some of the sessions.
I work at Tonbridge Baptist Church. Everything here, however, is my personal opinion and is not read or approved by Tonbridge Baptist Church before it is posted. Opinions, conclusions and other information expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of Tonbridge Baptist Church.
chilling out clearing my google reader whilst Hannah watches #ittakes23 hours ago
applications for the tbcYouth mission trip is closed - we've had 14 forms back & we'll be getting in touch with those in the next day or two 12 hours ago
back from #ywc2009 - some real great moments - lots to think through 1 day ago
Whilst bored by the football I finished reading 
