January 2012
1 post
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October 2011
16 posts
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“I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be...”
– Henri Nouwen
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Telling a good story
Stories are a vital part of every sermon or presentation. They engage the audience on an emotional level in a way that delivering information just can’t do. Here’s some of my ideas about how to tell a really good story.
When I first started preaching a few years ago, I fell into a trip which I think many others fall into. I prepared sermons packed full of important information, but...
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“Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it’s been.”
– Wayne Gretzky
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“While God’s words are eternal and unchanging the tools we use to access those...”
– John Dyer, From the Garden to the City.
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Why I still believe in the sermon
I still believe in the sermon. I know it isn’t necessarily cool or clever these days to think that. In an age when young people and young adults are leaving the church in huge numbers, a lot of people, especially youth workers, have suggested that the old method of preaching is outdated and needs replacing. But I still believe that preaching, when it’s done well, is an art form.
Last week I...
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6 Reasons why young people are leaving the church →
David Kinnaman (author of unChristian) and the Barna Group have just released their latest research, this time interviewing American young people who left the Church after the age of 15. Here are the six main reasons they found for young people / young adults leaving the church:
Churches appear to be overprotective
Their experience of Christianity was shallow
Churches appear to be against...
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The Ten Commandments of Steve →
The news of Steve Job’s death was a huge shock - for our generation he had become an icon of creativity, vision and leadership. The Daily Beast has 10 core ideas that sum how Steve Jobs led Apple into a new age of creativity:
Go for perfect
Tap the experts
Be ruthless
Shun focus groups
Never stop studying
Simplify
Keep your secrets
Keep teams small
Use more carrot than stick
...
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“An evangelical is someone who is transformed by the person and work of Jesus...”
– Kurt Fredrickson - Fuller Theological Seminary
Fredrickson’s is a definition of ‘evangelical’ that I can get excited about.
Check his post out about why the term evangelical has been hijacked by a group of judgemental people with their own agendas, and why we need to recover a...
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5 ideas to make your talk stand out
Every day, the people we lead are bombarded by thousands of advertising messages, videos, images and news items from different sources all competing for their attention. This makes the art of communicating with an audience or congregation that much more difficult and that much more exciting, as we need to find new ways to engage with people.
Here’s five ideas I’ve pulled together over...
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5 reasons to practice silent contemplation and how...
Practicing silent contemplation is something a lot of Christ-followers would associate with old, worn-out, traditional Christianity. I’ve found it to be a hugely significant part of my spiritual life - here’s why I think you should give it a go and how you can get started.
A couple of years ago, I went on retreat to a Catholic monastery, where I found spending time in silence was...
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“It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind...”
– Leslie Newbiggin
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20 points on leading young adults →
Brad Lomenick has this great list of pointers for people working through the challenge of leading young adults (or Millenials - the generation who came of age around the millennium).
August 2011
2 posts
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Why faith-based youth work offers a solution to... →
Youthwork Magazine editor, Martin Saunders, wrote this piece in the Guardian looking at the London Riots from the perspective of a Christian youth worker:
Faith-based youth work has something special, something inherently different to offer them, because it offers something distinctive: transformation. And we in the faith community must not be ashamed of where that transformation comes from: an...
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July 2011
7 posts
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“Jesus refers to himself as the ‘good’ shepherd. But our word...”
– Tom Wright, John for Everyone - Part 1, p154.
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Moralistic Therapeutic Deism...
What the hell is it?
It’s a way of understanding who god is:
Moralistic - the need to do good things and not bad ones.
Therapeutic - the need to feel good about ourselves.
Deism - A ‘deity’/god who is ‘far away’ and doesn’t actively intervene into reality.
Some Moralistic Therapeutic Deist beliefs might look like this:
“A god exists who created and...
Sorry!
Sorry things have been quiet for the last week and a bit here. Needed a bit of a break to refresh and regroup, and ran out of space in my schedule for blogging.
I want the blog to be something liberating for me as I express ideas, and not something which enslaves as I try to bash out regular posts - so in a sense I’m not that sorry about it.
More posts will arrive at the beginning of next...
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Emerging Leaders #1: The Call to Adventure
Just like good old Luke Skywalker (or the hero of your favourite story), the first step towards growing into leadership is hearing a ‘call’ to move forwards.
For the hero of a story, this is the call to adventure - for those of us thinking about Christian leadership, it’s a call to join God on his Mission.
What does it mean to hear a ‘call’ to leadership?
And how...
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“Well done is better than well said.”
– Benjamin Franklin
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The Community Coffeehouse in Cincinnati →
Leadership Magazine in the US has a great article which profiles a church in Cincinnati which runs a cafe for its local community in a challenging area:
We said, “Let’s be a welcoming place, a place where people experience love and grace, whether they’re wealthy or homeless, educated or street people.” A look at the books in the café—mostly dealing with justice...
June 2011
19 posts
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5 Tips for Dealing with Conflict
Dealing with conflict, either with people you are responsible for, or between people, is one of the most challenging parts of leadership.
It’s one of the elements of leadership I have always struggled with, as my tendency is always to want to ‘leave it’ or ignore things and hope they go away. Unfortunately they don’t.
However, dealing with conflict constructively can...
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WatchThe work that Frontline Community Church do in Liverpool has gained so much attention that the Guardian produced this film exploring their approach, and asking questions about how faith groups can fill in the gaps left by recent and forthcoming government cuts.
I especially love what the church leader says when he is interviewed, and the testimony from those who the church has helped. This is why...
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“The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is...”
– Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, p.308
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5 Essentials for Leaders →
Brad Lomenick, who leads the conference called Catalyst in the US aimed at young leaders, gives 5 simple essential qualities for leaders:
Be Humble- you’re not that big of a deal.
Be Authentic- your team wants to be led by the real you.
Be Informed- ongoing competence requires ongoing learning.
Be Decisive- no one wants to be led by someone who can’t make a decision.
Be Present- in the...
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Missional Meals →
With The Lab, we have always found food to be a great way to grow community. In this blog post at the Resurgence, Tim Chester agrees:
Jesus didn’t run projects, establish ministries, create programs, or put on events. He ate meals. If you routinely share meals and you have a passion for Jesus then you’ll be doing mission.
Read the whole post here.
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The Pool of Siloam: Can a place hold spiritual...
Last week, for the first of our Lab summer series on John, we explored the story of Jesus healing the man born blind from John 9v1-12 (you can listen to it here). Here’s an offshoot of my thoughts/research that didn’t make the final version of my talk.
One of the really interesting elements of the story, is that Jesus doesn’t just tell the blind man to see - instead he goes through a strange...
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WatchVideo of Hope Newport 2011 in Alway.
Thanks Sarah, as always, for your amazing editing skillz.
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The Relationship between Desire and Reason
A week ago at our Sunday night Lab gathering I shared about the need to be constantly cultivating within ourselves a desire for more intimacy with God (you can listen again here). As part of preparing my thoughts for preaching, I often end up with lots of off-cuts of material that didn’t quite make the cut. I thought I’d begin to share some of this extra, bonus material on the blog.
Here are some...
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Discerning your calling →
Found this article from Tim Keller which is really useful in thinking about what God might be calling you to do, especially thinking about calling outside of ordained ministry or volunteering with the church. Fits in well with our current series on ministry at St Paul’s.
He suggests three ways in which you might discern God’s call on your life:
1. Affinity “Look out” and see what...
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Lessons for Younger Leaders →
Have been thinking for a short while about doing a series of posts on being a young leader - being one myself. The Willow Creek blog (not one I normally visit) has a really good series of posts on young leaders from lots of great leaders much older and wiser than me.
You can read them here.
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Social Networking at Work →
Thought-provoking post on Q about using Facebook and other social media sites at work. It asks these questions:
- Is it fair to our employers to engage in social media when we’re “on the clock”?
- For those of us who have flexible work schedules (or even work at home), does social media compromise our attention span and mental capacity?
- Are we sitting behind our computers so much that we...
May 2011
4 posts
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“For I tell you this; one blind loving desire for God alone is more valuable in...”
– Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing (Found in Mark Yaconelli - Wonder, Fear and Longing)
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The Alway Project - Annual Report 2011 →
A few weeks ago, we threw together our annual report for the project in Alway over the past year. You can view it here to see the different work we’ve been involved in.
Also, in the last few days we have properly formalised a partnership with the Streetspace Network - a network of innovative youth and community work projects run by Frontier Youth Trust in partnership with the Church...
WatchA different interesting take on what makes a great motivational presentation, still based on similar ideas as the sermon.
February 2011
20 posts
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