Falling With Style

The eyes of the world will be on a stadium in East London tonight. A global audience of billions will be watching one city on the planet to see who is the biggest, strongest, fastest and best over the next two weeks. What has been built in the Olympic park is staggering. The sheer hard work and brilliance of the thousands of athletes from around the world just to get there is incredible. As we celebrate pinnacles of human achievement in sport, architecture and a regenerative city legacy, we are in danger of our own Babel moment of hubris though. This old Greek word is ideal for our over confident, self sufficient generation. Hubris, tips us over the edge, over hyping, strutting, swimming in a pool of self congratulation at our own human effort, courage and skill. I’ll enjoy the Olympic spectacle and fireworks tonight, but I’ve been reminded this week to get a better perspective. Reading Louie Giglio’s ‘Indescribable’, he references a photo of planet earth taken by the Voyager s...

Let's hope the North  Korean's geography isn't as bad as ours. I would like to point out that if they are planning to fire their shiny communist era missiles our way, it was Scotland that snubbed you, not London! If the chattering liberal doomsday media hadn't made such a fuss about the wrong flag on the PowerPoint then no one would have known - in the words of Scooby Doo : We might have just got away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids.  This was a women's football match between well supported Columbia and North Korea, traditional footballing powerhouses. It was being played two days before the London Olympics officially begin, in the capital city of a neighbouring country! There was no one in the stadium other than the few hundred school children they could give tickets way to, no one was watching on the red button on BBC3 and nobody has a tv set in North Korea, other than Kim Jung Ill Junior,  the new Dear Leader who has a big room where he has gath...

Oi Bradley, read the script! You were supposed to get a puncture on the Chans de Élysées, or do the gentlemanly thing and let that nice Italian pass you on the last lap, or even get your sideburns caught in your chain and come in second, bloodied but heroic. But what is this kind of relentless victory? This was a Sunday when the sporting psyche was turned on its head. A confident Australian bottled the Open when he practically had his name on the trophy, and a plucky Brit closed out a victory without even a hunt of a wobble. What kind of summer is this where the weather and even the national sporting stereotypes are upside down? We just don't have a paradigm for understanding this! Bradley Wiggins is a total failure of a British hero. Doesn't he realise, his role is to raise our hopes, try really hard, then fail spectacularly at the last to a technically superior foreign opponent? We can then satisfy ourselves by saying its not really a proper sport, or the way that these E...

Who says we have to own a bigger home or drive a newer car, or that our kids have to be involved in 5 competitive sports a year? I know some parents who keep a spreadsheet on their computer in order to keep up with the activities of their kids - Never mind a spreadsheet, we've made life so frantic we need a therapist! Maybe it's driven by the usual tiredness that hits us the week before the schools break up, but we don't have to buy into the lie that the world determines how fast a pace of life we live. We don't have to let our children buy into it either. It's that time of year again where the allure of slower summer days begin to nibble at our subconscious and leave us dreaming of a different life. If like me, you find you have got caught up again in busyness and find yourself living for the next break, wake up - like the English summer, those days of ease are never going to come! Our western consumer culture defines how we live more than we like to admit. I...

A number of you have been asking about the prayer that I read out at the second of our gift days at New Life in East Grinstead yesterday. For those who want to read it, use it, or share it - here it is. Lord we remember the stories of how you have provided for your people. How your children in the wilderness saw you give them food for 40 years and shoes and clothes which never wore out. We remember Elisha and the widows pots of oil,  she kept pouring as you kept giving. We recall Ezekial and the army you called out of dry bones. We remember the Acts community giving generously, living with devotion to Christ and one another, having no poor among them. You've called  us to shine with your glory in the same way to our generation, You're going to bless us so that all the ends of the earth will be blessed We're going to keep trusting and walking forward. You will put in our hands what we need every step of the way. Every time we pour out, you are going to give us what we n...

In response to some questions about how we are working into the nations, I'm going to post a few short videos over the summer. These should give you a taste of the vision and values that are behind what we are doing, and that directly shape our church planting work into a number of countries. A lot of the old ways or 'missionary models' are being discarded. There is much we can learn from, but we are also needing a new way of engaging with the world in the 21st Century, ways of working in simple New Testament pioneering partnerships. These are essentially the same apostolic foundations that the first century church planters laid, albeit, contextualised for our generation. This first clip details some of the structure behind the vision to see churches planted and leaders released - the need for financial support. Do we follow the old missionary handout model, or is there a more dignified, mutually beneficial way of generating wealth to support church planters? Let m...