Falling With Style

Over the past few weeks of our discipleship training, the songs I've tweeted about change have produced as much comment as the content of the course!  So, for those who are asking, here are the six songs that I've used, all of them in some way expressing a yearning for change or transformation. Some are more bitter sweet, even sad and broken, but all are stretching towards a new way. They are not scripture songs, but this perhaps makes their longing all the more powerful, coming from voices who don't yet know the ultimate metamorphosis that comes to those who receive the good news about Jesus. Week 1/ Keane - Everybody's Changing. Week 2/ Augustines - This Ain't Me Week 3/ Aretha Franklin - Change Gonna Come Week 4/ David Gray - Transformation Week 5/ Man in the Mirror - Joyful Noise Week 6 / Tourist Ft. Lianne La Havas - Patterns

I've been reading James Emery White's latest book, 'Rise of the Nones.' His provocative attempt to shape churches and lives in order to reach the irreligious who state 'none' to the religion question on their census forms. Quite simply, to reach an increasingly post Christian generation, authentic Christians are needed to grow up as quickly as possible. In our local church, we are learning that the emphasis on creating a discipling culture is with this real Missional purpose - It is in order to create genuine followers of Jesus in community, that make his message very real and attractive to those who currently consider him irrelevant to their lives. This fabulous quote from James Emery White summarises so well what we are aiming at. It contains a quote within a quote, a Bill Hybels bonus from his book,'Courageous Leadership.' "Hybel's gathers his final thoughts: 'There is nothing like the local church when it's working right. It...

We're considering the culture of discipleship over these couple of Sundays together as a local church. Not so much the structure of how to get it done, but how it feels to be part of a discipling, growing community of people who are eager to grow up fully into the mission of Jesus. The story of David in Adullum's cave is great example of the kind of mixed up people that are drawn into this mission, and that are still called to partner on Kingdom adventures today. The distressed, discontented and those in debt began appearing at the cave as they heard David was hiding out there - this sorry bunch of loser outlaws with all their hang ups and poor history became the power base for the new kingdom through their growing love for David, and the increasing understanding of the adventure they were engaging in together. This rag tag rabble don't look too different from the troublesome twelve that gathered around Jesus' leadership hundreds of years later! These fall out boy...

Stories are always great, and we used this one about Mr Genor to finish a training day on the Kingdom of God today. Some of you have asked about it so I have copied it below. I read the story from the book 'Fire Evangelism' by Che Ahn. A number of years ago in a Baptist church in Crystal Palace, in south London, the Sunday morning service was closing, and a stranger stood up in the back, raised his hand, and asked the Pastor if he could share a testimony. He said, “I just moved into this area, I used to live in another part of London, I came from Sydney, in Australia. And just a few months back I was visiting some relatives and I was walking down George Street when a strange little white-haired man stepped out of a shop doorway, put a pamphlet in my hand and said, ‘Excuse me sir, are you saved? If you died tonight, are you going to heaven?’ “ He said, “I was astounded by those words. Nobody had ever told me that. I thanked him courteously, and all the way back to Heathrow...

Matthew 28:19 has been rightly emphasised by churches down through the centuries - 'Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit'. Nothing has changed - this mission remains our top priority. However, verse 20 is of equal value, and yet has received less emphasis. 28:20 'Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you to the very end of the age'. It seems that by emphasising verse 19 and not verse 20, we risk getting new believers to baptism, but then leaving them to get on with things on their own. To work it out as they go along. If this mission to the world remains our most important focus, then we cannot afford to leave disciples of Jesus looking and sounding just like the world they have been saved out of. What gospel message is that going to preach? The idea in the early church was that our distinctive, Christ shaped lives would be an attractive contrast to the lost world a...

Those One Direction boys Zayn and Louis are in a bit of bother, allegedly caught on camera with spliff in hand whilst in Peru this week. Their behaviour isn't far out of step with their contemporaries. Two of the five boy band members stand accused here, but one in five young people claim to have experimented with casual drug use during the last year.  In his Guardian newspaper column today, Owen Jones remarks on the pressure on One Direction to conform to the sort of clean living that even disciples of Jesus would find a little stringent. Jones is clearly not attempting a reasoned theological summary of the gospel here. Rather he is pointing to the micro analysis of their every move, and the need for squeaky clean lives to maintain lucrative teen idol status contracts.   He is however plain wrong, but his words say something significant about our generation's misconceptions and lack of any real understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. It's just another ...

In our local church community, we've been using the story of Isaac in Genesis 26, re-opening wells which had been dug in a previous generation by his father Abraham. This narrative is a helpful prompt as we discover again some of the life of God that has been in our history. This is true in a number of areas, but no more so than with healing miracles. Although they have been significant in our past, we want them again in our present, and into our future. The need for us to dig once more into what we once confidently drew water from is apparent, as is our need to clear away the rubble of wrong thinking and the opposition of a cynical culture. Should either mindset prevail in a local church, the well of healing will remain blocked. Instead of being an oasis of life giving water for the thirsty, we become a cynical Nazareth, the kind of place where even Jesus found it hard to work miracles because of their unbelief. Our battle is to decide which water source we want to draw from...