Holy Spirit in the World Today Conference

Last week I was privileged to attend the Holy Spirit in the World Today Conference at Holy Trinity Brompton. Amongst others speaking were Jürgen Moltmann, Miroslav Volf, David Ford, Tom Smail and Rowan Williams – quite a line up!

The conference was significant for a number of reasons: firstly, it was determinedly church centric. Few academic conferences would be hosted in a church context, yet on a number of occasions participants explicitly noted that academia has lagged behind the church in exploring pneumatology. Jürgen Moltmann in particular reflected on his experiences in his church in Tübingen, echoing the cry of the ecological movement that we ‘think global, but act local.’ Secondly and strikingly, explicit connection was made with the Frontline. The second speaker on the Thursday was Ken Costa, Chairman of Lazard International Bank and creator of the God at Work course, speaking about the need for a pneumatology that embraces the workplace and the home.

Connecting Sunday With Monday

Dave Gooderidge, minister at Lymington Baptist for the past 10 years, has been seeking to create a whole-life disciplemaking culture in his church. Here he shares something of their experiences...

The conviction that God is interested in the whole of life was rooted into me primarily as a student under Mark Greene at London School of Theology. So as a minister, the Sunday has always connected with Monday. I didn’t know anything different!

I think this is crucial to our understanding of the church. There is a big thing in the Baptist understanding of church about ‘walking together in ways known and ways to be made known; watching over and being watched over,’ what that means is, if we are going to grow as whole-life disciples we need to band together. We need to watch over and look out for one another and ask questions, about how you are getting on with your boss, for example, creating mutual care and accountability.

5 Values: 4 - We Are Active Listeners

This is part of a series of posts on 5 Values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series.

‘Our task is the opposite of distraction. It's to help people concentrate on the real, but often hidden, event of God's active presence in our lives.’ Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart

Clearly, Christians need to learn to listen to one another, to understand the pressures that they face and the opportunities that are available. But listening goes further than this. We need to be able to discern the forces that are work in our culture which may be a challenge to our discipleship, or may encourage us to think more deeply about our relationship with God. We need to hear the cries of the world to know how best to begin the dialogue that might enable us to offer the good news to people. We need to develop attentive hearing to the promptings of God, who we believe is at work in his world, bringing new creation out of the spaces where previously there were only signs of despair. And we need to encourage people to be able to understand what is happening in their own lives so that they can grow in self-awareness, moving away from the temptation of self-deception towards the liberation of authentic honesty.

One Degree Shift Ideas

Small changes are helpful in a culture shift programme, because they are visible, create little sense of anxiety, operate as powerful symbols for the overall change that is hoped for, can easily be reversed or adapted if they are not working well, do not have to be defended to the death.

We have already put together a list of one degree shift ideas on the Imagine website.

However, we recently came across a list of 23 ideas from Nelvin Vos and Melvin George for Equipping and Encouraging the Laity on the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America website that you may be interested to explore as well.

We'd love to hear any ideas you've tried. What has worked? What didn't?

5 Values: 3 - We Connect The 10 To The 110

This is part of a series of posts on 5 Values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series here...

‘We are gathered into communion so as to be sent our again. We are sent so as to come back. This…is the breathing of the Church ... this rhythm of gathering the community around the altar and then sending it away belongs to the oxygenation of the Church's life blood. Without it, the Church would stop breathing and die.’ Timothy Radcliffe, Why Go to Church?

There are 168 hours in the week.
Take away 48 hours for sleep and 120 remain.
Of those 120 even the most committed member of the church will probably only spend 10 hours in church activities.
That leaves 110 hours.

Centered Life Website

Sometimes it feels a little chaotic how connections are made between people exploring similar ideas, but thank God that he helps us connect the dots!

We recently stumbled across the brilliant Centered Life website and it turns out their concerns are very similar to those of the Imagine project in equipping churches to equip their members to follow Christ in the whole of life. They put it this way:

Your calling is your life, it's in the work you do every day - as a parent,
child, neighbour, caregiver, volunteer, worker, or however you spend your time.
To know your calling is to know:

• meaning and purpose
• identity and belonging
• freedom and hope

Connected with the Luther Seminary they have produced a number of interesting resources and a process for churches to begin to explore and nurture calling amongst their members. It is well worth taking a look around their website.

In particular, watch the You! video (I tried to get this to play here but couldn't get it across) a brilliant 3 1/2 minute video exploring whole-life discipleship that could be used in sermons. (You can request a free copy on DVD.)

Changing the Culture

In this article, Alasdair Macleod, shares his thoughts on disciplemaking and his involvement with the Imagine Project. Alasdair is now the Senior Minister at Billericay Baptist Church, however, until a few months ago he was leader of Bushey Baptist Church which was part of the first Imagine pilot project. This article was previously published in the Baptist Times 'Crossing Places' Special Edition published 30th April 2010.

We are all longing to see the church in the UK grow. All too often we place the emphasis on adding converts to our churches without adding depth. Yet for growth to be sustained we must equip believers to live well for Christ in their frontlines of mission. This vision has been recognised by the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity (LICC) in their Imagine report, “The UK will never be reached until we create open, authentic, learning and praying communities that are focussed on making whole-life disciples who live and share the Gospel wherever they relate to people in their daily lives.”

5 Values: 2 - We Value Everyone's Frontlines

This is part of a series of posts on 5 Values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series here...

‘For Christian faith not to be idle in the world, the work of doctors and garbage collectors, business executives and artists, stay-at-home moms or dads and scientists needs to be inserted into God's story with the world. That story needs to provide the most basic rules by which the game in all these spheres is played. And that story needs to shape the character of the players.’ Miroslav Volf

Over the past twenty years, the church has become better at recognising the significance of many people’s vocations. Years ago, many evangelicals assumed that the top job for a Christian to have in God’s eyes was to be an overseas missionary living by faith. This was clearly sacrificial, often challenging and occasionally there would be no awareness of the fruitfulness of the work for many years, if ever. Below this in the assumed godly career ladder were ministers and church workers. If you weren’t able to be employed directly in these tasks, there was always your voluntary time that could be used for the important work.

North-West Pilot Project Video

We posted this video on our website before, but thought we would put it up here again as in it Chick outlines some of the thinking behind the North-West pilot project...

EVENT: Graham Cray on Discerning Leadership

Grove Books are launching a new Leadership series at LICC on 8th June, 6:15-8:30pm. Bishop Graham Cray, who has written the first booklet of the series, will be speaking on Discerning Leadership: Co-operating with the Spirit of God.

Tickets are £7 (£5 for concessions) including refreshments and a copy of the first booklet. Bookings of 4 from one church get an additional place free.

To book your place call LICC on 020 7399 9555. More information is available here.

5 Values: 1 - We Submit To The Lordship Of Christ In All Things

This is part of a series of posts on 5 values for a Whole-life Disciplemaking Church. Read the introduction to the series here.

Here is a conversation Neil had not so long ago with a group of students at a university Christian Union:

Neil: ‘Who is the Lord of all things?’
Students (Without missing a beat): ‘Jesus’
Neil: ‘Who is the Lord of the University?’
Students (Again in unison): ‘The Chancellor.’
Neil (Becoming somewhat more emphatic): ‘Ok, one more time. Who is the Lord of all things?’
Students: ‘Jesus’
Neil: ‘Right, so who is the Lord of the University?’
Students: ‘The Chancellor’

At which point we leave Neil to reflect on the current state of university education and his own teaching techniques…