A few weeks ago I travelled up to Stoke for a friends asylum appeal. My friend is a Afghan Christian and his case will be decided based on whether or not the courts will accept his claim to faith in Jesus. I got the news not long ago that his claim has been rejected and now we must wait for the news on whether or not an further appeal is viable. Sitting in the court listening to the Home Office representative deride his claim to faith and his practice of Christianity, was a heartbreaking experience. If only that representative could come and speak to us one Sunday morning!

What about numbers?

In this discussion about different aspects of the vision you will have noticed that almost all of my/our thinking is centred in convictions, content & heart issues.  What about structure?  What about size?  What about multiplication?

Glad you asked.

Numbers were honestly never part of the thinking as we began to think about vision for this church.  Of course everything that is healthy reproduces and grows so we knew to look for numerical indicators as one sign of life however it was down the list a bit for us. 

“This took place for two years, so that all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” Acts 19:10 (in reference to the Ephesian revival that some historians say resulted in a church of 50,000 after two years)

The Vision: part 2.

POWER and EXTENSION.

A few weeks ago Jim spoke a bit about learning to party like Jesus and God is continuing to teach us what parties look like in His Kingdom. You see it’s not only that we have something to celebrate that sets our parties apart, God’s guest list doesn’t look like you might expect. In Luke 14 Jesus tells the story of man that was preparing a great feast.

As I write this blog, I'm on my way home from The Rage Factor. Rage Against the Machine's free gig in Finsbury Park, thrown in celebration of their Christmas number one over the X-Factor winner. For reasons that will hopefully become clear, being at "The Rage Factor" made me think a lot about how we gather as a church. I was surrounded by thousands of people passionately engaged with the experience, the music, the band and yes even the words.