After I’ve looked back over the significant moments of the previous week, and everything that’s happened, I now want to ask, ‘Who do I need to thank’?
This is no surprise: I am a huge fan of Michael Hyatt’s products. They’ve become central to how I organise myself as a pastor. They are undeniably expensive here in the UK (especially when import duties apply as well as shipping), but the planners themselves justify it, I think. At least, I am still using
A book of wonderful treasures
This book is quite superb. Thoroughly researched, beautifully written, expertly selected, and dizzyingly clever.
The question we’re trying to answer is one I know you face too: How do you communicate well, in a busy church, with most people attending every two-to-three weeks?
I get to write a short piece each week, to every member we email. I get to write something biblical, of relevance on a Wednesday, which will be read on a Wednesday. I get to encourage (and that is the only aim, to encourage) mid week, every week.
Consumerism would say, we will offer what is directly relevant for you, and you can ignore the rest; countering that mindset means seeing the relevance of it for someone else, and being delighted that it’s happening.
I see people’s eyes glaze over with a sequence of announcements. They reach for their mental ‘mute’ buttons, or ‘fast forward’ buttons, or whatever you do to get over the ads and into the programme.
People listen to our announcements with their guards up – it’s their habitual response to being told about something.
If you know what you’re praying for, you’ll know why you’re announcing it.
Let’s pray for a non-weird revival, and let’s be ready to call the weird for what it is too.
All over the world, flagship Apple Stores are offering a free, immersive Augmented Reality experience; a walking Tour around six artworks, ‘anchored’ in the area.
I’m increasingly convinced that for lots of issues, the battle isn’t over whether people know they ought to do something; they frequently just don’t know how.
As both Ezra and Nehemiah show, the task of renewing, restoring, reviving the people was, and is, never-ending. However great the work has been in the past, Lord do it again.
This is about a style of church leadership that is built on multiplying disciples and churches, from one-to-one coaching all the way up.
Hutchmoot has just happened, in the UK for the first time. What, you ask, is a Hutchmoot? Well, let me tell you a story. In Nashville, Tennessee, lives the wonderfully talented Andrew Peterson. He’s a novelist, and a publisher, and a family man, and he keeps bees, but he is also, and above all, a
The bible tells us to sing, repeatedly. Across both Testaments, at home and in exile, before and after Jesus, to God and to one another. Why? I mean, why sing rather than, for instance, reading the bible out loud, in chorus? We do that sometimes, and it works. If we are serving each other
Rest. Days off. Holidays. Even the occasional evening off – how do we make the best use of it? After all, it’s not just a good part of the creation rhythm, but it’s a reminder of the gospel. Salvation – even a pastor’s salvation – is not accomplished by your work. Well, we know the
The Preacher’s Plateau. We’ve all seen it, heard it, smelt it. It’s the growing sense that the preacher has a style, a pattern, a groove. A default. I’ve seen it happen to preachers even in their late twenties: they get approval for preaching in a particular way, and they then assume that that is the
This wasn’t just being busy; this was a series of simultaneous responsibilities with a major price tag, and a lot of grieving people.
