Inspiring Churches

One thing I love most of all about my church in Leeds (Hope City Church - www.yourelookinggreat.co.uk) is the leadership. They inspire and challenge me, not through their words, or their lifestyle, but the fact that they are always growing. The worship leaders get better from month to month, the youth pastors are constantly coming up with more and more creative ideas and the young pastors are growing and getting better every time.

What I like most is that I can see where they have come from. Not one of them is there because of there calling, but simply because of their capacity. Dave Gilpin (my senior pastor) often talks about the difference between our calling and our capacity. The size of my calling has no bearing at all on what I can do for God's Kingdom, partly because we almost all have the same calling (Matthew 28:19). It is not the size of my calling but the size of me that will dictate what I can do for the Kingdom.

Romans 12:3 says 'As God's messenger, I give each of you this warning: Be honest in your estimate of yourselves, measuring your value by how much faith God has given you.' This passage was a revelation to me as it spoke to me about the qualifications we need to do great things for God. Faith!! Thats it..

We need qualifications to work, to drive, to achieve... but not with God! Its is not the size of our calling, not our interpersonal skills, not our upbringing, not our past, not our vision and not our experience that dictates the heights we can reach in God.

We build up our faith and capacity by walking with God, which is probably why I labelled this section the way I did... This is why I'm so inspired by the leaders in my church. They walk with God everyday and you can see it. Its almost as if the growth and leadership I see in their lives just comes as by-product of their relationship with God.

Day by day this is becoming something that I want my life to be. I've realised that if I want to build up my capacity then I need to walk with God. Get up and walk with God, work and study as I walk with God, hang with friends and walk with God, go home to my family and walk with God. Thats it. Thats all the qualification I need to bring God's Kingdom to earth. I want the love and hope and joy and peace and strength and life that I have in God to just flow out of me as a by-product of my walk with God. Same for my leadership, wisdom, speech and priorities.

Thats what I love about my Leaders. Every day they walk with God and as a result He adds new strings to their bows. God is awesome!!