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!!
Saturday, 18 August 2007
Inspiring Churches
Thursday, 16 August 2007
Living God's life (Studying Galatians)
We often talk about Giving our whole lives over to God. We sing about, preach it, we constantly jabber on about 'Living for Jesus'. Yet we back it with a life style, with actions, that suggest otherwise. This isn't a call for us all to invade the nearest monastry, claiming selibacy and vowing to silence, poverty and other extreme measures. Religious fervour never led to intimacy with God. This isn't a call either for us to have no zeal or hunger at all in our lives (Galatians 4:18).
If I am honest I'm getting a little fed up of singing such cliched lines as 'I live for You' or 'I'm on fire for You' etc. Paul writes in Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." I think it's time to take 'I' out the equation completely so its no longer
However as I mentioned in the previous post (Inspiring Churches), this is not about forcing ourselves into changing our entire behaviour because someone said we should. We have to realise that Christ came so we could have freedom (Galatians 5:1). In church we often take this to mean we have freedom from sin and shame, that we can walk free from nasty situations. Yes the freedom we have in Christ does give us these great things, but it goes so much deeper.
We have freedom to be ourselves, we have freedom to be God's chosen people, we are free from religion (Galatians 5:4), so much so that this should change the whole way we see church. I really want people to get this! We have freedom in church. Simple. Therefore if we are walking in freedom we don't have any feelings of obligation, duty, commitment or otherwise to the church. My love for my church is simply a by-product of my relationship with God. It naturally flows out so therefore I never feel pressured to grow in church. I want to grow. This is freedom. No pressure, no condemnation, no jumping through hoops I don't agree with.
New wine skins
This sunday we listened to Dave Gilpin speak. Dave is one of these speakers that can say just one throw-away sentence that suddenly open up new revelation. His message was about being predictably unpredictable, about unlocking the creative genius inside all of us. God is a creative God and we are made in His image so therefore we all have creativity within us. I know because I couldn't draw to save a life. Or paint...
Through out the Old Testament we see God encouraging people to use their creativity. Moses asked for authority, God gave him a stick. Gideon asked for a mighty army, God gave him clay jars and torches. Sampson needed a weapon and found the bones from a donkeys face. Time and again in my life I have asked God for things only to be given the bare bones of what I need. Its what I do with those bare, dry bones that will bring God glory.
However it was one throw away sentence from Dave, one little insight into another of his many revelations that sparked my interest. If I'm honest I never really understood the passage about new wine being poured into new wine skins. It seems flimsy an irrelevant, even as a metaphor. Yet when Dave starting talking about renewal, about creating something new in our lives, something clicked. The Holy Spirit is always looking to do something new, he is pouring out new oil, annointing, wine, whatever you want to call it, but if we want to take part in the new move of God, then we must become a new wine skin. If I want to be a used by God to bring salvation to this city, to this nation; if I am seeking God to come and move in my finances, in my relationships; if I want to see God's Spirit poured out on all the nations then I must become like a new wine skin.