N. T. Wright is the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England.  He is a leading theologian that I am reading and learning to appreciate more and more.  In the above interview he offers the following piece of advice:

I want you to know your bibles, inside-out, upside-down, in the original languages, as thoroughly as you possibly can.

I want you to get on your knees and learn how to prayer, and not just five minutes here and there, but serious prayer for a lost world, for lost people…

I want you to learn how to love people…

If you are going to be a Christian leader …… The Bible, Prayer, and Loving people

 

So there you have it, wise words from a wise man.  Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

 

I have recently finished this gem of a book that had been lying on my humongous reading pile for too long.  I have been really impacted by the message, and the heart behind, this little red book.  For those of you who want to taste the DNA of a movement (as opposed to the structure of an organisation) this is a must-read.

Providing a slight monastic tone to the evangelical scene, it effectively captures the essence of what a "European Move of God" looks like.  I say this, not because it is confined to Europe, but really because it was birthed in Europe, and consequently carries in it much of the European Evangelical world-view, rather than its North-American siblings.

If you want to turbo-charge your prayer life and want to sign-up to a post-modern subversive resistance movement, check out Red Moon Rising - you will be blessed to read how this God-ordained "accident" happened.

These guys have entered into my radar via Vicky Beeching's blog.  Human trafficking is real.  It is a cancer of the vilest characteristics that, in this day and age, the world has more slaves than at the height of the slave-trade pre-emancipation in the USA, and pre-William Wilberforce in Great Britain.  Hope for Justice exists to rescue people out of the slave trade, and to raise awareness of this issue.

Human Trafficking is the sale, transport and profit from people who are forced to work for others against their will. This trade in human life is taking place on a vast global scale and is the world’s fastest growing crime. The statistics are shocking.

• 1.2 million children are trafficked every year, one every minute
• The average age of a trafficking victim is just 14 years
• $9.5 billion is made through human trafficking each year
• The UN estimates that 80% of people trafficked are taken for sexual exploitation.

Are you shocked yet?  What are you going to do about it?

I plan on getting involved with these folks in order to take a stand against human trafficking.  We just cannot stand by and not ACT.  I cannot continue to call myself a Christian and not act for justice in the world.  If we want to presume to have God's ear in prayer, we would do well to note that He has inclined his ear to hear the cry of the needy, the oppressed, the poor, the orphan, the destitute.  Yes, the Lord has positioned his heart to pay close attention to the heart-cry of the little girl who is forced to service the depraved wants of a brothel's client.

Allow me to make a suggestion.  Let us join together and make a stand against this.  This, my friend, is the true Gospel - this is true religion, to make a stand and be a voice for those who do not have a voice.

I hope to be writing much more on this issue as I want to raise awareness in the West, was well as share on what we can do to put a stop to human trafficking once and for all.  I cannot stop and rest whilst there still remains one child without the freedom to be innocent.

"Because no-one is free until everyone is free"

 

Videos follow:

 

Let me know what you think.

I am a visual learner.  I need to READ things to learn.  Hands-on learning, for me, conjures images of grease-covered hands tinkering with engines.  No thanks. 

However, for those of you who learn better aurally, I have lately been using this site to engage with scripture in a way that is new and refreshing.  The Daily Audio Bible lets you cover the whole bible in a year through their daily Podcast.  I am finding the daily readings very refreshing as I can engage with scripture in a way that is totally different to how I normally "read" the bible.

These guys are also breaking new ground in terms of the way in which they are forming an online  community around the daily reading of the scriptures, worship and prayer.  Sort-of like a virtual prayer room.  Awesome!

This is what they say about themselves:

Daily interaction with the Scriptures is the heart of all we do.  A deep and abiding friendship with Jesus informed by the rich texture of the Bible is the reason the Daily Audio Bible exists.  We believe that it is fundamental to every believer's healthy spiritual life that we be people seeking the counsel of the Bible every single day, that we be people who walk with God intimately and conversationally and that we live in community with one another.

Check them out - dive into the daily audio bible and let me know how it goes for you.

 

Peace out.

Where's Joe the plumber in this?

We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture where we often exalt the superstar, at the expense of the regular guy. I am very concerned at how I see a lot of the celebrity culture infiltrating the church, especially in the realm of evangelism. I am standing for the regular guy. Regular is good. Joe the plumber needs to get a better rap in the Church, especially in the west.

Preach! - Just do it!

When we look at evangelism, we are often guilty of having too much of a  success-oriented view of evangelism and not enough of a process view of evangelism. We place too much capital of achieving the results, and its corollary fear of failure, and not enough on just doing it! The biblical idea of preaching, of evangelism, is much closer to the concept of just communicating news than it is to the idea of convincing someone to make a decision or accept a message. In fact, it is God's job to convince, our job is simply to communicate and explain the evangel, the Good News. When thinking about what it takes to evangelise, think more newsreader, or anchorman, than salesman.

The Gospel is all about a King and his Kingdom

OK so you are revved-up and ready to just do it! You want to preach the Gospel..... you think you know what the Gospel is.....but do you? If we are to give ourselves to this business of evangelism, wouldn't it make sense to actually know what it is that we should be communicating?

You see, “the Gospel” is more than a system of theology, more than a system of salvation. “The Gospel” was the word that was used to explain that Caesar was Lord, and that at his name every knee hod to bow. The Gospel was therefore a Good-news proclamation that Jesus (not Caesar) was Lord – that there was a new king on the block, and as King over all, He demands our allegiance, our submission, our obedience. You see, this good news is that your Caesar, that which used to dominate you, is no longer "lord" - there is a new King on the block, and He is GOOD.

At its very core, and true to the biblical story, "The Gospel" is the proclamation of that message that God's Kingdom, or empire, has arrived, that Jesus vanquished all the powers of evil at the Cross and that, beginning at the resurrection of Jesus, God is in the business of fixing all of the world's wrongs, wiping every tear and consoling all those who are suffering. He has now invited you to be a part of this revolution, this "setting the world right" Revolution.

And what does He require of us?

If evangelism is all about the proclamation of a king and his kingdom, then the requirement is that we embrace Jesus as such and submit to Him. We do this be believing in Him, thus our very faith in Him becomes this submission and obedience. That is why scripture speaks of the obedience of faith:

And this is His order (His command, His injunction): that we should believe in (put our faith and trust in and adhere to and rely on) the name of His Son Jesus Christ (the Messiah), and that we should love one another, just as He has commanded us - 1 John 3:23 (Amplified)

The early Christians believed that rather than you, it was this very proclamation that acted as the means, the vehicle, of grace through which God's spirit brought conviction to the sinner. If this is so, then the mere process of evangelism, the process of proclaiming the lordship of Jesus, becomes the means of grace through which God's Spirit can act.

This weekend, at Living Waters Church, we will have with us Pastor Angel Nava, of Semillas de Vida, a dynamic church in La Paz, Mexico. This church has partnered strategically with Bill Johnson's Bethel Church of Redding California. Semillas de Vida hosts one of Bethel's Schools of Supernatural Ministry. The school is designed to raise up nationals in Mexico to begin to dream and to train them to bring revival and transformation to Mexico. They are seeing some phenomenal things take place. Graduates from this school are beginning to plant businesses, become missionaries, and move into places of influence. This base is becoming a place where people are being raised up and sent out. Angel is also emerging as a key voice of reconciliation, honour and unity among different streams, churches and ministries in Mexico, and beyond.

If you are in the area, come and join us for these meetings! Watch this space for some follow-up posts on these sessions!

I just finished reading Seth Godin's book "Tribes" and have just been fired-up with its message of radically changing the rules of the game through the fluid, cause-based, leadership of communities that he aptly terms "Tribes". Anybody who is involved in influencing the market of ideas, would do well to take this book's central themes to heart. By the way, YOU are that person, involved in influencing the market of ideas. If you care about stuff, if you want to get things done, if you want to change things, if you use the power of words to bring about change...... then this message os for you.

If you are passionate about an idea, or a message, then there is a tribe out there waiting for you to take the initiative and lead. Your message needs you - your tribe needs you..... welcome to the new world.

Technorati Tags: Tribes, Seth Godin, Books, Viral, Marketing

The following email was sent to Gibraltar's Minister for Family, Youth and Community Affairs, asking the Government to introduce a fast-track system for adopting children that are orphaned in disasters such as Haiti's massive earthquake. ------------ The Honourable J J Netto Minister for Family, Youth & Community Affairs 14 Governor's Parade Gibraltar Dear Sir, Re: Crisis response protocol for adoption in Gibraltar. It is with astonishment that we witness the scenes of devastation coming out of Haiti. every day. In times like these we all wish that there was something that we could do to help, and no doubt the typical response from our community will be to contribute money, energy and time to help the lot of those less fortunate. Although I'm not aware of the intricacies of the adoption process here in Gibraltar, I am writing to ask whether the Government of Gibraltar has considered introducing a fast-track protocol for the adoption of orphaned children following a disaster such as Haiti. Parents who decide to adopt these orphans would be able to bring the child to Gibraltar under a certain protocol, that would relax any bureaucratic impediments and expedite the whole process. I am aware that there may not be multitudes of Gibraltarians standing in line waiting to adopt orphans, however I am also aware that sometimes small but poignant gestures, such as having Government introduce the said protocol, will serve as a powerfully symbolic catalyst to motivate some to take action. Sometimes not doing anything at all can be the worst thing we can do. Thank you for your kind attention to this matter, I remain, Yours faithfully, John K. Baw

Clowning in Rome - Reflections on Solitude, Celibacy, Prayer and Contemplation (By: Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Our cultures have pretty much put aside the values of solitude, celibacy, prayer and contemplation. As a result, we experience emptiness in our hearts and our relationships. Clowning in Rome will perhaps inspire us to risk to be touched by those in our homes and on our streets that we would rather put aside and forget. The homeless, belligerent, rejected, violent, lost, uncooperative, and vulnerable people are the prophets of today beckoning us to become clowns in the circus of life, where we foolishly squander our enormous energies of love and generosity. -Foreword (xviii)

... I [slowly] realized that in the great circus of [life], full of lion tamers and trapeze artists whose dazzling feats claim our attention, the real and true story was told by the clowns. Clowns are not in the centre of the events. They appear between the great acts, fumble and fall, and make us smile again after the tensions created by the heroes we came to admire. The clowns don't have it together they do not succeed in what they try to do, they are awkward, out of balance, and left-handed, but.... they are on our side. We respond to them not with admiration but with sympathy , not with amazement but with understanding, not with tension but with a smile. Of the virtuosi we say, "How can they do it?" Of the clowns we say, "They are like us." The clowns remind us with a tear and a smile that we share the same human weakness. -page 3.

photo credit: Himalayan Trails

Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth - 1 Corinthians 5:8

Talk to someone about what they think of the "Church" or of "Christians" and painfully often you will hear THAT word: "hypocrites". Ouch! It hurts me that people will often refer to Christians or the Church as "hypocritical", sort-of in the same vein as one hears people talk about politicians, perceived by many to be milking the public purse for personal gain, or bonanza-bonus-taking bankers, who, many argue, are paying themselves huge sums out of money that they only have because they have mortgaged our whole economies for the next few generations. St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthian church, urges them to "keep the festival" of the (new) Passover, but to keep it in the spiritual sense, having Jesus as their sacrificial lamb that makes atonement for their sins. This festival of the Passover is the foundation of Christianity. I will spare you the intricacies of Jewish Passover-observance, and the rituals of purging-out of yeast that goes with it - suffice it to say that Passover requires a cleaning-out of every nook and cranny of your kitchen in order to remove any traces of yeast - yeast is symbolic of sin and impurity. He then goes on to state that this festival is to be observed "with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Now here's a thought: We place a lot of emphasis on keeping the festival with the proper truth (and doctrine becomes the rallying-cry for many movements, divisions and separations), but are we placing equal emphasis on keeping the festival, on being true Christians, with the quality of transparency and sincerity? Surely if the world sees the Church as full of hypocrisy, we need sincerity by the bucket load - for fail you might, but people will always appreciate you if something is genuine. In Paul's Corinth, it is said that it was normal practice for people selling earthenware to cover-up imperfections, cracks and crevices with wax, pouring it into all the nooks and crannies, and then paint-over the whole vessel. These were sold in dark shops, so the unsuspecting buyer got the shock of his life when a perfectly looking vessel was used to pour hot water into it - the wax invariably melted, and the water was spilled on the ground - and what looked like a beautiful earthen pot was therefore useless. The way to detect that the vessel was "sincere" was by holding-it up against a bright light, and the wax would let the light through in contrast with the opaque clay and all imperfections would be highlighted. From this practice of filling-up cracks with wax, some say that we get the word "sincere" from the latin sin (without) cere (wax). Here's where this thought is taking me: I don't want to appear as if I've got it all together, only to discover wax covering my cracks and faults. In 2010 I purpose to hold my own heart and life up to the "bright light" of God's presence and have Him reveal all the imperfections, shortfalls, nooks and crannies. I apologize to you all beforehand if it isn't a pretty sight, but when all is said and done I want to be part of the real deal.