In this blog series, I’m going to take a look at the book of Acts from a strategic point of view. What was going on in the days of the early church and what can we learn from it today in the 21st Century?
At the start of Acts 2, everyone is together. Suddenly the Holy Spirit comes and...
In this blog series, I’m going to take a look at the book of Acts from a strategic point of view. What was going on in the days of the early church and what can we learn from it today in the 21st Century?
The final part of the chapter is concerned with replacing Judas. As we know from...
In this blog series, I’m going to take a look at the book of Acts from a strategic point of view. What was going on in the days of the early church and what can we learn from it today in the 21st Century?
Verses 1-5: Succession
Jesus has risen from the dead and spends time proving his...
Sunday is always coming, right? Right. Life is busy, and as a church leader, your job is one of the busiest. Every week, you’re preparing a preach for your church, organising the service, not to mention all the pastoral visits, prayer meetings and midweek meetings.
Whilst many people think...
It’s hard to know how 2021 will be remembered, after all, we’re less than halfway through it. Whilst we’ll immediately start thinking about the easing of lockdown and the hopeful return to some semblance of normality, I think that the church should be aware of a huge change that...
It’s Christmas time, and I think we’re all glad 2020 is coming to a close. Coronavirus, toilet paper crises, lockdown, politics, more lockdown, more politics, I’m A Celeb in Wales… It’s been a tough year.
There’s an old saying that says you learn more in...
In the church world, we’ve become conditioned to believe that the right way to “do” church is found in Scripture. And to a certain extent, I agree. We want Scripture to guide us when we look at how we do church. However, when we look at Scripture, there’s no manual for how...
In the COVID world, there’s been much talk about the need for the church to get out of the four walls. Things often get said like, “We shouldn’t be bringing the lost to us, we should be going to the lost!” In one sense I understand this. We should be going to reach people...
With the end of COVID now slightly more in-sight, more churches will be thinking about how to move forward as a church. Multisite was a fast-growing option for many churches in the U.K. pre-COVID, and with churches starting to re-gather again, I think that this is going to become a very...
“If you change something and no-one gets mad, you just changed something that doesn’t matter."
Dan ReilandI recently saw this quote from Dan which really got me thinking. After all, we often go into change thinking about how we can take people with us. If anything, all of the focus...
A lockdown can bring with it a healthy dose of introspection. With more time at home, there should be more space to think. At least you’re not being interrupted every two seconds with another request, so take the opportunity to not just work in the ministry, but work on it as well.
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Hiring is one of the most important jobs you can do in your church. Firstly, you’ve got to get the personality right, if you don’t get that right, all of the rest of this is pointless. Although that’s for another blog.
Different types of roles link to different ways in which...
I’m a proud child of the City of Gloucester. It’s a small city with a fantastic history. Originally the Roman town of Glevum, we have a king buried in the Cathedral, which was also the filming location for the Harry Potter movies. Home to Robert Raikes, the pioneer of Sunday Schools,...
If you’ve grown up in church (which I have) then soon enough the talk around personal finances comes up. The talk goes a little like this: Spend less than you earn, give your first 10% to God, save your second 10% and the rest is for spending. And it’s great advice, advice I try to...
Excellence is a much-talked about subject in church. There’s two camps we Christians can fall into. On the one-hand, many say excellence is our response to a God who gave his excellence for us, it honours Him to give Him our best, and excellence draws people in. On the other hand,...
I’ve never watched an episode of The West Wing. However, the one thing I do know about it is that it made the scenes of walking and talking famous. In these scenes, which are now ubiquitous amongst US TV dramas, the main character walks towards the camera in a corridor whilst the supporting...
The word ‘vision’ gets shrouded in confusion very easily. That’s because we get confused between Mission & Vision. And it’s no wonder that we get confused between the two because everyone has a different definition for it.
I remember being in a meeting once...
There’s an old saying that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. And it’s usually true, especially in church life. How often are we struggling to find people to fill roles? I don’t know a single church that isn’t crying out for leaders in some area. Now, some of...
Summer is all but gone. And that means that as the leaves turn brown, the days get colder and the nights draw in, the church world turns its gaze to Christmas.
However, this year everything has changed. COVID-19 is still rumbling on and new measures have been put in place by the Government to...
On 27th March 2019, The UK’s Parliament started their now famous ‘Indicative Votes’ – MPs voted on 8 separate issues in order to solve the Brexit conundrum. After unceremoniously rejecting both of then-Prime Minister Teresa May’s Brexit deals, Parliament took control...
