Thursday 20 May 2010

Sacrificial Staff Giving

Wow, quite a day. Our staff for the second year running have blown us away with their generosity, from just 100 people we have over £50K given or pledged towards our growth this year.
I believe that accountability is really important!. For me our staff team is one of the most important groups I am accountable to. If we change our heart, swerve from our vision, lose our passion, they will be the first to spot it and see it. So when they do this,give so much of their own money into the vision and cause of CAP, it tells me that not only are they right behind us, but that God is too!
I prayed this the other day: “I really am quite stunned Lord that our staff would step out once again in such an awesome way. I praise you for it Lord and ask that you truly would repay them” – then I was drawn to read this in Prov 19:17 it says “He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD, And He will pay back what he has given.” Or in the New King James version it says “He will repay them in full” It struck me how amazing it is that God sees a gift to the poor as a loan to him that he will make sure we get it all back in some way at some time. He is no man’s debtor, and I know that the sacrifice our staff team have made will bring great and positive things back into their lives and that God smiles, positively beams, all over it.

Weakness

Wed 5th May 2010

I’m not a big fan of feeling weak. Certainly not a big fan of acknowledging any kind of weakness! Strange that the bible says that it’s in our weakness that God’s power can be more clearly seen and experienced. (2Cor12:9)
So last week I had a stomach bug, an evil stomach bug from the pit of hell! Vomit so violent my body bent double as my system tried it’s hardest to rid itself od every last bit of fusili pasta I had for my tea. Now I’ve no problem with that, being sick, it was the fact that it took me like 3 days to recover, still feeling “weal”
This was compounded by having the builders in. Whilst I wasn’t bothered about the noise, it was the fact that every time I saw them they asked “How are you?” Macho men who make their living being hard, and my response was “still feel a bit weak”, ahhh I hate admitting it. So much so I started to fake being better, just so they didn’t think I was too much of a Jessie.
This difficulty in being weak or admitting weakness show actually how much I get my significance from being able, from being capable from being strong (obviously not my biceps but other ways). That I truly do think it’s in some way all about me and my ability. If I think I’m responsible for my weakness then I must also think I’m responsible for my strength? Oh the danger of self sufficiency.
As Josie said the other day I need to learn the weakness lesson quick so God doesn’t have to anything drastic to teach me!

Monday 26 April 2010

Now that Was a Kingdom Week!

What an amazing week. I had the immense privilege this week of spending time with some of the leaders God is using to help turn his church inside out and make God’s light shine bright in this land.
Wednesday we had an event I organised called Replicate, where I gathered leaders together who are working to replicate their own successful model around the country. Basically just invited people whose ministries revolved around our 3 core values at CAP the poor, the lost and the church.
The first session was perhaps the best as each person shared what they were doing and the sheer energy and passion and God’s heart for broken people just completely filled the room. It was phenomenal, so inspiring. I’d kicked the whole thing off talking about how it’s so important we never see each other as competition. Instead we see ourselves as effectively one organisation but we all represent different departments.
We then had the exec team from Tearfund come to CAP. They came to learn from us – flip me! What a privilege, I think Tearfund is awesome and somehow in God’s grace we’ve got something that might be able to learn from us, and what’s more they did. As we shared how we’ve done what we’ve done, most of it we’ve learnt off others, and you just realise how much God has shown us that is good. To think that we impacted them, which we did is just so humbling.
Finally we finished off the week with a fundraising dinner, one lady shared her story of how her and her husband were so depressed they talked regularly of suicide and how her husband was in fear every time he came home from his night shift scared of what he would find!! But God and CAP have saved them in every way which is awesome. Oh and we raised £43K in the process.
God is good!

Sunday 11 April 2010

This is church.....

Wow what a fantastic day today was. So much of what I think church should be happened in my life today. The Sunday morning was great, I particularly enjoyed not doing anything, apart from trying to make sure people hadn’t got missed, who need to get into Light Groups. Then after the meeting, we were lunch hosting. A really great thing we do as a church, where you cook for a certain number of people and then frantically go round inviting whoever you can find. So we ended up with a rather cosmopolitan dinner table to say the least. Not a single person who came was British! A Frenchman, a Brazilian, a German who grew up in Brazil and an asylum seeker from Eritrea. Man, I realised again why God calls us to hang out with the oppressed and the poor (which Marcos definitely was) – so that God can humble you and remind you just how flipping blessed your life is.

This guy Marcos from Eritrea was a full on refugee, having seen his parents murdered when he was just 15. He made it all the way to Calais and then got into the country under a truck. He now has full rights to stay. But man you hear a story like that and you just think, again, I don’t know I’m born. What an immense privilege to share a table with someone who has gone through that and to simply show him that he is of such value to God.

I don’t know what you think makes a good church, but for me I had the ultimate compliment today. Jacques, the French guy mentioned above, said he only comes to the Light because it is the sort of church he can bring the homeless and refugees he meets and knows they’ll get a great welcome. Whatever else we build in the Light, I can't think of any greater compliment.

This evening we had our Prayer and Ministry Night at church. It was awesome. Before Chris had started the first song, everyone was off praising God just naturally flowing out of them. An amazing night, the presence of God so tangible it was just brilliant. The highlight being a guy called Darren. Darren has been coming on a Sunday for a few months, and has been on our discipleship course. Tonight as we were praising God I looked over and he had tears running down his face with his hands in the air. I went to pray for him and just asked God to keep doing His stuff. I asked Darren, when he had given his heart to God, his response – I’ve just done it. Wow, he was just blown away by the power of God. It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone so overwhelmed by being forgiven and receiving a fresh start from God. It reminded me not to take my salvation for granted and just how precious it is to be born again!

What a Sunday!

Monday 5 April 2010

Church Unity

Last night I went to the Prayer for Bradford Easter Celebration at the Cathedral. It had all the hallmarks of churches together, PA that squealed right in the middle of an intimate worship time, songs that you haven’t sung for ten years, charismatics readjusting to Anglican liturgy. It was great! The messiness of coming together like that is just nothing compared to the joy of the church being one church. Putting aside our own organisation of church and just being one, united by what unites us and ignoring what makes us different, most of which is surface anyway.
I always used to think that the church that I was in was “the best”, whichever church I happened to be in must be the best, it’s a trap many Christians fall into. I’ve realised now, it was simply the best church “for me.” When we try and rank churches, when we try and decide which is the best, I believe we’re falling so far short of where God would want us to be. I used to call big churches great, and small churches crap. I have repented many times of that attitude, how worldly is that? “Big is beautiful, small is rubbish” is not a Kingdom value, it’s the values of corporate America that whilst they can be helpful surely cannot be the measurement we use for the Kingdom, it’s much more empire language than Kingdom language.
I’m glad that God has taught me about this stuff. Especially now I’m a leader of a growing church, that will no doubt get big. For me bigger does not mean better, bigger does not mean more successful. All I want is effectiveness, help people love God more and help people love people more so that the poor are helped and disciples (new and old) are made for God’s glory.
It is not our place to look down on any part of the body of Christ, to talk it down or put it down. Our job is to build up the body and going to a churches together service and enjoying the fun and games of worshipping together is all part of it.

Thursday 1 April 2010

Drinking

Drinking
Today is the day that I end a four week fast of alcohol. I basically did it, because I’m aware how much I love a beer or a glass of wine and just need to prove to myself from time to time that I can live without it. To make sure it’s in its rightful place. You know what, I think I’ve done quite well. The main impact – it’s just been a bit boring. Like having dinner with friends, no glass of wine - boring. Fancy going out for a drink, not if it’s coke I don’t – boring.
It’s a bizarre thing drinking and a challenge for a lot of Christians, how much is ok, how much is not ok? For a while I struggled with what is my limit and I felt God give me this measure – “if you were needed to pray at any point during the evening, would you feel ok about approaching God in that state of sobriety?” Would I feel cool and OK about approaching God after that many beers? That for me has been the measure and it’s a measure I’m cool with, don’t know what other people think.
I also take great encouragement by the fact that Jesus clearly liked a drink. Not only turning water into wine (a very cool miracle) but also he was accused of being a drunkard, which he so clearly won’t have been but you don’t get accused of that unless you have the odd drink or two. Clearly he enjoyed it and so I see no problem with me enjoying it.
The difficulty of course is being a leader, people look to you and they perhaps see you drinking and don’t understand the thought process you’ve applied to it. They see you packing away a few beers, and think it’s ok for them to do the same. But perhaps a few beers has a bigger impact on them? Perhaps they don’t have the same self control – I know I didn’t use to.
But, I think that whilst I have a responsibility as a leader, maybe my call is to model how to drink and do it in an ok way for a Christian, cos let’s face it plenty of Christians will drink, so if all we model is abstinence then that’s only going to be so helpful.
Anyway, I am so looking forward to a few beers – can’t quite believe today is the only day of the 4 weeks that I have a bit of a sore throat and don’t actually fancy one. I remember this happened last time I did this. Bizarre, random, annoying, but hey, I’ll just have to do one of my “I believe this beer can heal me” prayers and push past the pain barrier.

Sunday 28 March 2010

Amazing lunch with newly saved clients

Sunday 28th March

Wow, Sunday lunch at our house doesn’t get much better than that, than to have two lovely ladies completely fresh to the things of God sit round your table, share food with you and hear them talk about finding God. It was quite funny, cos we’d chatted for a bit, and I thought, I want to know where they are with God, so started asking them questions. They’d been brought up Catholics, and not had a great experience, and certainly not truly discovered God through it. I’m thinking to myself, these two ladies are so going to give their hearts to Christ by the time we’ve done pudding. Then just as I was explaining about giving your life to Christ, they said “Oh yeah we did that with Kevin on Friday” Sure the angels were rejoicing, but I’m gutted, I wanted to do that (why I ever thought I could beat Kev Worsnop to an opportunity like that I’ve no idea.) But just a big fat reminder from God, “It’s not about you Matt!!!!” By the way I wasn’t really gutted (well not for long) soon we rejoiced in the new found freedom they had. We prayed for them, asked God to pour out His spirit on them and Angela described an amazing floaty type feeling after we’d prayed for her. What an absolute privilege, and how amazing to invite people over for dinner who are just blown away by being invited out, and “being with people who actually care” – their words.
Thank you God, that seriously poured some fuel on this fire!

E-mail addiction

Friday 26 March 2010

E-mail addiction
I had the most bizarre experience the other day. I was working from home as I do every couple of weeks to get a bit of space to think, be creative, get some stuff cleared out of the way, blitz my to do list etc. (That wasn’t the bizarre bit) Now normally as I work at home I try to steer clear of looking at e-mails. I turn off my e-mail programme so I can’t even get them, and then just turn it on from time to time. But this day, (this is the bizarre bit) something just gripped me, I was like a man possessed (I’m not by the way (oh yes he is, oh no he isn’t) sorry those voices just never go away). It was like every time an e-mail pinged in, I just didn’t have any self control, any discipline whatsoever to ignore it. “READ ME, READ ME” they would shout at me. And I found I was no match for their temptation. So maybe I’d be in the middle of preparing a talk, just crafting a great concept, then STOP “THERE’S AN E-MAIL TO READ!!!” so lose track, lose focus and read e-mail, only to discover someone at work is selling some Stars Wars figures and the online auction is about to end, with 5 shillings and thruppence having been raised.

Why, do we do this? I’ve also noticed when I get up in the morning, as I make my cup of tea, I always check my e-mail. I tell myself that it means when I get to work, I’m ready to go. But why not just chill and have a few minutes acknowledging God and enjoying his presence? Because e-mail knocks Him off the top spot in my life.

I’ve just got a new phone, it’s amazing you can ring people and send texts, flipping awesome. Self Control comes and goes doesn’t it, I decided to exercise self control and not get a phone where I can check e-mail, not get a phone where I can go on the internet and see who on facebook has made a funny comment on my status update.

Life is so much better when e-mails and facebook and twitter don’t control you. They’re not bad things, in many ways they are brilliant ways at interacting with a wider community. But when they control, I truly believe they can squeeze out the peace and relaxation of a mind at rest which from time to time is exactly how God wants our minds to be.

Right, time to check e-mail……

Self Control runs out.....

Friday 19th March
Have just started reading a book called Switch by two brothers Chip and Dan Heath (or Chip and Pin as we like to call them) it’s a book all about change, helping people to change etc. First fascinating insight from this is around the issue of self control. They talk about some psychological experiments where they took a bunch of hungry people, some of them were told that they were allowed to eat freshly baked cookies and others were only allowed to eat radishes and were all left in a room alone with both things on offer. The people told to eat radishes did not touch a single cookie – pretty amazing. They were then all put in a situation where they had to use self control again. The people who had not had to use any self control lasted more than twice as long in the second test than those who had eaten radishes. The point being – people have an inexhaustible supply of self control. Once you’ve used some up, you have a lot less to offer.

Personally I think this is one of those insights that whilst you may struggle to see how it’s relevant now, at certain times and in certain situations, that’s going to be invaluable!

Edinburgh CAP Money

Saturday 13th March
Just had a great day training another load of CAP Money coaches. The highlight for me was a testimony from a lady called Helene. Her journey with CAP started 9 years ago. She was dramatically healed from MS (wow God how amazing are you?) and as a result lost loads of benefits, a mobility car etc and her healing meant she ended up in debt. CAP stepped in through one of her first centres (and actually the first centre that I set up on my own – Dunfermline) and we helped her through her debts and she is now debt free. The main thing that got me was she said what a treat it was to have £10 per month for “treats” - £10 per month!! She said they used to take their boys to KFC for a family meal and it was the highlight of the month. Man, I just don’t know I’m born, but hey praise God for the chance to bring a small bit of joy into her life and into the lives of hundreds of new families every month! She is also now a CAP Money Coach and shared a story of how she had helped a couple who were maxed with their credit cards get debt free in just 3 years. How amazing is that.

It was just a great day, with Johnny not there Dave Kendall did a great job! And I finished the day off with watching the first half of Scotland v England in a pub. So funny, I tried asking for my beer with a slight Scottish accent and whenever anyone talked to me I just smiled and nodded. Remembering what Josie said – “don’t open your mouth or you’ll get beaten up!”

Now on my way home, looking forward to a great Sunday at the Light, with my amazing wife preaching!