Kindred Spirits

For the next couple of months my days and nights will be filled of thoughts of bands, production & foremost ticket sales. We are now in the run up to our annual music extravaganza at Alton Towers - The Ultimate Event.

I called Justin from Lemonade Productions yesterday. He organises a similar festival - frenzy - in Edinburgh each year. It was great to talk with him. Its always good to connect to someone else who goes through some of the same ups and downs.

Although not the reason we do it ticket sales become so important as we try to balance the budget. Sitting late in the evening checking emails for the latest sale is not uncommon or even first thing in the morning.

All that is forgotten on the day when we see 1000's of young people join together and bring their friends that don't yet know God. The biggest kick we get is hearing stories of how people lives were changed forever because of one of our events. Last year a guy rang up to book some tickets for his youth group only to tell me he started following Jesus at the Ultimate Event years earlier. How cool is that!

Praying for many people to meet Jesus at Frenzy & Ultimate this summer.

Mean about vision

Spent most of yesterday with our Senior Pastor preparing for a meeting with our Leadership Team later in the week. Over the last few months we have been going through much change at Milton Keynes Christian Centre. Change is always a little difficult but is always needed where there is growth.

All through our lives we encounter change. We even experience change in our relationship with our parents. As a baby we are totally dependant on them for everything. Our whole life depends on what the do and do not do. As we grow we learn to do things for ourselves they encourage us, they inspire us. We leave home and sent up home, they support us. Then as they get older we support them. One thing is constant - change.

As our church grows, and it must for all those who don't know God, relationships change, people change, methods change but vision stays the same.

In the words of Rick Warren: Bring them in, build them up, train them for and send them out.

I have been reading some exerts from Gary Lambs blog about the churchplanters.com conference he is at. He mentioned the title of the first session. Latter found out that my friend and Pastor i grew up under Roger Blackmore is at the same conference and blogged about the same thing. Being Mean about your Vision.

We are going to have a great day on Friday planning with our new leadership team. I am looking forward to making plans but our vison stays the same.

Bring them in, Build them up, Train them for, Send them out.

Growing opportunities

I stayed up far to late watching the Oscars live from LA. It didn't start here in the UK till around 12:30 am Monday morning. It was good to see the brits represented well yet again.

Helen Mirren won Best Actress award for her role as The Queen. During the evening she was quoted as saying that "The disasters in her life had been more important than the successes."

We really don't like it when things go wrong. Sometimes we blame ourselves, sometimes we blame others and sometimes we blame God. We want to fix oe get out or away from the problem as quickly as possible. We try various things to help us forget about the problem. But the last thing we often fail to do is learn from the problem.

Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, once said that the mark of a great was how they reacted to adversity, how they reacted to a loosing a game. He said that he learned more about his players when things were going bad than when they were great.

Rick Warren has said that God never wastes a hurt! I also remember an old Dana song which had a line in. "Life is like a tapestry and we need dark colours to contrast with the bright.

Its great when things are going well and you feel like you could take on the world but its good to remember we can learn and grow in every situation.

The Band Rocked the House

This morning at church was stonkin! The band was in fine form as they belted out praise to God. One line which captured my attention for the song "He turned my Morning into Dancing" was God's anger lasts for a moment but His favour on us lasts a lifetime. (Well that was the jist of it anyway - not good with lyrics)

Its awesome to know that we have the favour of our great God on us for our whole lifetime. We can spend our lives trying to win and earn all sorts of people favour but we already have Gods! God is for us not against us. I know that in some churches you wouldn't believe that was the case because of the message of judgement and condemnation they propagate in the name of the Gospel, but is is true.

Our early morning service had a larger crowd than normal. The car park was a disaster area. We already provide a bus service from a nearby college car park to help with paring now we will have to start to provide this in our early service as well. We don't want people to miss out on hearing this great message of God's favour.