Zimbabwe and Family On A Mission

Zimbabwe's journey over the past few weeks has been fascinating to watch, albeit at a distance. Whilst we still await the final result of the recent presidential and parliamentary elections, today The Times had a fascinating article about their Africa Correspondent's incarceration by the Zimbabwean authorities.

In October Terry Virgo reported back from a trip he made involving a visit to a conference in Zimbabwe. He said:

"Over 1,000 believers gathered and against the backdrop of severe economic crisis, hardship and political chaos, they shone like stars!"

The church of Jesus Christ was in stark contrast to everything going on around in the country - making a real difference to that nation. And today in The Times there was an echo of that in Jonathan Clayton's report. He said this:

"[The other inmates] were mostly policemen and soldiers who had deserted and, despite my initial fears, were wonderfully friendly and warm. They gave me what little food they had left from the day - half an orange, a banana and some dry bread. "This is the only country in the world where the inmates are policemen," Ryan, a 30-year-old traffic cop, laughed. During my eight days in custody most of the only food and drink I had came from donations from local churches. Without them Zimbabwean prisoners would have nothing to eat or drink."

At a time when the secular press is increasingly intent on reasserting the myth that the church is dying, it is so exciting to see the good work done by local churches around the world being presented in a national newspaper. Yes, it was only a snippet of a much longer article, but when the local churches are the difference between prisoners eating and starving, doesn't their presence and work seem all the more important?

The article ended: "Before I left a sympathetic policeman took me to one side. "Zimbabwe is a good country," he said. "One day things will change and you will be back.""

I do hope things change in Zimbabwe - when they do the nation's local churches will surely have a huge part to play - a part they appear to already be playing.

It's Been A While

It's been over a month, so I thought I would update. Things seem to go quiet blog-wise over the summer, and not just for me.

At this moment I'm in a different place to when I last blogged. Then, I was accustomising to being in Southampton, getting ready for a holiday and a few conferences. Now, those things have come and gone, and I'm preparing to start work in September.

Brighton (by that I mean Mobilise 2007!) was a huge blessing. In fact, today I sent off an article for the next Newfrontiers Connect e*news, but at 400 words it really does skim the surface of the 'mountain range' of a conference Mobilise was. Hopefully I'll get the chance to write about what I gained from the conference in more detail soon. These days, going through my notes as I used to on this blog would be fairly pointless in terms of readers. Not only can anyone download the sessions and listen themselves, but there were a number of live-bloggers covering the event. But then I always said I typed up my notes for my own benefit, no one else's. So maybe I'll do it again. But I can't recommend highly enough that you download the the sessions from here.

Following Brighton, I had a week to sort myself out before jetting off on holiday for just over a week. I went with my family to the Algarve in Portugal, where I tried my best to prepare for Newday, and we also got the chance to visit the Newfrontiers church in Lagos.

I arrived home from Newday 07 late yesterday afternoon. I must be honest; camping in a field in Derbyshire is not my idea of fun. Sleeping in a tent is not my idea of fun.

I was involved in leading the milkshake bar in Global Cafe this year, which was fun, and a lot of hard work. I had recruited an amazing team (primarily from Life Church Southampton) before the event, and they made it what it was. There was a great atmosphere in there all week, and thanks to some very keen customers, I had to go shopping about a hundred times this week. The whole social side of Newday takes a huge amount of organisation in itself, without all the work that must go into the 'main' stuff. It was great to get to know some of the other team leaders and to pray and worship together each morning. We even had someone recommit their lives in one cafe (Sarah Dickenson's Pink Bar)!

It's very easy during a week like that to get all 'Cafe-Cafe-Cafe', so it was very refreshing to get to one or two sessions and enjoy God with everyone else. That's why everyone was there, not for milkshakes (though I hope people enjoyed them!). When you see scores of people running to the front to be saved, or because they've been healed, you know God is at work. And that's more my idea of fun.

Going into our church office today, I was reminded that this (Life Church Southampton) is the reason for the conference. Churches. I've come back so excited to help build Life Church - that is the whole purpose of something like Newday, not the other way around! Having said that, it was great to be able to serve the vision of Newday as a church. I was inspired in 2006 by ChristChurch London, who, despite only bringing the Stroud and Holloway children, had 100 people on site, serving. I want Life Church to be a serving church! So although we only have 2 people in our church of Newday-age, we took 20 people to Newday. Ten of those ran Global Cafe. I'm praying for more in 08!

If you've never been to Newday before, I would highly recommend to you (whatever age you are) to go. If you're too old, then cook for your youth group, or serve all week (perhaps not the 15 hours a day I found myself doing!). Anything to get you there and see what's available for young people today. As Terry Virgo took the stage one evening to tell the story of Newfrontiers (one of the highlights for my fifteen-year-old brother who said "I thought he was just an old man! Not anymore!"), it struck me that what Terry didn't receive in support as a teenager, now exists. The support he needed as a new Christian now exists in one form or other, both in the form of Newday, and of hundreds of vibrant churches for teenagers to be fed into! What an amazing vision.

Strange Coincidences?

Over the last few days there have been a number of other bloggers who have said what has been on my mind (without realising it I presume!). Part of me wonders whether this happens because I read bloggers whose minds work in a similar way to mine. But another part of me is secretly and quietly excited that in God there are no such 'coincidences'.

Yes, I sometimes wonder whether God prompts me to write about things for a specific reason - and when others are writing things I have planned to blog about, this sparks my curiosity even more.

Adrian Warnock has commented on Terry Virgo's latest blog post, in particular the part which I disagreed with but didn't take the time to say so. Namely, that a blog becoming personal is something to apologise for! Finding Terry's latest post was, far from being a bore or an imposition, a delight: an insight into the life of the man who founded and still leads Newfrontiers was offered voluntarily - I find that powerful, welcome, and it is indeed the mark of the man.

I was first introduced to Peter Day through Dan Bowen's blog. Peter has recently written about inventions that changed the world: the printing press and the internet. As I mentioned recently, there are a number of examples of excellent people knowing how to get their message out to the culture, which have inspired me recently. I had half-drafted a post about it (I've been drafting posts in advance to save myself time dureing exams) when I found Peter's post.

These overlaps encourage me because even if there is no 'divine hand' in it whatsoever, it shows that we are feeding off each other, bouncing ideas around in a positive way in this corner of the Christian blogosphere. Coincidences or not, I reckon we should be encouraged by them.

Terry Virgo On Marriage

"Let me recommend marriage to you. Some of you young guys and girls, don’t be scared of commitment. Don’t be shaped by the modern drift. I know that statistics tell us that marriage is going out of fashion, but break with fashion! Ask God to help you find a partner and then ask Him to help you be loyal, faithful and fruitful to the praise of His glorious grace."

These are the words Terry Virgo used yesterday on his own blog to encourage us young-uns not be be afraid of the c-word.

They stood out to me starkly. The reason is that though we are now seeing more and more excellent teaching on marriage and singleness (see below), we don't often hear someone from another generation say "let me recommend marriage to you."

The confidence that statement puts across about the right-ness of Christian marriage is helpful for us. There is much teaching around which seeks to validate being married and validate being single. But it must be possible for an older generation to recommend marriage, without that being interpreted as an attack on singleness. Both marriage and singleness are good, and yet we can clearly see God's intention for man to have a helper at the outset in Genesis. I'm not sure we can ever move away from that.

Recent teaching which has caught my eye on the subject of singleness are:
John Piper: Single In Christ - A Name Better Than Sons & Daughters
Adrian Holloway: Single In The City
There are many others too.

My point is that we mustn't marginalise the single. And we mustn't marginalise the married. And though we are more and more exposed to good teaching on the issue of singleness, that does not take away from the fact that marriage was in God's original plan for the world. Although we won't experience marriage in heaven, I believe it is very good for us to desire it for the very reason that God himself calls it "very good".

Terry Virgo On Being Relevant

"So the church is vital in God's programme and it should be vital in every Christian's life, our experience of church life.

"It's important for us too to realise that though we're meeting in a theatre here; and we're very relaxed; and we don't have clergy and laity; and we don't have 'priest and people'; and we could look as if we're really rather novel, maybe reactionary, maybe just trying to be relevant to our generation and just do it different, maybe experiment.

"Actually, those are none of the motivations that stir us. We're happy to be here, we're happy to be relevant to our generation, we're certainly wanting to be contemporary to this generation, but our endeavour is to be as Biblical as is at all possible. We want to really take the scriptures [seriously] because we believe that's God's way of building church, that's God's way of touching our generation and fulfilling His purpopse amongst us. So yes, we may look rather different in a place like this, but we are building as far as we know how, seriously from a Biblical base. We're trying to get it right because there we believe God will bless."

This is a quote from a sermon by Terry Virgo at ChristChurch London. You can download it here.

Terry Virgo On The Existence Of Apostles Today

"Is this church properly founded? That's an apostolic work. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3 'when I came to you, as a wise master builder'- the greek word gives us our word architect, someone who sees the whole plan- 'I laid a foundation.' Now there he's talking about one local church, he did his apostolic work making sure it was properly founded. So that was part for the role of apostles and that work will continue until Jesus comes, the necessity of churches being properly founded...

"Jesus ascended on high: it doesn't say he gave some priests, he gave some clergymen - it doesn't say that, it's not in the Bible. It says he gave some apostles to make sure churches are properly founded on their identity in Christ... establishing the community, giving them a sense of identity, purpose and meaning... establishing bodies of Christ if you like, in town after town after town. Places where Jesus was manifest in phenomenal glory again and again and again. that's part of our calling as a family of churches, from generation to generation. Let's plant church after church where the presence of Christ can be known in that particular place"

This is a quote from a sermon by Terry Virgo at ChristChurch London. You can download it here.

Terry Virgo On The Church

"The book of Ephesians probably is the one that most emphasises the place of the church. It's interesting that Jesus said to His disciples 'go and make disciples of all the nations' and the strategy they immediately took on board was to go and plant local churches. That was the way they saw that they were going to fulfil that commission to make disciples. That was the way they chose to do it.

"And so we're very much in line with that Biblical arrangement, that you go and plant churches, you go and gather people together. That's the way we fulfil the commission of the Lord Jesus to 'go and make disciples of all the nations'. It's very important then, that you're built into a local body and of course Ephesians highlights the place of the church in several ways; it talk about a temple, not of concrete or stones but of living people that are built together as a context for the presence of God. It talks about the church as a bride in Ephesians 5, that relationship of intimacy... and then it speaks of the church also by implication as an army, it says we're soldiers, we're to put on the armour, we're to fight. And then in this particular chapter in Ephesians 4 it talks of us as a body together"

This is a quote from a sermon by Terry Virgo at ChristChurch London. You can download it here.

Terry Virgo.org

Terry Virgo, the leader and founder of Newfrontiers, has started a blog.

And it's not just a blog either; there is a whole website at terryvirgo.org which draws together a wide range of resources from Terry, including preaches, an outline of his diary and other useful features for those (like me) who both want to be blessed by Terry's ministry, and who have often wondered how they can best pray for their leader (e.g. "I wonder what Terry is up to this week?").

Often during my year on Frontier Project I would steal a glance at the copy of Terry's calendar that my leaders would have, and be grateful for the opportunity to feel involved. It's easy to say "I go to a Newfrontiers church", or even (probably more what I would say) "I'm part of a family of churches around the world called Newfrontiers"; but saying it is very different to feeling it. This blog fosters that sense of feeling involved with the wider mission which only comes through an engagement with those who are going, or have gone.

Before my blogging days, when I started a tongue-in-cheek online petition called "Dear Joel Virgo...", Adrian Warnock found the website and commented:

"For those knowing the people involved this is hilarious. If anyone ever does a website about me I will know I have REALLY arrived. Actually it would be great if guys like Joel would blog- that would be my petition to him."

I presume that means Adrian is pleased with the Newday blog (where Joel sometimes writes); and now to have Terry blogging must be (I would suggest) at least in part due to the influence of Mr. Warnock. Well done, sir. Perhaps CJ had a hand in it too. After all, both gentlemen's blogs make it onto Terry's blogroll.

Already the articles on the blog demonstrate Terry's ability to combine Bible truth with his own experiences to share, with a healthy does of family news as well (with mentions of various church plants -come to Life Church soon please, Terry!- and personal relationships).

Why am I particularly excited about this new blog? ...

This week I was invited to an interview which forms part of some PhD research at The University of Sheffield, on blogging. The questions I was asked were quite interesting. One of the final ones was "will you carry on blogging?" to which I initially laughed (before realising that might be considered rude), and gave an unequivocal "yes!" The reason I said yes is the same reason I'm excited about Terry blogging.

In the interview I explained something which I had recently researched for my dissertation, about Francis Schaeffer's idea of an intellectual staircase. I first heard of this at the Mobilise Student Worker Day earlier this year, in a seminar by Andrew Wilson. Having chased Andrew for the source, I eventually got the name of the book from Joel Virgo and found that the ideas worked well as an introduction to my dissertation.

Schaeffer's point is one about how new ideas affect the culture; for his purpose it was effective to show that the new idea started with philosophers, before affecting art, music, and the general culture before affecting theology. He said that this type of change takes place in three different ways: geographically, socially, and through the disciplines. An example is that not all newspapers catch onto a new idea at the same time. Climate change would be one example, where Melanie Phillips is frequently given an opportunity to rally against the 'green agenda' in The Daily Mail, wheras a reading of most scientific journals reveals the scientific 'consensus' to be that climate change is happening, and humans are partially responsible. Whatever one thinks about that particular issue, it is clear that new ideas affect the culture gradually, with those at the top of the intellectual staircase having more influence than those at the bottom, or in the middle.

I think blogging is quite high up on this staircase. This is why I'm pleased to see Terry added to the world of bloggers. His blog will turn out to be another arrow in his already-full quiver of resources to affect change. But it will probably be one of the sharpest and furthest-reaching of the lot. To an extent blogging is simply a mechanism we can use to get the message out. It's not like preaching, for example, where there are fine, Biblical precedents which lead us to believe passionately in the proclaimed word of God. But, just as the printing press was a revolution for our message, to a similar (but lesser) degree, blogging opens up new potential for how far that message can reach.

A recent conversation I had with Becki Ring (my Student co-Worker at City Church) recently brought this to light. She made a comment that a someone had recently said to her: "everyone's talking about Mark Driscoll at the moment." I realised that, if indeed that is the case, it is about a year after the 'subject' of Mark Driscoll 'did the rounds' in the blogosphere. Obviously, he has subsequently come up every now and then, but (at least among the blogs I read) the bulk of discussion came a good while ago now. Which means that, even compared with prolific readers who are non-bloggers, discussion of current issues happens more quickly and thoroughly among bloggers.

I recently learnt about architectural modernists of the twentieth century,whose authenticity of message went hand-in-hand with the fact that they tied their designs in with the new technology of photography. They were more successful because they recognised the methods by which they could get their message out. With hindsight, blogging for Terry Virgo will surely prove to be a breakthrough discovery of this type.

Thanks to Jul for the tip off about www.janga.biz/terryvirgoblog/.

Attribute 33: No barrier can hinder Him from pouring out His blessings

This reminds me of a phrase I first heard used at Newday 2006. It was one which spoke of God "setting His face like flint" (I had heard this part of the phrase before), but to bless a new generation, the sense was that if God has determined to bless us, we cannot hold it back!

This phrase also finds resonance in Terry Virgo's final message to the Newfrontiers Brighton conference this July. How can we forget the phrases "what about my arm?!" and "is the Lord's arm shortened?!"

The Bible talks about how when God streches out His hand, no human can turn it back. In sending Jesus, God set His face like flint to bless humanity, that all should come to know Him. Yes, there may be application for "our generation" in a specific kind of way, but let's never forget that His arm is not too short to save - He has determined to save us and to bring history to completion through the mission of the church. No barrier can hinder Him from pouring out His blessings.

Mobilise 2006: Terry Virgo - Together On a Mission

Together On A Mission, Main Session: Tuesday Evening

Tuesday evening saw the first session which brought Mobilise to the Brighton Centre to join the Together On A Mission conference. How appropriate then, that it was Terry Virgo who brought the first message to us, as the full conference.

Hebrews 11:23-26 was the text and The Explosive Power Of Faith was the title.

Terry started by clarifying what it was he was meaning by faith: not just a means of obtaining things from God, but seeing that faith can involve making costly decisions.

"Making huge decisions rooted in things you presently
know"

Faith's Refusal
Moses' first step of faith was to refuse some things: "Moses, by faith refused..."and a whole community was able to be built on the foundation of the decisions he made by faith. He made sacrifices, but because of his faith-perspective it didn't seem like a sacrifice to turn his back on the things that were on offer to him.

"He was very happy to make this choice to turn down everything
that Egypt was offering him; and without that radical awareness at foundation,
we will never genuinely build a counter-cultural
church."

And his decision wasn't just based on what he thought he "should" do - there wouldn't have been anyone there to tell him! It was purely out of joyful faith that he turned his back on what was being offered to him. Similarly, the Christian life should not be rooted in a sense of morality, or a following of a "prohibition list", but a response of faith to everything that God has done. This is only brought about through a revelation of faith.

Moses' choice was at a significant time in history, as are we.

By faith Moses turned his back on an entire value system. By faith we are to say NO to this present age, because we have seen something infinitely better. Moses saw futility in the passing age he was in.

Faith's Choice
He chose to suffer ill-treatment with the people of God, actively choosing to be identified with the despised community, the slave community.

Faith's Consideration
"...considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the riches of Egypt, for he was looking for the reward..."

What Moses saw ahead genuinely excited him more. He knew he was attached to a group which carried the answer to world history, a group which would eventually come out of slavery. Not a group which is "inching up a philosophical cul-de-sac" (quoting Matthew Parris as he does in The Tide Is Turning), but which is altering the route of history.

He believed God would see them through because they were carrying world history. God wants us free. God wants us pressing into what will last forever.

Mobilise 2006: The Broad Sweep

Newfrontiers have been inviting students to the Brighton Conference for the last five conferences. Over the years I have watched these times grow from students simply signing up for the main conference (the only student-specific part being the seminars recommended for students), to 1100 of us gathering in the Clarendon Centre for half the week, whilst still enjoying many of the main sessions in the Brighton Centre. What a difference four years make.

On Friday night I wrote down how I found the week. The first line started "What a week; What a God!" This summarises it for me!

I never cease to be amazed at how, though our vision and values are well-established and we would therefore not expect to hear anything "new" at such a conference, God continues to use it to reveal, and re-reveal his purposes for this family of churches! How helpful it is to be reminded of why we are doing what we are doing, what the final goal is, and how we are going to get there: church planting.

Over the coming weeks I shall be revisiting the sessions I attended and bringing both a representation of what was said and my own response. As I pointed out in my proposition, this is mainly for my own benefit, but hopefully others may find it interesting. The first post will be on Tom Shaw's opening message to Mobilise last Tuesday morning.

Index of posts:
Tom Shaw
Pete Cornford
Terry Virgo (1)
Andy Martin
Wayne Grudem (1)
My Story
David Holden
Wayne Grudem (2)