Youth Leaders Learning Community
Our very good friends Roll the Rock are hosting a Youthworkers’ Learning Community in April. Head over to their website to find out more.
Ben Askew
About Ben Askew
Posts by Ben Askew:
What’s your part in the story?
There is much that is good happening across Kairos Network Church right now. It’s great to see so many people getting involved with what God is doing. Our MSCs are meeting in a variety of places – homes, pubs, community centres, pre-schools and of course in the Kairos Room. 9am Communion is also gently growing, as people discover this valuable place of worship, prayer and stability.
The story of Kairos is that God is at work among us as we focus on releasing communities of disciples in the mission of Jesus. We want everyone to be able to confidently tell that story. If you and your MSC are planning something interesting please tell us. If you have had a go at something and its worked, or even if it was a bit messy please tell us, if you took a photo of your MSC in action please show us! Be confident about your bit of the story and tell it!
As well as telling our story, we want to get better at asking others to tell theirs. If you are interested in finding out what is going on with an MSC then ask. If you want to know what it is that you can be praying for, for MSCs, for Lifeline and the other ministry areas that are emerging amongst us – then ask!
How do you ask? Who do you tell? Well the short answer is anyone and anywhere! There are lots of connecting points: 9am Communion, The Up, Central Gatherings, Huddles, etc… How can you make the most of these to share a bit of your story and find out someone else’s? We also have a team working to keep communication flowing as well as we can – look out for stories on What’s Up What’s On and MSC News, keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube feeds. You can easily contact us on any of those platforms or email KairosComms@gmail.com. Go on, try it out – ask us a question, tell us something. Let’s get better at sharing our story together.
How to Change a Story
If you were not with us at our Central Gathering on Sunday and missed Ben speaking on Joshua 2, or if you want to hear it again, then you can listen, and view the slides, using the links below
Book Review – My Sheep Have Ears by Cath Livesey
Over the last 8 years I’ve been involved in developing and planting a church that is focussed on releasing people as disciples who fully participate in the mission of God. It became clear early on that the most important thing to do was listen. This was followed by the recognition that listening without making a response was foolish – the two had to come together. Another recognition was that hearing and responding had to move from being in the hands of the specialists to being for every Christian everywhere. One of my deepest desires is to see that everyone involved in my sphere of influence is able to hear God, respond obediently & go where he leads.
Cath Livesey addresses these things in her book “My Sheep Have Ears“: distilled from many years of being an ordinary practitioner- a hearer & responder. She uses practical illustrations and stories to help us see how we, as ordinary ‘sheep’ of the shepherd, can hear his voice in the ways unique to us, as well as the whole flock benefitting from hearing God.
In the chapter entitled ‘Learning to tune i
n’, Cath focuses on the change of mind that is required. I love how practical, biblical, and simple her approach is – if you struggle to have a personal practice of listening or are helping others to do so, this chapter couldn’t be more helpful.
Furthermore, she helps us explore why prophecy is actually normal for the church, and for all disciples. Cath gives simple steps to being able to hear God for others; moving it from the super-spiritual zone it often occupies in the church to very practical. The more you read the more you run out of excuses about being unable to hear God’s voice!
Where the first three chapters focus in on our personal & individual activation as sheep that can hear & respond, chapters four to six examine more deeply the gift of prophecy, the function of prophetic ministry in the church and crucially how to support and release this for the benefit of everyone. This is especially useful for church leaders & those who are recognising that they have a call to grow in the prophetic ministry as a gift to the whole church and not function as rather spooky, slightly nutty, self-servers!
She handles relevant scripture carefully, unpacking passages in a comprehensible and thought provoking way. Making clear the benefits gained by all God’s people if the ability to hear God is fully released, both as a normal fact of life for all disciples and also a gift to the whole church, ministered through people who are called to be ‘ministry’ prophets.
In the final part of the book Cath helpfully engages with different types of God’s revelation and how to respond as God reveals things to us. Cath makes comprehensible what lots of others make incomprehensible, giving practical steps and leaving you with a real sense that you can respond to what God is saying.
I have a must-read list of books to do with discipleship and mission. This book goes onto that list because it is crucial that we grow in being able release the whole flock to hear and respond. My Sheep have Ears is a vital contribution to this. Read it!
Cath is part of Accessible Prophecy, a ministry helping churches grow a prophetic culture.
Mark.
Be careful to obey
“Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave to you”. Joshua 1
We can’t separate love and obedience. We might like to try sometimes but we can’t. Jesus says “If you love me you will obey my commands” (John 14:15) Paul says: “I want to know Christ… so forgetting what is behind I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.” (Phil 2: 12 – 13). To the people of Israel in Joshua 1 God says: “Be strong, I’m with you, be careful to obey my commands.”
Following Jesus is supposed to be simple – Love God and do what he says. Leading or being part of an MSC is supposed to be just as clear – be a community that loves God and follows his way.
Too often we complicate it with our buts and ifs. How does this work?, What about so-and-so? Did God really say that? We muddy what is simple, when God would want us to stay clear and focused.
So how do you keep your MSC simple? The Up, In, Out triangle is a really useful tool here. It’s modeled on Jesus pattern of life; time in intimate connection with the Father, time with close friends and family, time serving the world in Mission. How do you lead an MSC? Make a regular pattern of doing Up, In, Out together. You won’t be able to do all of this in one meeting so fix some simple repeatable patterns across a month and stick to them. Sometimes this will mean doing more than one MSC thing a week; if that’s the case then you are doing it right!
The other way to keep it simple is to regularly come back to what God told you to do in the first place. Every MSC grows out of a sense of vision or purpose: a thing you want to be, a part of the world you want to make better, a group of people you want to bring to Jesus. As you started there may well have been bible verses or prophetic pictures that were particularly import. Obeying God’s call means regularly coming back to these and using them as the measure. How are we doing with this… what are we doing well? What needs to change?
We recently did this with Ohana – we got together and looked at the bible verses and descriptions that we felt God give us as we started. We reminded ourselves that we are called to help families flourish and to see that no-one is left behind. To see one generation tell God’s work to the other (Psalm 104) to make sure the lonely find a place in family (Psalm 68). It was encouraging! We realised what we were doing ok! We reminded ourselves why we exist and we got some good challenge about what might need tweaking in each of our lives.
What has God called you to do as a community? Go looking for the things that will remind you, then simply do it.
Ben
Jesus is Lord
One of the earliest creeds (statements of faith) we know of is the simple phrase ‘Jesus is Lord’.
I have found myself thinking about this a lot recently. A lord has power and authority over other people. When we confess that Jesus Christ is Lord we are stating that Christ has power and authority over us – in effect, that we submit to his power and authority.
To state this and not to submit to his power and authority is a contradiction, and actually makes the confession, “Jesus is Lord”, meaningless. Declaring “Jesus is Lord” is not just uttering words but placing ourselves in the most effective place of kingdom action. As Greg Boyd puts it: “we enter the domain of God’s reign when we enthrone Christ as Lord of our life”.
The challenge for us is to cultivate lives of submission to Christ as Lord. This is especially important as we make space for more MSC activity, as we face challenges, make decisions and respond to uncertainty.We have a tendency to make ‘lordship’ decisions from the basis of our own power and authority – we try to rule our own domain. Actually, to authentically live as disciples is to use the declaration of “Jesus is Lord” as the entry point into the domain of the true Lord and to lay down our own measly attempt to be lord of our lives.
The Lordship of Jesus is effective. I think at present we need to recover some confidence in the Lordship of Jesus. When you find yourself feeling fearful, doubtful about whether it is possible to do the things you think God has called for, when you feel troubled try simply praying “Jesus is Lord”. It isn’t wishful thinking or a kind of positive thinking technique but rather a statement of fact: “Jesus IS Lord”…… it is his rule and reign, his dominion and domain that matters and is the place to be for a disciple of the Lord.
Let’s make this our statement of faith and lifestyle: Jesus is Lord!
Mark
Water into Wine
If you missed Rachel McHugh preaching at our 9 o’clock gathering last week, you can have a listen to it here.
Happy Birthday Lifeline
We love Lifeline, the homeless housing charity that Carl and Georgie set up in 2013! They recently sent out an update looking back over their first 3 years, we wanted to share what God has been doing with them here.
Looking Back.
It is hard to believe that this month it will be three years since Green Pastures bought us our first house in the January of 2013, with us housing people in the February.
I remember the first morning vividly. We had worked so hard to get the house ready after being blessed with so much help and assistance.
However, just as with a pregnancy all the hard work that went into getting us to that position was not the end but only the beginning! Three men arrived with their bags and their hopes and dreams. One resident quickly moved on into fully independent accommodation, box ticked, job done, an immediate success under our belt! Another one of the men had some serious issues going on in his life. We treated him with dignity and respect but he was suffering far too much mental anguish to settle and he had to leave, so not so easy after all, in truth we always knew it would never be easy!
We then had the most amazing experience. It was tragic that it turned out that the third resident Richard was suffering with Cancer when he came into the house, unbeknown to him and us. His illness became a reality and in his suffering Georgie and I formed a close bond with him. We laughed cried and prayed with him. We were humbled by his bravery and hope in the face of such dire circumstances. When he was in terrible pain one night he talked about “feeling a hand on his shoulder ” and we knew then that he was in safe hands. Richard passed on later in 2013 at his sister’s house in Blackpool, a miraculous set of circumstances reuniting him to his sister after having had no contact with his family for 20 years.
After that experience we knew that we would have to ‘expect the unexpected’ and that this was going to be a journey not a destination, but what a journey! Since those first residents moved in we can point to over 5,000 nights of residence in Lifeline houses, two residents who definitely would not now be alive if it wasn’t for our interventions, others being reunited with families, finding employment and finding themselves!
We still remain at the beginning and many challenges will lie ahead but after three years of the most amazing time I just wanted to thank all of you who have made it possible, our supporters, trustees, volunteers, support workers, mentors, clergy, Green Pastures and Harrogate Homeless Project.
What’s next?
We are delighted to announce the appointment of a new Housing & Support Officer for Lifeline!
With our third house opening in August last year it was always our intention to bring in an additional person to work with Trefor and Carl in supporting our residents.
We are therefore delighted to announce the appointment of Martyn Chenery who will start working with Lifeline from the 1st of February.
Martyn has worked in industry as well as working with vulnerable adults in both a paid and a voluntary capacity. Martyn is also an approved foster carer. He brings with him a wealth of experience of working through difficult
issues with individuals facing challenges of addiction, homelessness, or encouraging young people to envisage a positive future. We are therefore very excited about Martyn’s appointment and wish him all the very best in his career with Lifeline.
Ways to get involved
Prayer evening
Prayer is an integral part of what we do. We would like to invite you to an hours prayer for Lifeline at 5 Park Chase on Sunday 31st January at 7pm.
‘Friends of Lifeline’ evening
Our friends of Lifeline evening is for anyone who is interested in the work of Lifeline and would like to find out more, and/or would like to get involved in what we are doing, and for existing supporters and
friends of Lifeline. We are holding our next evening on Thursday 4th February at 7.30pm (this will be in the family room of Wetherspoons where we will eat a meal together and then we will give you an update on what is happening with Lifeline)
Carl and Georgie Good