Leading together?

The last few weeks have been busy trying to ensure everything is ready for the Autumn term before we 'break' for the summer. We have a lot of staff changes coming up which has meant a load of interviews for me to do (thanks Elaine for organising all the detail!). The good news we have some great people joining to replace all the great people leaving the team (all for good reasons - honest!).

Carolyn Chart will be taking on the role of part time paid Childrens Worker from mid-August to continue developing our rapidly growing childrens work at Central Hall. We now have up to 80 children on a Sunday morning which has almost doubled in the last few months. Carolyn comes with loads of experience and will help us ensure that the recent growth will be sustainable in the future.


It has also been announced in the last couple of weeks that Lottie and I will be officially taking responsibility for the morning congregation based at Central Hall as part of the New Community network of churches that is developing here in Southampton. It is a very exciting and daunting season for Lottie and myself as we start to put into place our various teams to take the church forward into the future.

One of our biggest conversations has been about Lotties role. I want her to be part of the leadership team as she adds so much to who I am. Lottie is concerned that she will be seen as just being part of the team because she is my wife. People have made comments about not 'seeing' Lotties contribution (which generally means they have not seen Lottie preach or lead a meeting). What people dont realise is that everything I have ever done has always been discussed through with Lottie, we are meant to one after all. So is it better to recognise her contribution or hide her away knowing that secretly she is providing leadership through me!

The way I see it is like this. If I was left in charge of our home things would be very different. I would probably be more efficient, the house would probably be cleaner, more organised, the walls would be painted magnolia and the place would be minimal and sterile - more like a doctors waiting room than a home. Lottie brings the heart to our home, she makes it unique and welcoming. Whenever we get visitors to our home they comment on how lovely it is and how welcome they feel - none of that is to do with me, it is all Lottie - she is the homemaker.

In the same way when we work together, Lottie brings the heart to the work that we do. If the church was left to me it may become all boxed up, organised and managed - efficient but without heart (bit German maybe?). Lottie ensures that I dont go to the extremes of my character she brings the balance. I need her and the church needs her to lead with me - she may never be 'seen' (although I think she will one day) but her input is invaluable.

Leading together as a married couple maybe a challenge to some but I know (and my true friends know!) that I am a much better leader and person with Lottie than without.

Any thoughts anyone?

It shouldn't happen to a Pastor?

I have just got off the phone from an irate man from Eastleigh wanting to speak to someone at the church about a pastoral matter. The phone call gets put through to me eventually and I endeavour to placate the very upset individual! "The music is too loud!" he says, having heard this complaint regularly, I start to apologise with the standard line that I use. Most Sundays there is someone who thinks the music is too loud and it is never the sound engineer or the drummer... I wonder if people ever complained about the volume of the pipe organ when it was first introduced into the local parish church? Still it is a part of modern church leadership that you can have the dead being raised, people overcoming addictions and new people discovering the way of Christ but somebody will ALWAYS complain about something unnecessary and mundane. It normally tends to be the ones who have been in the church for decades and feel they have the right to vent their frustrations about the change that has been imposed by all these new people that have recently joined the church.

So I am used to complaints, some I take in my stride and make all the right noises to encourage the complainant that I am listening and taking them seriously, but there are some that seem very personal about my style or my approach or my lack of this, that or the other and I always take them personally (funny that!) - my friend Jim says "you're a wee bit sensitive, Sim!" which always offends me!! :o)

So, I am on the phone to this guy upset about the volume being too loud trying to placate him with my normal grunts of encouragement when he says "and it was 3 O'Clock in the afternoon!" - what? oh, he's not talking about our Church worship band after all he is talking about his neighbour! He just wanted someone to talk to, to complain to, to have his say and for some reason went through the yellow pages and rang me at Central Hall. A strange phone call to start the week off, but if someone in desperation sees the church as a place of refuge and a place to be listened to then I am all up for helping out the needy for surely that is what Matthew 25 tells us.

So if you need help and you want someone to rant to about the stuff that life throws at you give me a call the confessional is open!!!

This week I am in a bunch of meetings with our Church Fun Day on Saturday in Victoria Country Park for a BBQ and games for about 300 people, then speaking on Sunday morning. Great day yesterday morning with an awesome response to the offering - God is good...

Dedication's what you need...

Yesterday we had our fourth child Jemimah dedicated at Central Hall. It was a perfect day! We had both sides of the family including Lottie's Nan who is 90 and and my Granny who is 93 - amazing! Theo did a great job of leading through the service and friends and family swarmed forward to pray for my beautiful little girl. Friends from our last Church, Arun Community Church had taken time out to come and join us and Rich Hubbard spoke on Faith it was a great time of celebration with the wider church family.

Then it was back to our house for a BBQ with over 50 people crowding our recently re-modelled garden - weather was perfect and the new half price BBQ from Asda passed the test and everyone was fed plenty. We still have loads of salad and pasta in the fridge!

But the thing was on Saturday night I was starting to get concerned that we were making too much effort on the food and tidying the house and garden that we were forgetting the real reason for the day of thanking God for the life of Jemimah. But as I reflected I realised I was just getting a bit religious and not recognising that hosting a party for my daughter, having friends and family all mixed and eating together is very important. The prayers of thanks need to go with the celebrations and so often we put one in a 'spiritual' box and one in a 'worldly' box.

I know God can cope with the complexities, I sometimes wonder if I can? I know that God is as interested in the church service as the party, food and conversation but sometimes I revert to a religious mindset... fortunately I have great friends and family who keep my thinking straight!

Thanks to all those who made the effort to come to Southampton for the day much appreciated...

This week I have several meetings, finalising budget for September, looking through applications for childrens worker post, preparing for speaking on Sunday looking at Values through a Father eyes (its Fathers Day in the UK) and trying to finish my final assignment.

Back from Holiday

Just got back from an excellent family holiday in France. We spent three days in Paris by ourselves visiting the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe as well as getting the kids portraits drawn at Sacre Coeur (something Lottie and I did on our last visit 12 years ago before kids!). It was a brilliant family time with simple things like just getting around the City of Paris on the Metro with 4 kids and a buggy was great fun.

Then it was off to Brittany to join up with the rest of my family: Mum and Dad, four brother, one sister, three sisters in law, one brother in law, one brothers girlfriend, five nieces and three nephews - 26 of us in all (I think!). We hired five Gites on the same site with shared swimming pool and play area and we all had a great time. The kids loved playing with their cousins with Floella every morning up and dressed at some ridiculous hour asking to go and play. We managed to keep them in most mornings until 8 am...

Then during the day it was beaches, parks, rock climbing, eating ice creams, drinking coffee, great photo opportunities, sun cream, hats, sand in your shoes and all the normal stuff of holidays and then back in the evening for a BBQ. We all took turns cooking each night - which meant we only had to cook one night each - perfect...

Anyway we are back home now, rested and relaxed and I am more desperate than ever to get on with doing a great job leading my wonderful, beautiful family and serving the church and helping it to connect the world with Jesus. I pray for his presence to impact our church meetings and our every day lives so that the Power of God becomes a reality and not just a phrase.

This week I am giving a lot of thought to the future leadership team of New Community Central as well as preparing budgets for September and developing the teaching programme for our morning congregation. On Sunday we will be dedicating our fourth child Jemimah to God with family and friends for a BBQ at ours afterwards - it will be a great day I am sure...

You following?

Over the weekend I have had dozens of people joining my Twitter group and following me. I am not sure if it is due to some kind of marketing scam (i.e. if I tweet about coffee I get a Coffee Company following me or I mentioned Hospital yesterday and got some Healthcare person following me!) or whether the UK is starting to get hold of Twitter which has been around for quite a while especially in the States, but...

...one of the most basic principles of Leadership is that you need followers. Someone once said if you think you are a Leader and you turn around and no one is following then you are not leading you are just taking a hike!

Since the age of 13 I have known that I have been called to lead people and specifically to lead the Church. The problem is being English we don't like to talk about our ambitions and leadership is always seen as such a lofty ambition. I don't like to make loud statements about the things that are so personal and important to me, I would rather carry them in my heart and see what happens (doesn't sound much like a leader to me!). At the age of 16 the Church I attended had a split and people scattered, my Dad was the Church Pastor - I didn't want to be a Church Leader any more, I had seen too much. Then over the next decade God kept prompting me to take up my gifting of Leadership and not to hide it - easier said then done. I thought of every excuse and allowed other people to push the gifting down in me rather than let it rise up as God intended. Eventually I did start to take on Leadership responsibility but always with a reluctant obedience.

Although I carry a Leadership role within the Church here in Southampton I am always hesitant to declare myself as a Leader and prefer just to be seen as part of the staff team in case I was misunderstood as trying to be something I was not. Ironically I was trying to be something I was not and God was on my case...

Last week at two separate Leadership meetings I was called out and prayed for specifically around this area of Leadership with the challenge to break off any old words that may have discouraged me and to step into the role that God has for me. So this week I am determined to start stepping into Gods plan for me, to take on the role and responsibility of leadership and lead well. I can't believe how hard this is to write on a blog, I am double checking every word in case people criticize and ask where is the humble leader who serves others? But at the end of the day I need to respond to Gods words on my life and not what other people may think or say - easier blogged than done!

Anyway enough said I need to get on with leading, anyone up for following?

Seeing is Believing?

Last week we were fortunate enough to have Bill Johnson and Randy Clarke speaking at the Global Awakening Conference at Central Hall. Held over four days it was sold out with 800 delegates every day coming from all over Europe.

Over the four days there were hundreds of healings and some excellent teaching...

But in some eighteen sessions of teaching it was only two things that really grabbed me over the time that they were with us. Firstly it was good to see Central Hall full. I am completely believing that we will see Central Hall full again for our Sunday services. What was a City Centred Church of 500 people meeting at Central Hall has become a Network of Church Communities all around the city and region with almost 1000 people meeting in eight different gatherings.

God has been good and New Community is flourishing but Central Hall can seat 800 easily and on a Sunday morning we have around 220 - 240 attendees with 70-80 of those being under 11. I would love to see the building full once more and people queuing up to get in!

I was able to see a glimpse of the possibility last week. People were queuing from 8am to get the best seats for the 9am start, the building was full and God's Spirit was at work. Wouldn't that be great on a Sunday morning. I put myself in the middle of the Main Auditorium and looked at all the people and asked God to let it happen.

I already believed it, but now I've seen it...

The other thing I picked up was about our theology or understanding versus our expectation. Biblically we believe in healing but we don't expect it to happen every time we meet someone in need and we pray. That has to change. We need to increase our faith to see what we know is possible become a reality. I want physical healing to become a standard part of our Church Community, that as people go about their normal business that God's Spirit will invade their lives and healings will happen in our city on a regular basis.

I don't want to chase the manifestation of God (I get a little annoyed by those that do!), I want to chase God himself and as I worship him, put him in his rightful place, get my life working to his rhythm then there will be an outpouring of his Spirit at every level of our society.

So, I have seen the possibilities, and like Thomas, now I believe it more than ever...

Seeing may not be believing, in and of itself, but it helps!

Building Fun...

Over the Easter Break some of my friends have gone to Cornwall, a team from the church went to South Africa to work in an orphanage and some of my friends spent 2 weeks touring around Scotland. A time to relax, take stock, breathe...

yeh, that would have been nice but instead I woke up on Easter Saturday and decided to build a new bedroom! What? Mad! I know!!

Lottie and I had been talking for a while about how we could increase our house size to match the increase in our family. We only had three bedrooms and four kids with the boys getting bigger and needing their own space. We had discussed building extensions and all sorts for thousands of pounds onto the mortgage (gulp!) but then came to the conclusion that we could probably get a similar result by splitting our pretty large bedroom into two. So I woke up on Easter Saturday and got on with it!

To be honest in the main it was easier than I thought, the stud walls and plasterboard took just over a day, but plastering the joins, cutting the coving at the right angle and hanging the door - not so easy! The door is still not right, but if you lift the handle and open it quickly it is fine, don't what all the fuss is about... So on Saturday night just gone, 1 week after starting the project Zak and Levi were tucked up in their own rooms and we had been downgraded to their old room.

But when I go to woke them up yesterday morning for Church, where do I find them? In bed together - because they were missing each other!! Maybe they will ask me to knock the wall down again!

Still a good job done and for less than £300 we have a four bedroom house instead of a 3 bed, I should be on one of those DIY shows that Lottie loves to watch.

Anyway back to normality today with kids back to school (found the uniforms, but not the PE kit or one of their lunch boxes!! might have plastered it into the new wall...), Central Coffee is open again and another busy week ahead.

Moorlands College tomorrow and Wednesday for the last Study Break of the year and then we have a huge conference at Central Hall with Randy Clarke and Bill Johnson. 4 days with 800 people packed into the building - it is going to be fun! Strategy day with Links International on Saturday and then Baptisms on Sunday morning. Really looking forward to the baptisms as it is the first that we have had on a Sunday morning for some time. Hope you have a great week, follow me on twitter for regular updates...