Raising up the next bunch of leaders

On Friday at Jozi Lights our leaders meeting was full of next generation guys and girls! Youngsters that we have discipled over the last 5 years at Jozi Kidz and who are now discipling others. What a joy for this 40 year old to get out of the way and let these guys run... Today Letty at half my age left in charge of Jozi Kidz whilst we were out ministering somewhere else. One of our young 13 year old leaders said "well it was a bit hectic and I wasn't as well prepared as I should have been" but hey that's what it is about... learning to minister and to gain those incredible insights. All around I see people we are raising up and it is so awesome. Loved Steve Murrell's statement that, " I always lead with the view of leaving" I thought today if in a years time we aren't at Jozi Kidz it could go on. Leadership has been raised... and we will continue to help disciple them and mentor them.
Was a great blessing to pray and release 12 leaders in our West congregation today to lead their childrens ministry. Some of these were kids in our ministry! The consultation manual that we worked so hard on and went thru with pastor Gabriel, Gifty and Ivan has beared fruit and hopefully we can help more churches with this.
To God be the glory and thanks for using us!!!

JESUS... what more

It's just JESUS that's all people need. We don't need to complicate things do we. That's what I am hearing from Chris Overstreet and the Bethel connections. Love Jesus, love people and don't be scared to step out. Just ask people if they need prayer for anything, then pray and watch what God does. It is Him not us. Fear of man is a sin, Chris said and smiled. True, if we don't step out to share the love of Jesus with people then it is a sin and fear is normally the problem. Fear of what they might say, like it matters anyway! Inspired and felt God was lifting things off the hundreds of people packed into church today.
My stepping out to speak to an old guy I saw running two weeks ago, led to me following it up with another run and on the first lap I was already talking about Jesus. This guy turns out to be a spiritualist whose wife leads a Buddhist home cell. Yes Lord, i was hoping for an unbeliever, well he believes but needs to be convinced that JESUS stands above the rest and really is the way, the truth, the life. His claims are unique... and people of all religions are discovering that. Thank God He loves us so much and is chasing after each one of us... don't run, it is too nice to be caught!

Ramadan and Jesus

The Love of Jesus must break thru the rules and regulations. His forgiveness from sins changes our hearts. His word is truth and anyone who reads it and studies it will find that to be the case. Jesus appearing in dreams, thru books and on TV, these are all ways that Muslims can find Him. Just been watching some short movies of true stories of muslims who have found Jesus. So awesome and encourages us to not run away but to engage with them. So many are genuinely wanting to follow God, but have been lied to. Let us as Christians be an example and love those who may despise, even hate us. Let us live the life of Jesus, so that we do not give them excuse to accuse us of hypocrisy. As I shared with the Muslim man in Malaysia, we share so much when it comes to morality, but not our understanding of who God is. We know Isa personally and so can they. Even in the Quran Isa is revealed! During Ramadan let us pray for Muslims to meet Jesus.

Spiritual Trapeez?

balancing acts are awesome to watch and balancing acts are hard to do. In the Church we are so often balancing between different things. Tensions holding are good. We face the balance between spending a lot of time seeking God in prayer and worship, enjoying God and pressing into Him for more, and yet also taking the gospel out to a lost world that so needs Jesus. It isn't one or the other but both and. Need to soak in God for want of a controversial word and then act in a way that makes sense to the unchurched and shares love. This we must pursue at church and at Jozi Kidz. God has great plans and we dare not miss it by rushing too fast or dragging our feet. Praise God for a great team of passionate men and women, all with their own bent but willing to lay it down for Jesus. Thanks for the Spirit and the Word, for experience and thinking. For local and further afield. For young and old. Thank God for all He has done and is yet to do! We are in the right place... somewhere along the high wire of life in Jesus.

Let's keep on track

We need the presence of God and loads of worship of Jesus to grow in Him and to see His glory revealed. But we can't camp there for too long before going out and engaging unsaved people with the view to letting them encounter God for themselves. We then bring them into connect, grow them and then they can reach more people and influence society. This is discipleship as expressed in our faith journey at HP Jozi. It may be packaged slightly differently in different churches but the principals of discipleship are biblical. They were the final words of Jesus- go make disciples. Steve Murrell in his new book accidental missionary spells it out much better that I can.

Children's Church lessons from Manila

We were so blessed to visit Manila and to spend time with some of their Children's Church people, and to visit a number of different sites. We asked many questions and made some important observations.
1. Their front desk/reception was very jacked and made parents feel that kids were valued and would be taken care of. They use an easy sticker system where the name of the child is written on the sticky side and given to the child and the other side goes to the parent who must produce it to claim child. The one church had a bar code system which is even better.
2. Their staff were very warm and welcoming and remembered our kids names very quickly.
3. The pastors love their kids and ministry and are sold out to it.
4. For special events where there may be many visitors they hand out an info page with the run down of the meeting, and even the name and cell of the team leader.
5. They have many volunteers who serve in teams once a month like us, and their team leaders meet once a month with their childrens pastor.
6. They have big budget and great venues that are very clean, safe, and child friendly. All have multi media and lights!
Challenges us to look at what we can do better in these areas. Didn't get to see actual ministry, but they do use big group and small groups to disciple their kids.

Manila's strength is its people. The Filipinos are so warm and friendly. Customer service is important and every where people speak to you. You realize that they value you visiting their city. Manila is huge and very busy. Mixture of run down and up market areas. never have you seen so much food and places to eat and the food is awesome! The roads are jammed and town planning has not coped with the constant influx of people from the provinces. Hairpin bends keep changing your direction and there are few traffic lights. Amazingly the people just hoot and drive but seldomly hit! Houses are built on every available space and they have villages which are walled in and boomed off for security. It is hot and sweaty but wonderful. The church is alive and the city is alive too. Quite a grey city, and can't say it is beautiful but the Filipinos make up for it.
Kuala Lampur, on the other hand, is beautiful and green. parks and flowers are everywhere even amidst the very modern buildings. This is a more international city and we met people from all over the world there. The transport system allows you to get around easily and the city centre is not huge, so you can walk a lot of it. People are friendly but you have to make the first moves. There are a lot of different homes, and many high rise condos. The city also contains some older areas from its interesting history. The national museum gives a great picture of the development of the area. Our favourite area was china town where you can get great bargains and interesting foods. The outskirts of the city are green and much more open.