Leadership, Church Planting and Church History

It has been a long time since I last posted and I have heard many of you have been wondering what I have been up to. So here we go. Prayer Points first.

Prayer Points
. We are at a maturing stage, pray this continues to happen
. Finances. We estimate roughly 4000NOK, that is roughly £417 a month for my outreach to Vienna.

. A house in Vienna City Centre that is cheap and a car for travel.

Leadership
This teaching was led by our base leader Runar. It was a very straight forward week with a very simple message what does it mean to lead? His definition of leadership was to simply lead and that leadership is less about managerial roles such as finance keeping but is more about foresight seeing the potential in things and acting on it. Which for me is a relief as I am not really great at creating complex finance charts. Part of the week also focused on what kind of leader are you, specirfically what kind of leadership giftings have you got. It was a very practical week of teaching showing us how to spot trends, potential but also the signs of ministries about to end. 

Church Planting
I really enjoyed thsi week it focused on one persons experience of chruch planting it was actually really eye opening on how we as a class defined Mission, Church and Jesus but especially our negativity towards Church. One of the most valuable things I learned was this:

Jesus + Mission = Church

Our teachers point was that nowhere in the bible does it say plant a church but it does say go out and make disciples. It is when we go we create frienships and these friendships create communities and these communities are what create a the church (the body). It is Jesus who sends us into Mission and then Church is formed but Jesus must come first. This teaching really started to challenge my views on how I view mission and my motivations for doing it, seeing it from this perspective lifts a burden and makes mission easier.

Church History
This was a lot to take in a lot of facts but was very interesting, the focus of the teaching was that where we come from, what we do,  what we study etc. forms our identity. These past 3 weeks have in many ways linked to each other, as I learned that if we want to change the future we must first find out what has happened in the past with Europe and where the Church has been in the midst of that.

I am finding that the SOE has moved into a new focus of preparing us to be pioneers for Christ, this is reflected in all this practical and factual teaching but we are also finding more opportunities to step out and take hold of leadership and use our giftings in Evangelism.

Newcastle

I feel it is about time I told you all about my time in Newcastle, England. The reason the SOE went there was because every year a team called Forever sets up a gathering inviting lots of DTS students for a week of teaching on Evangelism and then they get to practice it, a truely fantastic idea. They invited us the SOE to be examples but also to lead the outreaches.

We did lots of things such as street evangelism using magic to draw a crowd giving us the opportunity to talk to people. We did Treasure Hunting and I shall tell you an amazing story further down the page. We did litter picking so a great opportunity to serve the community. We did a lot of youth work which I was in charge of and it was a lot of fun having the opportunity for both myself and the DTS students having the chance to encourage young people with testimonies. There was also refugee drop in centres, developing a church by painting it ect, and there was a most fantastic opportunity to get involved with Newcastle University and their Missions Week. Also as grwoing leaders to start practice what we are preaching and to live out our values that we would ourselves expect to be lived out in a disciple-discipleship context.

Something that God has been putting on my heart since Newcastle is to start investing in people. I had many amazing opportunities in Newcastle to do so. I found investing in others is a sacrifice but it is also a lot of fun. I had this wonderful opportunity to take two DTS girls out on a treasure hunt at night and one of the perks I found of investing in people is that you also get to share in their experiences of Gods power being shown, in this case they discovered not just that God speaks to them but at how specifically God speaks to them.

Testimony
We feel that the things combined together of what we felt God was saying drew us to this one person. I had this word that we should walk to a certain location a specific way and when we got there this DTS girl noticed her treasure walking past to the exact description she had written down. So naturally she is amazed and it took a little convincing for us to follow this girl that walked past. And yes it feels like your stalking someone. We follow this girl and the DTS girls i am with collect enough courage to talk to this girl and it turned out the name she had on her list was the girls name who we stopped. It was amazing to watch these DTS girls speak so powerfully into this girls life something as a guy I just would not be able to do. This girl leaves and my DTS friends realised that after chasing this girl down the street that they ended up in the exact location according to all the clues written on this treasure map. It was absolutely incredible to witness these two DTS girls invest so powerfully into this other girls life that we met. But what was really amazing was how God just melted their brains as the realisation sunk in that God had just spoken to them in perfect clarity. It has been an incredible blessing to see God transform DTS like these, because I look at them now and I can joyfully say they can never be the same again, how can they be now they have tasted God in this way.  

What I have been able to personally take away from this week is the importance but also joy it is to invest in other people.