This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Spiritual Formation, which you can download in it’s entirety here

The goal of spiritual formation is to become like Jesus. Galatians 4:19 (TNIV) "My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you..." We have the privilege and task of becoming both Christ-like (Christ being formed in us) ourselves, and helping others become Christ-like, like Paul, labouring to see Christ formed in others.

There are central teachings that Jesus gave His followers that move us towards this goal of having Christ fully formed in us and within those teachings, tools that are central to helping that formation. Two key spiritual formation verses in the New Testament were both a result of Jesus reinterpreting Old Testament passages.

Every Jew from their earliest age would have learnt and recited the “shema.” Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (TNIV) "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Jesus reminded the expert in the law who asked Him what was the most important command first of this Old Testament command, and then added Lev 19:18 "Love your neighbour as yourself." And then He goes on and further refines it in John when He says, John 13:34-35 (TNIV) “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Jesus was saying if you do these two things – love God and love others (and of course you must love yourself if you are to love others properly) – then you will look, act and be like children of God, and Christ will be fully formed in you. Jesus also took a common prayer the Jews prayed – the kaddish ("Magnified and sanctified be his great name in the world He created according to His will. May He establish His Kingdom during your life and during your days, and during the life of all the house of Israel, speedily and in the near future. And say amen.") and developed it into what we now call the Lord’s prayer. Both of these are profound spiritual formation statements and tools of discipleship. The goal of following Jesus is that Christ is formed in us – in other words we act like Jesus would if He were in our skin. A Kingdom disciple can be described as a person who loves God, loves him/herself and loves others. And they regularly pray a prayer centred around these priorities.

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Tags: Lloyd Rankin, Spiritual formation

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Vision, Calling and Vocation, which you can download in it’s entirety here

I have always found it easier to hear God’s “no” than to hear God’s “yes.” Sometimes my enthusiasm or desire can sound too much like God’s “yes” for me to trust it in a lot of situations! So my practice is to assume the answer is “yes” unless I hear a “no” from God. God is very able to communicate “no” through losing my sense of peace, through the scriptures, through people and circumstances. God also seems to speak more when we are drifting “off course,” than telling us over and over that we are “on course.” Is 30:21 And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

So while I don’t have a clear sense of “calling” to be leading churches, what I do have, however, is a very deep sense of the calling to follow Jesus (John 21:19), and to be a servant of God. My identity as a Jesus follower is that I am a servant of God. I choose to live a life of voluntary restraint - choosing to obey God over and over again, and build my new life around His ways. Since making this decision to follow Jesus in 1977 I have had the privilege of training to be a secondary school maths and science teacher, serving as a youth pastor and assistant pastor, a Bible college lecturer, a church planter, and a church movement leader. I have of course also had the great privilege of serving my wife through being a husband to her, and serving my family through being a father to my children

I am utterly convinced that the role of the servant is the best role one can have in this life. (Yes, I am aware that Jesus said I no longer call you servants, but friends - but this is referring to our relational connection and identity rather than function). The wedding guests at Cana (John 2.1-11) got to drink the finest wine, but they had no idea where it had come from. But the servants who filled the jars with water, got to see water turn into the finest wine right before their eyes.

We are servants who lead, not leaders who serve. There is a very profound difference between those 2 statements, and they produce very different leadership styles

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Tags: Lloyd Rankin, Leadership

This GROW 2012 excerpt is written by Fran Francis, co-pastor of Shore Vineyard Churches. It is taken from GOLD - Vol 1, which you can download in it’s entirety here.

Twenty years’ experience in rented halls comes to you right here!
Use your senses: Sight (add light or colour). Smell (add a reed diffuser – not too feminine/flowery. Go for fresh). Sound (add floor coverings to help absorb sound). Feel (add screens/arrange seating in a way that feels humane). Taste (how’s the hospitality? Good coffee? Great baking?).
People don’t like to rattle around in a space that is too big, nor to be jammed into a space that is too small. People need about a metre each to feel “just right”. If you don’t have that much room for each person – time to move! In fact, if your space is 70% full people will perceive it as too crowded so you will lose them.

If the space is big you have to make it more intimate and the best way is with screens. Large “office divider” screens arranged in a semi-circle at the end of the hall going lengthways will draw the eye to that point. That’s where the worship team will stand and you can arrange seating in one block or two (with a central aisle) according to your numbers and the kind of seats you have. Hessian from Spotlight or Harveys is an affordable way to change the colour scheme. Velcro strips along the top of the fabric, which just happens to be the perfect width for those screens, makes it easy to attach. You can then use this backdrop to hang a painting, an A1 poster that illustrates the sermon theme or a wreath at Christmas…

This semi-circle of screens can be placed as far forward or back in the space as you need. For example, in the summer numbers are often reduced while families are on holiday so move the screens forward to create a smaller gathering area and put out fewer chairs. On special days such as Christmas Eve or Easter, move it back so there is room to accommodate visitors.
Why a semi-circle? Because curves are organic and “friendlier” than hard lines.
Folding Japanese-style screens from The Warehouse or folding fabric screens off TradeMe are lightweight and relatively cheap. Use these to create the same effect if you don’t have access to 2m x 1.4m office screens. They are easier to store, which is often an issue in rented spaces.

Dampening sound on wooden floors can be achieved by using carpet runners. Anything from hardwearing rubber-backed “garage” carpet from The Warehouse to vintage Axminster-patterned hall runners could be considered. We use a combination of charcoal grey rubber-backed commercial carpet with colourful Trade Aid rugs to cheer things up a bit. Make sure you eliminate trip and slip hazards – remember your “public liability”! We tape ours to the floor each week, covering sound leads and cords at the same time.

What’s the lighting like in your space? Too gloomy? Vintage standard lamps with or without shades are great for brightening the room. Or go for an industrial look if that fits better. The design rule for lighting is three points of light in a domestic room – scale it up for your space. In fact, three is pretty much the magic number. If you can’t afford a big semi-circle of screens, which would likely be seven, get three and space them out a little bit.

Make sure the tea and coffee area is attractive and accessible. At Harbour, we use two vintage drop-sided wooden tables (easier storing) and coffee plungers, matching teapots and polka dot cake tins with the week’s baking in them. At North City, we use two trestle tables with covers made from coffee sacks to disguise the trestle. A layer of clear plastic from Spotlight protects the fabric from inevitable spills.

Change it up seasonally. How can you make it special for Holy Days such as Lent, Easter, Advent, Christmas, baby dedications, Mother’s and Father’s Days, or special preaching themes. This is your shop window – dress it up!

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Tags: Fran Francis

This GROW 2012 excerpt is written by Jen Harvey, co-pastor as Grace Vineyard’s Beach Campus. It is taken from GOLD - Vol 1, which you can download in it’s entirety here.

The welcome
I recently gave birth to our second son. When we arrived at the hospital for our after-care there was a lady waiting to welcome us. She knew our names and was clearly happy to see us. As we entered the ward, the other midwives flocked over to offer encouragement, coo over my baby and meet my needs, which included making me a cold Milo with ice-cream. I felt like a celebrity who had just given birth to the most AMAZING baby the world had ever seen. I am seriously considering having half a dozen more children just so I can go back there and feel that loved all over again.

Wouldn’t it be incredible if our churches could match this sort of welcome . . . where people feel instantly loved, encouraged, cared for and accepted? We’re pretty good at loving God, but how good are we at loving people? Jesus makes it pretty clear in Mark 12:30-31 that we’re called to do both.

The dream
The dream is that we create a church culture where welcoming is second nature, where the hospitality is so radical, the generosity so outstanding and the love so tangible that it could only point to the God who is love.

Where to start
Start with some big questions:
Are new people experiencing a welcome so warm and loving that it points them to Jesus?
Are they feeling genuinely cared for, noticed and accepted?
Is it easy for them to get connected, make friends and find where they fit?
Are we as leaders so comfortable in our own relationships that we assume everyone else feels as loved as we do?

Simple ways to share the love
1. Create a welcome team. Find people who are great in social situations, radiate warmth and excel in hospitality. Spread them out – man all the doors, have some look after a welcome area/lounge and have some floating around keeping an eye out for those who look lost, lonely, new etc.

2. Invest in your welcome team. Have vision nights, training nights and social get togethers. Let them know how important their job is. We should be encouraging our welcomers to look with spiritual eyes, teaching them to pray for opportunities and to listen to the Holy Spirit’s promptings during a service.

3. Create a welcoming area. Make it comfortable and inviting. This could be a place not specifically for new people, but available for anyone who feels they aren’t connected, have questions or need someone to talk to.

4. Invest in your welcoming area. Get comfortable chairs. Get someone creative to give it a feel-good vibe. Make it modern and interesting. You want it to convey the message – you are important to us! Be prepared to spend some money. Think about ways to make it inviting (nothing says I love you like homemade baking and fresh flowers can give it a “cared for” feel). Have staff/pastors pop in after services to say welcome.

5. Help people get connected. Once a person’s “guest” status is over it’s important we help them get connected and this can happen on a number of levels – friendship, fellowship, volunteering etc. For those who aren’t new but still on the outskirts, this stuff’s for them too. Find out their needs and introduce them to the right people. Remember not everyone can be best friends with everyone, but everyone can be best friends with someone. It’s a good idea to introduce new people to at least one other person who is at a similar age/stage of life before they leave. You know you’re winning and this is becoming part of your culture when those in your church are taking the initiative to invite new people into their homes and lives without your prompting. What a beautiful picture of God’s mission in action.

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Tags: Jen Harvey, Ideas, Practical

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Vineyard College’s Next Level on Discipleship which you can download in it’s entirety here

Answer: Disciple (mathetes in Greek) means a pupil of a teacher or an apprentice of a master craftsman. It has the connotation of a learner but also of a “doer”.

It could be large numbers, as in Luke’s description of the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:17), or those who followed Jesus in itinerant ministry. A disciple of Jesus was someone who adhered to His teachings and did them, and thus they were spoken of as those who imitated Jesus (John 8:31, 15:8). This could be quite openly, as with the apostles, but also secretly, as with Joseph of Arimathea (John 19:38).

This concept is further exemplified by the fact that early Christians in the book of Acts were called “followers of the Way”. In other words, they were known by their behaviour or way of life. In John they are described as those who “abide” in His Word, ie, live in adherence to His way of life, whereas in Acts they are described as those who believed upon him and confessed him.

The term disciple is not used in the epistles. Instead, we find, “brothers, sisters, believers, saints and church”. In the Gospels, the term is used both of those who stayed and worked at home and of those who gave up normal life, left home for some time and walked around with Jesus. There are, of course, large numbers of the former and fewer of the latter.

In the book of Acts, we find established churches of believers in towns and cities and fewer comparatively who are able or called to pursue an itinerant lifestyle. Of those who are itinerant, the most mobile appear to be single and the married are more inclined to settle somewhere during their travels. John, for instance, seems to have settled and lived in Ephesus for many years and Philip, despite his earlier adventures in Acts, settles and lives with his prophetic daughters in Hierapolis, a resort and medical town about a day’s walk inland from Ephesus.

We do not find the term disciple in the Old Testament, although the concept is implicit in the companies or schools of the prophets. Another example is the apprenticeship of Samuel to Eli. Elijah, Isaiah and Jeremiah also had underlings who represented them and sometimes, as with Elisha, replicated them. Joshua also succeeded Moses after serving a term of apprenticeship. In another sense, the image of the people of Israel being in covenant relationship with their God is an early pointer to the relationship we have with Him.

At its core, though, I think discipleship flows out of the kingship of Jesus. From the Garden of Eden, God reveals himself to His people as Creator, as the King of Israel, as the One and Only God before whom we should have no other Gods. In the Exodus, He is portrayed as overwhelmingly more powerful than the gods of Egypt. By the time of the Psalms, He is described as the Lord of heaven’s armies. The church is in one sense an inheritor of this relationship as the “New Israel”, the “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16) with Jesus Christ as its head. In Romans, we are saved if we believe in our heart that God has raised Jesus from the dead and confess Him as Lord. Confessing Christ as Lord is more than just repeating a formula and saying those words, it is making him the King, the Ruler of one’s life. Discipleship is based on this fact, Jesus is the King and we are not, and by virtue of His Kingship we are to submit to his rule and obey Him.

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Tags: Mark Brickell, Vineyard College, Discipleship

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Discipling, which you can download in it’s entirety here

“Recently we gathered a room-full of younger and middle-aged leaders to pray, dream and strategise the next phase of the development of Vineyard churches in NZ. One idea to rise to the surface during our two days together was that, whatever we’re doing as leaders, we should be inviting two or three other people with us. The language around that thought was to bring our “Peter, James and John” along with us, in order to encourage and influence them, and to ensure they are exposed to the same experiences and thinking that we are.

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others (2 Tim 2:2).

Our intention is to have leaders who have made discipling others, and becoming Kingdom disciples themselves, their greatest priority in life.”

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Mark Brickell, principal of the Vineyard Training College and author of the Next Level articles, tells us the reason why we are producing the GROW material each month.

These resources are for all leaders of Vineyard churches - so pass them on! Get them here:

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This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Vineyard College’s Next Level on Leadership, which you can download in it’s entirety here

How does a leader get the guidance to make decisions? John Wimber used to say, “God sets the direction and we get to organise the camels.” He was referring to God calling Abraham to go to Canaan without giving him specific directions. In other words, take the general idea of what God has called you into for guidance and make decisions about the details based on your own judgment. Unfortunately, one of the down sides of hearing the voice of God is that sometimes we expect to hear Him for all decisions.

I have heard a lot of teaching on hearing the still small voice of God for all kinds of minor details, the underlying assumption being that God is hard to hear but if we could only get our act together we would hear Him properly and amazing things would happen.

I have now come to believe that God is quite capable of speaking to us very clearly if He wants to and when we find it hard to hear Him, nine times out of ten it is because he expects us to make our own decisions and grow up. Someone is going to respond to this with a story about when God did speak to them about all kinds of daily decisions and great good came of it. I think God does do that occasionally, often just after conversion or in a time in our lives when the kingdom is near. I have experienced this myself. After that, He expects us to live by faith and make decisions using our judgment while staying open to hear His voice. To continue trying to hear God’s voice in everything is a path that can lead to Gnosticism, deception and depression.

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Tags: Mark Brickell, Grow 2012, Leadership

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Leadership Overview, which you can download in it’s entirety here

“Christian leadership is closely related to discipleship. In fact, discipling, mentoring, teaching, coaching etc are all forms of leadership. They are all about helping a person move from who they are and what they are doing, to becoming a different person doing different things. It is an incredible privilege to influence another person.

Leadership happens in the home – husbands and wives have a profound influence on each other, and one of the important goals of marriage is to serve each other in such a way that we become the man or woman God intended us to be. Marriage is the most effective discipling and leadership training programme given to humanity!

Raising children is all about leadership – we use leadership of our children to help develop them into the people God intends them to be. We give them support, nurture, challenge, resources, opportunities in order to move them from one degree of development to another.

As Christian leaders, we also are given an incredible opportunity to influence other people, who are not part of our family, to be all that God intends them to become, and to do all He intends for them to accomplish.”

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Tags: Lloyd Rankin, Leadership, Discipleship, Influence

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Vineyard College’s Next Level on Kingdom of God, which you can download in it’s entirety here

Kingdom theology is such a comfortable fit with the practice of praying for the sick. It has a theology of dying, and it accepts the reality of suffering and sickness while still seeking God for healing. It can accept poverty while asking God for resources; it understands that sometimes we will give in to temptation while still asking God to deliver us from it; that we can pray “Your Kingdom come” while knowing it has come, is coming and is yet to come.

Kingdom theology is a theology of conflict and war in the present. It sees healing and everything else in terms of a cosmic conflict between God and Satan. It is a clash of kingdoms and therefore where the two are intersecting is where most of the action will be.

Kingdom theology sees the history of the church as part of the ongoing conflict between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. Therefore it has been a story of continued advances and retreats, of battles won and lost.

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Tags: Mark Brickell, Kingdom Theology, Vineyard College

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter TheCentrality of the Kingdom of God, which you can download in it’s entirety here

“One thing that defines us as a particular type of church is our understanding of the Kingdom. It shapes how we worship, how we teach, how we pray for people, how we disciple and how we see the Kingdom expanding. In the Vineyard, we believe the expansion of the Kingdom of God is God’s chief objective, rather than the expansion of the church. Church is a subset of the Kingdom. We are a Presence-focused movement (see letter #1) and we understand the King is present in His Kingdom. His Presence and His Power are the same thing, and He invites us to seek first His Kingdom.

Vineyard is committed to the theology and practice of the Kingdom of God, rooted in the vision of the Hebrew prophets and fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. We have been commissioned to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom, bearing witness to the already and not yet of the Kingdom in words and deeds. The Kingdom of God is the over-arching and integrating theme of the Bible. From our beginnings, Vineyard has been committed to the proclamation of the Kingdom and to bearing witness to the deeds of the Kingdom through healing (physical, emotional and social), doing justice and delivering those held captive by evil. Since the Kingdom of God is the future reign of God breaking into the present through the life and ministry of Jesus, we are a forward-leaning movement emphasising the ever-reforming nature of the church engaging the world in love.”

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Tags: Lloyd Rankin, Kingdom Theology, Vineyard, VCANZ

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Vineyard College’s Next Level on Spiritual Gifts, which you can download in it’s entirety here

“In 1990, I visited Kansas City to attend a conference run by Mike Bickle and the Kansas City Prophets. On the way, a group of us met with John Wimber and he told us that since inviting that type of prophetic ministry into his church in Anaheim, conversions per year had fallen dramatically. In contrast, people were now driving hundreds of miles to get a word from the special prophet at a conference.

The danger of an emphasis on the “Five-Fold Ministry” is an unintended reversion to an Old Testament model where the Spirit rests mightily on a few and the majority do little. This is in direct contrast to the New Covenant prophecy of Joel, the priesthood of all believers and the ideal of “everyone being able to play”.”

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Tags: Wimber, Spiritual Gifts

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Vineyard College’s Next Level on Spiritual Gifts, which you can download in it’s entirety here

The only way to really learn about spiritual gifts is by practice and being there. There is little, in my opinion, that can really be learned by reading or developing a long, authoritative and systematic definition of each gift, even though people like myself hunger for that. It is noticeable that while the Bible refers a lot to spiritual gifts in both the Old and New Testaments, it also provides no systematic definitions of them. Instead it provides numerous stories in which God works with people through gifts in a great variety of ways. Furthermore, these stories defy our attempts to classify and define gifts except in the most generalised ways. But they do create a hunger for God to do the same things through us and those we know.

The variety of ways God works in these stories and Paul’s teaching also makes it hard to try and develop any method whereby we may do the same. Healing in the Bible, for instance, can occur by mixing mud and spit, by command for a person present or somewhere else, in public or in private, whether they seek it or not, by the laying on of hands, by handkerchief, by an angel stirring the water of a pool, by inadvertently touching the bones of a dead prophet, by getting in a river, by being breathed upon, with the help of faith, or in the presence of unbelief or even anger at it happening. It happens and doesn’t happen to the deserving and the undeserving, to those who persistently pray and cry out to God in desperation and those who do not. In short, God grants these gifts and we cannot box him into a method or a system.

All we can do is hunger, be there when it is happening, read the biblical stories, learn some general principles, take a risk and try while being willing to look like a fool if nothing happens and do this over and over again. We may feel full of the Holy Spirit, experience bolts of electricity coursing through us or absolutely nothing at all and wish we weren’t there.

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Tags: Vineyard College, Mark Brickell, Spiritual Gifts, Doin the stuff

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter The Importance of Using Spiritual Gifts, which you can download in it’s entirety here

One of the significant promises God gave me when we started this movement of churches in New Zealand was Exodus 33:14, “The Lord replied, ‘My Presence will go with you and I will give you rest’.”

We are a Presence-led church-planting movement more than a purpose-led, or programme-led movement, though purpose and programme are important. We are churches and people who are looking for the Lord’s Presence. Outside of the church gathering we are looking for the “breaking in of the Kingdom”. There is a swirl of activity around the advancing edge of the Kingdom and we seek to spend as much time as possible with people who are at the advancing edge of God’s Kingdom. It seems that certain people attract more supernatural activity than others. There are some who the Lord seems to draw near to especially – people in pain, the poor and the marginalised, the foreigners, the brokenhearted, the needy, the humble and those in transition (life stage transitions, geographical transitions, relationship transitions etc).

It is good to remember that the results of using spiritual gifts, which produce “signs, wonders and miracles”, are all signs – they point people to Jesus. While they certainly alleviate suffering, they are not an end in themselves – they draw people to their God. Our adventure is looking for the times and places that the Kingdom breaks in and God draws nearer to a person, and in that moment, taking a risk and partnering with Him as He brings His Kingdom to people.

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Tags: Lloyd Rankin, Spiritual Gifts, Grow 2012

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Vineyard College’s Next Level on Vision, Values and Practice, which you can download in it’s entirety here

Why does the Vineyard talk in the language of values? Because John [Wimber] primarily wanted to build a church that people who he knew before he met Christ would want to go to. The church would have to feel like “home” to those sorts of people, it would have to taste, smell, sound, dress, talk and be like them without compromising the gospel. This is the task of every missionary–to contextualise the gospel to a culture, or to make the gospel “fit” the culture so it is not seen as “foreign”. Being trained in sociology and willing to use its language, John wanted to create a church that had many of the same values as the people he was trying to reach, a church that would express his own values as someone who came to Christ from a non-church background in his thirties.

The dangers of this approach are the same for any missionary who attempts this process. We can go so far that we become no different from those we are trying to reach and compromise the gospel – syncretism. In the other direction, shunning the culture, we can become such a sub-culture, so different from the prevailing cultural values, that we ourselves are a hindrance to conversion and can only grow by families having more children and transfer growth. The Amish are Christians, but how many new converts do they get?

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Tags: Vineyard College, Wimber, Culture, Values, Gospel

This GROW 2012 excerpt is taken from Lloyd’s Leadership Letter Vision, Values and Structure, which you can download in it’s entirety here

Every generation needs to redesign or re-develop what the church could and should look like so that it remains connected to the culture it finds itself amongst. When we work cross-culturally, it is obvious that we need to contextualize both the gospel (what the words and concepts mean in that culture) and the structures (how we do things) if we are to connect at all to the people we are trying to reach. It is just as vital to contextualize to a generation, a socio-economic, an ethnic context.

The four main elements we need to work with are:

• The Message - while we must never add to or take away from the gospel as expressed in the Bible, it must be translated into the place we find ourselves.
  

• The Messenger - those who have embodied or incarnated the Message - people like you and I who are living the message of the gospel in such a way as to encourage as many other people as possible to follow.
  

• The Media - the various ways we carry or communicate the gospel. These obviously change with technological advances and culture changes. For example, websites, blogs, YouTube and social media were not mainstream communication forms even five years ago.

• The “Market” - our culture, society and communities are dynamic and ever-changing and so we must change with them, or be left behind as an irrelevant group.

The challenge and pleasure we have is to bring the unchanging Message to a dynamically moving Market, using appropriate Media and Messengers who embody the Message and are in the world but not of it.

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