Category Archives: Whole Life Discipleship

New Term

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I have a young daughter in her early school years and so much of our life is governed by school term times. It often strikes me however, how much of my “none-school” life is directed by school terms. So it wasn’t too much of a surprise then, that at the first Elder’s meeting in September we had quite a lot of catching up to do as we started our church “New Term”.

We were expecting Chick Yuill to join us for the middle third of the meeting so we got straight into a time of catching up and prayer. When Chick joined us we took some time to recap with him what we were trying to achieve with our enagement with the LICC Imagine project and with our journey of Whole Life Discipleship. We tried to imagine how our church (or any church) might be different when we think about those 110 hours that we have spoken about so often. The times when we are at work, with family or friends. The times when we are with our children, even doing our shopping. What is God doing in all those situations and what part does he want us to play? Chick shared this video of “Flees in a jar” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKR4tmd8TNg&feature=youtube_gdata_player, once the flees have been in the jar with the lid on for a while, they will never try to jump higher than the lid even when the lid is removed. Chick was showing us that we too can be very constrained by our traditions and past experiences. Perhaps we can try praying and listening to God at lots of different times through the week to hear what part we can play in his plans for all kinds of situations.

The lid on the jar has been removed so lets see how high we can jump in God’s strength?

God Bless

Steve

Imagine Leader’s Visioning Day

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On the 18th of May, I accompanied Andrew ( our Minister ) on a day of teaching for church leaders engaged with ( or interested in engaging with) the LICC Imagine project.

The day was held at the Salvation Army in Sale and was lead by Neil Hudson the Director of the Imagine Project and Chick Yuill. The day was broadly split into 3 sessions with plently of opportunity to talk to leaders of other churches who were also engaged with the imagine project.

The 1st session was very much lead by Neil and recapped some of the goals of the imagine project and during this time, I was thinking about how we might apply the teaching at our church. I had some ideas during this time, most of which need a bit more thought before sharing, but one idea was this blog.

The 2nd session was split into 2 groups, those churches not yet engaged with Chick and the LICC to help them with their Whole Life Discipleship went to another room whilst we stayed and shared experiences, issues, ideas etc. to help us all learn from what was happening in other churches.

We enjoyed lunch after the second session which was beautifully prepared by Margaret ( Chick’s wife) and chatted a little more informally about our experiences.

For the final session we were again all together for more teaching which focused on what a “good”  Whole Life Disciple of Jesus might look like and how we might be able to tell if we were doing the right things.

I found the day very helpful and informative. At a personal level, although I regularly attend and even lead training sessions and workshops in my real life, it felt somewhat different. Most people who were there were in “ministry” as their “day” job there were only a couple of us who were in “secular employment”. Having said that, in many ways, for me at least, one of the big lessons of whole life discipleship  is that there are no “secular jobs” God is part of every job. There is an opportunity to follow and to share something of God in most ( if not all) jobs and situations.

Monday_blues

In future posts I’ll try and include some of the things we plan to try as a chuch and also some of what I learnt in session 3 about what a whole life disciple might look like.

Hope this is helpful and remember, these are my views, thoughts etc. and not necessarily the opinion or policy of Thomas Risley Church.

God Bless

Steve

To set the scene

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To set the scene – Whole Life Discipleship

In february 2010, Chick and Margaret Yuill came to Thomas Risley Church for a day of preaching and teaching. The links to the podcasts from those sessions can be found http://thomasrisley.org/Podcasts.aspx and are made available by kind permission of Chick and Margaret.

The subject of the day was “Sharing the Gospel in todays culture” and at the end of the day Chick mentioned that he was working with a number of churches in his role as “NW Regional Church-Life Consultant” with the LICC. The Elders invited Chick to come back to see if Thomas Risley Church would be a good fit to engage with the LICCs Imagine project. Following Chick’s visit and some prayer, the Elders felt that this was exactly what God was calling us to do. So the recommendation was presented to Church meeting and the relationship with Chick and the LICC began.

So last Summer (2010), we started with “the Survey”, The survey was entitled “how whole life is your church” and was designed to give us a snapshot of where were starting from. The survey was completed by a good number and the results were encouraging, showing that lots of things were good but that there was plenty of room for improvement.

Throughout the year Chick has visited a few times to meet with Elders and leaders of church groups and has helped us to identify some small changes that will slowly move the church towards becoming a more effective whole life disciple making community.

Some of those changes you may have noticed, and have included:-

The changes to the church logo
This time tomorrow interviews
Prayer cards for the 10 year anniversary
A map showing some of our front lines
The story catcher in the form of Angela, don’t forget to give her your your stories
This blog
I know that the progress at times seams slow but we don’t see this as 3 month programme to get Whole Life Discipleship “ticked off” as complete but we recognise it as a journey that we are taking together to grow as whole life disciples of Jesus. Having said that, we also recognise that there may be a need for some bigger “marker” moments or events to keep the process alive for us all.

So that brings us up to now, May 2011 and I’ll endeavor to keep you updated following each Elders meeting ( and as and when anything else happens or I have any other words of wisdom to impart( I know what you are thinking “what wisdom!” but don’t be too hard on me), with this blog as well as updates in paper form of some kind for those who don’t use the “interweb”.

As well as the regular updates, I’ll try and create a couple of entries in the near future with some suggested resources and an FAQ

TTFN

Steve

Introduction

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Hello, I’m Steve, I’m an Elder and as of May 2011 soon to be Church Secretatry at Thomas Risley URC in Warrington. If you are regular at the church you’ll probably know me, at least as the guy who stands at the front and does “Shine!”.

I wanted to start this Blog in response to questions that are being raised within the church about “what’s happening about Whole Life Discipleship?”.

Thinking clearly about what it would mean to grow as whole life disciples of Jesus was something that we started to do about a year ago following a day of preaching and teaching from Chick and Margaret Yuill. You can still hear the podcast from that day on the Thomas Risley website www.thomasrisley.org .but more about whole life discipleship in a later post.

In this blog I plan to discuss what is happening at Thomas Risley Church, in particular items that are particularly focused around equiping us all to grow as whole life disciples of Jesus. I’ll also be discussing how we are working with Chick Yuill and the LICC who we engaged with to help us as we work and pray to become a whole life disciple making community.

One last thing, this blog contains the thoughts, prayers, understandings, missunderstandings, questions, experiences and observations of the author and may not always reflect the views of Thomas Risley Church. I hope it will promote a bit of thought, perhaps a better shared understanding of the journey we are on and maybe a bit of discussion.

God Bless

Steve

P.S. If you want to know more about Thomas Risley Church and our beliefs, why not visit our website www.thomasrisley.org visit us on facebook http://www.facebook.com/ThomasRisleyChurch come along on a Sunday morning (10:40) for worship or pop in on a Thursday morning to our TReats coffee shop.