K Is For Kingdom

Here's a question for all church leaders...

Are you kingdom building or empire building?

Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God 116 times across the four gospels, so it was obviously an important part of his message. Much of what we do in church is about building and extending the kingdom for His glory. Sadly this sometimes goes awry.

J Is For Jesus

I make no apologies in stating that as far as I'm concerned it's all about Jesus.

Whilst there seems to be a growing fashion to remove Jesus from church as certain leaders gain celebrity status I have to say that for me and Tree of Life Church, Jesus is and will remain central to all that we do.

Lecture over!

I Is For Indecision

I is for Indecision though arguably it should be for Déjà vu.

I couldn't come up with anything for I so I'll go away and hope that J might come along to rescue me.

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This post is part of a series in the Blogging From A To Z Challenge, April 2013.

This is a stolen /plagarised post from last year's challenge.

H Is For History

I'm taking a break from my theme to look at a hot news topic.

Margret Thatcher Dies

I'm not going to rejoice or gloat in her death (I've probably already said too much on Facebook and will no doubt get into trouble for this post) but neither will I mourn her passing. She was a deeply divisive politician and depending on your political persuasion she's either the saviour of the UK or the devil incarnate.

G Is For Grace, God & Go

"There but for the grace of God go I" 

This is a quote attributed to John Bradford (1510-1555), an evangelical preacher and prebendery of St. Paul's cathedral. Though there is no actual evidence to support this attribution I'm sticking with it because it's so fitting given that he is said to spoken these words whilst he was in prison.

The story goes that one day as he was looking out of a window in the Tower of London he saw another poor soul being lead to his execution and uttered this now immortal phrase which has subsequently been used and abused to the point that it has entered the common vernacular of many cultures and languages around the world.

F Is For Fellowship

I've always found fellowship to be a bit of an odd word, preferring instead to talk about friendship. However in church circles it doesn't always work.

Fellowship is about sharing similar interests, ideals, or experiences which is pretty much what we do when we're with fellow Christians.

E Is For Ecumenical

Ooh, that's a big word!

One of the joys we've had in our many years in mission and leadership is that we've never really behaved as we should have. I'm not saying we were naughty or doing things we shouldn't have but rather I'm referring to the fact that we've never really gone to the churches we were expected to.

D Is For Discipleship

One of my biggest passions is discipleship in the local church. In a secular sense we're talking about mentoring which basically means getting alongside folk and helping them to make positive choices in their lives and walking the walk with them through those choices. In the local church context it means doing just this but also helping them to know Jesus better by helping them grow in their faith and getting to know and understand the bible. 

C Is For Conference

Good Friday saw Tree of Life getting together with our family of Church of Love & Grace and Simon's Bay Christian Church for our first ever conference.

The theme was The Master's Plan which was highly appropriate for the Easter weekend.

I've never spoken at a conference before so was very excited by this opportunity but also a little nervous, especially about speaking in front of around 100 people.

B Is For Bible

I have to be honest and say I love this book!

The bible underpins our faith and is the building block for church life at Tree of Life.

This is our personal collection of bibles (there are a few missing scattered around the house and car) in the office just above my desk. We have goodness knows how many versions in at least 6 languages. Some are used a lot more than others, though increasingly I use e-Sword which is a brilliant bit of bible study software!

A To Z Challenge

I'm cheating today and using the A for 'A To Z'

Hopefully this will be the end of my cheating but I'll let you know if it isn't.