Spacious

This last week has been a brilliant week really.

It started with a new birth.

Dawn and I pulled up outside our daughter Bailey's house expecting to spend some time with her. as she opened the door her waters unexpectedly broke!

And to cut a magnificent story short,

Clark William Warner was born a few hours later.

As quick as that.

And,

He is gorgeous.

Then I have had a fantastic weeks writing on my book, one of those weeks  where the text flows from your heart at breakneck speed. Only a couple of months work to do until it is more or less complete.

Dawn and I also managed to visit Winsford SA Corps where Dawn has been appointed Pastor.We met with a few people and they made us feel so welcomed. They were so nice to us we could almost eat them.  We are so looking forward to swapping the intensity of the City of London for the Cheshire countryside. We have had three major challenges in our Officership, and we are excited by the challenge ahead for Dawn in the coming years.

For me, my own ministry is developing brilliantly under God's direction. And I know he is positioning me back in the North for some major Kingdom opportunities, so I'm busy trying to secure some part time work to aid me a bit in my ministry. So please pray for me in that quest.

Anyway back to the baby!

I got to hold him for the longest time.

He was hours old.

I was being careful and gentle and saying all that daft baby stuff like you do, when God showed me something.

He showed me, well, me.

How far I've come lately.

I was trapped by the damage that some of my experiences as an officer had inflicted on me so badly. I had really forgotten how to live, how to love life, and how to love myself basically. Yet as I sat with my new grandson in my arms I could have wept because I saw how God had held me through that mess inflicted by different people who may be leaders but are really clueless and lost.

And,

I realised something brilliant!

I've finally come out the other end.

I am finally free.

Living in the freedom Jesus won for me on the cross.

It's taken a long time to recover from the wounds inflicted by people who were meant to care for me.

But.

My life is now spacious and full again.

I'm stronger.

Rehabilitated.

Fresh and ready for the fight again.

I think that's why I'm looking forward to a new start in Cheshire. Its spacious and open, and, as much as I have loved London, which I have and always will, I have felt a bit claustrophobic lately, like the City is closing in on me.

And,

That reflects just what God has done lately in my life, he has brought me into a spacious place where I can move and breathe and spend my new healing well, He has brought me there from a place where the ungodliness of religious rules and regulations closed in on me and strangled my Officership to death.

Yeah,

I'm ready.

Ready to help people to know a God who holds us all in his arms no matter what is happening in our lives.

Change

My current writing project is well on its journey presently.

Every working day starts at 8am with my old Lenovo ThinkPad X230.

I work in an old office on the top floor of the Prayer Centre Dawn and I imagined and fruitioned when we were appointed as West London development Officers back in 2013.

Coming in every day has allowed me to watch and marvel at the transformation which has taken place.

The first Sunday service I did at the Corps that was Ealing Citadel left me cold and saddened. You have to understand Dawn and I came to London from a brilliant Church we had started where uniform wasn't important, Where worship took place every day not just on Sundays, where you could go to church at 12 midnight and find people worshipping or praying, where love acceptance and compassion was the norm. Dawn and I had always up until that point been able to create new projects from scratch. This was the very first time in our Officership we had inherited a Corps. But the situation was dire. We had been brought in to try to turn the tide of dramatic decline of the Salvation Army in West London. The first thing I saw when I entered the hall that Sunday was a lady wearing a bonnet. I nearly fainted. Then I saw a songster brigade taking there places, all five of them. The hall looked like some weird kind of heritage centre with more flags than the Royal Navy, flags which represented the Eighteen or so Corps that had closed down over the previous thirty years. The hall was really only open on a Sunday and the situation was dire. really dire.

We had been asked to turn this around.

It seemed impossible that Sunday Morning.

Dawn and I went home for our dinner that day and we don't mind saying that we seriously considered packing up and fleeing the country!

But

Four years on?

I'm sitting in a thriving Corps. Open every day, financially sound, full of people who have had their lives turned upside down by encountering a saviour they had never known. full of those who desperately need help, the homeless, the addict, the lonely, the lost.

Only one person of the original Corps survived the change.

And it was a change and a half.

I had learned very early on a very profound lesson in planting new things. This lesson stood us in good stead as this sinking ship was saved by the power of prayer and the power of God. The lesson is this. In the twenty first century, Deep change is required. You can't do incremental Change. or what some people in business call straddled change. In other words you can't hold on to things and just change a bit. many people reading this will have seen SA Corps who have tried to mix tradition and so called contemporary stuff. That is straddled change and is proven not to work. and there have been some disasters believe me.

We implemented a deep change to this project. This involved a cessation of the traditions that this particular Corps had held onto while heading further and further towards extinction and I mean a complete cessation, and a reimaging of the part we could play in saving people from destruction in the community of which we are a part, which in our case was the 3.5 million people that live in Ealing borough.

In the end.

The reimaging actually turned out to be more of a reawakening. Prayer, Hospitality, Mercy and compassion were the elements that needed to be instilled into the fabric of our work and the Spirit of God really has instilled them. Many people have been touched by the kindness of  Jesus through our amazing team and our tireless work for the kingdom.
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Why do I bring you this little glimpse of our time at Ealing, a time I could actually write a 40000 word book on if I was so inclined?

Well recently I've been undergoing a bit of a change in my life. And when I have given myself the space to think and reflect, I realised I needed not an incremental change but a deep change. So right now I am in the process of trying to change everything about my life. I've realised the things that are important to me and have to stop wasting time on the things that really aren't. I am stripping back, which as it happens is what my book is about. I am reimagining my life.

I'm so looking forward to moving to Winsford in Cheshire not only because it is close to where most of my family live, but because it will be a complete change to the intensity that living and operating in a City like London brings. obviously I want to support Dawn in her new ministry there, but I also know God is gearing me up for some new ministry opportunities too from that area.

Its a complete change for us.

And.

I am excited to be on the journey I am on to a deep change.

And.

I guess I write this as always in the hope it may help someone to focus on their own situation right now.

Maybe you need a deep change too.

Head Space

It took a long time coming.

But.

I have had to admit that my life is digitally infected.

I had an epiphany moment the other day.

I realised that notifications are the framework for my daily living.

And.

As Jurgen Klopp would say, "it's not cool."

So.

I have embarked on a very difficult treatment.

A digital detox.

I declare I am giving up my smartphone.

On order is a new phone.

A Punkt MP01.

The thing about this phone is that the Swiss company Punkt, product range is designed to carry out a digital detox.

The phone although brilliantly designed by top industrial designer Jasper Morrison, only allows you to call and text. No email, No internet, NO camera No Facebook or twitter, The tweets the likes, the loves, the posts can wait until I reach my computer.

The idea?

A less distracted life.

By no means can I give up on emails, Facebook etc all work tools to me, but they will not be dropping onto my smartphone every five minutes distracting me from real things and real life.

While I've been waiting for my new phone, I have got an old nokia out of the draw and started.

Sitting in Nero's this morning I kept reaching for my phone. It took me a while to get over what I might be missing on my emails and social network platforms.

But after a while?

It was kind of nice.

I had a face to face conversation (Remember those) with my wife. I looked out of the window and admired the architecture of Turnham Green Church opposite.

I found I had some head space!

Further more when I had a little prayer time I found an interesting thing. I found I couldn't keep looking with one eye on my notification bar. I couldn't hold the phone in my hand to wait for the next vibration.

Someone called me mid head space but it was nice to have a conversation instead of whacking out a few sentences on a touchscreen keyboard.

I was able to engage in conversation with God in a way I haven't felt for a long time.

Head space is important in prayer.

Head space is important in life.

I'm really into my digital detox now and its as if life has been illuminated. Im reading books again, Im noticing things in my area I have just missed because my head has been too often in the screen stoop position.

I'm claiming my life back from the digital grip.

I am entering the real world of live face to face conversations.

Its also making feel more alive to the need around me.

Maybe you should try it

The Junction of a thousand roads

It’s been a mad week or so.

Dawn received her change of appointment that sees us both move to Winsford in Cheshire on July 13.

We have been to visit family in Yorkshire and Liverpool.

One of my daughters is pregnant and boy doesn’t she talk about anything else!

I’ve had to slip in and out of my various life roles constantly. Father, Brother, Husband, Son, Friend, acquaintance and so on and so on.

All of this?

While trying to reassess where I am in life.

And.

Attempting to engage with God about what he would have my future to look like, you know, which direction should I go down.

I kind of feel like I’m standing at a junction with a thousand roads ahead of me, anyone of which I could take.

It’s kind of exciting.

It’s kind of scary.

If you stand at the junction too long?

It gets a bit confusing.

I’m shouting at God ‘What would you have me do?’

Then

Without warning.

An old song from the days when I was stuck in traditional Salvation Army stuff, one of those golden nougats out of the time before my transformation out of that dark place, flew into my head straight from Heaven and landed smack bang in my mind and my heart.

"Mid all the traffic of the ways, turmoil’s without, within. Make in my heart a quiet place, and come and dwell within."

My study for my Master’s degree came flooding back. I wrote a dissertation on silence. I had written about how silence is massively important to be able to effectively join Gods mission.

Basically?

If we don’t stop and hear God?

Listen to what he is saying?

Reflect on what he is doing?

Then forget effective.

In fact, I remember at Sanctuary 21 in Durham, a prayer centre that Dawn and I planted from scratch, when one lady out of the hundreds of people that came for one to one prayer ministry with either Dawn or myself or one of the team, came into be prayed with, and she was in complete turmoil. Some serious stuff had happened in her life and she was all over the place. Before we minister to anyone we obviously pray to catch a hold of how God would want us to approach the session. When I was praying, I really felt an overwhelming feeling that God was saying, “Send her to the prayer room without her bible, without her handbag, and tell her to be silent before me, for however long it takes. I don’t want you to minister to her on this occasion I need to directly minister to her.” So, being as obedient as I could be I sent her to prayer room five to be alone with God. When I explained this to her she looked at me as if I had two heads. But she went. About three hours later she emerged out of the prayer room looking tearful but radiant. To cut a long story short, she had been incredibly touched and changed by God and he had given her a new direction.

So.

Hey.

Remembering all of this?

I stand at the junction with a thousand directions ahead of me.

Mid all the traffic of the ways, turmoil’s without, within. Make in my heart a quiet place and come and dwell therein.

I head for a silent space today in the third prayer centre we planted, a fantastic place that is testament to the power of God.

And.

I wait.

To hear where he requires of me next.

To point me to the right road.

And.

I write this today because there maybe someone out there standing at the junction of a thousand roads.

I urge you to try silence.

Get away, no notebook, no bible, no pen.

Just you with all your inner stuff. With all your anxieties, with all your thoughts.

Be still and know he is God.

Be silent.

Leadership stuff

I posted on Facebook today which is in my case not very often.

But.

Today I've been reflecting on the last few years

And

Trying to get some perspective on the future.

Nearly twenty years in leadership has gone quickly.

The picture I posted on Facebook summed up what I think is the most important thing I take from my past experiences into the future.

Life is about to change for Dawn and I.

We have some decisions to make.

And.

They are imminent.  

I mean this week imminent.

So.

I have been thinking. 

We have planted three different prayer centres. 

Liverpool Boiler Room,  Sanctuary 21 in Durham and Sanctuary in Ealing West London.

One thing I hope we have done is looked after those we are responsible for.

Of course you can't please all of the people all of the time,  but we have been blessed by the people we have tried to lead.

Hundreds of them.

And

We think God is wanting to do something fresh through us going forward.

So please intensify the prayer for us.

This week could be a rocky ride.

But

If I could leave one bit of leadership advice from my past its this.

Leadership is not about being in charge,  it's about caring for those in your charge.

And.

Any leader struggling with caring for people?

Maybe it's time to reevaluate.

Maybe it's time to change.

Yet to come

I carry fifteen years of experience in creating prayer ideas that help non churched people encounter God.

The vision God has entrusted Dawn and I with will carry on.

I am asking for those who pray for us especially all those people who have acted as our armour bearers as we have taught all things prayer across Europe over the years to pray hard for us over the coming weeks.

We know God is calling us to even more incredible things than we have already seen.

Greater things are yet to come.

Greater things are still to be done.

I'm asking for specific prayer.

That Dawn and I would be able to establish an altar wherever we end up. 

That our work will never finish touching the lives of those in desperate need. 

That God will protect us as we move forward.

That lives will be changed forever through our ministry.

Pray that people will continue to encounter God especially those who have nothing to do with any church.

God you've been so gracious to Dawn and I.  You've let us see transformation that is truly miraculous. Help us to continue to help others.  To continue to see deep wounds healed,  tears dried,  hearts restored,  lives completely transformed.

Greater things are yet to come

Still

This morning is a rare chance to take a break from my ever increasing busy schedule.

So.

I take a corner seat in an atmospheric coffee shop in West London and let my mind wander.

A couple of scriptures fly about in my head.

Both of them about being still.

Be still and know that I am God (Psalm 46 :10)

And.

Only be still and the Lord will fight for you. (Exodus 14: 14)

Being still is really hard.

Anyways what does it mean to be still?

To me it means just stop!

Step out for a while of the madness of life.

Sounds great on paper!

Not so easy in the real world.

Yet lately im learning this more and more.

Take my transition from the safety of ordained ministry in the Salvation Army, into a paid job for a while and now of course working self employed.

I want to share this with you because its kind of important.

The first thing I was faced with was I had to make some very difficult and brave choices (Some people may say stupid and daft!) But I remember reading Soren Kierkegaard’s take on the wheel of indecision saying basically if you don't make decisions you will go mad. He described a wheel of indecision that kept going round and round and challenging people to step of it. 

After all I'd gone through stepping of that wheel to step out pf officership in the SA, recently I was faced with leaving a secure, well paid job to develop and carry on with my call to speak. I was on the wheel of indecision again knowing I was carrying my marriage, Dawns ministry, and a secure life financially. Yet my calling is massive. And I knew I had to step off. 

So I handed in my notice. 

Just like that.

I had no clue what the future held.

I actually didn't know where the next penny would come from!

But hey.

I could not stand being on the wheel of indecision so hey I just jumped off.

Dawn and I hit the prayer room at the Sanctuary in Ealing on the first day of my new venture.

We prayed the Aaronic blessing over my business.

The Lord bless you and keep you

The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up his countenance on you

and give you peace.

We declared that the business was God's business.

The same day my trusty Blackberry passport started to ring.

Someone wondered if I could do a funeral for them.

For the three months that have followed?

My phone rings everyday with new work and new challenges.

I am working every day speaking into the lives of those who are in need.

Im being asked to speak more and more into loads of differing situations, and the Lord has showed his increase on Dawn and I.

Really?

Its pretty miraculous.

The thing about all this im sharing with you is this.

For someone today I really felt that they needed to hear this. You may be trapped in a job, a relationship or a situation that you really need to put an end to. 

Here is the thing.

Be still. 

Right now!

As hard as it is.

Stop what you are doing.

Stop fighting it.

Let the Lord fight for you.

Know that he is God.

Step off that wheel of indecision.

Don’t try and get the future taped up.

Just enjoy a new identity, a new journey.

You WILL be fine.

Act

I turned the page.

Psalm 107.

A completely beautiful piece of the reality of God’s massive love for us.

I needed it, you know, to be reminded.

To be reminded of the fact whatever type of distress, however dark the situation, however much we can’t see the way ahead, when we cry out to him he listens.

And.

Acts.

This Psalm written to celebrate the Jews return from exile in Babylon speaks about some of the different types of darkness they will have encountered in Babylon. Deepest gloom, iron chains, peril on the seas, affliction, loneliness, hopelessness amongst others.

But.

Hope that reaches epic proportions flows from these words.

The Psalm gives us the message that however extreme our calamity may seem, God is able to break through to help us.

Verse 6 & 7 kind of sum this up.

“Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle.”

So.

Hey.

If you feel in distress today.

If you feel pretty hopeless or like nothing is going right for you.

If you feel unsettled or restless.

If you feel discouraged or even disillusioned.

If you feel trapped or claustrophobic.

If you feel like you are kind of losing the plot completely.

Don’t think about it, just cry out for God and then let him shower you with hope.

However extreme your thing is?

Let God help.

Smooth

Snow fell onto the pavements and roads.

The view through my window at home in West London was soothing and reassuring. The city seemed to be that little bit more silent even though it was as busy as ever on the main road where I lived.

I was thinking.

Thinking very hard.

So the smoothness of the wintry evening outside helped to keep my mind clear.

And.

I needed it.

Yeah.

I needed a clear mind.

I had a major decision to make. I had been a Salvation Army minister for close on fifteen years including my stint at College in London.

The feeling I had was that it was time to move out and move on was so overwhelming that I was having trouble trusting my feelings. I was wondering in my heart where the Salvation Army in the UK was heading. My overriding sense was that it was heading into a place called nowhere really. But that was probably just me and the circumstances that I found myself in at that time. However, the reality was I didn’t do well with insane decisions leadership made time after time. I didn’t do well with the archaic regulations that only serve to stifle not affirm. I didn’t do well with theologians who if they are good sound like they have the key to eternal life themselves. In short I didn’t fit very well as a SA minister.

I love simplicity not complexity.

While I was deep in thought, being tossed about the shall I leave or shall I stay question that I was asking God to help me with a flashback came from nowhere.

A flashback that had the clarity of a UHD Movie.

I remembered the night I had to make another big decision! I was on a freezing street in Liverpool City centre when I came across a homeless guy in a doorway. His head was blue with cold and he only had a thin jumper on. Something told me this guy was in trouble and that he could actually die with those type of temperatures. Earlier that day I had bought myself a really nice coat that had cost a lot of money. I had it on that night. I felt an argument start in my head. Shall I give him my new coat or should I keep it and walk on. I had no choice! I gave him my new coat.  I gave him my coat and took him to McDonalds for a coffee and some food.

Maybe a simple act of kindness would save a life?

As I remembered this.

I knew I had to step away from the complexity of organised religion. I knew a simple faith, a simple mission, a simple love was God requires of me.

I know there are many ministers who operate in the organised religion of the denominations are brilliant at doing so and could easily argue that they live and operate a simple faith, and please this is only my experience that I am sharing, but I wasn’t really cut out for that stuff.

So since I have stepped out in faith, out of the security of the Salvation Army with its comforts and safety, I have found some perspective, I have found some peace, I have found my relationship with God has developed in a completely new way, more like a friendship than a theology.

And.

I think I needed that.

I think soon I can return to the church a different person, stronger, more resilient and more effective.

The simplicity of a relationship with Jesus is massive. Religion complicated it way too much for me to handle. It seems to me when I grasped the real essence of a relationship with God, breathed it in, allowed it to change me, my task to help people to know Jesus has become easier and way more understandable to a world who need to know. 

Hey.

So.

If my advice counts for anything with you? I would ask yourself, “How complicated is my relationship with God?

If it is pretty complex.

Have a clean out.

Get rid of the clutter and enjoy the friendship of Jesus.

Hey thanks for reading.

Standing

My blog has gone on the back burner for the last ten months.

A lot has happened in terms of realigning and readjusting where I am regards my calling and my ministry.

I have had to do a severe reality check following my years as a Salvation Army Officer. I had to step out of that bubble and shake off the fallout from some pretty shoddy treatment over the years I spent there. Yet I wouldn’t want to say it was all bad because it wasn’t, and I believe God used Dawn and I to help many people in my fourteen years as an officer.

The outcome of my soul searching?

I will always be a minister.

In whatever capacity.

I have the credentials.

That’s the thing I can’t get away from.

God won’t let me, no matter how far I have tried to run from it.

All this inner examination has culminated in me leaving my job at the funeral directors which was a temporary measure, and going freelance as a speaker and a writer while conducting funerals as a freelance minister.

God is doing massive things in my life.

I am so grateful to Andrew Homes and Son in London for giving me a job which paid very well and gave me chance to see the world in a new light.

How I needed that.

To step into the pain of people who have lost loved ones, to see horrific death of people taken too young, to be able to help people to function in their time of deep need.

It helped me to see that the pain of the world really needs Jesus.

So I stepped out and said “here I am God use me.”

It is so amazing how when you step out of the security of a job and decent pay to follow what God really wants for your life how he provides. Straight away I have had bookings every week to speak or to do funerals. And the funerals have been massive opportunities to minister to extremely needy people. I have embarked on my calling to write a book which is filling the gaps between speaking engagements.

My one to one prayer ministry and counsel has led me into the lives of some very troubled people who I can speak into their respective situations and bring some comfort and help to them.

During the last two years I have fought hard.

I have fought depression, I have fought to make a living, I have fought some very strong attacks from the forces of evil.

And.

Here I stand.

Ready to do.

Ready to fight on.

Ready to do what I can to help people.

Ready to help others discover their true identity.

Ready for anything

From time to time I feel prompted to republish a past post.

As it happens I was undoubtedly prompted tonight.

I felt it was actually imperative and urgent.

I have no clue why.

So the following rehashed post from early 2011, I guess becomes a kind of prophetic call tonight.

So here goes.

A mix of sun and torrential rain invaded my walk on the streets around my Neighbourhood this morning. The rain though, felt strangely nice as it bounced on my face relentlessly.

Most days I take a walk around the streets.

As I walked today I really noticed the shabbiness that adorns some of the streets of this former mining community, a community that has seen more prosperous days when the local coal mine was up and running.

I saw weeds, lots of weeds, growing out of walls and pavements. I saw litter, lots of it strewn around the streets. I saw the barrenness left by a recent demolition project right in the centre of the place. A few odd walls were still standing looking out of place and almost lonely. I walked amongst the sparse scattering of shops on the main street and watched as people went about their daily routines. The rain clouds above were almost black and this cast a bleak glaze over the whole of the place.

On one of the odd walls sat a teenage girl, she couldn't have been more than 16 years old and she was pregnant and already had one other child with her. I saw a guy struggling up the hill towards the doctors surgery with two walking sticks to help him he looked extremely pale and withdrawn.

As I walked down one of the streets a couple of guys now in their twenties, who I have talked to on these streets before shouted, "alright Gaz," then proceeded to take the michael out of me by mimicking a priest walking with his hands together.

I laughed to myself!

But didn't laugh for long.

As I walked in and out of the streets today I felt like crying.

I didn't know why.

I began to pray over the houses, the businesses, a couple of Church buildings, the community centre, the streets.

I prayed the Aaronic blessing, The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace.

I prayed it over houses with barbed wire over their fences, I prayed it over overgrown gardens and back alleys. I prayed it down streets lined with houses.

I began to imagine the different needs that probably lay behind those doors.

You don't really need to waste time doing fancy questionnaires to find out what the needs are in your community.

Your eyes will show you.

Your heart will show you.

The Spirit of God will show you.

I began to weep. Not much, but enough to ask God what is going on here Lord?

I heard six words drop into my thoughts.

"You are humbled by the need."

Humbled by the need?

I understood that sentence straight away.

Yeah.

Humbled by the need.

Being effective out on the mission field requires it.

Becoming humbled by the need.

Not in some attempt to become humble or practice getting good at doing humbleness, or carry out a way of being humble that I've read in some book somewhere.

But by becoming humbled by seeing and sensing the things that God is so humbled by.

I guess God is longing for the Church to rediscover humility.

What it means to be humble.

If we aren't humbled by the need in our communities, in our cities, our families, our circles of friends, our workplaces, our streets, then how can we reach out to the need?

My mind hit on a scene from the bible.

Just before Jesus made an amazing miracle happen that saw a crowd of around 5000 hungry, needy, people fed from a few loaves of bread and a few fish, the scriptures give us a glimpse of the motivating factor behind this miracle.

Matthew 14:14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

As soon as Jesus saw the need. He was humbled by it.

It fired up a compassion in him that led him to do something about the needs these people had.

He was humbled by the need.

He didn't need to try to be humble.

He just was.

For me it makes so much sense. We can go out into the world to make a difference. We can create mission plans, We can do need surveys, we can do the intentional thing.

But are we humbled by the need?

Do we feel it deep inside?

Do we have a compassion that comes from the heart of Christ himself.

A compassion that spurs us into action. That catapults us into feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, slaking the thirst of the thirsty?

God is relentlessly calling his church to be humbled by the need.

I think all great revivals were birthed in prayer that's for sure. But before the prayers, those prayers came from people who were humbled by the need that surrounded them. By the needs of a nation. It was always the motivating factor.

People moved with compassion.

Is God calling the church to be like a Jeremiah who would weep over a nation?

I think so.

The time is now.

To get into the heartlands of our communities, our circles, our mission fields, and look around. To allow God to show us the need. To allow the compassion of Jesus to touch the nations through us.

To be humbled by the need.