Come to G2 this week and celebrate with us as we baptise a few people!

Gav Loftus will be speaking.

There will be cake and coffee and time to connect with each other.

BUT….. most importantly we’re excited to see God glorified as people take a public stand in their faith for Him.

Next week I will be heading down to  London to attend a national conference about leadership. I am really looking forward to hearing insights on leadership from world class leaders on what great leadership consists of.To some extent, I will be a little out of my depth; I will be surrounded by leaders of large businesses, organisations and Churches. However, I really hope there are things I can take away for my future as a leader in some capacity, and things that I can share with G2 as a community about the development of great leaders.  I will be posting things on the G2 Blog and on my twitter feed throughout the coming weeks, so watch this space!

Recently I spent an hour with Matthew Porter, the leader of St Michael le Belfrey, the Church of which we are a part. I wanted to pick his brain on what he felt was important to great leadership. I asked him what the difference between good and great leadership was, to which he responded “discipline and humility”. I have been mulling over his answer ever since.

I think this is a lesson that we can all learn. Whether we lead specific things: cell groups, clusters, teams of people at work, children’s work, or whether we don’t specifically lead thing; we are all leaders of our own lives. As Christians we all have purpose and we are all called to be leaders of God’s Kingdom. How can we get from good to great? How can we go from Sunday Christians to living as totally submitted to God and seeing God’s kingdom moving powerfully in our communities?

Discipline and humility are two characteristics you see strongly in Jesus’ leadership. And two characteristics we could definitely do with more of.  Jesus puts a great emphasis on prayer and spending time with the Father, often pulling himself away from groups of people to pray.  He knows his purpose and his role is in establishing the Kingdom of God on earth and he isn’t afraid to be disciplined in his pursuit of it.

How disciplined are we in the little things? How disciplined are we in prayer? At times that is quite a difficult question for me.

Jesus is the greatest expression of humility there is. The words of Paul in Philippians express this perfectly: “being in very nature God, he did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped”. Jesus had every right and claim to be honored, worshiped and acclaimed, but instead chose the role of a servant.

Paul urges us to do the same. To have the same attitude to one another; one of service and not of power.

I left meeting with Matthew with these two words as a deep challenge for my own life and my development as a leader. I know that I need to have more discipline even in the every day things: not eating too much, regular exercise, spending more time studying the Bible. And I see a need for service all around me;  there are people in our immediate communities every day who need time, money, food, company.

Perhaps if we are faithful to humility and discipline in these little ways then their impact will be far greater than we can imagine for our own future and for the future of the Church.

How about you? How can you begin to cultivate the characteristics of discipline and humility in your life?

Josh Cockayne is a leadership parish assistant for G2 and a regular blogger. He recently graduated with a degree in philosophy and enjoys espressos and single malt whiskys. He is engaged to Ellie.

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Steve, Kiera and Ivy are excited to announce the arrival their baby boy of Rowan William Ashew

Born on Sunday 6th May at 8.10pm in York Hospital.

Weighing in at just over 8lbs!

Mike McKinstry

You can also right click here to download the talk

Jo Blair

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Tom O’Dair

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A few weeks ago our Cluster met for a fantastic meat related evening. We had sausage tasting from some of the best butchers in York, pickle trays sausage quizzes, sausage games and live music. After three hours of devouring over fifteen kinds of sausages, we were all left full to the brim with meat.

What was really exciting though, was the sense of community around that evening. It was so enjoyable just to be around so many different kinds of people. Churches have the habit of bringing together seemingly unlikely combinations of people- and our Cluster seems to reflect that value. But it was so exciting to see families, couples, students, young people, older people all coming together and enjoying the taste of good old Yorkshire Sausages. 

I went away from the evening really exciting about what God is building in our community. Our cluster is built around some really strong relationships who are passionate about seeing God at work- and it was such a fantastic evening just to spend some more time with them. Cluster, after all is all about people not sausages- it is all about people getting stuck into community, reaching out to friends and bringing them in.

I can’t wait to see more of this at G2 and in our cluster. Whether it is a few drinks at the pub, a meal at someone’s house or a sausage tasting evening- it is all about community. The event originated out of a cluster meeting we had in which we gave people permission to be as creative as possible in designing a Cluster evening. It will be exciting to see what other exciting ideas people have- however big or small.

The Jubilee is something I am particularly excited about, and following the Queen’s recent trip up North I have been thinking about it a lot…The Queen is a bit like my hero. I love her. A lot of people will disagree with me but I like the tradition and the ideals that she represents. The historical and symbolic representation of having a leader of a country who honours the good and the brave, meets and greets people. And not to mention that lovely royal wave!

One of my favourite elements of the Queen’s job is the Christmas Day message. I have been known to demand a halt to Christmas dinner (not something done lightly) to make sure I get to watch it. This Christmas was no exception and as I listened I was massively moved and encouraged. I know we are now in May and Christmas seems a long time ago, but the words that the Queen shared with the Commonwealth have stuck with me ever since.

“Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves – from our recklessness or our greed. God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive. Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God’s love.”

To many Christian’s what she has said here might not appear ground-breaking. But what occurred to me is that she, as one small, elderly 85 year old woman, has come out of her palace and said that. To the whole nation. She has talked about something we believe in, about our faith. This ‘power to forgive’ that Jesus has, is what has saved us from ourselves.

Because we have been forgiven we too have the power to forgive. If we don’t, if we hold on to a grudge or some bitterness or hurt, then how are we using the gift of forgiveness?

The Queen is the Head of the Church of England. Some might say she, when she speaks as a Christian like she did on Christmas Day, represents Christians in Britain. We as Christians represent Christ in our country. If we do not live up to this message of forgiveness, if we do not forgive others as we have been forgiven, then who can we say we are representing?

‘Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.’ Collosians 3 v 13

 

Rosie Loescher is a teaching student at York St John University. She comes to G2.

This Sunday at G2 is ‘Ignition Sunday’ – the heart of it is about igniting peoples spiritual gifts. We want to give the opportunity for people to go for it and so this Sunday three different people will give a short talk on a topic they feel God has laid on their heart.  We truly believe God is excited when people use the gifts He’s given them and want to enable people to go for it!

So come expectant for God to speak to us … See you there at 3.45pm.

ALSO THIS SUNDAY  – AWAKEN! A praise and worship evening  - at 5 there will be pizza for anyone wanting to stay on after our usual meeting time followed by an extended time of worship 5 -8 pm.

You can also right click here to download the talk or subscribe to the G2 podcast so all the talks drop onto your computer every week. Click here to find out more.

Jesus throughout the four accounts of his life went around telling these short stories called ‘parables’ . There are 37 different parables across the four gospel books. In the same way that today if you wanted to make a point or sell a message you’d create an advert and put it right in the middle of the most watched program on TV- Jesus used a medium which was well understood to his audience. The parable was something  that Jesus’ hearers would easily recognise.

And Jesus’ parables were viral- they were short and pithy- intended to be passed around, retold so that others might be effected by them- so they’re memorable and distinctive. I imagine the parables might be trending quite highly on Twitter if they were told today. It’s a little bit like the YouTube phenomenon- in the same way that we have conversations about what we have seen on youtube, I imagine the parables were very talked about in their day.

The way parables function is that they take very familiar characters or stories and they flip them on their head. So Jesus might start a parable today with: “An Irish man and English man and a French man walk into a bar..” Or “Once upon a time far far away there was a beautiful princess….and they all lived happily ever after”. The parables had force because the audience immediately recognised what was going on.

So with Jesus’ parables, often he is plodding down a familiar route and then he lobs a grenade into the room and watches it explode. He takes the audience off guard and says something controversial or uncomfortable by flipping their expectations.

Some of Jesus’ teaching is very head based; it is intellectual and complex. He has long discussions over details of the law, he teaches about how prayer should be done. Parables aren’t like this. They are emotional not intellectual. They appeal straight to your heart- they disrupt something in you, they leave you thinking. It’s the sort of thing that really sticks with you, really gets under your skin.

And most of the parables don’t have neatly packaged explanations- Jesus doesn’t unpack the parables particularly. He lets the story make its impression. The hearer is left uncomfortable and disturbed.

I like to think of parables as an uncomfortable mirror; they show you something that you don’t really want to see in yourself and something you don’t feel comfortable about. The sort of thing you wake up in the middle of the night still thinking about – it makes you want to change. And that is the real point of Jesus’ parables- to change the way we live, to challenge our worldview head on.

And I reckon that Jesus’ parables are still as applicable and uncomfortable today as they’ve ever been if we allow them to be. The problem is; we don’t. Often a lot of their force is lost because we don’t understand their references. And if we just sit and read these stories, it’s easy to ignore what they are saying.  The parables have lost a bit of their edge, their bite.

So the aim of the next few weeks at G2 is to discover the Parables in a same way that they were originally heard, but for us today. So I hope you will be left challenged by Jesus’ words in a new way, be left feeling uncomfortable in what they reveal about yourself.

Josh Cockayne is a leadership parish assistant for G2 and a regular blogger. He recently graduated with a degree in philosophy and enjoys espressos and single malt whiskys. He is engaged to Ellie.

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