Tony Thompson is a man who is infectious, mischievous and warm hearted, he has also planted two churches in the south of England in St Neots and Luton, and he took those of us who were prospective church planters through a session on calling which was excellent.
Utilising the stories of Saul, David and Paul he showed us that when God calls us TYPICALLY there are five stages in that calling. These are
- Private calling, God calls us in a private way, either directly to our hearts or through people
- Private response, we respond in some way to that calling David goes to the war front, Saul hides Paul goes into Damascus
- Public Calling, there is then a more public calling where more people become aware of the calling
- This is then responded to by the people around them and the person grows into the calling
- Recognition, finally the calling is recognised for what it is and the person is released into that calling.
One of the main things tony spoke about was the time between the private and the public. This is a time which God uses to grow the person into the roll they are being called to do. It is imperative that this is not too short or two long.
Also when we are called God will typically use trials to perfect and it is how we respond to those trials that changes and builds things not us.
How will we respond will we push through or pull back? Will we run and hide or will we stand and fight. These are important issues for anyone who is called of God to do anything.
He then made a statement that I found quite interesting and one that I hopefully fit the bill with. “Leaders have a constructive Spirit of discontent, no destructive”. I have at many times in my life in the church been discontent with things but my aim has always been constructive in how I respond to them, well almost always. My reaction is “that’s bad! how we make it better?”
An important lesson for anyone out there who is discontent with the church, dot just gripe about it pray and then act to solve the issue.
Following this session we had our interviews with our coaches. This was probably the most scary part of the weekend. Nobody on the course really knew what these looked like, how they would be worked through and what feedback we would get.
We had been assigned to Roger Bye a chap who had planted a church in Cockermouth in Cumbria, and who is heavily involved in the New Frontiers churches in Canada, in particular the one in Oakville, Ontario. We had already touched bases with Roger before the interview and had shared dinner with him and his wife Cheryl the night before.
The interview was very relaxed and we chatted through how we had got to our current stage in the process. How we felt called to church plant, where we felt called to church plant and talked about our past experiences. This was a great time of sharing with Roger and Cheryl and we were able to work through our story to date and were greatly encouraged by the wisdom shared by them.
They gave us advice on what we need to be doing now, and helped us plan the next couple of steps on our journey. I will be blogging on this as the last post on BASECAMP in a few days time.
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