Blog archives for August, 2009

27 August 2009

Manifestations and Impartation

In a conversation with a friend today I used two words and he frowned at me as I mentioned both.

When I spoke about manifestations that were taking place in our church meetings (such as healing, being weighted down in God’s presence, laughter, the appearance of gold dust and other such occurrences in the manifest presence of God) he said that he had always equated the phrase with demonic activities and not godly ones.

Looking back on my life, despite have being brought up Baptist, I remember many different kinds of godly manifestations taking place along the way:

(1) Being immersed in God’s Word (I recall in a war zone in Angola having a brother pray over me and for the next three days I consumed the Word of God from cover to cover and it was like what I read was burned into my mind and I can recall so much Scripture because of that experience).

(2) Weeping uncontrollably (I recall a Baptist Summer Camp Experience in 1991 where I wept uncontrollably for hours throughout the weekend as God brought waves of conviction on me for my life and how I needed to pursue absolute surrender) sovereignly chose to grace us outside Kimberly in the Free State.

(3) Being pinned to the floor (I recall a Baptist Theological College Camp when I received a call from God to launch  a disciplemaking movement across Africa and was feeling really under qualified for the job – God moved in, immobilised me and showed me with waves of affirmation and anointing for at least an hour – and believe me, I would have gotten up if I could have – it was a little embarrassing for the youth professor to “act” that way)

And so I could go on and on with unusual yet significant physical manifestations of the encounter with God – some of which are not unlike what happened to Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc.

So I like the word, manifestations – as it reminds me that God is at work in the world (of course the flesh and the devil can get on board as well) and that our Christian life is meant to be something that goes far beyond the cognitive domain.

The other word is impartation - and some might be tempted to consider it a synonym of preaching – but there are times when we preach and little impartation takes place. To impart is more intentional – for me it is the transfer of insight or passion or gifting from one person to another that results in significant life change taking place. I know that I am not done preparing to speak to teens or adults until I have prayed that God would grace my words and presentation in such a powerful way that I might impart life and whatever is needed to those listening.

And the Bible? Well the Apostle Paul spoke about gifts being transferred by the laying on of hands; he longed to visit a church to impart life to people; and many of the 25 One Another commands in the New Testament have to do with physical contact. I have realised that I am way more open to the idea of transfer from one human to the other than I was when the original Toronto blessing broke out. I recall being critical of South Africans who travelled to the States to bring home whatever it was that was taking place there. I think I was wrong and narrow minded.

The alternate is a virtual world where we don’t need to gather to receive anything from anyone else and where we have little or not physical expressions of our relationship with Jesus.

So I am open to manifestations and impartation – even though my spell checker has just rejected the word “impartation”!

26 August 2009

Shepherding Teens Into a Move of God

The igniteYOUTH team, that I lead, spent the whole of this morning grappling with how we need to repond as a youth ministry within a church that is starting to experience a significant moving of God. As a church leadership we have been experiencing amazing visitations at our Tuesday morning staff meetings and at occasional God Evenings that take place on Tuesday nights once a month. The church has set aside three Tuesday nights during the month of September to bring the wider congregation into the outpouring.

The move of God is characterised by an increased sense of God’s presence in our midst and God’s power in our midst particularly in healings, the pophetic and even dramatic physical manifestations among people.

Our time praying and grappling as a youth staff was prompted by a question from one of our senior leaders who asked whether the teenagers would be joining the church at the Tuesday nights God Evenings. My initial response was that we had tried with mixed results in the past to get teenagers out to mid-week events like cell groups and that our main focus is on our Friday night and Sunday events as well as school contact and one on one mentoring. Some of the leaders mentioned that they would be willing to come and teach and minister within the youth programs if the youth don’t attend.

This got us going as a team. We realised that our ministry at present is foundational, personal and issue-driven – and not leading in areas like openess to the supernatural realm, or teaching on faith. We sense that we need to bring our teens to the place where their faith is developed to receive from God.

But we also do not want to forfeit the opportunity for teens at His People to miss out on what God is doing – so our tentative (i.e we will commit this to further prayer in next two days) decisions are:

1. We will promote the God Evenings in our Friday and Sunday events – sharing how we have been experiencing God in deeper ways lately and have set aside these evenings to seek God for a wider outpouring of His Spirit.

2. We will personally speak with teens who are following after Jesus to encourage them to start preparing their hearts for what God is going to do and have them pray about attending the sessions.

3. We will communicate with their parents at some stage probably via letter to inform them of where we believe that our church and ministry is heading in terms of openess to God.

4. We will continue to develop an environment of trust between adult leaders and teenagers  so that our teens know that we are on a journey together and are not without direction and focus.

We came away from our meeting with a firm conviction that we are responsible to shepherd the teenagers at His People Christian Church into this new season in their lives and the life of the church.

The igniteSTAFF Planning Process

As our team planned for a 30-minute session in a high school I observed that we have developed a process over the past months that enables us to produce creative and relevant material in our ministry.Here are 4 steps and some notes about the process itself:

1. What is the topic that we are teaching? We begin with the obvious identification of the topic that we are covering – it must be relevant to teenagers, and build on what we have done before otherwise we are totally off track.

2. What is the take-away we are expecting? We next identify as specifically as possible what we want the teens to think, do or be as a result of the session.

3, What is the interaction we are creating? We always spend time figuring out how we can involve the teens in what they are learning. This has led us into exploring contemplative practises or experiential journeys or discussion styles.

4. What is the media we are using? We look at songs, images and movies that teenagers relate to that help to illustrate or prepare teens to hear the message we believe God is wanting us to share with them. we edit and re-edit everything done to the irreducible minimun to ensure that the media and activities actually help us communicate with teens rather than overshadow the event.

Finally, here are some insights that I discovered about how we collaborate together in shaping something that is unique and effective:

* We ask tough questions about what each person brings to the table – we allow our opinions to be shaped by what other team members think.

* We don’t rescue each other or take over someone’s responsibility for an event or impartation but we are always willing to help out where it is needed.

* We go away after the initial planning time and spend a few days developing what has been created and then bring it back to the group for a final check up and tweaking where necessary.

* We meet one last time and the person responsibile to facilitate the event presents the “final” product for last minute checking and reflection.

* We pray that God will move despite all our hard work at being relevant, creative and accurate to the Word of God – we know that unless God works we labour in vane!

* We meet after the event to talk about what was effective and what followup us needed.

What do you think of this process? How do you work as a team to create resources?

The Move of God

God is clearly moving across South Africa in unprecedented ways. All over the country we are hearing reports of how God is touching lives and in many places there are dramatic manifestations taking place. As a church, at His People Johannesburg, we are seking to be open to what God is doing while ensuring that we “govern” the church and people through these times.

I was inspired today to hear that John Wesley once said: “‘If I can’t have revival without the mess, then give me revival with the mess.” In any move of God there will be three things involved: God himself, the devil and the flesh. We will know the true from the false by the fruit: there will be greater missional activity and greater sacrifice on behalf of people.

Andrew Murray said that the Holy spirit is the presence and the power of God. We are not just seeking after manifestations of God (ie. the power of God), but a climate in which the character of God is experienced (the presence of God). May God continue to lead and guide us as we experience more of His sovereign presence in our midst!

23 August 2009

Don’t Be Cheap

I learnt a great proverb while I was growing up:  “Goed koop is duur koop.” For those who are not up to speed with Afrikaans or Dutch, it is translated roughly as: “Buy cheap and it wil cost you!”

I just wish that I had applied that wisdom last week when I spent hours setting up a free website – I am talking hours past midnight and hours in the day too – only to realise that creating a proper website that I wanted is beyond the freebie stuff out there and it was just not going to meet my needs.

I just wish that I had opened my wallet and bought my own web domain in the beginning because I ended up buying into a web storage facility for the large number of audio and powerpoint files that I needed to upload – so that cost me money, and then I realised that the site was really slow (I can hear my dad saying: “Well you got what you paid for it!” Cheap skate!).

Someone once said: “If something is worth doing, it is worth doing properly”. So, now I am all set up (after a little investment from my credit card) with my own domain (http://www.ymresourcer.com) that should give me the space I need to share what I create or gather for use in youth ministry with as broad an audience as possible.

Sounds a little like the attitude that King David reflected when he said: “I will not offer anything that costs me nothing!” (2 Samuel 24:24). Here’s to investing in the kingdom of God!

Follow Me

Paul said it first, “Follow me, as I follow Christ.” In the Twitter world of the 21st century, “follow me” means something very different. For the past three weeks I have being exploring the world of Twitter. If you choose to follow me there, don’t think you will get daily updates of where I am and what I am eating. For that you’ll have to find me on Facebook – and even there you may be disappointed.

Graeme Codrington gave me this helpful ditsinction that Facebook is for Who You Know, while Twitter is for What You Know. I will be uploaded periodic tweets as I come across short insights or web articles of interest and I will continue to use Facebook to stay in touch relatonally with people.

This Blog will give me an opportunity to post longer insights into what I are learning about youth ministry in the context of the team that I am leading and from what God is showing me in other spheres of my life.

It is my desire that these various media will work together to provide an integrated resource to the body of Christ – oh, and I plan to have a lot of fun along the way!

So you can follow me:
On Twitter: http://twitter.com/marktittley
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marktittley

Working Together

On Wednesday this past week our monthly Unity Fraternal gathering took place. The Unity Fraternal consists of a group of youth pastors from different church backgrounds who meet once a month for sharing, encouragement and planning of corporate gatherings. Our youth ministries meet together once a term at one of our churches and once a year for a camp type event.

This week was a real highlight where we just spent time each sharing where we were at – some of us had returned from the annual Change Agents Youth Leadership Conference so we have much to share. But the value of the time was in sharing about our needs and also insights that God had given to us from his work and experiences since our last gathering a month ago.

We have an upcoming event that we briefly planned around, but we work hard at making sure our monthly gathering do not get swamped by planning time. We are committed to relating and ministering to each other and want that to stay the focus of our time together.

Historically churches have not been quick to work together, so we are realy excited about what God has been doing in our midst over the past two years that the Unity Fraternal has been gathering.

Up and Blogging Again!

I have some experience a few years back wth blogging but it did not last. Hopefully this time will be different! I am excited about the possibility of uploading thoughts, experience and short impartations to this website and will work at being faithful over the coming months.

We are learning so much as a youth staff at igniteYOUTH, the youth ministry of His People Christian Church in Johannesburg, and it is a shame to not share out of our experiences. I am deeply indebted to my colleagues, Andrew Falkson and Mthawelanga Nkonzo, truly I am learning from them as much as I am leading them.

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