Shoutlouder

Deal with the Bystander Effect

// August 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Inspiration, Sunday, Thoughts

I’ve been reading a bit of a clever book by a Psychologist recently – thought I could do with a bit of brain food for a change – called 59 Seconds by Professor Richard Wiseman. I’ll review it properly eventually (if I can manage to understand it all) but a thought from it struck me as I read and has crept into my thinking lately as I consider how we move as a church from where we are now into a place of greater growth and increase.

Some psychologists somewhere with a little too much time on their hands have discovered an interesting human response (or lack of response) called the “bystander effect”. Whilst studying people’s willingness to act in various situations they discovered that people are less likely to get involved when part of a crowd. For example, someone walking down a street and dropping their groceries is less likely to have someone come to their aid on a busy street than when there might only be a couple of people passing. The reason… we are less likely to help in a crowd because we think someone else will do it! Hence rather than respond we become an unintentional bystander.

When I read that I thought FLIP! That means every time I preach a message to my congregation with a challenge for them to be a person of influence in their world, or to take time to serve someone, encourage someone, or reach out to their family and friends with the gospel of Christ – every time I’m looking for a response from a crowd then the majority of them are thinking, “someone else will do it!” I may as well be shouting at an empty street if what the Psycho’s are saying is true!

We can’t afford to have a bystander effect in our churches and even more so in our own lives! And yet it’s so true – how many times has someone challenged us and we’ve been moved to act… that is until our brain begins to conveniently abdicate responsibility to the friends who REALLY need to hear that word!

Listen up (if you’ve not already phased out to ‘bystander’ status) – the call of God for YOUR life is for YOUR life and not the person sat next to you in church. The opportunity for God to use YOU is an opportunity to use YOU and not the person sat in the third row and five seats in from the aisle.

Let’s deal with the ‘bystander’ in us and choose instead to respond to God’s call on our lives. Stop thinking He’s speaking to someone else and realise His attention is on you…. Yes that means You! (hello! Yes and you too!) and you!

sunday revisted

// April 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Sunday, wisdom

I loved speaking about Marriage on Sunday. The whole thing came about simply through the prompting of the Spirit… and to be honest it didn’t take a lot of prompting to realise that around church there are a lot of single guys eyeing up the single girls… so it seemed more than apt to bring up the subject of love and marriage. But more than that I believe that’s part of the role of a Pastor is to bring wisdom to the big subjects that can often rule our lives!

So I really enjoyed speaking on Marriage as it gave me a chance to dig deep into a subject and bring out some clear wisdom from the Word of God. And as it turned out it also gave everyone a great opportiunity to laugh at all the fopah’s that a preacher is bound to make when talking about Sex and Marriage with his wife sitting on the front row! Anyhow – I think I managed to get away with not too many embarassing revelations…

My key thought was to look at what God Intended for us in the first place. You just need to look at the first couple of chapters of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve to see that God intended man and woman to be in marriage from the moment He created us. Marriage didn’t happen after a few weeks when God saw how good Adam & Eve looked together! He didn’t warm up to Adam and say.. have you thought about asking Eve out? No marriage was the form in which God created them both.

God also intended from the begining that we’d have someone suitable - that He has someone in mind for you who is the right person, so we need to stop pursuing any and every good looking chick or hunk when we should be pursuing God’s purpose for our life.

God intended for us to become ONE in marriage - an expression of His own ONEness and the ONEness we find in our relationship with Christ. How amazing is that – and that’s why sex is for marriage alone!

Finally God intended that we walk in the garden with Him. Adam was ashamed after eatin the apple and hid – he missed walking in the Garden with his Lord. But praise God that Jesus came and died for the sin that we have so that once again we can walk in the Garden with our Lord. Don’t worry what’s in your past or how badly you’ve done relationships / marriage. You can start afresh under His grace!

Love to hear any testimonies of lives changed though – make sure if you were there that you leave a comment and let me know how God has impacted your life! That’s what it’s all about after all.

I was left almost in tears on Sunday night as a young girl testified to how a prophetic word I’d given literally saved her from going through with suicidal thinking. I found the whole experience incredibly humbling and left me in awe of the incredible work that God can do through us when we allow Him the liberty to move!

So I’m believing for marriages and relationships to thrive in Hope City Church because of the foundations we began reinforcing on Sunday.

sunday revisited

// April 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Sunday

So the best thing about Sunday – to be really honest – was the dedication of my little girl Ania. I know… I love church and we saw some people make decisions to follow Christ – which is REALLY REALLY AWESOME – but I have to say my real highlight was the dedication and a chance to place my little girl’s future into the hands of her amazing God.

Some people might think a dedication is just a nice ceremony that people do when they have kids – for some it might be a christening… but I believe EVERYTHING we do in the sight of God is significant. Whether you’re stood in an altar call, reading out marriage vows, going under the water in Baptism and the other many ceremonial practices we have around church… you can either take them as just something you do – or you can see that behind the natural there is a supernatural world at work and what we do and declare over our lives are not just words but powerful statements that resound across eternity! That might sound deep… but it’s the truth….. tha’s what Paul was trying to get across to the Ephesians when he said:

¹⁰Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. ¹¹Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. ¹²For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. ¹³Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

We get so lost in the imaginary world of movies and fiction that we forget that there is a very real, SUPERreal world at work around us and what we say, do, believe is a key to seeing the power of God at work in our lives. I fully believe that what took place over Ania’s life on Sunday morning was a powerful declaration of intent and has set her life on a collision course with the plans and purposes God has for.

Exciting stuff…!

sunday revisited

// March 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Sunday

It was the week when the Clocks went forward so always fun to see who forgets. The funniest thing had to be a number of iPhone friends who all use it as an alarm clock and changed the time before going to bed – not realising that the iPhone automatically accounts for daylight saving and so they ended up waking 2 hours earlier instead of 1!!!

Anyhow – great Sunday morning in Leeds. This was our 5th Sunday in the building and only my 3rd time preaching on the new stage. I have to say I’m still getting used to it. It feels like the lights are only 2 feet away which makes you feel like you’re preaching in the Sahara – and we still need to work on some of the lighting and sound to make it work best for the entire room. But the experience of being in a new building has been amazing! We’ve had a few people over the weeks arrive simply because they pass the building on the bus or on the way to work in a morning… talk about location, location, location.

Been preaching for the last couple of week on ‘Keeping it Burning’. We’ve entered a great season in the life of the church. Last week one of the girls got healed right in the middle of the service without any special laying on of hands. Plus we’re seeing a couple of decisions to follow Christ every week. But one thing I want to see on everyone’s agenda is the need for us to actually REACH the people in our world and not just have a happy club on a Sunday.

Leviticus 24:1-4 is one of those little nuggets of Old Testament Gold. It talks of the instructions given to Aaron to keep the lamps burning that it up the place where God’s presence resided amongst the Israelites. God’s instructions were that the lamps must be kept burning ‘continually!’ The people of Israel were to know where their God was night and day!

Jesus passed these instructions onto us when he said “you are the light of the world…” It’s our responsibility now to ‘shine’ and make known the presence of God on planet earth! And this is not some day job or hobby… but we need to keep on shining continually!

We need to tend the LIGHT OF LIFE that is within us and ensure that we are shining at all times!

passionate sundays

// November 17th, 2008 // No Comments » // Inspiration, Sunday

We had a great morning in our Leeds congregation yesterday. There’s just something absolutely brilliant about our meetings at the moment. It seems that everyone is so passionate about pursuing God that it fills the place with a great sense of praise, faith and expectation for God to move!

It makes such a difference when the church comes together in this kind of unity – for God responds to those who chase after him, who choose to stand on his promises and grasp hold of the inheritance he has for them.

And it’s not stopping on Sunday as I’m hearing more and more of the God-stories that are taking place during the week. The group who are so excited about the Word of God that they are now meeting together regularly to study the Bible more; the new Christian who found himself in a difficult situation at work and having found a place to cry out to God in prayer saw the whole thing turn around for good; the new opportunities for people to speak to their friends about God; new people in church every week and more importantly more people making decisions to follow Jesus than ever before!

Right now I’m doing a series from Paul’s letter to the EPHESIANS. I’m really loving just spending time in one book, slowly picking through the banquet of goodness that God has provided in his word. I could spend literally years on EPHESIANS – (I won’t – so if you’re in our Leeds congregation you don’t need to worry) – but I love how much it says about WHO WE ARE in Christ and WHAT HE HAS GIVEN us through Christ.

The greatest thing you can do in life is to discover WHO God created you to be. What has he done for you and what does that mean for you today? To discover you are created by God’s hands himself and not off some production line, to find out that you’ve been adopted to be one of his children, given the same inheritance rights as Jesus himself, seated in heavenly places, called a co-heir with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords… to know the FULL extent of God’s grace, mercy and redemption… I could go on…. but every piece of the puzzle starts to build an incredible picture of God’s love for each one of us and the incredible power and blessing he has put on our lives.

So why not try living today as the person God has created and saved you to be… start living as his child today. Imagine what you would do if you’re Dad had all the resources of heaven available at your disposal? Just imagine… then go and do!