Cloud and Fire

It’s time to be honest with whoever is reading; As a pastor, I was often busy doing ministry, doing what was expected, but I realise now, that I was not quite in the right space with my own gifting and calling.

Pastoral concerns weighed me down, and, instead of thriving, I burned out.

As I travel throughout Ireland, I have started to realise that when I move forward from here it will be into a very different season of ministry. I know God has released me from something old to bring me to something new, perhaps a more apostolic (read that as pioneering) or relational-evangelist type ministry… as I look around there is not much funding for church planters, visionaries or relational evangelists, and yet the church needs those people as much as it needs shepherds and teachers.

This Sunday past I met in a church filled with prophetic types… it was an inbalanced church, yet it was authentic and I was blessed. I ask myself though, why is it that some are given to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers and yet our mainstream churches end up generally filled with a leadership (paid and unpaid) made up only of shepherds and teachers and our ‘others’ often have to go elsewhere?

I want to just sit with this and imagine a different type of church (or linked up churches together), will you dream with me?