I’m reading a great book called, ‘Deliverance’, by Jon Thompson.

I am learning so much that it takes me a long time to get through a chapter because of note taking. 

Today’s chapter is just too good to keep to myself! 

The premise of the book is about deliverance from demonic forces, but it is so much more than that. The depth of study is just fantastic.

Back to today!

Revival 

We all want to see it don’t we?

This is what Jon Thompson says and I agree.

There are three components to revival:^[1]

1. Emphasis and encouragement of spiritual disciplines. i.e. prayer, fasting, bible study, solitude and silence.

2. Recognition, identification and use of spiritual gifts.

3. Expectation that God does work, is working and will work through His Church.

If ANY of these components is ignored or only given lip service, what God is doing will be missed or quickly fade.

We all know the stats around prayer and bible study, but I googled it again anyway. There were lots of them and none of them made for good reading.  The average was 5 minutes a day; One social media post that someone had written a couple of years ago said 27 minutes a week which is even less than 5 minutes a day!

If ANY of these components is ignored or only given lip service, what God is doing will be missed or quickly fade.

If that stat doesn’t change, we’re not going to see revival.

I hear a lot about churches that are timed to the minute. Shorter services, no anointing, but well-polished presentations. We even have production teams now. Lights, music, action. Sanctuaries that are so dark because of the stage lighting that people can’t read their paper Bibles (that’s a dying habit too). Power pointed sermons (nothing wrong with that if the holy spirit is allowed in to change the sermon at any point) AI written sermons. Did you know that there is a website (Probably more than one) dedicated to writing sermons? Their strap line is, ‘never scramble for a sermon again’. But, I guess, if leaders aren’t doing number 1 on Thompson’s list, they have to rely on AI. 

If we don’t allow or have time for the Holy Spirit to move or speak in our gatherings, we’re not going to see revival. 

Jon Thompson says,

The Spiritual disciplines are how we walk post-conversion and the spiritual gifts are how we serve post-conversion^[i]

God decides, out of the 21 gifts, which He wants to give you. They are available to every Christian. But, no-one has them all and not everyone gets the same. 

Thompson divides them into three groups: Love gifts; Word gifts; Power gifts;

The Love gifts – those that demonstrate the mercy or love of God. i.e. Administration, helps, mercy and giving

The Word gifts – those that continually clarify who God is and what he is doing. i.e Teaching, exhortation/encouragement, apostleship, leadership/ruling, shepherding/pastoring and evangelism

The Power gifts – those that demonstrate that God is in the room right now/He is an interventionist all the time: prophecy, tongues, interpretation, miracles, intercession, faith, discernment of spirits, words of wisdom/knowledge and healing. 

He goes into detail of every gift, but you’ll have to buy the book for that! Click on the link below.

Deliverance

He says this:

If you are missing, ignoring or rejecting one of these three elements in your church, it will be imbalanced.

Of course, God could blow a wind at any time and send revival, and every revival is a move of God, but only ever after there has been a move of us.

As John and I seek to create a new wine skin, I want the above thoughts to be front and centre of every church we plant. 

A scripture that I have used a lot lately is in 1 Corinthians 3:6-8

⁶ I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷ So, then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸ Now he who plants and he who waters are one,^[a] and each will receive his own reward according to his own labour.

Only God can cause our churches to grow, but only if we plant and water. And that, as far as Jon Thompson and me are concerned, is mostly a spiritual thing.

Until next time!

D xx

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^[1] Deliverance, Jon Thompson, pg 195

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^[i] Deliverance, Jon Thompson, Page 196

They say (whoever they are) that to attract people to what you want to say, you need a title that will catch the eye. I hope this one did and I hope that by the time I’ve finished this blog, you will see what I’m saying.

John & I have been leading churches for 37 years. It’s such a unique, hard, privileged, emotional, nightmarish, wonderful, blessed call. If you lead church, you will understand all those emotions! Some days you drive home feeling on a high and that you’re about to take the land for Jesus and other days, you wish you did ANYTHING else! 

The story goes of the late Wynne Lewis, that in his early days, very often he would post his resignation letter on Sunday night and then on Monday morning he would be waiting by the post box to take it back! I don’t know how many times he did this, but it is a sentiment that every single leader of a church will relate to.

It’s true that we must learn to just obey God, point people to Jesus and sleep well. Sounds simple, and it is, but it isn’t easy. I read a great quote from a book called ‘deliverance’, by Jon Thompson. “If ministry is causing you sleepless nights or restlessness, then you’ve picked up a responsibility that is not yours” We who lead churches are called to equip people for works of service, we cannot change them. Only God can do that. I’m going to try harder to live by this.

John and I were awake very early today and by 5.15am, I was into my daily Bible readings, I read this and it sparked this blog. 

In the twenty-seventh year of Israel’s King Jeroboam, Azariah^[a] son of Amaziah became king of Judah. ² He was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jecoliah; she was from Jerusalem. ³ Azariah did what was right in the Lord’s sight just as his father Amaziah had done. ⁴ Yet the high places were not taken away; the people continued sacrificing and burning incense on the high places.

A strange few verses from 2 Kings 15:1-5. But let me say what I felt God speaking to me about in these verses. 

If you know the Old Testament, then you’ll have read similar verses to this many times during the time of the Kings of Israel and Judah. “They did what was right in the Lord’s sight, BUT the high places were not taken away.”

So many churches are doing what is right – social action. Food banks, clothes banks, breakfast clubs, after school clubs, warm spaces, and the list could go on. 

Are these things right, absolutely! But should the church be doing them at the expense of leaving the ‘high places’ alone?

If I were to translate high places to today, for the purpose of this blog and what I felt God speaking to me about it would be this: High places are where leaders need to go to take on the powers of darkness; to get prayer as the central engine room of our churches; to preach the whole, convicting, deep truth of God and not a 15 minute ‘ditty’ that keeps the majority happy – there is a place for a 15 minute light sermon, don’t get me wrong, but if that is the norm, so we don’t upset anyone, then the high places won’t be moved. The high places could be the challenge of lifestyle that is contrary to the Kingdom of God or the challenge of character where a person is highly talented but is an objectional person. ‘Oh but they’re such a talented worship leader, so we just overlook the ‘high place’ in their life – if we challenge it, they will probably leave’. And here lies a massive reason why we don’t tackle the tough things. ‘If I challenge that, they will probably leave and what will that look like on my returns to HQ?’

Numbers have the potential of keeping us leaders on the track of just ‘doing what is right’ at a certain level but not ‘doing what is right’ where the high places are concerned.

Numbers are important. If no one is following you, then you’re probably not a leader. Numbers give a denomination the knowledge of where it is at. But what numbers give us the real picture?

A church could record 200 (“if everyone is there” – haha – have you used this sentence, I have!) on a Sunday, and the prayer meeting numbers are 30 – What’s the real number? I would say, the prayer meeting. They are the people that have signed on to take on the high places. Sunday numbers aren’t the core. The mid-week stuff shows you who is, those who are in the trenches with you seeking to advance the kingdom. We have found every church that we have served in has a core, maybe we should just count them? Maybe we should just count those who have signed up to do church as they did in Acts?

Acts 2:42:

“They devoted themselves to 1. The apostles teaching; 2. Fellowship; 3. Breaking of bread; 4. Prayer.

Does your/our church reflect that?

Churches that we’ve either led or been a part of, until we changed it, ‘scored’ badly on at least two of those things, namely, the breaking of bread – once a month or every other week and Prayer, again – once a month or every other week.

If you only do these foundational things once a month, people could go through their church life not doing it at all. Holidays, sickness, work, these things all get in the way so if you miss it once, you’ve gone two months without cooperate prayer and communion. 

If you picture church as a jigsaw puzzle, how many pieces are social action and how many are spiritual taking down high places?

Social action is the right thing, but it must not be instead of or in the place of pushing back the powers of darkness, preaching the full counsel of God and challenging people’s characters and/or lifestyles that are not in obedience to God. 

The world can do social action; only the church can do spiritual action.

I’m only interested in the high bar that Jesus has set us. Do we want churches that are a mile wide and only a centimetre deep or the other way around? I know what John and I want and it’s what we will plant or re-purpose in Wales. On January 25th, 2026, ‘Kingdom Life Church’, Porthcawl will be born. We will begin with the high places as we always have, and we will only do social action as God calls us to it. The high places will be the largest pieces of our jigsaw. 

If you lead a church, do an inventory. What is taking up most of your time? Has your daily time with God gone by the wayside because you’re too busy doing what is right? If you have a lot of social action jigsaw pieces, and you can say we had ‘hundreds through the doors’, but you don’t have a prayer meeting, maybe you need to re-evaluate. 

Maybe your jigsaw is just right. Well done. Keep going. If you’re not getting hundreds through the door but you have some dependable, Kingdom-minded disciples, build with them. Our master only had twelve. 

If we need to, let’s raise the stakes and do better. The world needs a strong church. 

Until next time

D x

I posed this question recently to leaders – only in my head – “Are you in love with Jesus or the position that he probably never gave you in the first place?”

I was watching a documentary a while back of very famous preacher who ended up with a disgraceful fall. When he was younger, he couldn’t see what he wanted to do with his life but what he did see was that being a pastor gave you a platform and significance. He became a pastor.  I don’t know if that was his main reason for going into the ministry but that’s certainly what was implied on this documentary, so it was a factor. Too many past and recent events make me wonder whether people in the pulpit, in charge of churches are more in love with that position than they are with Jesus. Why do I say that,  simply because some of the decisions that are made whilst in that position – from angry outbursts, treating people terribly, bullying, manipulation to gross sin –  For me, the words bullying and anger should NEVER be in the same sentence as ‘leader’ or ‘pastor’.

The many stories I’ve heard about the way these leaders have spoken to the ones in their care, there’s no other word for it but outrageous that we can use that position to treat people in a way that Jesus never ever would.

Sad to say that some rise to the very top without dealing with that tragic list above. 

How do we fix it? Can we train leaders better? Do we need to say ‘no’ more often than ‘yes’? 

When a denomination or movement is short of leaders, it’s hard to say ‘no’ – churches need leaders. 

Too often though, saying ‘yes’ causes much bigger problems. Maybe we should have fewer well-lead churches, which doesn’t look as good in the portfolio (does Jesus even care about that?) But it would mean less pain for the those who are caught in the cross fire of an angry or sinful leader. 

Who am I to say any of this except I care deeply for God’s church, and I see a great need to make sure we have the right people ‘driving the buses’ to advance God’s kingdom. How great would it be if those who oversee denominations could spend most of their time with joyful celebration and less time putting out fires. 

Until next time

D xx