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Opportunity (Acts 3:12-26)

Peter saw his opportunity and addressed the crowd. “People of Israel,” he said, “what is so surprising about this? And why stare at us as though we had made this man walk by our own power or godliness? (Acts 3:12)What is evident from the previous verse is that Peter was not looking for an opportunity to preach the gospel when healed the man born lame. He did not think, “If I heal this man, it will draw a great crowd and that will give me a chance to tell people about Jesus.”Furthermore...

What would I most want my team to know at the start of a new year

If you have ever tried to jump start a car, you’ll know that the time where most effort is required is at the start. As we push hard and as the wheels slowly begin to turn, inertia takes over and the effort required diminishes as the car begins to roll down the road.One of the challenges of youth ministry at the start of a new year is inertia.At the end of the previous year things were rolling along quite nicely but after the summer break there are new leaders on board and new young people com...

Nothing (Acts 3:1-11)

But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!”. (Acts 3:2)The account of the healing of the lame man at the temple gate is astounding for a number of reasons. Here was a man familiar to all who entered the temple. He had been lame from birth and so likely had sat there for many years, begging for money.At Peter’s command this unfortunate man was instantly healed – one moment he was s...

Life (Acts 2:42-47)

And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. (Acts 2:47)A great temptation we face in churches and the ministries within them is to seek to imitate what we deem to be spiritual Life. We have a picture in mind of what a Spirit-filled church looks like and so we set about trying to imitate it.With a mindset such as this, we tend to read the book of Acts as a blueprint of what we are to do instead of a description of how Jesus builds His church.The passage at hand ill...

Response (Acts 2:37-41)

Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” (Acts 2:37)At the conclusion of Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost, people cried out, “What should we do?” to which Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” As a result, we read that “Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the churc...

Preach (Acts 2:22-36)

 “God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this.” (Acts 2:32)Here we have the first sermon preached in the history of the church, and, unsurprisingly, it is about the resurrected Christ. Peter, full of the Holy Spirit, stood to address the crowd gathered for the Feast of Pentecost and immediately spoke on the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, drawing on prophecies made by King David in the book of Psalms. It is impossible to think of a more relevant me...

Spirit (Acts 2:14-21)

‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17)It is of note that the first sermon preached in the “church era” began with a reference to the past. When Peter stood to explain to the gathered crowd what they were seeing, he quoted the words of the prophet Joel in the Old Testament.He did this because he wanted his listeners to understa...

Amazed (Acts 2:1-13)

They stood there amazed and perplexed. “What can this mean?” they asked each other.  But others in the crowd ridiculed them, saying, “They’re just drunk, that’s all!”. (Acts 2:12-13) The desire on the part of leaders to run services, programmes and events that people refer to as “amazing”, is understandable. After all, we serve an amazing God, so naturally we want our efforts to reflect that reality and evoke amazement among those who attend. Surely, it’s not wrong to...

Appoint (Acts 1:15-26)

So they nominated two men: Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias… Then they cast lots, and Matthias was selected to become an apostle with the other eleven. (Acts 1:23,26) It is undoubtedly true, that it is easier to appoint someone to a leadership position than it is to move them out of it! Divisive leaders can harm the team while ineffective leaders can do harm to those who are being led. Equally, a leader without the necessary gifting and passion, can not only wea...

Accord (Acts 1:9-14)

These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers. (Acts 1:14) While it was significant that Jesus’ disciples obediently waited in Jerusalem as He had instructed them, it is even more significant to note the manner in which they waited. Here we read that they waited “with one accord”.Jesus' great hope for the church – the number one item on His list of prayers to the Father was, “that they m...

Wait (Acts 1:1-8)

He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father. (Acts 1:4)I remember the first time I ever saw a microwave oven.It was astounding to my young mind that you could put cold food inside a cold metal box, press a button and voila! In no time at all, the food was hot!Looking back, it was, to me at least, a pivotal moment – a switch from a delayed, to an instant world. From slow to fast. From later to now. From “eventually” to “immediately”.Of cours...

Ministry and the Book of Acts

Ever wondered about the purpose of the Book of Acts?Its full title is, “The Acts of the Apostles” which is accurate, at least at one level. As we begin to read Acts chapter 1, page after page describe the things those early apostles did and what they experienced. It makes a great story as the narrative quickly progresses from miracle to persecution to salvation and back to miracles.But while it is a book outlining the Acts of the Apostles, at another level, it is not really about them at all...

Ministering Life through the Spirit

God has enabled us to be ministers of his new covenant. This is a covenant not of written laws, but of the Spirit. The old written covenant ends in death; but under the new covenant, the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6)A great danger we face in youth ministry is presenting the gospel as an exercise in sin management and elimination. The tendency is to want to tell people in our preaching and our pastoral care to “try harder”.The results of such efforts often lead to a twofold outcome.Th...

Youth Ministry in Spirit and in Truth

But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. (John 4:23)When Jesus spoke these words to a woman at a well in Samaria, He was answering a not-uncommon question that stood at the heart of an argument between Jews and Samaritans. According to Jews, the earthly centre of worship was in Jerusalem, while Samaritans held it to be on Mount Gerizim.Meeting a man who see...