The First Rooftop

It was an amazing experience to be leading the first ever Rooftop Cluster in Virginia Beach.

I arrived at Heathrow terminal 4 praying that my flight would not be delayed as I had just an hour to get through immigration in NY city. As it was the flight landed in New York and hour early. My flight down to Norfolk Virginia also arrived about 40 minutes early so instead of a mad rush to the venue I even had time to check into my room and have a shower.


Around 20 people from a number of churches had gathered for this first cluster and following an introduction to More to Life we all went to the rooftop of the Hilton hotel in Virginia Beach and considered, in three small groups, what new vision God wanted to give us in terms of reaching people in the city.

Each group looked at the story of Peter’s vision in Acts chapter 10 and 11, the moment he received a vision from God that he should not limit God’s grace to the familiar but should be open for a new thing. It was great to see people moving around and looking across the city, sitting in groups and discussing – praying for a vision from God.

Feedback the following morning was just amazing with people sharing how God had spoken to them in such meaningful and personal ways, helping them to see the lost as He sees them. One pastor spoke of this experience as among the most significant experiences of his life! In spontaneous response to this feedback we all joined together in a large circle, facing outwards, and prayed together that God would help each of us to take the next step in reaching the lost. The silent but awesome presence of God at the end of this prayer time was tangible.

Following this I was able to present and explain the vision and approach of More to Life and demonstrate how it can be used to help churches to reach the lost people in their communities. The engagement from all who were there was great and each of them spoke of how God had helped them to receive a fresh passion and energy to reach the lost.

The next step for all who attended is to now go and lead More to Life in their local church. I will meet with the cluster again in December to offer guidance and support as we pray together for the Christmas outreach that will take place.

Overall the experience was awesome! I can’t wait for the next clusters in Richmond, in July.

Dennis

Oh my goodness. It has been months since my last blog, and so much has happened since I last wrote. Here are some highlights.


The most exciting thing for me is that the More to Life materials that I have been writing (published by Lifeway in the US) www.lifeway.com are now completed and released. The quality of these is great and the interest in them is huge. I have taken my own picture of these on my table at home just to show that they are really here!

We will soon be beginning an initiative in 3 states in North East America (Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York) called the Rooftop. The Rooftop is a series of clusters taking place across the 3 states. Leaders will attend and I will be training them in the More to Life approach with a view that they will then use it in their church and introduce it to others. A key aspect each cluster will be the rooftop experience where we will go to a rooftop overlooking the city and seek a new vision for the lost. I encourage you to read Acts chapters 10 and 11 – you will see, I believe, what we feel God is inspiring us to do. If you want to share anything with me about these then please email me.
In addition I have just completed a series of meetings across Texas where there was considerable interest among significant churches both in using More to Life but also championing it to other churches. I was particularly inspired by meeting with one ‘mega church’ senior pastor who thinks he may teach More to Life to the whole church over six Sunday’s because he wants all the people in his church to engage in faith sharing.
Beyond the US, Lifeway are also providing support for me to continue the development of More to Life in several other English speaking countries around the world. This is a great (and yet another) ‘God thing’ where so many of the contacts I have been building with the Baptist World Alliance can now be resourced by Lifeway. Also, I am speaking at an international distributors meeting with Lifeway in St Louis in June this year and a really exciting piece of news is that Lifeway have made it possible for me to speak at the international distributors service which is part of a huge conference hosted in the US. I will be speaking to around 300 distributors from all over the world. As I said ‘it is a God thing.’
We will also soon be beginning the production of an Hispanic More to Life ‘Mas a la Vida’ subject to funding. Please pray that interest expressed in this will turn into tangible support for the project.
As well as developing these contacts I have spoken at a number of churches where I have challenged believers to ‘cross the line’ and make a decision to be a believer who shares their faith with others – responses have been so encouraging. The best part each time has been when the pastor has asked people to share out loud why they have come forward. The depth and sincerity of sharing is so exciting – God has been touching many lives and filling people with the passion that He has for the lost.

I will be in touch soon.

Den

The following ‘blog’ has been produced by Rich – Den’s travelling assistant as Den is still in the States and has had an incredibly busy couple of weeks.

“The last two weeks Den and Rich have been in the United States and Canada. The first week was spent on Richmond, Virginia – whilst Den is a well seasoned traveller, this was only Rich’s second time to the USA and so he was very excited about the adventure that they were embarking on!

The first part of the 7 days in Richmond was spent at an evangelism conference called 21C, Den and Rich were hosting some workshops about More to Life which was very well received by people, again showing how God is just opening up new avenues all the time for More to Life in America.

The trip then got disrupted by the snow, at least 10 inches fell overnight, and so we were forced to stay in the hotel! However, God really used this time to show us how he wanted the cluster idea to develop into what we are calling ‘The Rooftop’ gatherings. The clusters which Den is setting up, will come together for a 36 hour period and on the middle evening the group will be taken up to a rooftop over-looking the city. This whole idea came from reading Acts 10 : 1 – Acts 11: 18, when Peter goes up onto the roof to pray, God gives him a new vision and therefore he goes to the gentile house and tells them the gospel. Please pray that during these rooftop moments, the church leaders and church planters involved will be open and allow God to give them a new vision for their cities, one where everything is clean and everyone deserves to know about Jesus!

By Monday, the snow was more manageable and we had our first meetings, when we portrayed the rooftop idea to leaders they said they got “spiritual goose bumps” which was very inspiring because it showed that this idea really was from God and not us! All of these meetings were extremely successful and there will now be four ‘Rooftops’ happening in Virginia State this year, one of which will involve 21 people rather than 7. We also met an incredibly inspiring couple from Chorleywood called Bob and Mary Hopkins, they are church planters and Virginia State are looking to work with them, we had a great evening sharing stories!

After a very effective and successful week in Richmond, we then flew up to Toronto in Canada, after some fun and games at immigration – they did not want to let us in! – we were met by Alvin Lau from the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec (CBOQ) and he took us to our hotel for our first sleep in Canada. On Thursday morning we had breakfast with Gary Nelson, who is General Secretary of Canadian Baptist Ministries (CBM) and he then took us to the offices of CBM where we led Chapel, presenting about Viz-A-Viz Ministries and focussing on More to Life. Please pray that God directs Den correctly as he looks to see how More to Life could work in Canada to help Gods Kingdom grow!

Following on from this, we were met by Tim McCoy who is Director of Youth Ministries within CBOQ and then the three of us travelled 2 and a half hours north to Muskoka Wood, Ontario which was the venue for Blizzard 2010. Muskoka Woods was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, full of God’s amazingness and peace, seriously it was incredible to be there. Rich was particularly amazed, as people would normally pay thousands of pounds to see places like Muskoka Woods, and he has not got a penny yet got to see it, as Den said “God is generous!”

Blizzard conference is mainly for church youth groups, this was the biggest attendance on record, around 700 14+ came and it was an incredible three days. Den and Rich were the speakers for the entire conference and God really spoke powerfully the entire weekend. It was amazing to see him inspire and challenge so many young people to go out and love His world and make a real difference living authentic, faith driven lives for Jesus! Everyone kept saying they loved the authenticity, realness, rawness and passion and so many youth leaders kept telling us how much conversation the talks were causing amongst the young people.

One of many stories we heard was of a 16 year old girl called Tabatha waking up her youth leader called April at 5am Sunday morning to say she wanted to start following Jesus. Very cool!! There were many other stories of kids either starting to follow Jesus, having their eyes open to the radical nature of following Jesus and also youth leaders being encouraged and challenged, God is always amazing and at Blizzard he really did some amazing things! Please pray that all involved with Blizzard won’t just have enjoyed the spiritual retreat but will actually start to walk with Jesus everyday, seriously trying to live life His way in His world!”

Off to the States

Dennis is off to the States for a two and half week tour of Virginia, Canada, New York and Pennsylvania speaking at a couple of conferences (one called Blizzard in Ontario, where he has been warned it is likely to be very cold!) and with various groups in setting up Discover More to Life cluster groups.

Dennis recently recorded a blog which is accessible via the Viz-A-Viz website - http://www.vizaviz.org/latestnews/ - with an update.

Enjoy!!