It is good to have something nice or exciting to look forward to. Perhaps you have not yet had your summer holiday and you are looking forward to that?
Looking forward at QPBC.
There are a couple of exciting things to look forward to at QPBC in the Autumn.
Transforming Sport, Friday 6th September with Franco Smith.
Transforming events are always a great opportunity to be invitational and bring not-yet-Christian friends, work colleagues, and family.
Franco has built a reputation for building team cultures in which the performance of the team is greater than the sum of its parts. When he took on the head coach role at Glasgow Warriors, they had just had their worst season for a long time. Yet, a mere two years later, with little change in the players available to him, he led Glasgow Warriors to win the URC Championship.
At this Transforming event Franco will speak to how his Christian faith informs how he, in a high-performance sports environment, builds cultures of growth (both personal and as a team) in adversity as well as when things are good.
I’m sure there will be lessons from his sports environment that we will be able to take into our workplaces, studying, volunteering etc.
I’m expecting tickets will go fast for this event, so sign up now to avoid disappointment.
Launch of QPBC School of Leadership – sign up now for October 2024.
Multiple prominent Christians, John Mark Comer springs to mind, have, at least since the pandemic, commented that the Church in the West is suffering from a crisis in discipleship.
While those commenting on this crisis may say different things, there are two trends which emerge:
(1) Discipleship needs to be intentional
(2) Discipleship needs to go deep
The QPBC School of Leadership aims to be a vehicle through which as a church we can engage intentionally in deep discipleship.
Part 1 of the school will start in October 2024 where we will be doing the Emotional Healthy Relationships part of the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship course developed by Peter and Geri Scazzero.
Over the past year we as a Staff Team (Iain, Mairi, Josh, and myself) have done the Emotionally Healthy Discipleship course, and over the past number of months, the SLT have completed the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality part of the course.
The QPBC School of Leadership (QPBC SoL for short) is open to anyone. You do not need to currently be in church leadership to do the course or benefit from the course. This course is open to the whole church!
As a Staff Team and SLT, we are really excited about the fruit that doing this course will bring in individual lives and in the life of the church as we seek to be intentional in our discipleship for the sake of Jesus’ mission in the world.
For more information and to sign up for the course follow this link: QPBC SoL Emotional Healthy Relationships
Mindful of the Present
While it is good to have things to look forward to, we do not want to be so future-focused that we are not mindful of the present.
This Sunday we are going to explore Psalm 55: 1 – 8.
Biblical scholar John Goldingay, drawing on verse 22, titles this psalm “How to throw things at Yahweh”. This Sunday we will not make it as far as verse 22.
In the section we will look at, I’m currently mulling over verses 6 and 7. If I were to put the sentiment of these verses into the Glasgow vernacular I think the Psalmist would say “Haud the bus I want tae geit aff!” [Translation: Stop the bus, I want to get off].
How would you sum up these opening eight verses?
See you Sunday.
Brodie