Our Pastor has taken some time out to relax and soak up the Holy Spirit for the next chapter in his journey. Pastor Mike and Shelagh are away for two months and are spending time in the southern hemisphere to enjoy the local hospitality.

While away they are keeping a record of their journey through a blog that has been created for them – Pastor On Tour.

On this site on 13 May 2008 I talked about the great things that were taking place in Lakeland, Florida with Todd Bentley. Unfortunately and even upsettingly the Revival has now gone a bit sour with poor press coverage from the secular arena and also issues with Todd’s private life also making headlines.

The damming report on ABC News could be excused for some ‘clever’ editing but still rocked the momentum that the Revival had stirred up and the many that were/are being heeled. To add salt to the wound Todd has also split from his wife and many are now calling him a ‘false prophet’.

I disagree though.

I believe that Todd has stirred up real passion for Jesus and has possibly been swept up in the media circus that pursued. In any business environment the key to survival is to delegate and if Todd had stayed focused on what he was being called to do rather than trying to drum up a media frenzy and create international Revivals, he would still be in Lakeland today.

For me, I lost my fire in the belly for this Revival when Todd’s ‘brother and sisters’ at the Revival started delivering the event in Todd’s absence. Fair enough you might say, surely Todd is allowed a break every so often, by why did they try and mimick the physical actions of Todd. Todd was unique in the way that he would rid evil spirits from the sick; the rest just copied and thus could be classed as false prophets!

I pray that Todd can recover from this and prove that he is not another Marjoe Gortner.

As a heterosexual man I fully believe that the bible deters homosexuality on the same level as adultery and some may say that it is the work of the devil, but it is very interesting to view a really strong article written on the BBC website about the current split in the church between pro-gay and anti-gay believers. Well worth a read and certainly starts the brain cells thinking. View the article.

12 months ago I undertook a review of search traffic within Google to understand the search traffic of ‘religions’ within the UK. Click here to view original post.

Back then we highlighted the fact the although there are more references on Google for the term ‘bible’ compared to ‘Koran’, there was though more users searching for religious terms ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islam’.

Well 12 months on and it would appear that the number of references within Google UK for ‘bible’ has increased to 8.8M compared to a leveling for the term ‘Koran’. 12 months ago the ration was 6:1 in favour of the term ‘bible’, that figure now stands at 23:1. So is Christianity really under threat in the UK of distinction, or is just media hype?

What is also interesting is that if we spread the research to the four corners of this planet it would appear that searches for ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ are on the decrease, is this the turning that we have all been awaiting.

Also I wonder why historically traffic for the terms ‘Islam’ seems to decrease around holiday times!

Dilbert strip

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues.”  (1 Corinthians 12:27-28)(NIV)

I have always steered away from guns and gun crime purely for the reason that there are too many innocent lives affected but this activity. For every one person killed by a firearm, there is a network of family and friends who suffer most. This network is then expected to pick-up the pieces and resolve the void left by this crime.

I normally don’t advocate programs on television, but a trailer for one program really got me thinking and to the point that it is a great humbler to the rest of us outside of that world.

A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to see a performance by Teen Challenge in which a reformed group of young chaps provided a really strong performance on growing in a drug and gun culture. It was hard hitting, emotional and most of all to common story that seems to growing. If you ever get a chance to see these guys in action then I would strongly recommend. Click here to view their website.

Gun Crim on Channel 4

How smart is this – a biblical version of the Yellow Pages!

For me it can often be frustrating trying to remember passages that I may have read which I think would be beneficial for the situation I am in, maybe this is all part of my spiritual growth!

Click here to view God’s Yellow Pages.

What can I say that has not already been written or said about the revival currently taking place in Lakeland, Florida?

It was by chance in the middle of April that we started to watch the revival on GOD TV and have been glued to the telly since. We normally watch it the night after the event – rather than staying up till 4am each morning and are rescheduling our life to be able to watch ths! We have even tuned in to the webcam for the current UK revival taking place in Dudley, UK; although a much smaller event, it is equally as inspiring to see people being healed here in the UK.

What is amazing is that Todd is still talking about the great revival to come and this is just the beginning. The number of people being saved is just awesome and I pray that it continues to grow from strength to strength. And isn’t it great that God has chosen somebody like Todd to lead the revival; a man with such a great testimony and a true servant to Jesus has been called to be fearless in the duty he has been called to undertake.

With the media streaming the event, is this truly the first global revival that the planet has seen and placing our hands on the telly or monitors really does feel like we are there. In fact we know a couple in our church who have been also been watching and have noticed improvements in their knee and ears retrospectively. Hallelujah.

I would love to hear from anybody who has actually been to the revival and share their experience of their time there.

Does anyone know of a Christian event in the UK that does not require a small fortune to attend?

I am not talking about the church outreach programs but festivals that I can take the family to. It seems that there is a good profit margin in the production of a festival within the UK and I am not sure who actually profits from it. When I compare this to the US market, it seems that all the best events across the pond are either free or nearly free. This then makes the events inclusive rather than the UK mentality of exclusive. That reminds me of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life description of a perfect church and the lack o them – well maybe these UK events are the first step towards this mentality. What about us chaps who can’t afford to spend huge amounts to attend events?

I am no expert on this subject matter but the only ‘free’ event that I know about in the UK is Creationfest in Devon during August but surely there must be others but where is the Christian event calendar which promotes this – in fact why not start one know. If you know of a good Christian festival which does not requires a month’s wages to attend, then please leave a comment below.