King's Daughters

Back to my church story and this part is a really happy part of the story :) It comes after the terrible mess I made of my life, after my first marriage failed due to my stupidity and after I moved away from Crawley London to start over with my girls. Just a quick glimpse into the low point so that you can appreciate how high the highs were. This is an extract from my very first book, Hope's Journey . "During a very dark and confusing season, when I was living a shameful lifestyle and going through a divorce, God spoke to me.   I was sitting in the hallway drinking wine and crying my heart out.  Sadness, confusion, helplessness and total aloneness was closing in on me. The razor blade was already bloody as I had attempted to hack into my wrists.  Pain consumed me as life had become completely unliveable!   Whilst I sat there crying in agonising pain, I cried out to God to help me.  I said that I didn’t want to live anymore and couldn’t see any way forward except to keep tryin

    Just came across these team training notes, and since my work involves team building and training, I thought this could be helpful. You cannot build a strong organisation without a strong team. You cannot build a strong team without building the people within the team. Sounds obvious, doesn't it? However many times we see our team as a whole module forgetting the components that make up that module. When dealing with a team I try to keep things as simple as I can. This helps towards effective communication. The chart below has helped me to quickly assess where a team member is at. You might find it overly simple. I like simple. I believe simple can help leaders to unclutter, to see clearly beyond the mess and focus on the results we look for. Every now and then via conversations I ask a team member the following: What is your main challenge at the moment?  This question helps to spot problems . What do you fell you need in order to perform better? This question helps to

"For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ." 1 Corinthians 12 - 12 Before I continue with my church journey I wanted to take a look at how awesome the body of Christ is. No matter where I have been geographically, emotionally or spiritually I have always been a part of the body of Christ. During a dark season as a backslidden Christian when I was about 19 I first discovered the beauty of the body of Christ. I loved Jesus, I always did and always will do, but I went through a patch of unGodliness where I loved other things more. I got caught up in the party scene through a Christian friend and started drinking alcohol through that same friend. Up to that point I was a good Christian girl trying to work out my faith. Being a teenager who grew up too quickly, the pull of parties and fun was too much and I gave in. It wasn't long before I no longer attended church and was out until silly o&#

That's what happened on 16th April 2000, my church had its final meeting and closed its doors forever. That season is a bit foggy in my mind, perhaps it's better that way, but I will do my best to recount someone of what happened but please keep in mind it is my view point, many others would share their version of things a little differently. Hindsight is interesting, looking back all the signs were there, well hidden most of the time but occasionally they did pop up. Being the pastor's PA and church secretary meant that I got to see a lot more than many and I quickly learned that what happens behind the scenes is very different to what you mostly see at church on Sunday. I learned how churches can run out of money and struggle to pay bills at times, a sad but very real  circumstance. Bills need to be paid and if people don't give generously and faithfully then where does the money come from? I saw how incredibly generous some of the church were and how about eighty per

Before we we pick up with the story from my previous post , let's pause and take a look at the church. What is it really? It's easy to say that you are hurt by the church but what is the church? How can "it" hurt us?  the dictionary defines church as 'a building used for public Christian worship'. If we speak of church in this context then we cannot be hurt by it - after all a building simply cannot hurt you! This must mean that this is not what we are talking about when we speak of church. The dictionary also describes church as  'the hierarchy of clergy within a particular Christian Church'. Hierarchy is a system which once again cannot hurt you. These explanations of church are partly true in that the church does meet in a building and does have a hierarchy but it does not describe The Church that Jesus died for. Jesus didn't die for bricks and mortar or for a particular system or hierarchy. Jesus died for people! Yes he clearly says in the Bibl

Picking up from my recent post , let's get back to my church story.  Oh and before we go there, what do you think of the new King's Daughters lilac logo? We are trying to keep the 'K' across all three areas just have a slightly different feel. Ok, let's go back to the church I was first saved at, The King's Lighthouse in Brits South Africa. It was a wonderful season where I was totally loved up by  my church family despite all my 'stuff'. I loved being saved and forgiven, I felt clean despite the many things I still had to work out with God.  I was baptised, filled with the Holy Spirit and passionately on fire for Jesus. I only listened to Christian music, burned anything that was even slightly unchristian (seriously!) and even wore Jesus t-shirts to make sure it was clear I was a Jesus girl!  About a year or so later we had to move towns for my then husband's job and so we were transplanted into a church recommended by our pastors. It was amazing t

We are thrilled to share April Shipton's latest post with you. It's a must read! She says, "As a 24-year-old worship leader and Christian songwriter, my passion for real, godly music and lyrics is a pretty massive part of my life. So when my very purpose for song-writing was thrown into question recently, I found myself struggling to defend lyrics I once fervently believed. As I prayed and opened the Bible to try and reignite the vision I had been driven to express in music three years ago, what I discovered absolutely stunned me."   Read more on April's blog at  www.aprilshipton.co.uk  and see her song below.    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqYmrnU7xt8]   April Shipton has been singing and writing Christian music for over 6 years. She lives in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire with her husband, an engineer. She is currently working on producing her first EP with Christian producer FFG Audio, scheduled to be completed later this year.