New Wine Leadership Conference 2016

I was also reminded by Nicky that ours is not the full picture, that belongs to God. Abraham was only given the details to lead him one step at the time. I was also reminded to consider God’s viewpoint and not shrink it to my own. Nicky concentrated on how encouraging the New Testament assessment is of Abraham’s unwavering faith, when the Old Testament tells us that there were actually quite a few blips in Abraham’s calling and career. We all make mistakes but we are to remember how God sees us, beyond our errors and through the blood of his Son. Nicky spoke of the confidence we are to have in the resurrection, it was confidence in God raising people from the dead that had steadied Abraham in his big test with Isaac. Nicky spoke about how God is not done with his church and how he continues to send his Spirit in power upon us. He rallied the congregation with a vision not dis-similar to Justin Welby’s about the Church of England thawing from its winter to enter a new spring.

Kate Coleman began acknowledging that the New Wine movement is facing some challenging times. She began her preaching by describing a man who wanted to change the world but set his vision too wide. So he thought instead he would change his country, but again this proved difficult so he focused on his neighbourhood. He began in the end to work only on himself and this is how the world came to change. We are all praying and sharing our grief since the leader of the movement fell from grace and in some ways the Leadership Conference revealed to me how much of a family we are as we took stock together of this challenge. There was a humility expressed about our obvious vulnerabilities and fragilities as leaders and I saw nothing but grace within that framework of loving discipline that I had hoped to see, from the front, and in people’s making reference to the challenge we are facing.

Kate explored Moses’ leadership challenges; his growing pains on the way to maturity; the maturation process being more a spiral than an upward curve with no simple linear progression. She called me to consider what she described as ‘What you know about yourself that no one else knows’, ‘What others know about you but no one else knows’ and ‘What only God knows about you.’

She focussed on the life of Moses and how he tries to evade God’s call, wants validation of God’s authenticity. Then there was this seeming mismatch for Moses; has God really understood Moses fully? Is he a credible choice, does God really know him, to choose him as he does. Finally God’s authenticity is validated, Moses’ credibility is validated but there is this final recourse motivated by fear or false pride which tries to persuade God that there should be someone else whom he chooses as a deliverer. I suspect all of us leaders can relate to the life of Moses. Sometimes the voices protesting are not always the internal ones, we have to deal with our external critics too. This is where Kate’s experience as a coach and mentor shone through. I have just finished a year of coaching as I transitioned from second chair to first chair in ministry and I had been asked to always find the kernel of truth in the claims of my critics, where are they right? What can I learn?

Tags: 2016, conference, leadership, wine

Category: In Depth, Spring 2016