Leadership the Jesus Way.

Announcing ‘Jesus-Shaped Leadership’ a new small group Leadership Development Course by NAMS.

“To learn to be a disciple-making leader means to help people enter deeper into dependence upon the Lord Jesus, not ourselves.”

(NAMS Founder, Revd Canon Dr Jon Shuler)

In NAMS, we have always believed that the holy tasks of spreading the good news of Jesus and planting new churches are intimately related to the making of disciples who make disciples AND the raising up of faithful and fruitful leaders who believe and practice this passionately.

Indeed, we believe it is self-evident that the work of God’s church and kingdom cannot be accomplished without called, prepared and consecrated new leadership – who have learned to be utterly dependent on Jesus

The Jesus-Shaped Leadership course is a 7-week small group course on Jesus’ method for raising disciple-making leaders. It calls attention to the kind of leaders he modeled, incubated, trained and sent into the world.

Two free resources (A Participant course book and a Leaders/Facilitators Guide) have just been published on the resource page of our website:

www.namsnetwork.com/resources.html

(under the heading ‘Jesus-Shaped Leadership’)

Our prayer is that this short course will bring focus on the vision, values and godly methods of kingdom leadership development.

Each week’s lesson will focus on a different facet of leadership as the Scriptures and our Lord Jesus taught or instructed. It is hoped that the teaching from Scripture, personal sharing, mentoring and practical application will catalyze a culture of learning, encouragement and accountability for new and seasoned leaders alike. (The Leaders/Facilitator’s Guide will give additional information on how to run each session).

We have also released a new e-book in conjunction with the Jesus-Shaped Leadership course, also available on our resource page. It is called ‘4 Things Kingdom Leaders Do.’ You can access it directly from this link:

https://www.namsnetwork.com/assets/kingdomleaders.pdf

Please feel free to download, share and use these resources.

If you have questions, requests or feedback, please write to us at info@namsnetwork.com or directly to our Global Executive, Revd Manik Corea at manikcorea@namsnetwork.org

 

 

Join us for an Easter service led by Rev. Jon C Shuler

Dear NAMS Network and Friends,

The Anglican Bishop of South Carolina has asked me to step in, temporarily, to lead a parish here in my hometown called Christ the King/Grace Anglican Church. We will upload our Easter service to Youtube at 7:00am Sunday morning, US Eastern Standard Time. We would love to have you and your family join us. May the Spirit of God bless you and yours throughout this extraordinary Easter Season.

Jon Shuler
Servant General (NAMS)

The service can be accessed via this Facebook link:

https://www.facebook.com/gracechurchwaccamaw/

 

 

On Your Marks, Get Set…. (By Manik Corea)

“So (Mary Magdalene) ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple….So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were both running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.” (John 20:2-4).

An epidemic of running breaks out in the immediate aftermath of the resurrection. Mary Magdalene tells Peter and John and they both race away to the tomb. John wins, but Peter stoops first to cross the line. Going in after Peter into the inner sanctum of the empty cave-tomb, John sees and believes (verse 8).

Matthew, in his resurrection account (Matthew 28:1-10) tells us that when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to morn at the tomb, the only ‘dead’ bodies they found were those of the guards, made comatose by the sight of a glorious angel. Fueled by a mixture of fear and great joy and at the command of said angel, they likewise run to tell the disciples.

How fast can you run? That probably depends on what you’re running from or for!

But what if God speaks to you?

‘He is not here, for He has risen, as he said.’ (Matthew 28: 6).

What if, like those first witnesses, you were given this startling, unexpected, mind-boggling news.

What if, like Philip, you were sent as a messenger to a leader of an unreached people group (Acts 8:29-30)?

Would you drop all and run like they did?

Or hesitate? Rationalize your situation? Think of a way to send someone else instead?

Would you drag your feet back to your normal routines, distracted and busy as you can be with the usual business of your day?

The good news of the resurrection ought to likewise set us running to rouse each other and hurry to proclaim to a lost and cruel world this greatest news.

Why should we let the wonder and death-shattering reality of His resurrection stay the treasured secret of a few, cloistered in the confines of our inner lives and gatherings?

Why not with haste, broadcast far and wide? Why indeed not?

This year, let us run to tell those far and wide the startling life-changing news of an empty tomb and a risen Savior.

Go!

 

Read our free e-booklet ‘Holy Transformation – 7 short reflections for Easter’ by Revd Canon Dr Jon Shuler, NAMS Servant General. Click on this link.

Easter greetings from the NAMS Team!

The Way of the Cross (by Manik Corea)

We are in the midst of Holy Week, that yearly reminder of the greatest lengths God went to rescue us from sin and death. Two startling events bookend these most pivotal moments in human history: Jesus made a triumphant but hardly regal entrance into Jerusalem on someone else’s donkey one weekend; He rises from the dead the next from someone else’s tomb, following a tortuous execution reserved for criminals of the worse sort.

This week of weeks constitutes the ‘real stuff’ of our Gospel, the veritable news and life-saving kyregma transmitted to us, individuals in a many-linked chain of hope, by faithful people through the ages. Their message we likewise believed on in faith and are now responsible to live by and pass on (1 Corinthians 15:3-7).

It is a history of epic proportions that stops all heaven in her wake. This great saga of God’s making is worth pondering about often, worth singing about daily, worth sharing about regularly and with urgent intent, to people we meet, near and wide who don’t yet know it (or may not yet care).

It is of first importance for you and me. It is good news with eternal ramifications for all, believers or not.

Yet, if we have ears to listen, we would be awe-struck again and again at the wonder of it all. Jesus, whose very word created everything, divested himself of heaven’s glory to become one of us.

He wandered all over Israel hounded and homeless (Luke 9:58). He was misunderstood and rejected by those closest to him – his own family and home-town (Mark 3:21; 6:4). He and his disciples depended on the generosity of others (Luke 8:3). This was not the life that Heaven’s King deserved.

He was, as the old prophesy had said he would be, ‘despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief…’ (Isaiah 53:3).

J.C. Ryle, the great Bishop of Liverpool and theologian wrote: ‘When (Jesus) crossed the sea of Galilee, it was in a borrowed boat. When He rode into the holy city, it was on a borrowed beast. When He was buried, it was in a borrowed tomb…Who that reads the Gospels carefully can fail to observe that he who could feed thousands with a few loaves, was himself sometimes hungry; and he who could heal the sick and infirm, was himself sometimes weary; that he who could cast out devils with a word, was himself tempted; and he who could raise the dead, could himself submit to die?”[1]

Yes, far more mind boggling that his humanity is this: God in Jesus submitted himself on our behalf, to a first-hand experience of unimaginable pain and a shameful death on a Roman cross. He left heaven for earth and went to hell to keep us from it. And He has the scars to show for it.

This Holy Week, let us be challenged anew to walk the way of the cross, to choose to live and die as Jesus did, for a purpose and a glory far greater than this world could ever supply.

Let us sing again, amidst the sacredness, silence and hope of a bloody cross and empty tomb, His song of love in sublime concert with His glorious purpose.

One which will ultimately overcome the syncopated rhythms and discordant melodies of our off-beat world, and call it to order, drowning it with an anthem far lovelier that earth could compose, transporting us to a kingdom far greater than history’s pretenders could build, at the feet of a King far nobler than earth’s famed academies could ever produce.

Let us fall down and worship our crucified, risen King.

 

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[1] https://gracegems.org/Ryle/mark11.htm