 Number three, we need an x-ray room. I think in the church we need a place where we can have real talk, where we have MRI scan level kind of conversations. And I don't mean when in people's faces or we invade people's space or we are intrusive or insensitive, but pasturing for decades I became aware quite early on that a lot of the relationships we had with people were around personal issues that were nothing to do with the church. And what had happened is they transferred a personal issue onto the church. Now we are trying to answer to something we are not responsible for. So personal issues, marital issues, financial issues, attitude problems, all kinds of things that we finished up getting involved in, and these were just human issues that all humans struggle with, but in the church world it became something that was obviously in their minds a church issue, a pastoral issue, and I got fed up of sitting with people that would transfer their personal problem onto me and onto the leadership, I would be awake that night praying for them while they were sleeping like a baby. I don't know if there is something wrong with this picture. And I thought I am going to collapse under the weight of people dumping stuff on us who just need to have said to them, whoa, hang on a minute, this is nothing at all to do with me or this church or our leadership, you'd have this problem, whoever you were, wherever you were in the world, you'd probably still struggle with this. And to separate it out as a separate human issue rather than a problem we should fix in the church isn't kind of x-ray conversation. It's like Peter saying to Jesus, hey, they are all going to let you down but not me. And Jesus said, look, you let me down three times before tonight, and that's cool, it's okay. That kind of x-ray response that tidies something up and delivers us from months or years have been embroiled in something that was never an issue for us to be embroiled in in the first place. I think we needed a real talk x-ray room culture in the house in the way that we communicate and lead and speak and counsel and help people grow their lives. I think it's healthy that we have this real take, this root issue conversation that helps us get to it quickly, may not be pleasant, may not be comfortable, but if we're forever slashing away at symptoms and treating symptoms, and we never x-ray through all those smoke screens to the real problem is, that's why the medical world is so struggling because the further we're treating symptoms, knowing that it's not the issue, and medicine is evolving to where it's going to have what they call narrative medicine now, that experimenting with round the world, where instead of you tell the problem, the doctor that has been trained in left brain logic diagnosis listens to your problem, before you finish talking, he's already got the prescription in his head, or her head. Then boom, five minutes you're gone. Narrative diagnosis is, hey, what's going on for you? Tell me a bit about yourself. To discover that actually the reason why you're not sleeping or you have anxiety could be to do with a multiple range of things, and perhaps you need some different kind of help or you don't need is a pill, that's why we're realizing that depression is far less to do with serotonin, a lack of serotonin is far less to do with that and far more to do with isolation, human disconnection, loneliness, meaningless lives, people that hate their lives, hate their jobs, feel they have no significance, feel they're invisible and they're not seen, it's that which is vital round the world as we all know. You all okay? Therefore I think we need a play room, hello. You don't need much help without you lot, because I've seen Pastor Phil too many times up here teasing the life out of us all, and it's brilliant and I think it's very healthy. I think having this playful culture in the house that you guys do so well, I think needs to become viral around the world in God's house. I think we take ourselves too seriously. I think we feel the weight of the world is on us. I think we think we're the fourth member of the Trinity. I think we think Father, Son and Spirit is insufficient without us, so you can count on me and the way you listen to some people like, dude, lighten up. You can put Jesus down now, he can walk all by himself. And I think we need to have more laughter and we need to have a bit of daftness and stupidity and a bit of ballroom dancing, bit of fun. I think we need that culture. I meet too many leaders around the world, honestly, that are Tigger on stage and the E.R. in the green room, only because they obviously think that up here you're too fragile for E.R. So we've got to give you Tigger, which is a bit patronizing because that's not real life and all of us have a bit of Tigger and E.R. in us. So just be that. And if you're E.R. today, then be up here and be a brilliant E.R. Just be the best version of that. And let us know that there's light and shade and there's range of mood. You know, God has a whole range of moods. He's not moody, but He has a whole range of moods. Sometimes we are one-dimensional in our expression of the moods that humans go through and we hide from church often certain moods that we have not found a way to navigate and do well in. So we hide from the church this authenticity that we have in the green room. The green room or you know the dinner table or whatever, often that's the more authentic version of us. And then we come here and we hide that and we put on this facade and hope it won't slip before we get out of the building. I think we need to have a more playful culture where you can come as you are. I don't think we stop playing because we get old. I think we get old because we stop playing is I think what happens. You can't look at a giraffe and tell me that God is not playful. Because honestly, how unnecessary is that neck? Honestly, what a waste of time that was. How elaborate, how audacious, how extravagant, how ridiculous. I mean, who came up with that that day? It wasn't an angel that said, I got an idea, I got an idea. God said, what is it? Let's do this with this thing. Let's give it this massive neck and all of heaven will, that's brilliant. Let's do that. What do we call it? I don't know. Leave it to Adam, he'll figure it out. You can't look at a warthog. I was once on a game drive, my wife and I in South Africa and I said to the ranger, what's the animal with the longest memory? I heard it was an elephant, but I've never asked anybody that knows that. He said to me an elephant and he told me why and it was interesting. And I thought, I'm going to ask him another question. I said, what's the animal with the shortest memory? He didn't hesitate. He said a warthog. I said, how do you know that? What is it that you've observed that tells you that it has a bad memory? He said, well, we watch this all the time every day. He said a lion starts chasing a warthog. A warthog runs away. Then it stops start eating grass because he's forgotten why it's running. I said, it forgets. It starts munching the grass. Then he sees the lion and goes, ah, lion. After me, runs again, stops again, starts eating grass. Oh, lion. And the guy said, this goes on all day till either the lion gets the warthog or it lives to do it again tomorrow. And I said to him, I have a daughter that's a warthog. She can't find anything. Don't know where her shoes are and her hairbrush is and nicks it from her sisters and then all hell breaks loose. So maybe what I'm talking about. So I think we need to sustain intentionally a playful culture so that people don't come, new people don't want to join our churches who were playful before they came. Then they stop it because they don't think around here you can be that. Then they have a dual identity. When they're with the mates, they're a hilarious life and soul of the party, have fantastic timing when they tell a joke. Then they come here to our churches and they kind of feel, oh, you can't be that version of you here. People will be offended. People will think you're taking the rip out of someone and we lose all that personality, all that shade, all that light. So playfulness I think is vital. Number five, we need a changing room. We need a changing room. I put a locker room idea up there rather than a retail changing room in the store because I think that's more what I'm talking about. And we need a changing room. We need a space where you can reinvent and you can grow and become a different version of you while still being here. You are not the same person through your life, nor should you be. And sometimes when people are going through transition and personal reinvention, they check out for a while because they don't feel that they can change around people who have parked up on an old version of them. Many of us battle relationally because often we are doing life with people and they're relating to who you were five years ago. And you love them and they love you, but it's increasingly hard to be around them to the degree that you were before because they're still talking to you as if you're still interested in the same things you were five years ago. And they're still mentioning names and situations and you're like, I'm so fed up with that conversation and you don't know how to say it because they're not picking up the idea that you have no interest anymore and you've changed and your interests are changing and your world's changing and they're not seeing it. And so they're fastening it into an old version of you. Imagine how difficult it is then for you to do life with a community of people who love you as you are and one day you show up and you're not as you were because you read a book, you heard a podcast, you heard a sermon, you had a good chat with someone, you went on vacation and you had an awakening and an understanding and you began to change and grow and think, I'm going to fix this, I'm going to change, I'm going to reinvent. And not knowing that if you did that, the people that only know you as you were are going to feel threatened because they're not going to have the same space in your life anymore. So we cling to the versions of you that we know and hold you back and I think we need to allow for space to change and reinvent. I remember when I, 17 years into my leadership, pastoring, because pastors don't grow churches, leaders do and I was pastoring for years but I had like leadership Tourette's. I would get frustrated and angry behind the scenes of all this stuff we were dealing with but I didn't know how to address it publicly in a good, healthy, wise way. I was just frustrated but I realized looking back that frustration, they didn't come out well, was the leader in me saying, please let me out. And so what happened 17 years in is that the leadership genie came out of the pastoral lamp and wouldn't go back in. Then I started to lead which looked like having an opinion about something or saying we need to change this or saying you're fired or dealing with the church mafia and breaking some of the control people had in the church or changing some of the culture or some of the stuff I'm talking about. It was leadership and all hell broke loose from the people who liked the old version of me, just be a pastor, shepherd, nurture, be kind and behave yourself. The last thing some of you need to do this week is behave yourself. You've done it for too long and it's boring and we need you to wake up and be naughty. I dare you, no seriously, this week I dare some of you this week I dare you, go for it, some homework, okay? This week some of you need to, because some of you, honest to God, some of you this week if you opened your mouth and said, excuse me, I don't agree with that, they'd be like, what? You never have an opinion, you never speak out, you just go with the flow, this week I dare you to say something. This week I dare you to say something that you know before you say it, it'll get you in trouble. Say it anyway, it'll be very good for you. The good for you chemicals, the good for you, the good for you, whole soul will go, yes, this week. Because if you don't, you'll get parked up inside other people's permissions for you, you'll become their version of you. When you get to a stage in life where you think, I haven't lived my life, I've lived all their life. This is what people have made life crisis for, they realize I haven't been who I wanted to be. I've been someone else's idea of myself, going back to my parents and the education system, and my culture, and my socioeconomic background, and my nationality, and my gender, and all this stuff, I've just been that all my life. And I want to have a different career, and I want to have some different interests, and I want to get a different hairstyle, I want to wear something different, I want to say something controversial, changing room, I think we need one. You all okay? Last one, we need a spare room. We need a spare room. What I mean by that is, we need a room for people that are not staying. I realize in our church that we were not kind and inclusive to people, that we got the vibe that they were passing through. I know you guys get this because you have a huge spare room in this church. I know you have lots of people you equip and send around the world, it's part of your culture. But I think in many churches, we feel that if people are coming and consuming, and taking what we are giving, and they're growing and all the rest of it, but they're kind of highest towards the exit while they're doing it, that they can sometimes feel they're not as loved, not as welcome in the house, as people that have chosen to make it their home. What I'm talking about is foster care. I think in the church, we have been good with newborns, people that get born again and they're born in our house. I think we're good with people that want to be adopted by us. I don't think we're so good with people that are looking for a foster home for a while, because at this season of their life, they're hurting, they're struggling, they're going through something, they need a city of refuge as it were, and our church becomes that for them. They need to heal and grow and get through something, find themselves, they need to go through messy, all that stuff we said earlier, they need a panic room, but they're not staying. And I think one of the greatest loves in the world is foster care love. I think it's a superpower. I salute any of you that are literally foster parents. I think it's an amazing kind of love. And I think it's rare. And I think we need a spare room culture in the house that celebrates the fact that someone here tonight, you're only here for a season, and what we want to do in that season is to love you and serve you so that five years from now, when the word church comes up, you will speak about a church you went to for a year, and in that church you were loved and grown and believed in, and you recovered and you got strong, and without that experience, you would not be where you are five years from now when you tell your story. Rather than you went to a church, rather than you went somewhere and when it was clear you weren't staying, they were like, oh, okay, let's reduce our attention to that person because they're just gonna consume and go, yeah, some people are, and that's okay. It's okay, it's part of humanity. All of us in life have been more takers than givers in seasons of our life. That's okay. That's why I like a big church because a big church you can hide in a big church. There's nothing wrong with hiding. So people need to hide for a season in their life. Don't force the light on them, let them hide. You have all gone through seasons of life where you need to hide, and so because you can't do it in God's house, you don't even come, and I like it when people can come late and leave early because they're not ready to involve beyond that yet. Allow for that, celebrate that, make friends with that. I think we need to spare room also in God's house, and you guys do that particularly well, I think in my observations about you guys, rather well, you do playfulness really well too, as I mentioned earlier. I think you're doing brilliant, but I think all these rooms, and others you may think of, we should add and be intentional about adding these rooms. The more rooms that we build, the more types of people will feel welcome. The bigger the house, the more rooms you need. If you have a big house and you've got three rooms, something's wrong. The bigger the house, the more rooms, the more diverse the rooms, and the more kinds of people feel, well, they're welcome people like me at that church. They have a culture that includes me. It's the rooms that we add on as we grow, extend, add rooms, the word gets out. You wouldn't believe who's welcome at that church is the word that gets out. That's the best thing to have said about your church. All right, I'm gonna stop. Let me mention a couple of resources for the risk of boring you with this. Personal development, my top 10 is out there, video course, number one personal development, give you it free, number one personal development, okay? To keep growing as a human, to keep growing as a believer, to keep growing as a leader, you need to let go of being liked. Who tells people that? Some of you are waiting for someone's validation and approval and high five for you to move to the next level of yourself. It's never gonna come. So sometimes you gotta let go of being popular. If you're gonna keep growing as a human. And then finally, servant leadership, the thing I've been teaching around the world recently and eventually put on video for a video course because I think the world is going through a servant leadership revolution. That's where Donald Trump came from. It's what happened with Brexit. So it's happening in Hong Kong right now. People are sick and tired of leaders that don't listen to them. And we keep putting people into leadership who were not servants before. You know, you can bought leadership on later to servant hood, but you can't bought servant hood on later to leadership if you weren't a servant in the first place. And all around the world, the world are having a revolution all around the world. It's what happened in Syria. It's a revolution from grassroots saying we are sick and tired of leaders that don't love us, don't serve us, they're serving themselves. So servant leadership, video course, talk to Hannah about that. Father, thank you for these beautiful people here tonight. Stepping into a new week with all kinds of challenges and difficulties and messiness, scary stuff, opportunities, health scares, health issues, relational problems, all kinds of stuff, Lord, this week that is part of our humanity. And we pray that this week that we will remind ourselves that we are welcome and every part of our humanity is welcome in the Father's house. Help us this week to have an awareness of those around us that never believe that they will be welcome in this house. Help us as we speak to people in our world this week to lift our chin and to notice at the end of that wrist at the coffee shop is a human whose name we've never asked, whose life we've never shown interest in. Help us to engage with the guy at the gas station who hates his life and feels stuck. And we never say what's your name, where you're from. We never say anything kind. Help us this week to increase our awareness of those around us and to be kind and be inclusive not to have an agenda, not for it to be transactional but just for us to learn to love and be kind and spread this love of the house into their house, into their lives this week because we were once those people. And someone noticed us and someone included us and this week in your life, someone is desperate just for that. It'll cost you nothing to pay attention to them but I tell you this week for some of you just saying hi, watch your name, thank you, I've noticed you before, I appreciate you, I love how you do what you do, you're doing a great job. This week to some people that will change their mind about something terrible they were planning to do. I pray that we become that moment in their lives this week as we come and export the love of this house into the community around us in Jesus' name. I love you guys, thank you so much for welcoming and for listening to me today. Thank you, you're strong, thanks for. So good, we're gonna pray. I imagine.