Susan the founder has had loads of loads of ideas and has a spectacular vision for what she wants to see in terms of the relationship between the community and the church. You will see what I mean when you look at the pages listed under the word vision in the menu above.
It started when she heard some of the stories about the church that was founded by the man who wrote the Church Shift book (see recommended reads). It took a long time to find other people who had a similar vision. The strange thing is that as time went on those ideas seemed to become more and more popular as more people wrote books and ran conferences on the interface between church and community.
Like I said have a look around and if you like what you see sign up to join our email list so that we can stay in touch with email.
What does the name say about what God’s Lily Training does?
It is a strange name but names mean things and this one is no different. Let’s start by looking at what the words in the name could mean to you.
God
An interesting word that you rarely see outside faith-based networks. It seems to imply that the training programmes offered by God’s Lily Training have something to do with faith or even Christianity.
The reality is that God’s Lily Training is for people who are at peace with Christian ideas. The values and principles behind what we teach are based on the Bible. However, many of those values are seen as old-fashioned values and many of the principles are seen to be simply common sense or things that have been seen to work in practice.
The hope is that you will see that these biblically based ideas are good ones and that in due course you will explore the Bible itself for more good ideas. One thing that God’s Lily knows will turn people away from a faith-based site is constant references the need to repent and accept Jesus as Saviour.
There is actually more to the Good News of the Bible than that anyway. The bit that she is really interested in is if you live your life according to the principles in the Bible then you will have an easier and more comfortable life.
Her thinking is that if you work out for yourself that living according to the Bible-based values and principles that back up her teaching that you are more likely to read the Bible for yourself. When you do that you will learn more about Jesus as Saviour.
Lily
The lily is a beautiful flower as well as being a name given to baby girls. There are a couple of points that you need to remember.
Firstly to use this site you need to be aged 16 or over. As explained in the terms and conditions in the UK anyone under 16 taking part in an educational programme, in addition to their normal school activities, normally needs to inform the school. Many colleges ask for a letter of permission from the school before allowing someone under 16 to start an evening course with them. Rather than set up a checking procedure that would be burdensome for all involved God’s Lily Training only offers training to those aged 16 and over.
Secondly, something that became obvious in the early days of testing this material was that some men find the name God’s Lily too girly. Actually, guys if you are going to vote with your feet we womenfolk are going to take advantage of it. In other words, although God’s Lily Training does not exclude anyone, the majority of people it serves are of the female persuasion. That means that programmes are more likely to include subtle differences that reflect a feminine point of view such as mother guilt (i.e. that tussle between spending time at work while your babies are being cared for by someone else).
Training
Now the issues of values, age and gender have been dealt with it is time to think about what the training offered is going to help you do. The tagline on the main God’s Lily website is
the voice of those frustrated with the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in such a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further
How on earth do you turn such a tagline into a training programme? You offer training that relieves that frustration by helping people become part of the solution. To be honest that is the frustration of God’s Lily. So many people say this is the problem and do little if anything that they can do in a practical sense to improve the situation.
Christians often take the escape route of praying about things rather than taking action. Others don’t realise that they can be part of the solution. There are things that can be done to change things. It is a question of finding an answer to the problem and then presenting it to other people in such a way that they see the value in your solution.
Simple really. Well not really. Think of the wife who looks around at various solutions to the problems that arose due to the mental health issues that plagued her home. Some approaches she could look at would be based on ideas from the Bible have a spiritually based while others would be more practical or medically based. Sooner or later she would discover that it is possible to lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. She could do everything she could think of even if it meant twisting myself into a pretzel and allowing her own life to be wrecked and nothing would change. She would be trapped and the only way out would be to leave her husband behind and start a new life.
The thinking behind God’s Lily Training is to support for those wanting to set up projects that could develop into businesses. That made a lot of sense because long before setting up this website God’s Lily had managed to gather all the paper qualifications needed to teach business start up courses in the UK. The thing that did not make much sense to me was how do you get a job teaching others about setting up businesses. After all, how do you take people in a direction you are not going yourself?
Add to that that amongst the things God’s Lily had done to relieve her own frustration of seeing so few people getting up and doing something was to write a book called The Manifesto that is not for Wimps. In it is a reasoning for what Christians should be doing to serve the community around them. One of the things that was included in that book was the idea that the church needs to be a training centre. When she asked God what He wanted such a training centre to teach He dictated to her the description of the five dimensions.
Is God’s Lily Training for YOU?
If you have read this far down a page in an age where people are easily distracted there is a good chance that it is. Even if you are just vaguely interested in what is on offer you should consider joining the email list. You can do this using the form at the side of the page.