I’ve had a fun day so far, and yet it’s been such a normal day. Let me explain: Our church was serving the local community at the weekend by providing four skips for people to bring their stuff and save them a trip to the tip (many locals don’t have a car, so it’s very much appreciated). There was one last skip that needed filling, so a couple of us did that this morning. As the skip was loaded onto the truck and about to be driven away, I showed the driver a picture on my phone, and asked him […]
Category: Inspiration
Celebrating a Short Life Well-Lived…
On this day last year, my dear friend Caleb Meakins graduated to glory after days battling to overcome injuries sustained in a car crash in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His death left many of us reeling, because he had so much love, energy and passion to give, and it all felt so wrong. To understand Caleb, you had to know the defining moment in his life. His English father worked for Tearfund and had married his Ethiopian mother. In 1996, his Dad’s plane was hijacked and crash-landed in shallow waters just off the Grande Comore Island in the Indian Ocean. As the […]
Lockdown Encouragement!
I just recorded this talk and sent it out to a number of churches. If you fancy a listen, may it bring you some encouragement through these difficult times… God bless you loads, cheering you on in the Spirit! Simon PS Lots of folks have joined the Choose Life Big Church 365 Read, and it’s easy to sign up for, with a weekly vlog to further encourage folks. Here’s the link: glo.org.uk/chooselife
Wartime Walkie-Talkie or Domestic Intercom?
The world we are living in is nuts, and only getting more nuts. Most people, however intelligent, are seeking rational explanations. But the truth is, there aren’t any. I genuinely think most of us in the West are so blind to spiritual realities that we have an awful lot to learn from other worldviews.I was cleaning up my computer and came across this talk given in 2017. I’d never posted it. But I found that all the more after a short time of living back in the West I needed to hear it. I think it’ll do you some good […]
Amused to Death, or Staying Sharp in Lockdown?
George Orwell wrote about the time a wasp “was sucking jam on my plate and I cut him in half. He paid no attention, merely went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam trickled out of his severed oesophagus. Only when he tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thing that had happened to him.” Back in 1985, Neil Postman wrote ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death’. The book is obviously dated, but whatever warnings he flagged up back then concerning the dangers of being conditioned and shaped by vapid television content – well, they need to be […]
A Spiritual Enema for 2021!
‘Spiritual enema’ is how my friend Kevin describes my daily devotional ‘Choose Life’ – in his words, it ‘clears the decks and provides a welcome shot in the arm’ – metaphors galore! Well, I would definitely prefer submitting to a spiritual rather than to a physical one! So do you need one as 2020 comes to an end? I think we all do! From the start of 2021, a whole bunch of churches and individuals are going to be journeying through the year with ‘Choose Life’ as part of the Big Church 365 Read. We’d love you/your family/life group/school CU/church/etc to join […]
Get Out There This Christmas!
How are you doing? How are you feeling? I’m usually an 8.5/10 but would give myself 5.5/10 in lockdown. I feel like a caged, frustrated animal. Yet I’m aware that although we’re all in the same storm, we’re not all in the same boat – my boat’s one of the nicest, which makes me feel all the worse for being grumpy and lacking in positivity! However, I’m determined to combat that darkness, and I want to challenge all of us to consider joining in something like the following: It’s very simple. I’ve just bought this portable Bluetooth speaker. Now multiple times […]
Rocking Revival Prayer
Have you ever wept in prayer before? I can count on one hand the number of times I have. I guess I/we could fake it, but that’d be worse than not praying at all, I suspect. PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO WATCH THIS… For those of us who heard it as he prayed, we were all left stunned. Since lockdown, we have been meeting on Zoom every week with between 100 and 150 people from a dozen nations across time zones to hear what God is doing in Burundi. Various Burundian brothers and sisters leading different ministries have shared inspiring […]
The Gospel Call – Urgent, Costly, Precious
William Booth’s last speech to the Salvation Army ended with this: “While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight. While little children go hungry, as they do now, I’ll fight. While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight. While there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight – I’ll fight to the very end!” Greetings! The above and below are a few of the stories I shared in this talk […]
Faith in Word and Deed
A vicar was too busy to help a desperate homeless lady needing help. He fobbed her off with a promise to pray for her. She wrote the following poem and gave it to a local Shelter officer: I was hungry,And you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger.I was imprisoned,And you crept off quietly to your chapel and prayed for my release.I was naked,And in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.I was sick,And you knelt and thanked God for your health.I was homeless,And you preached a sermon on the spiritual shelter of the love of God.I […]
Heroic Faith in Burundi…
His brother rang to tell him their parents had been murdered and dumped down the sewer. He was about to run the most important race of his life… Watch this beautiful short (4-minute) film to hear more of Charles’ story. It’s good to have stories of triumphant hope during these difficult days… Deep peace to you, Simon Guillebaud
Appearing in a Lady’s Dream, and then in Real Life!
Yesterday we joined GLO’s newest partner UCE for an outreach event in the bush at a place called Bugendana. It was wild! These guys have been running for a decade on a shoestring budget without any external support, relying on their own sacrificial contributions. Recently we committed to backing them, as their track record was so impressive. On this visit, I really wanted to see them in action, and I wasn’t disappointed. I’m out with a friend Jon, and he was likewise beautifully blown away. Not least because this lady came up to us after the main meeting, having testified […]
10 Top Lessons from 20 Years in Burundi…
TED/MAP talk in North Carolina at New Wineskins Conference Hello, my name is Simon Guillebaud. I’ve recently completed 20 years working in Burundi, a conflict zone in Central Africa, and one of the most beautiful but broken countries on the planet. That’ll do on introduction, time is short. This TED/MAP talk is just 15 minutes to share my top ten lessons from two decades of cross-cultural work – isn’t that an impossible task? I’ll try. So I’m picturing Paul in his cell in Rome, and he’s about to be led away to have his head chopped off (he probably died […]
Worrying about a lot of $£%@!
The Gospel according to Hollywood sometimes nails it. In the film City Slickers, starring Billy Crystal and the late Jack Palance, they are riding slowly across the range on horseback, discussing life and love. Palance plays a wily cowpoke, while Crystal is a tenderfoot from Los Angeles who has paid for a two-week dude ranch vacation. Of course, he gets more than he bargained for, and in the process, Crystal learns something important about himself. Listen carefully to their slightly edited conversation: PALANCE: You city folk. You worry about a lot of $£%@!, don’t you? CRYSTAL: $£%@!? My wife basically told […]
Cumulative Little Steps…
On the back of last week’s Phone-Call/Email from God, I got this brilliant response from a friend, which I wanted to share with you: I know friends who read your emails and they are hungry for more of God. However, there is a passiveness in the ‘waiting for the phone call’. They are paralysed by the big end to the stories and they don’t know how to get there. You have a powerful voice and many people read your emails what would be amazing would be to hear you encourage those first baby steps. There are few people who will […]
A Phone Call/Blog from God!
A phone call changed the trajectory of my life. Many of you know the story already.* And this weekend, we hung out with a man (pictured above, Lizzie and I, with Ted and Lorraine) for whom likewise a phone call rocked his world and gave it a remarkable trajectory. I want to share his story because you don’t need a phone call to experience what he and I have, but the potential of being open and ready to say ‘yes!’ is simply extraordinary. Ted Bosveld was visiting Rwanda in 2006 when his phone rang. It was my best Burundian buddy […]
Big Opportunities…For You?
What do you know about Slovenia? I knew virtually nothing until we went there this last week. And yesterday I got to preach at the biggest evangelical church in the country, which you’re probably thinking is a few thousand people strong. But no, it was maybe 130 people, because there are only about 500 evangelicals in the whole country! Out of a population of a little over 2 million people, that makes just 0.025%! I think part of this year’s purpose as we travel and preach around the world is highlighting areas of need. The week before we were in […]
The Marriage of the Year – Move Over Harry and Meghan!
In January, I shared with you ‘a fairy tale come true for the ugliest duckling in Burundi’. Well, on Saturday, he got married to his babe, Floride! Nobody, NOBODY, could ever have believed this was possible, from being the ugliest disfigured reject in Burundi twenty one years ago. God is amazing! In 1997, he had seven operations on his body, some lasting 8-10 hours, and was in a coma for four days. His body couldn’t take any more, and the surgeon said maybe a decade later more work could be done. In 2011 and 2012, we flew him to Kenya, […]
A Day in the Life… Being a Disciplined Discipling Disciple
I often get asked: “What does a day in Burundi look like for you?” And it’s difficult to answer because my days include a huge range of activities; but at this stage of life, this is the framework I’m trying to implement. What my work actually entails is beyond the scope of this blog. I’m sharing this with you in the hope that something might strike you, encourage you, challenge you, or help you. Our lives are all different – we have different balls we’re juggling in the air – and we might be at different life stages in different […]
Prayerful and Alert…
Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for… Here’s a sermon you can listen to here from a few Sundays ago in St Mary’s Maidenhead’s series on Spiritual Warfare. My text was Ephesians 6:18-20. Some meaty quotes from the talk include: “Probably the number one reason why prayer malfunctions in the hands of believers is that we try to turn a wartime walkie-talkie into a domestic intercom. Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for… But what have millions of Christians done? We have stopped believing that we are in a […]