April 25, 2024
Start with Why
By John Beckett

Some of you might have read Simon Sinek’s best-selling book ‘Start with Why’- or at least seen the Ted talk. The rediscovery of ‘why’ surprises me because I’m one of those people who are always thinking about why. I’m always asking questions. If I can’t understand the purpose behind what I’m doing then you won’t have me on board for very long. Starting with why comes naturally for me.

So for my first series of articles to launch the Seed blog I’m going to start with why. I want to invite people to understand what drove us to imagine and then create Seed. In doing this we’re modeling part of the DNA of Seed. We want to help people identify problems, imagine a different reality that is aligned with God’s purposes for the world, then create solutions to those problems.

Seed is our attempt to create a solution to three problems facing the contemporary church:

  • Many Christians are frustrated that their faith feels disengaged from the world and disconnected from their life. We sense that a life following Jesus should make a difference in the world, but our current experience falls short of that expectation.
  • The world is not as God intends it to be. We see and experience brokenness, injustice, oppression. Christians should be at the forefront of finding creative, innovative solutions, yet many lack the capital, networks or skills to respond.
  • The church is on the margins of culture, struggling to share good news to an audience not ready to listen. We need to create opportunities to tell the gospel story by demonstrating its world- changing implications in the way we live.

We’re working hard to develop models and frameworks that help Christians to engage with our culture in a way that is both faithful to the biblical story and also effective in creating change. We believe that effective engagement can and should result in a clear response to these problems.

We want to see:

Flourishing individuals – Followers of Jesus finding contentment, meaning and blessing as they live into the purposes God has for them.

Flourishing society – as followers of Jesus join others at the forefront of finding solutions to our most pressing social problems.

God glorified – as followers of Jesus live into and up to the reality of who God has made us to be through his amazing grace in Jesus.

This is our ‘why’.

We don’t have all the answers – but we’re trying to create a space where we can wrestle, challenge, imagine and create some answers together.

We would love you to join us.

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John Beckett

John’s passion is helping individuals and organisations to develop and articulate a clear sense of identity and purpose, and to find the places where their own stories fit with God’s story and God’s purposes. Too often people feel like living a life aligned with God’s purposes is too difficult to grasp, so John developed Seed as a vehicle to help give people the agency, support, resources, networks and confidence to create a new chapter to their stories. His hope and prayer is that Seed will help many to step into their God-given purpose, for the sake of the world and the glory of God.

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