It's not all bad then...

There's a lot of bad news in the world and if you're not careful it's easy to become cynical and suspicious of everything and everyone.  I saw this story of fair play which challenged me.  Having gained a goal in an unsporting fashion, the lucky manager of Borham Wood FC, Mario Noto, directed his team to allow the opposition to score a goal against them.  You can see the incident here.  See, it's not all bad!

Wally

I had a dream.  Last night I dreamed I was a lift engineer.  I shan't say too much more or someone will analyse it and tell me I need a week in the sun due to stress etc.  However, it reminded me of Wally.  Wally was a friend I knew in Boys Brigade.  When I lost contact with him he was training to be a lift engineer.  I liked Wally because he was a sincere person.  When he was about 19 he believed that God was there but couldn't see him so he set off to find him.  He had a brand new Honda 250cc Super Dream so distance was no object and he went to every big Christian meeting he could to find God.  I thought he'd give up after 6 months of searching and not finding him but he didn't.  After about a year of travel across the country God was still elusive and he was feeling rather low.  However, he knew God was there somewhere and he persevered.  One day I heard that Wally had 'found God'.  Wally was never the same.  The last I heard he qualified as a lift engineer.  I lost touch when I moved away from London but Wally's searching for God has stayed with me.  He doggedly looked for what he could not see and touched the untouchable.  God does that. 

Last Retreat

And finally on the retreat...this was my final retreat.  You are only allowed to go in the first three years of ministry - then you have to go with the grown ups for much deeper contemplation - a bit like junior school to senior school I suspect.  But then I wonder if they will have the same feel.  One of the strangest aspects of the retreat was the key.  By that I mean there was no key to your room.  In fact the only key I saw was in the outside door.  Whilst you were kept safe from pirates and marauders from the outside, you had to trust all your worldly goods to the honesty of your companions.  If you don't have much to begin with, then you've not got much to lose.  I, however, disobeyed the rules (no work to be done - at all!) and took my lap top and did work.  It was a peculiar feeling to walk out of the room with lap top and external hard drive and all my work therein, on the bed (it was a small room) and trust the rest not to pinch it.  I never thought they would, but it was a strange feeling never the less.  On Monday evening I'm leading a service of Christian unity.  Somehow I think this story may feature somewhere.

Never one to make a tradition, the next day I tried the coffee house three doors down.  I wish I had gone there first, it being warmer and more friendly. As I settled back and unfolded my newspaper I had this uneasy feeling...I raised my eyes to see the couple come through the door who, yesterday, had been so keen to sit in my chair with me.  Now, I was beginning to think uncharitable thoughts like, 'do people who go to more than one church have more than one reserved seat?' and 'were they going to forcibly evict me from this chair as well?'  They eyed me closely and had that look in their eyes.  I stared back and gave them the Clint Eastwood look - go ahead: make my day.  I was up for a fight over that chair and lost my appetite for my morning coffee.  They backed off and I claimed the victor's spoils!  I wanted to go but felt obliged to remain and make the most of the hard-fought battle of the chair.  So I stayed there for a good 10 minutes, keeping a careful eye over the top of my newspaper.  Having remained for what I thought was an appropriate time, I got up to go and walked back to the safety of the retreat house.  As I walked away I was tempted to look back over my shoulder to see whether they had make a dash for my chair.  However, not wanting to be turned into a pillar of salt, I set my face like flint and carried on.  I'll never know if they enjoyed the warmth of my seat.  It's probably for the best...

On Retreat

I'm on retreat somewhere in the depths of Yorkshire and it's been an interesting stay so far.  First of all, I have to go on this retreat 'cos that's what the denomination tell me I have  to do. Well, all the ministers got talking (as they do) about things in their churches.  The subject of reserved seats and 'my chair' phenomena came up.  There were stories of times long ago when seats were reserved for Mrs so and so or when Mr Thingamy kept losing his chair so he wrote his name on the bottom of it and up-ended anyone he found in it...  We wondered whether this was just a church thing or not.  We thought it probably was.  May I just add this story into the mix:
This morning, I woke up early and walked into town for an early morning coffee and a read of a (good) paper.  The young girl, still asleep I fear, opened the doors at 07.02am which is when I walked into her dream and woke her up by ordering a FlatWhite.  The coffee shop in question is really quite large and I chose to sit on the right hand side.  Nobody else was in the shop.  I sat down and began to read.  Two other people came in and sat directly behind me, squashing me into the table.  'Strange', I thought, 'there's a whole empty shop here  to sit in and they sit next to me'.  I subconsciously checked my wallet - yep, still there.  Anyway, I shuffled over a bit for more room, but was soon followed by the back of their seat, nestling between my shoulder blades.  Had I been a celebrity, I could have understood their desire to drink my coffee and sit on my lap but... well, as it was still early, I felt a call of nature and hoped the usually occupied toilet might be free for once: it was.  90 seconds later, I'm out and feeling like a new man only to find this couple sitting in my seat.  See, it's not just in churches that possessive seat hoarding takes place.

A New Year and a few changes

I hope this new year will be special for us all and that we expect to encounter God in a fresh, new way.  I'm not sure what this year will bring for me and the family but I am looking to see God anew and to see lives changed for the better because of God.
In the pages above the blog I will post my diary month by month (as best as I can) so that you can see where I hope to be over the month.  Ministers normally don't do this but I believe that I need to be more open and consequently, more vulnerable. My plan is to spend part of each week in each of our churches.  This is a departure for me as I like to respond to things as they happen and am not used to tying myself to any particular location or time so please bare with me as I make changes to my normal operation.
If you particularly want me to attend a meeting or event, then let me know.  I should already know about it, but there is always a chance it hasn't been noticed - so let me know.
I wanted to get round to visit people more than I have in December but the poor weather has stopped my plans here. Hopefully January will be kinder.
Take care and may we find the Trinity in all that we do.

Is there enough evidnece...? Part 2

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that I recently had a conversation with someone about mission and evangelism and that we were talking different languages.  To help me explain this difference I was reminded of a situation between a senior pastor and his three junior pastors (sorry it's an American story. When will we Brits come up with stories like this?).
The senior pastor of a number of large churches visited three of his junior pastors to make sure they were following the programme that had been set.  The agreement was that the churches would pursue a missional focus from now on.  The three junior pastors had been working hard to deconstruct their failing structures and to encourage the members to live lives as followers of Jesus and to share the Good News wherever they went.  This was no easy task and the congregation were finding great difficulty in accepting that it was their own responsibility to take Jesus out of the church not just the mission team's job.  The senior pastor was unimpressed and asked, '...but where are your programmes and projects?  All the other churches have projects happening.  Get some programmes happening or look for some other church to minister in!'.  This was an uncomfortable conversation because from all they had read, they believed they were turning around the tanker and (slowly) becoming missional.  Four months later the senior pastor called them in to his office.  The junior pastors were being obedient to a missional understanding and consequently they had no fancy project or programme.  Although people in the congregations were engaging with God more fully than before and starting 'works of God' in the work places of the non-churched it was not an official programme with budgets and rotas.  The three junior ministers were last seen clearing their desks.
Being missional is not and cannot be about programmes and big spends.  It's about sharing the encounters you have with the Father/Son/Holy Spirit and living out that relationship.  I felt sorry for the junior pastors.  If the senior pastor should ever read this blog, I would just like to point him to Alan Roxburgh's book, The Missional Leader.  In the introduction (p xv) he writes, 'Just as it's  [the church's] Lord is a mission-shaped God, so the community of God's people exists not for themselves but for the sake of God's work.  Mission is therefore not a programme or project some people in the church do from time to time; the church's very nature is to be God's missionary people.  We use the word missional to mark this big difference.'
For those people interested in church mission in the West, Roxburgh's  books are a good entry reader.