you’re wrong…

…and I’m right…

Not the most helpful of ways to have a conversation, is it?  Today I had a chat with a couple of friends about the aggressive nature of duality, or the concept that everything is black and white.  Such as you’re wrong, I’m right; light and dark; true or false.  Sometimes the world just isn’t like that. Sometimes all that breeds is hostility and conflict.

The older I’ve got, the more comfortable with grey I’ve got.  Or perhaps another way of expressing it would be to say that I’m happy with the concept of ‘maybe’.

We were ruminating on the idea of how truth (as evangelical Christians understand it) fits into this different way of thinking…are there absolutes?  Is truth something much bigger than we’ve ever allowed it to be?  How does a relativist view of ‘everything’ challenge our understanding of how Christianity has historically viewed this issue?  Things like moral codes, or even whether ’sin’ is something that has to be reunderstood (missing the target, as the Greek [apparently!] says).  I’m not sure, to be honest…

Is it possible that we’ve missed the point about the whole faith thing?  Have we reduced our faith to a tiny nugget, explaining everything through doctrine statements, when the faith that the bible talks about is massive.  More than once God basically says ‘you’ll never know’.  That doesn’t mean give up trying to think about it, however.  Hebrews talks about faith in this way:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see…

Maybe that’s a place of ‘maybe’.  A place, sometimes, of ambiguity, of uncertainty.  Maybe that tension isn’t such a bad thing.  Maybe then we’d have to rely on faith, not on our own assumptions.

Our hope is undoubtedly, unashamedly Jesus.  That’s a pretty good place to start…

sooo…

…it’s been a while. Maybe one of these days I’ll start a post off with a different sentiment!

Kay and I are still exploring our future – the communal living/monastic thing isn’t going away, but we’re in the process of exploring a few different things. So – we’d appreciate prayers around a few bits and pieces:

1. For people to do with this – we may not have met them yet, they may be our best friends…but this is something we really, passionately believe is core to this working. Having a group of people who are at the same stage as us and believe the same kind of stuff as us is so important. We don’t want to rush into this just because someone vaguely feels it might be a good idea.
2. For the right property – for this to work we’re going to need a pretty big place. In the city. Which means big bucks. Which we don’t have. Which is point at which you have to trust in God. I think you get the drift!
3. For an idea of what the shape of community life needs to look like – for example, do we follow a rule?

I’m also exploring ordination – although at a distance, and I’m not entirely sure what this will look like having been through ministry training and commissioning/ordination with The Salvation Army. It just ‘feels’ like the time is right.

So, if anyone feels called to explore the communal thing, get in touch. Likewise, if anyone feels led to give us a couple of hundred thousand pounds…please get in touch!

Prayers..

far too long…

It’s been quite a while since the last post – no particular reason…think I lost the rhythm of posting for a little while.  Anyway, back now…

Update…can’t believe Sephi is now 6 months old.  I’m told this is the lot of Fatherhood…time flies ridiculously quickly!  Work is great, lots of new challenges, including developing a new web presence for the team, but also lots of busy-ness, including a whole heap of Saturday working…

Church is good – ENC celebrates becoming a Bishop’s Mission Order…a major step in the life of a Fresh Expression…indeed I think we’re the first one in the country.  As such, this marks a new phase of our life together.  All very exciting.

We’re still keen to explore the community living thing – just looking and waiting for the right opportunity to emerge, trying to get a sense of God’s timing on this.  Who know’s what might be around the corner.

On that note, I was chatting with a youth worker and friend that I mentor today.  One of the things we worked through was the idea of ‘God of the unexpected’ – the way in which God is completely unpredictable in how he works.  Now, this can be a bit of a problem if you want a God who’s tied up in nice little boxes, or if you’re trying to explain who God is to someone who relies solely on reason or logic.  But it excites me to think that God appears right in the messiness of everyday life where we least expect him to be.  I suppose this is why the missional encounter is so important – we may learn more about God from the people we spend time with then they do from us.

So, life continues…

As someone once said… ‘grace and peace’

another interesting ad…

Something around bringing light into the darkness, maybe?

what kids want…

Every now and again I’ll stick something on here that’s specifically relevant to work…just helps me remember a creative spark or reflection that might come in handy later…

So I was reading an article from ‘Nursery World’ (not a catalogue for baby products!), a magazine for people involved in the Early Years Sector, pointed out to me by my colleague, Katherine.  Its headline is ‘Why teens won’t join in’.  Throughout the article it explores young peoples lack of willingness to join in with the governments ‘positive activities agenda’.  Anyone who’s worked with teens will recognise the list:

• Low awareness of available activities locally
• Personal inertia (laziness?)
• Real and imagined peer pressure
• Peer inertia (the way a group defaults to the familiar even when new ideas come along)
• A general lack of self-confidence
• Specific anxiety about their abilities at the activity
• Perceived lack of time due to school work and peer group activities (more common in the older teens)
• For a minority, actual resistance to the notion of taking part

(Nursery World, 27 Aug 2009, p10)

This is the ‘mission field’ we face…so what does it tell us?

Perhaps the following:

• Are we asking young people what they want, rather than providing a resource or facility or event that no-one is particularly interested in or is already being done by somebody else? (quote from article ‘It is really important to find out what it is that the young people want to do’ duh…)
• We need to invest a lot of time and energy in developing projects, not just looking for quick bursts of success.  I know of projects who have been hugely succesful…for a month, and then the young people have moved on to the next new big thing.  I also know of projects who have taken literally months to get established – but they’re doing really well now having started small and grown with their ‘users’…
• We have to meet young people on their territory, outside of our buildings.  For all the reasons above and more it’s incredibly hard for a young person to decide to go somewhere unfamiliar where they don’t know anyone.  Heck, I’m 31 and feel like that!  Something else I was reading this week said ‘the public space is produced as an adult space.  Studies suggest that young people are able to carve out for themselves and that hanging around, and larking about, on the streets, in parks and in shopping malls, is one form of youth resistance (conscious and unconscious) to adult power’ (Robbins, D This way to youth ministry: an introduction to the adventure, Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2004 p318).  In other words, kids hang out by the bush shelter, on the playing fields, on Cathedral Green because they can do what they want without someone telling them what to do (or not do, more importantly).  We have to move out of our comfort zone into theirs to even begin to deserve a hearing…the other aspect of this, of course, is remembering that the Spirit is already at work ‘out there’ – we have to be brave enough to join in with him…
• Kids are busy – they’ve got huge pressures on their lives from family, friends, school, work.  Church could be perceived as just another voice shouting for attention.  Are we weighing down or lifting off of weight?

Just some thoughts to get started…I think most of this is also relevant to all types of mission, not just youth work.

I love my job I do…

singing as hope…

Just finished watching a programme on BBC2 called ‘the Choir’ – if you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth watching.  You may hate choral music, but if you love seeing the Spirit at work in the most unlikely places and most incredibly powerful way ‘out there’ then this is an essential.

Basically the idea is very simple – a guy who’s passionate about the redemptive power of music for community cohesion gets a whole bunch of people who’ve never sung before to form a choir.  This time, it’s in a pretty rough community.  The cool thing is that the local Vicar saw the potential for something beautiful to come out of something pretty divided.

Watch here from episode one and then catch up.

Seriously, there is something simply mystical and profound about what happens during this 4 part series.  Something that the church should be doing.

The leaders closing comments say something like this: “the community needs music, it needs what music can do for it, bring it together, bring it hope”.  Isn’t that just something that makes you want to shout “it’s not just music that should be doing this”.  The Spirit of God is out there doing incredible things that we should be trying to join in with…

Where there’s hope, there’s God.  I truly believe that with every bone in my body…it’s my job to try and keep up with him!

Have a look at the series website here

new links…

just been adding a few new links – take a look at my links page above to get an idea about the things I’m into, reading or just generally nosey about!

toil time…

The next few days will feature mostly times of relaxation!  I’m finally taking back some of the hours that I’ve built up doing evenings and weekend work.  Today, went to see Tarantino’s new film – ‘Inglourious Basterds‘ (his, purposefully, bad spelling!)…on my own, unsurprisingly, as not entirely Kay’s cup of tea…and, well, Sephi is a little shy of it’s 18 rating!  Anyway – classic Tarantino.  I’ll leave it there.  You either love him or hate him.  Lots of fun though!

We had a lovely weekend – great Sunday morning hanging our with a couple of other new Dads and babies, chatting, having breakfast and just generally sharing life.  Really good stuff.  Hoping that more Dads from our NCT group may eventually join in…and then maybe others as well.  Would love to be able to put together a decent support network for new Dads – and to give Mums a break at least one morning a week!  Love the sense of community this whole new life as a Dad is bringing with it.

Sunday evening saw the wonderful Canon Mark Rylands (soon to be Bishop Mark of Shrewsbury) speaking at our ENC gathering.  Mark spoke about the spreading of the good news about Jesus out amongst the nations as promised by him at the end of the gospel accounts.  Inspiring to think about how the church exploded from being a bunch of terrified followers locked together in an upper room to a serious, radical, revolutionary empire changing movement in virtually one lifetime.  The challenge to us was to think about where our Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the rest of the world might be.  Mark’s particular passage was Acts 10-11, where Peter has a massive paradigm shift – his entire worldview is blown away and then put back together through a simple vision, a response to a calling and the outcome of his willingness to be used by the Spirit.

This worldview being blown apart isn’t about something as insignificant as styles of worship, or what liturgy we should use, or what our view on the sacraments may be – but a whole transformation of an understanding of who God’s chosen people were.  Not just a select group but the whole of humanity.  Peter suddenly understands what the scriptures have always said about Israel being a light to the nations – now, that time has truly come.

Peter was even in a place where it was inappropriate for a good Jew to be – staying with a tanner – someone who would have been on the very fringes of  Jewish society…even more so agreeing to eat with Gentiles and baptise them into the faith.  By this very act Peter is turning his faith world upside down – modelling a inclusivity that challenges us today.

Maybe we face a similar challenge today.  Which worldview have we allowed to get in the way of who we’re called to be by God?  Who are the ‘gentiles’ of contemporary society we need to be embracing today?  What things do we need to be transforming in our church culture – what attitudes need challenging?  Perhaps most importantly,  how are we placing ourselves in the right place to hear the Spirit’s prompting about changing our paradigm?  Peter’s vision came during his prayer time…the rest follows his willingness to listen.

Maybe the Spirit is already prompting us, and like Peter, we need to hear a few times before we get it…but then, whatever it may cost us in terms of our heritage and our most deeply held cultural beliefs, we have to be willing to listen and act.  The trick is working out how to remain solidly reliant on God and who we understand him to be through his relevation through scripture and the experience of the church over the ages while seeking to follow the Spirit’s guidance in breaking barriers.

Much to be inspired by…thanks Mark.  We’ll miss you…

summertime…and the reading is good…

summer is a quieter part in the rhythm of life of the Diocesean Education Team, of which I’m a part.  The great thing about this is that I’ve had a load of space to catch up on reading.  Now, I’ve confessed on this blog before that I’m a little bit of a unfaithful reader – I tend to have 2 or three books going at once.

At the moment I’m working my way through a couple of books for work and a couple of books at home…I know, how can I do them justice?!  Anyway – at work I’m reading Duffy Robbin’s incredible tome ‘This Way to Youth Ministry‘, which is a comprehensive handbook to an American Youth Ministry graduate level course.  It’s a very well written book – which needs contextualisation from American youth ministry culture to our British course.  Heaps of very powerful and well researched material that I would recommend to anyone who seriously wants to work on their youth ministry.

The second one I’m reading is more about my personal development.  It’s a book I’ve had on my shelf at home since I was a Salvation Army officer – called ‘The 18 Challenges of Leadership‘ by Trevor Waldock and Shenaz Kelly-Rawat.  This is a great book that explores the character and competencies of leadership.  Each challenge (vision, strategy, proactiveness, wisdom etc.) has a short chapter, followed by a self assessment and then a section for you to work through to improve in this area.  The great thing about this book is that it contains great practical as well as theoritical tips.  Again, I’d thoroughly recommend this to anyone in a leadership role.

Finally – my ‘home’ reads. I’m working through a history book about the Duke of Marlborough by Richard Holmes – great read about a great leader.  The other one I’ve picked up from the library called ‘Silver‘ by Edward Chupack.  This is a really interesting read whose premise is a captured Long John Silver telling his life story.  It’s a clever retelling of a classic.  Leads to some interesting thoughts on how we can seek to reinterpret our own story in each generation, but also the importance of listening to each person’s perspective.

I’m trying to find an easy way to catelogue online our book collection – but the only freebie I’ve found so far is Google Library – not the easiest or most dynamic of tools.  Also not very pretty!

Any books you’d recommend as worth a read – got a few weeks off coming up…

21st C monasticism…

this is primarily for me to find, but well worth exploring.

Tall Skinny Kiwi has posted on some of the stuff we’ve been exploring – find it here…

as ever, great post, but the comments are just as enlightening…especially dealing with some of the evangelical suspicion around this area…