How do we reach them?

So I guess the first question is: Who are they? Who are the "them" in the title question?

Well they could be anyone. Anyone we are trying to reach and influence. Anyone who falls into the category of missing from the kingdom of God. But let me narrow it down a little. They are the people who we end up condemning or speaking out against. Not always knowingly, but sometimes in our desperate desire to promote a Christian ethos, we inadvertently say things that are counter-productive in mission.

So what's got me thinking about this today? Have a guess?

Did you guess that it was some of the comments made over the weekend about gay marriage? Well that's what it was. I struggle with what to say about the issue. On the one hand I understand and agree with those who want to maintain the traditional definition of marriage. I wonder what's wrong with marriage being between a man and a woman and a civil partnership being used to describe the relationship between two people of the same sex entering a solemnised union.

I will hold my hand up and say that I think it only proper that homosexual couples have the same rights in our society as heterosexual couples. It doesn't mean that I think that a homosexual relationship honours God. That's not the issue when it comes to civil rights and liberties.

The thing that bothers me most is that when we speak out as Christians against such proposals as the inclusion of civil partnerships under the banner of marriage, we need to do so in a way that doesn't further remove this people group from the influence of the Gospel, and the love of the God who created them in his image. We may consider that image flawed and inappropriately expressed, but it's in there somewhere and it's redeemable unless I've misread the gospel. And tell me please, which one of us does not present a flawed representation of God's image?

So maybe it's time we stepped back and took a long look at what is really under threat here. I'm not so sure that it's our faith as much as it might be our prejudice. Could this actually be an opportunity for us to honour and respect our fellow human beings who are different to us yet still worthy of honour and respect and more than that, still worthy of the opportunity to engage with the story of God's passionate love for them?

Okay, so we want to draw the lines to defend and define what our faith has to say and what we believe God expects of us. But can we not do that without condemnation?

Boosting the economy by reducing tax

Now where have we heard that before? It's an old argument and one I'm sure someone more involved in economics can explain better than I can, but once again we're being told that taxing wealthy people hold the economy back. Okay, I can understand the argument to some degree, but are we really to believe that removing the 50% tax rate for a very small percentage of the population will actually right all that's ailing our flagging fiscal situation? I don't buy it.

There have been a significant number of voices from the very people who fall into that particular tax bracket who have been speaking out against both low tax rates for the very rich (how do you define "very" by the way?) and rates of pay in the boardroom. Somehow the two don't seem to sit together that comfortably.

If I'm honest, the call to abandon the highest rate of tax sounds like the greedy of a selfish generation who prioritise self. I wonder what the different in cost would be between Nick Clegg's proposed £10,000 personal allowance and removing the 50% rate?

Trickle down economics didn't seem to work in the 80's, maybe it's time to try trickle up instead!

Premature rejoicing over marriage?

I don't want to put a dampener on the celebrations surrounding the rise in weddings after a 40 year decline, but is this really a pointer to a revival in marriage, or is it just an increase in weddings?
I've long held the view that the Christian fixation with marriage when it is not allied with a determination to build strong and healthy relationships is just another game with statistics. Call me cynical, but a wedding doesn't make a marriage. I remember working with someone who had been in a long-term relationship with their partner and together they decided to get married. Within a pretty short space of time they had separated and gone their own ways. Now maybe the relationship was already in trouble, but the bottom line is that getting married didn't fix anything that might have been wrong.
A few years ago there was an interview with a couple who were both what you might call serial "marriers". I think they were on their 4th or 5th marriage at the time of the interview. They were talking about how much they had to offer in terms of counsel for those getting married because they had been married so many times. It seemed to me that what they actually had to offer was lots of advice on how to marry but not necessarily on how to build a long lasting relationship.
This, to me, is the key. Not how many marriages there are in a given year, but how many deep and healthy relationships are being built and sustained over the long haul. If all we are doing as the church is encouraging people to get married, then we are failing them spectacularly.
It's great that people are getting married, but let's get over the the idea that this somehow suggests that marriage is coming back into fashion. We live in a highly disposable society and relationships are just one of the casualties of such a society.
The real hope lies in the statistics that marriage provides a strong foundation for a long relationship, that people who are married are more likely to put in the effort to resolve their issues and this in turn has a knock on effect of teaching children and young people about working at our relationships.
If there is evidence that this is happening then it really would be a cause for rejoicing.

Just amazing!

My friend Tim shared this on Facebook. Just brilliant!

Faith is easy.... sometimes!

“You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.’”
Malachi 3:14-15

Faith is really easy when everything is going for you rather than appearing to go against you. It's easy to praise God when you feel blessed and secure and certain about the future. It's not so easy when you don't. I wouldn't say that we're in the difficult phase, neither of us feel any great sense of turmoil or distance from God. On the other hand, we would like a few answers to a few questions like what is happening with the house purchase, will it be done in time to get the necessary work completed on the house before we have to move out of our current home, what will I do for a job in May?

Somehow we have to learn to live in the in-between space of uncertainty without falling into the trap that Israel seems to have fallen into at the time of Malachi. It's so easy, when things are not going according to our grand plan, to wonder why we continue to serve God when he doesn't appear to be working for us. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe too often we set things in a context of my dreams, my aspirations, my ideal scenario, and not in the bigger picture of God's eternal plans and purposes. Of course it would be so much easier to that if we actually knew the details of the said eternal plan, but we don't. And we won't.

So how do we live in the in-between space? Honestly, I don't have a definitive answer for that one. I think it's a mixture of faith, realism, asking questions where they need to be asked and finding a balance between being proactive (for example, pestering the solicitor to find out what's happening) and some sort of prayerful reaction as we wait and trust.

But it's certainly not easy and I wish I could see the future and tell the story of the amazing things that God did when we stepped out in faith on our new adventure. Maybe next year I will a story to tell, or maybe I will still be waiting. I just keep reminding myself that it is always worth serving God not matter what the evidence might suggest. Maybe I need a poster that says: "Keep calm and stay faithful"!

Got an old bike?

I used to cycle a lot. Well around 120 miles a week, but that is a long time ago. I actually came to cycling quite late, never having a bike when I was a kid. At university I learned the skills to ride by buying a bike and getting back on it every time I fell off until I stopped falling off!

Sadly my cycling days are long gone, mainly due to a knee that reacts rather painfully to the stop and start routine. Oddly I can ride a bike at the gym without problems, but on the road eventually my knee complains and I have to stop. So my bike sits in the shed along with Anne's and two of Ally's bikes.

We're moving soon and I have been thinking that painful as it would be, it's time to get rid of these bikes and clear some space. But I didn't really want to throw them in a skip. Today, while I was looking at something else I came across an organisation that takes old bikes and reuses them in Africa. The main collection point is on Colchester, just an hour away from me. I think I've found a new home for my precious Raleigh tourer!

Bicycle Aid for Africa sounds like a great idea, and they don't just want your old bike, they are interested in bike tools and general workshop tools. If I'm honest I could probably supply a complete small workshop if I took the time to sort out all the tools I've inherited and bought over the years. So maybe a few spanners and hammers might find their way out of my garage and into a more regular place of use.

If you have an old bike, don't throw it away, consider instead donating it. The website has a list of UK-based bike recycling charities if you're not close enough to one of their own collection points.

Massage Course Blog

If you're interested in following the progress of the massage course I'm doing, then we have a blog for everyone on the course to add stories, questions and anything they want within reason!

You can find it at TwelveBW.

Why I hesitate to talk about Church Planting

I read a quote this morning that popped up in my RSS feed:

his [Jesus] disciples were to establish beachheads of his Person, word, and power in the midst of a failing and futile humanity. They were to bring the presence of the kingdom and its King into every corner of human life by fully living in the kingdom with him.

This comes from Dallas Willard and it is part of a longer quote. (You can read the whole quote here.) In the original blog post the question asked is a simple one: Is this just about semantics? To which my response is mostly no it's not, it's deeper than that. As you know, I'm concerned about the way we do church, the way we've turned church into an institution based largely around gathering a suitably sized group of likeminded individuals together on a week-by-week basis to sing songs and learn three things they already know about a text with which they are often over familiar but with which they are under engaged.

Okay, that's overstating it a bit, but you get my point. Church has become a refuge for the insider more than for the outsider. You have to know the language, know the songs, know the form and fit in on order to access what we do. At some point every institution or even group or tribe has it's now language and practices. In order to be part of that group you have to learn these things. So it's not just about clearing away those elements, as if building something without those limits will magically work a different outcome.

So why the problem with church planting? Well I guess it's because when you say you're setting off into the unknown then you need a label so people can identify with what you're doing and church planting seems to be the label that most closely fits what we are about to do. But on the other hand it doesn't fit at all because everyone seems to know what church planting is, and it doesn't look like the thing that I see happening! Yes, Im;' awkward and different and all those things, but the point is that I'm not that interested in filling the local village hall with a group of already believers who have become disenchanted with their current experience of local church life.

Perhaps I can't avoid the label, perhaps it's not important to avoid the label, perhaps it doesn't matter what it's called as long as God is honoured. I'm sure though that when some Christians get to hear about it they will make their own assumptions about what we should be doing. I just hope we are open enough to listen and strong enough to resist and wise enough to do both at the right time!

A Question of Faithfulness

I started the year reading Habakkuk and Haggai and I've recently turned my attention to Malachi. The small group with whom we meet occasionally are studying Malachi so it seems reasonable to read it! So many of the prophets raise a simple question, Malachi is no different. The question is the simple question of faithfulness. A simple question, but never a simple answer!

The problem is, how do we measure our faithfulness? Malachi sets out a series of faithfulness tests in the area of worship, marriage and giving (three that I remember off the top of my head). Perhaps the easiest way to see it all is through the lens of one of my often asked questions: How will God be most honoured? In other words,  if I make choice "a" then will God be honoured in it, and if I make choice 'b' will he be more or less honoured? I know it sounds simplistic, but can you see the deeper value in this simple approach to living a gospel life?

As we make the transition out of local church ministry, and in many ways out of local church life too, we have to keep our eyes on the faithfulness ball. It would be so easy to drift into a place of permanent isolation from the local church and thereby from the local community of Christ-followers. We don't want to do that, even though we want to pursue a different pattern of life for a faith community.

So maybe we need to mirror-read Malachi and ask ourselves what the tests of faithfulness might be in our 21st century Christian culture. I suspect some of them will be the same even if they don't involve grain into store houses!

The Joy of Articulation

For once I'm not talking about the art of talking or the joy derived from vocabulary. No, I'm talking about the joy and excitement of feeling the movement in the articulation of a joint. You can't believe how excited four early-days students of sports massage got when they found the greater tuberosity of the humerus and then felt the the intertubercular groove and then the lesser tuberosity as the arm went through a lateral movement! Now your idea of fun might not be to spend your time with your thumb inside someone else's armpit trying to feel the surface of the shoulder blade and the rib cage, but we were having a fine time of it!
There is of course so much to learn and not enough brain capacity to retain it, or so it seems, so repetition os key. I just keep reading an poking about around my shoulder and chest and arms looking for these landmarks. As I do I think several things ranging from "is that the right place?", to "I hope no one caught a glimpse of me probing around my sternum again!"
But the more I read, the more I try to learn and the more I get explore, the more in awe I am of how my body works. Of how the bones have their shapes and movements. It is a truly amazing things the way the skeleton and muscles work together to make even the most complex articulation work effortlessly. The degree of control I have over my movements and muscles is quite awesome. I can toss a ball with one hand, while rotating my other arm in the opposite direction to bring it up and over my shoulder from behind, rotating the forearm and wrist in such a way that I can hit a tennis ball. Or, using the same muscles I can bowl a leg-break, delivering a cricket ball out of the back of my hand. And yet again, another combination of all these muscles allows me to pick a cat hair of my jumper or strum a chord on a guitar.
How amazing is that!

Back to School

I took the opportunity yesterday to begin the process of familiarising myself with the contents of the first paper for my massage course. It's all about anatomy and physiology. And it's scary! It's bound to be when you haven't studied either topic before in any detail. But I've been down unfamiliar roads before, so it's books out, head down and get started. At least I don't have to fill my head with information for a written exam at this stage.

First task was read chapter 3 of the A&P set text. Off to a quiet place I went, book in hand. A quick read through I thought and the once more making notes. It turned out to be somewhat more demanding. New words and technical terms filled every sentence. I probably got half way and my brain began to seize up.

So it's going to be slower than I thought and possibly in need of more repetition. But that's the nature of doing something new. If our only adventure was to do what we have always done before, read only about the familiar, the usual, then how would we conquer new challenges?

Church planting is not something Anne or I saw ourselves doing. We've been involved once before, but not leaders. But here we go. The house should be ours in a few weeks. The builder is working out a quote for the work. We're planning the move. Ready or not, here we come!

Have couch, will travel!

Well, my massage couch arrived today, so I'm all set to start practicing my new skills. The question is, will those folk who said they'd volunteer stand up and be counted. Maybe that should be lie down and be counted. Anyway, I'm sure I'll get some volunteers and it will be interesting to see how my ability and technique develops over the next few months.

For interested parties, this is the couch I've chosen:

Mine is grey and looks very smart. I've tried lying on it, and it's quite comfortable. It's an Affinity portaflex (portable/flexible on some websites), and as you can see it has a lifting backrest. I'm not sure how important that will be, but I'd rather have it and not use it than want it but not have it. Over the course of the year I will work out what really suits my purposes and then if I choose to replace this couch I'll have a better idea of what to get.

It truly is a minefield trying to choose one of these things without really knowing what you are looking for in a couch. There weren't that many reviews to read or that many place where you can go and check them out. In the end I took the plunges based on a couple of recommendations. I got mine from Massage Warehouse. Ordered it on Sunday and it came today, Tuesday by next day delivery, which was free. The other supplies I ordered will come in the next day or two by separate carriage.

The technical data is that it weighs just under 17Kg, which is quite heavy. There are much lighter ones, but they come with a price. Once I get established and have made some money (!) I might invest in something like the Tarsus lightweight table, but at over £600 I don't think that represents a starting point unless weight is a real issue.

A bit more on BMR

If you're interested in knowing how to calculate your BMR rather than let a web-based calculator do it for you, then this is a good place to start. If you read the article, you will see that BMR can be calculated in a number of ways. The most accurate, it says, is to use lean body mass. That's the weight of your body minus the fat! You need to know your body fat percentage to do this, which makes it a little less accessible for those without access to the technology to do this. However, it's not that difficult to get it measured. Be aware that when you measure it can affect the reading.

The basic calculation is this:

BMR=  370+(21.6 x LBM)

LBM is Lean Body Mass in Kg.

It's not gender specific, so the same equation works for male and female.

The BMR figure I played with yesterday for myself was based on what I think would be an ideal personal weight for me as an active individual. When I used this formula for me at my current weight and BF% the BMR came out very similar (1882 vs 1811). So it's not a big difference, although 70 calories a day over a year would add up!

On the other hand, there's no allowance for exercise or activity in these numbers, so as a general guide I'm not sure either would be a problem.

Calculating BMR

My earlier post got me thinking about BMR a little more and I did a quick bit of maths! I know, 8:00am on a Thursday morning and I'm doing maths, it's not a good sign! Anyway, here's a graph of my BMR profile according to this BMR calculator.

Now I don't know how accurate this calculation is, but as you can see from the simple data set I used, BMR falls in a nice neat straight line with age. I've made no allowances for changes in fitness, I've just let the BMR calculator do the work, so whatever equations it uses, I've used!

I put in my height as it is when I stand up straight and again without allowing for shrinkage over time! I've also used a fixed weight which is probably a bit low for me, but one I'd like to be. No harm in having a dream. Given it's a straight line, changing the weight would simply shift the line up or down.

If you do a bit of simple maths, the calorie count drops by about 7 calories a  day each year. Not much is it? It's 49 calories a week or 2555 calories a year. If I remember correctly, 1lb of body fat is something like 3500 calories. Now it starts to add up. If you are eating the same amount of calories now as you were 30 years ago, you're almost certainly taking in more than you're using up. Unless you are dramatically more active, you could easily be 200 calories a day over your BMR, which is 7300 calories a year. Equivalent to 2lbs of body fat!

Now I'm not talking as an expert and there might well be something intrinsically wrong about my maths here, and if not the maths then the science or the logic! For one, I'm not wholly convinced that BMR is a straight line. If it were, my BMR at 20 would have been 2049. Maybe it was and I was just very active. But at this simple level, knowing your BMR would seem like a very useful bit of information!

It's all a bit sobering isn't it.

Playing with My Fitness Pal

So, I've been using the MyFitnessPal website for three weeks now and it's rather interesting. I'm not going to give away any results as yet, but I have lost some weight and it's been interesting trying to track my food intake, especially when it comes to eating out! I've created some recipes and I hope to do some more. what is helpful is seeing what a portion actually looks like. I've talked before about how easy it is to get portion sizes wrong simply because we don't know what apportion really looks like.

When you first sign up with the application you can let it do the maths and set your goals for you depending upon your aims (weight loss or weight gain). It works to a standard spread of calories from carbs, proteins and fats, but you can change this in the custom set up section from the website where you can also reset your daily calorie goal. So, if you find that the calorie goal isn't helping you to achieve the progress you're looking for then you can change it. In the end the goal is a guide and the scales are the evidence! Just because it says you will lose 0.5Kg a week by eating 1900 calories doesn't guarantee it!

For example, when I first signed up the system calculated my BMR at around 2400, but using another website calculator I got a figure of around 1900. Those 500 calories equate to about 1lb of weight loss a week. If I put in my goal weight, then my BMR drops to around 1800 calories a day. So, as my weight goes down (and as my age goes up!), so does my BMR and that would suggest to me that if I want to maintain weight loss then I'll need to adjust my calorie target appropriately. The basic rule is experiment. See what works and keep reviewing. The more you learn about what works for you, the more control you will have. and the more control you have, the more freedom I think you will have when it comes to those treats we all like and the less guilt you will feel.

I've changed my goal slightly on the basis of this theory and I'll review the most successful weeks to see what was different about those weeks compared to other weeks. That's a bit of a job, and a way of maybe getting some reports out based on a few user chosen parameters would be helpful. I haven't found anything that will let me do that yet, but then I haven't really explored the reports that much. Maybe the printable version would give me the data I want.

I think the other comment I would make is that you shouldn't assume that when you put in your exercise that the figure calculated for calories used will be wholly accurate. If it says you've burned 1,000 calories just don't assume you can eat those calories back and still reach your goal if it's weight loss. I think you'll be disappointed if you do that too often.

Overall I think this is a great tool for tracking how your diet is working both nutritionally and in terms of weight management. Used well, it can help you plan menus to balance your diet. Simply fill out the daily diary with your expected meals and snacks for the day and then see how that sits alongside your goals and make any necessary adjustments. Yes it would be time consuming to do it that way, but over time you might learn more about your own nutritional requirements than any quick fix diet will give you and it might just help you develop long-term healthier habits. That's my hope for myself anyway!

It will only ever be as accurate as the data you supply and the algorithms it uses. If you cheat it can't tell. So don't cheat! I'm off for some breakfast.

The BU money gap

I need to start by offering a spoiler alert! At some point in this post it might sound like I'm actually advocating widespread redundancies as the way out of our financial crisis. I'm not, and please don't read it as such. On the other hand, if we are not prepared to think the apparently unthinkable, then the novel and creative might just be out of reach too. Let me explain by way of two stories.

The first comes from my time at British Gas. I was on some sort of course, can't remember what exactly, based at a hotel somewhere in West London. We were divided into groups and on one occasion given a research project to consider. In my group I was the only one currently working in a research environment. The project was the remote reading of gas meters. Each group had to do a presentation and a senior member of one of the research stations was brought in to reflect on our presentations. We were third up and I got the job of presenting our ideas.

The first two groups both included in their presentations thoughts about the impact of remote reading on the jobs of the meter readers. They both received the same criticism that that was not their concern, they were to focus on the remote reading question and possible solutions. So, although we'd talked about the same issue, I dropped it from our presentation because I thought by now we'd all have got the idea that this was not part of the project. Not so. One member of our group spoke up after my presentation to say that I hadn't mentioned the meter readers. My response was to point out to them that we already knew that this was not part of the brief.

The point is quite simple. No matter how much we cared about the meter readers and their jobs, that wasn't the project. Focussing on that one issue would not help us think creatively about solutions to the questions raised by the project brief.

The second story comes from a conference I attend some years ago. It reaffirmed something I learnt in my early days as a research scientist about the non-evaluation of initial ideas. The speaker at the conference talked about how they came to design a standard control circuit for many household appliances like washing machines and dishwashers. They began by thinking about how a ladybug might control such an appliance. From that seemingly ridiculous starting point came the design of the circuit board.

Again the point is simple. Think the unusual, even the unthinkable and maybe you will find your way to the solution.

So what about the financial gap in the Baptist Union's funding. Well, we could take the kind of approach we've taken many times before and simply ask the churches to give more. The truth is I can't ever remember that working. We may have increased income, but never enough to cover the shortfall. And it all rather assumes that the churches, and the people in them, actually want to give towards the centre. From personal experience the evidence is very strong that fewer people in our baptist churches feel any sense of connection to the denomination for all sorts of reasons.

Perhaps we need to take the radical thinking approach, not as the end of the game, but the beginning. Maybe we start by asking what a movement would look like if we started it today, rather than how we can shore up our denominational structures that may have served us well in the past, but may not be the best way to do things now. I don't know.

At our recent ministers' gathering someone said something along the lines of, "Well, of course we can't make everyone at Didcot redundant can we?" I have to confess that I wanted to ask why not. I also wanted to ask why we couldn't do a few other things either, like stopping home mission grants. I know it sounds horrible, but unless we're willing to ask the question and answer it in a way that has less to do with jobs and careers and more to do with mission and kingdom, well how far will we actually get.

Thinking the so-called unthinkable does not mean doing the unthinkable. On the other hand it might just allow some hitherto unexplored creative ideas to emerge.

The Other 16

My daughter Ally sent me a link to this article this morning:

Who are the other 16?

Apparently 1 in 17 Android and  IOS 'phones have the YouVersion Bible App installed on them. I don't know how many that makes worldwide, but I'm guessing it's a pretty big number. The article is about how to reach the 16 who haven't and it asks some questions about what we can do to encourage people to engage with the Bible through the medium of smart 'phones and other mobile devices.

If you have such a device and haven't tried YouVersion, then do give it a try. It might just help you keep up to date with your reading plan, or not as the case might be!!

Retraining here I come!

So, this Saturday, 4th February 2012, marks the real start of my retraining. It's the first day of the full diploma course in Sports Massage Therapy and I'm looking forward to it with that mixture of excitement and apprehension that goes with anything new. Will I be able to learn all the information at a rate that will get me through the course? Will I be able to develop the practical skills and that I will need? Will I be able to turn it all into a viable business at the end?

All questions that will undoubtedly get answered in the next twelve months or so.

Of course it's also important to remember that I'm not retraining because I've given up ministry or because ministry has given me up. I"m dong it precisely because I'm still passionate about people who are far from God and about the church that God has chosen to carry the news of the greatest hope we can ever have. When I first ventured towards ministry it was because of a sense of the need within the church in the UK to rediscover it's spiritual life in God's hands. As fellow members of an expedition to North Africa were talking about their sense of call to reach the Arab world with the Gospel, I was consumed by an equal passion to see the church in the UK fired up.

I remember a picture that came to mind of a mission worker edging out a long a branch to reach whatever was at the end. I remember the folk sitting by the trunk cheering them on as they went. And I remember too the sense of time passing and the person on the branch fading from both the view and the memory of the those around the trunk. Eventually a decision was made to cut off the branch because it weighed too much and the trunk would be damaged if something wasn't done. No one remembered that there was a person at the other end who needed help and support. So they took a saw and cut off the branch and the worker on the end found themselves falling helplessly to the ground. In that picture I saw the church at home, concerned about itself so much that it lost sight of the wider mission.

Years later, when I read about my Grandfather's time in Gambia, I wondered if he felt that sense of disconnection with home. I wondered if that contributed to his returning home from the mission-field and never being involved in church again. I don't know. I wondered too if he ever prayed for the church in the UK to get its head back in the game and to stop fretting about curtains and policies and just get on with the job of the kingdom.

I was going to tell a story about getting to put into practice a few of the things I've been learning about massage. About how funny it was to be standing around after tennis last night doing a little bit of massage for a friend with a tight muscle. I was very careful not to do what I'm not able to do, but I did what I could and I'll find out next week if it helped or hindered. Hopefully it helped.

But whether I'm a Sports Massage Therapist, a Nutritional Adviser or a Baptist Minister, I will never stop being a follower of Jesus. I may slip and slide, I may make mistakes and I may fail in some people's eyes, but I will commit myself to pursue a simple obedience to the call of God on my life.

It's going to take time!

Finally I got to church yesterday. What with Christmas, family visits and weekend introductory courses, I haven't actually been to church for a month. Well not on a Sunday anyway, and not to a building that we mistakenly call the church and... Actually I have "been church" over the last month, just not in a standardised and sanitised appointed 1.5 hour worship experience.

Anyway, we toddled off somewhere yesterday and had a good time. Perhaps "good time" is not an appropriate description of what we did, but it will have to suffice. It certainly wasn't traditional, and it wasn't slick, but it was open and relaxed and engaging and okay. Is that the right way to describe a worship event-Okay? Who knows! It was interesting to be part of the congregation, mostly unknown in terms of my background. Only one or two possibly knew I'm a minister and I didn't tell anyone! Not that it's a secret, it just takes a bit of explaining! Rather like explaining that just because I used to work for British Gas didn't qualify me to fit a central heating system or that having studied chemistry that I would be able to fill my grandmother's prescriptions for her because the shop is called "Boots the Chemist" rather than "boots the Pharmacist"!

So what's going to take take time? Well, mostly it's about finding a place within a Christian community. One of the reasons for not disclosing readily my background as a minister is in order to not get pigeonholed into a role of any kind. If I'm a leader, then I want that to emerge through service rather than imposed by virtue of training. Eventually, if we settle in the community we visited, then it will become apparent, more widely known as we become more widely known within the community. The risk I run is being seen as the quiet one who doesn't say much. But then again, keeping quiet isn't a bad habit for someone who's been preaching for twenty years.

I don't know if it's going to be more difficult after two decades of ministry or if we will simply ease ourselves into ordinary church life. I don't know how it will be sitting in the congregation listening to otters do what I used to do. I don't know how I will respond if and when an opportunity to speak is offered. All these things lie ahead of us. I just hope that we don't lose sight of the simple church idea that is forming in our hearts and minds.

Driscoll and the British Church

By now some of you may have read the interview in Christianity that seems to have stoked something of a debate whether Mark Driscoll has anything to say to the church in the UK or not. I ought to reread the article again sometime, but from my first reading I thought he had some courageous things to say that need to be said and need to be heard. We're very quick to defend ourselves when maybe we ought to be taking a long cold look at the reality of our situation.

To balance things up, if you've read the article or just the tweets and blogs, then you might like to read what the man himself had to say about it and a helpful piece by Don Carson too. I thought Don Carson's reflections were particularly helpful and balanced, and you can read them here. Mark Driscoll's comments are on his blog here.

Mark Driscoll calls for clarity of doctrine, courage in preaching, and some objective thinking about men and the church. We ought to listen to that challenge. Generally, as evangelicals, we've got our doctrine sorted out, although there is always room for differences. How big those differences are and how healthy they are is not at issue here. I think the issue issue is how far they distract us from the core call of the church to reach those far from God. To be honest, I think it's naive to think that one's position on say women in leadership, is wholly responsible for our ineffectiveness in reaching men. There's far more to it than that.

What Don Carson does in his reflections is to remind us that Yorkshire is different compared to London (well we all knew that anyway!), and in reminding us of that points us to a reality that success is not necessarily in the numbers. Good things are happening in our country and innovation is alive and well despite institutional barriers and cultural challenges. Mark Driscoll openly acknowledges these differences too.

Overall, we're in danger of yet more knee-jerk reactions to things said by people who are passionate about the kingdom and actually care about the future of the mission of God in the UK, just because we don't like Jonny Foreigner trying to tell us what we're doing wrong and how we could do better. Perhaps the voice from the outside is just what we need so that we can see more clearly from the inside. Thank you to both Mark Driscoll and Don Carson for caring enough to say what they see and for raising the standard of hope around which I hope we can all gather.

Experimenting with diet and nutrition

As some of you know I'm currently studying a nutrition course. Partly for my own interest and partly as a personal retraining programme in order to be self-supporting in ministry. Anyway, my interest in nutrition foes back a long way and should have been better informed a long time ago. I was only four years old when I declared my dislike of most meat and announced I wasn't going to eat it anymore! My mum thought it was a phase, but in broad terms I've not eaten most red meat since then. I still eat chicken and turkey, and a few other things that I like, so getting all my essential amino acids has never been a problem.

A few years ago I decided to do two things. One, tackle my increasing weight and secondly, take a serious look at the potential risks of diabetes and possible solutions. BOth my mother and my grandfather had type II and my twin now also has been diagnosed type II. I started to look at GI and we adjusted our diet as a family to follow a lower GI/GL regimen.

In the run up to our daughter's wedding, both Anne and I lost a lot of weight following a ver popular eating plan that worked for us, and generally speaking we are being reasonably successful at maintaining our weight. Of course the root problem is that you put on weight because you metabolism doesn't match your calorie intake, and those habits are hard to change but need to change over the long haul if you're going to avoid the modern phenomenon of going form one diet to another.

My current experiment on myself is to use both a calorie counting tool (the My Fitness Pal website I blogged about recently) and an adjusted balance of protein and carbohydrates and fat in my diet. The FSA guideline is roughly 15% calories from protein, 30% from fat, and 55% from carbohydrates. To give you an idea of what that looks like, the average healthy adult male runs on about 2,400 calories a day (it just makes the maths a little easier). 15% of that is 360, 30% is 720, which leaves 1120 for the carbohydrate portion.

The simple calculation is that 1g of protein or carbohydrate is 4 calories and 1g fat is 9 calories. So that would suggest that you would need to eat 90g protein, 80g fat, and 280g carbohydrate. Apparently, most people usually don't eat enough protein, and often too much fat, but that's a discussion for another day.

To lose weight you need to eat a calorie deficit diet (fewer in than burnt). But protein uses more energy to digest and so if you get more of your calories from protein the logically your body will need to work harder to extract the nutrients. This is the basis for diets like the Dukan diet that is very high in protein and low in carbohydrate. So my experiment has been to eat a calorie deficit diet of about 500 calories a day below my needs, and to eat 30% protein rather than 15%. On top of that I am making sure that I drink a lot of water. at least 1.5 litres a day and probably nearer 2.5.

What I've noticed is this:

Firstly, it's quite hard to make sure you're eating that much protein. My daily target is 150g, which turns out to be quite a lot for a non-meat eater! Protein shakes can help, but that's not a cheap option by any means and you do need to be careful about what you're doing.

Secondly, drinking that much water takes discipline, but then so does everything else!

Thirdly, never forget the importance of exercise to maintain lean muscle mass and keep your metabolic engine running!

Fourthly, it seems to work! I've lost about 6lbs (2.2kg) in 3-4 weeks and I still treat myself to the occasional flapjack in the coffee shop once a week.

Farewell to the Baptist Times

I scanned the final print version of The Baptist Times this morning. This caught my eye from 1977, the year of the "Protest Assembly". Reading the text it would seem that protest is code for someone actually asking a relevant question that sends the procedural process folk into a tailspin. Maybe I'm being unfair, but it would seem that when a denomination is more concerned about the correct procedure than the question, we're in a real fix!

Anyway, the question was raised by one Douglas McBain of Lewin Road (I had the privilege of meeting Douglas in the 1980's and was really helped and encouraged by him), who apparently woke the assembly up with his challenge from the floor over the interpretation of the data on decline in the denomination, which in his words, had nothing to say about the life, health and spiritual strength of our denomination.

In a later article for The Baptist Times he wrote about the "malaise"  afflicting our churches where we'd lost the cutting edge of evangelism, how poorly paid most ministers were, churches that were afraid of change, too many colleges, and looking backwards rather than forwards. A week later he wrote about the need to have hope, be courageous, innovative and avoid any tendency towards centralisation.

I guess as the lights go out on our denominational paper and come on with the Beyond400 website and the Baptist Times website to be launched, we have to hope that we will not only listen to these voices from the past but also to the voices of the present who once again are calling for courage and innovation. Perhaps too its time to recognise that we are not like other denominations and we do not need to protect the centre in order to go forward at the margins. We don't need a centralised system that organises our life for we ought to be able to organise ourselves locally. Not in fierce independence but in cooperative interdependence.

Two years after the '77 Assembly a report was produced. It's take on the decline in membership? Apparently we were now "slimmer but stronger". If we compared the 2012 figures against the 1979 numbers I worry that we might find ourselves positively diaphanous!

Steve Turner once said: History repeats itself; has to, no one ever listens. Are we listening?

Reading Haggai

I made the decision to read Haggai and Habakkuk because I thought they might be relevant to our new direction. I know too  how easy it would be to pick out verses that saw what I want to hear and how dangerous that would be. But why would I read my Bible in a vacuum?

Haggai challenges and encourages us to prioritise the important. As we buy a house and talk about everything we want to do to it to make it our home, Haggai reminds us that we are not doing this for our benefit alone, but to honour God. If God cannot take pleasure in the house we are building then it's all a waste of time and effort. Remeber the psalmists injunction that "unless the Lord builds the house, those who labour, labour in vain".

So our prayer is that whatever gets built, God is honoured in it and by it, that he will be pleased with what he sees, his glory will be there and his peace too. Not a bad goal for where we are going.

Picking up the pace

You'd think that someone who has spent most of their adult life reading books, studying ideas, reflecting on concepts and generally trying to stay involved in changing conversations about all sorts of things would find shifting their focus to a new area of study fairly straightforward. But the thing is I've never really done anything in a straightforward manner in my life!

So I find myself about to start this amazing Sports Massage Diploma while at the same time studying a Diploma in Nutrition and planning some CPD in Pilates, posture and a few other things. These, of course, will not happen until next year at the earliest, but I do seem to considering a lot of fresh studying for someone of my advancing years! I just hope my brain can take it!

I have a friend that I haven't seem for a long time. In fact I've lost contact with them and would like to track them down, but I can't seem to find them anywhere yet. I remember his plan was to retire at 55, the age I will be this year and the age I think he must have reached about five years ago. I wonder if he did? I wonder what else he is doing?

As for me, retirement doesn't look like a possibility for a long time yet, so I might as well keep learning and exploring. No way do I want my brain to slow down. Recent studies seem to suggest that decline sets in much earlier than previously thought, so I know I'm on borrowed time as far as learning and retying new information goes. Let's hope the brain lasts out the next couple of years!

Stepping out in a new direction

Okay, so this past weekend I spent the two days taking my first steps into the world of Sports Massage. Stepping into the unknown is always somewhat daunting, but never more soy for me that this weekend's experience. The thing about massage is that it is literally "hands on". Who knows how one is going to react personally to applying massage to people one doesn't know. Will you be able to do it in a way that makes them feel comfortable, will you feel comfortable?

In the end, I really enjoyed my new learning experience and I've signed up for the full diploma course! So for the next 11 months or so I'll be a sports massage therapist in training! After that, who knows how things will take shape. We will have to wait and see.

I was really surprised at how much I learnt in just two days. Doing the final "full-body" massage on Sunday afternoon was a chance to put all the things we'd been learning together. Managing the time is quite difficult. How do you work out how long to spend on one leg before moving onto the other one? some of that clearly comes with experience and also with what you find. The tendency we all had was to want to look at what we were doing rather than letting our hands give us the feedback. We learnt that looking up was important for our posture.

I think the other thing we all discovered was how much effort it takes to do good massage. This isn't just lightly stroking someone's back, this is hard work! Learning to use your own body weight and to push through your legs and hips, not using your arms and shoulders takes a lot of concentration and effort at first. But it soon became more natural.

As I type this post, I'm listening to some worship from Hillsongs. It reminds me that what I'm doing is not replacing my ministry, it's reshaping it. I may never preach again, but this weekend I had more meaningful interactions with people who wouldn't consider church an option than I've had in too long. I've had my faith challenged as I was asked all sorts of interesting questions and sought to give open, honest answers.

It may be a new direction, but the good news remains the same, the passion for the lost remains intact, the desire to be shaped by the hands of God in accordance with his purposes is still at the heart of everything. I never want to lose sight of that.

More than a calorie counter

I've started exploring myfitnesspal as part of my interest in nutrition. We all know, I assume, that if calories consumed exceed calories used, then weight gain is inevitable. But how many of us have an accurate idea of our calorie intake?

Myfitnesspal is both a web-based food diary and an app for both iPhone and iPad. It allows you quickly to enter data about the food you eat and the exercise you take on a day-by-day basis. There is even a barcode scanner option for gathering data about a food item. By setting manageable goals you can track your progress. At the end of the day you can review both the calories consumed and the balance of the day's diet. So, for example, if you are trying to derive say 30% of your calories from protein, you can see how you are doing.

I suspect that over time, if you use it honestly, you will get a pretty good idea of what a typical day looks lie and where to make changes. I think it might also help design different eating plans.

There is a good range of easily accessed food data available without having to enter carbohydrate, protein and fat breakdowns. This was today's breakfast:

You can save any given meal, or you can copy a meal from a previous day or date, so it's quite a flexible system. I don't know that I would use it over a really long time. I think it's more a case of getting to know what a typical day or a typical meal means to my overall diet.

Oh, and by the way, it's free!

What is giving?

As you know, we're about to embark on a very different ministry track in the next few months. As things change one of the areas we've been talking about is how we give and what constitutes giving in these changing circumstances. It would be very easy for us to declare that we can no longer afford to give in the way we have done in the past, and so to reduce our giving to something we consider more manageable.

I hope you feel as uncomfortable about some of those words as we do. We've never wanted our giving to be a matter of affordability or manageability. I remember the quote at the start of RT Kendall's great book on giving that says something like, "When someone says it's not about the money–it's about the money!" We will always keep tat in mind when we work out what to give and how to do it.

The question we face is more mundane in many ways than the simple affordability question. In reality we can spiritualise it by saying things like, "We can't afford not to give," but who wouldn't like a bit extra in their pocket to spend, especially when the mortgage is due and the utility bills are rising? Equally we don't want to become fixated on tithing as the only true measure of our giving. We can so easily fall into the trap of doing the maths and deciding that God must be pleased with us because we hit 10% again this month.

No, our question really revolves around the costs of retraining and the investment in church planting. If I'm doing the training, does that count as part of our giving? There we go again. Another interesting word, "count". It's so forensic, so legal, so accountancy-like, as if everything is reduce able to a measurable amount, a metic of some kind. When did our faith-walk with God become about metrics?

Somewhere along the line we need to rediscover the joy of giving and the sacrifice, but also the joy of life with God. I can't remember how we worked this out last time when i went to college to study theology. I do remember well God's faithfulness to us through those years and how he blessed us in ways we never imagined. And I remember too our friends who struggled. We were no more deserving of God's blessing than they were, but together we shared the blessing.

This time around we have decided that my training is an investment in ministry. We will keep an account of the cost and we will still seek to be generous, but we won't beat ourselves up about numbers. As always we will watch carefully how things unfold and in faith we will look to respond to what we see before us.

What I'm about to read

Alongside reading books on nutrition, i'm still reading as widely as I can about church, particularly missional church. I have a number of unstarted books that I ought to get stuck into in the next month or so. Two that I want to read are: The faith of leap by Hirsch and Frost and The missional church in perspective by Gelder and Zscheile. Alongside these two, I've jus bought Barefoot church by Hatmaker to read on my Kindle.

That should keep me pretty busy for the rest of January.

The nutrition thing is quite interesting. I'm now on module 5 of 18, trying to do one a week. I guess this will get a bit more demanding when I start my other course. Self-discipline will be of the utmost importance. It will almost be like college all over again! At least I'm free of major examinations this time around. I remember vowing that I'd never sit another exam after I finished my first degree and then I went and did two more! And then after that I still did two more exams for my accreditation as a batiste minister and a diploma in counselling. Must be a genetically disposed student.

Maybe it says something about being willing to embrace something new and different. At least that might be an argument I could use for it. If, at school. someone had said to me that I'd have a degree in chemistry, two in theology an two or three diplomas in unrelated subjects I think I'd have thought them quite mad. Back in the 70's it was still very much the case that you settled on a career and followed that through. Now it seems that there's almost a portfolio approach the career development. Maybe not for everyone, but for some.

Anyway, whatever it all means it certainly means this: life will be different. So I'd better get on with writing up my next assignment and ding some research for a friend who needs some nutritional advice. Does this count as my first real client I wonder? Hope I can help!

Me and my Kindle

I was very lucky to get a Kindle for Christmas. As you know, I already own an iPad, so why you might wonder would I want a Kindle? Well, I have to say that I asked the same question for a long time. The iPad is great. It has a bright screen that is easy to read and a larger screen size than the Kindle. The Kindle is a dedicated reader, whereas the iPad can do so much more. So why carry two devices around with you when one would do the job, right?

Wrong!

The Kindle is brilliant. It is light, much lighter than the iPad. It renders the pages in a way that makes it feel book-like in a way that's just a little hard to explain. The text is clear, navigation is easy enough and the battery lasts a long time. Yes, it's a dedicated reader, but it's so good at being that, and that is exactly what I want from this kind of device.

I currently have a number of books on my Kindle. I'm half-way through The Long Walk, the story of a group of prisoners escaping from a Siberian work camp in the 1940's. I also have a book about nutrition on there and a couple of other fiction titles to dip into at some point. Yesterday I downloaded a sample chapter from a book I might get. Now that's a great way to explore new books and ideas without having to clog the bookshelves.

So I have to say that I'm impressed with my Kindle and I have a feeling we're going to have a long and enjoyable working relationship. Will I stop buying paper based books? Probably not. Actually I'd love to have the option of buying both paper and digital for some books, rather like triple-play Blue Ray, DVD and digital media.

Proteins, Carbs, fats and Vitamins

To keep my brain from going to sleep now that I'm no longer a church leader, I've embarked on a course in nutrition. To be honest I'm not too sure where it fits in the grand scheme of qualifications. If anyone knows what it means I be pleased to find out what an "NCFE Level 4 diploma" equates to on the NQF. From what I've done so far I'd guess that it somewhere around or just above an A-level, but given that they are supposed to have got so much easier than when I did my A-levels, who am I to say!

Anyway, I'm working away it to the best of my ability and trying to remember what I've read so far about complete and incomplete proteins, what the essential amino acids are, how to work out how much carbohydrate there is some foods and what a portion size actually should be for the average person! Next up is a module on fats and then there's a long unit on vitamins. My ageing brain is struggling to retain all this new material and I think I'll have to produce some kind of review system to help me stay familiar with  what I'm learning.

I'm using Anne and myself as guinea pigs to explore different diet elements. So last night I cooked a simple pasta meal, but rather than just sling some pasta in a pan, I weighed out the pasta according to the serving guidelines. I then did a bit of maths on the meal to see what the calorie count was. Very interesting. I'm pretty sure that one of the challenges the great British diet faces is that of portion size. Just for fun, try weighing your breakfast cereal out. Just put in the bowl what you'd usually have and then weigh it and compare it to the portion size on the packet. I was surprised how much I saw as a reasonable portion.

Anyway, it's quite interesting to explore all of this, at least it is to me.

In a couple of weeks I'm attending a weekend training course which is an introduction to sports massage. If that goes well, I'll be looking to start the full diploma course in February. All this should keep me occupied over the next year along with sorting out the house we are hoping to buy.

The 39 Steps

Last night Anne and I went off to the Criterion Theatre to see a production of The 39 Steps. It was a great evening.

Adapted by Patrick Barlow, it is a comedy take on Buchan's original story. The story moves along at a great pace and we didn't even notice the time passing. No sooner had the opening monologue begun than we found ourselves 45 minutes later at the intermission without a dull moment.

The cast of four did a great job and I think we'd even go back and see it again, just to pick up on some of the things we might have missed the first time around. There was some really clever use of props and shadow puppets on a very simple set. I'm not sure how far through the action that I realised the number of references to Alfred Hitchcock, the director of the original film version with Ronald Coleman in 1935. On the train home we listed the ones we could remember: Psycho, The Birds, Rear Window, Vertigo, The man who knew too much, North by North West. I'm sure there were more.

According the the programme notes "Buchan's story is too cerebral to make a good movie," but this comedy adaptation works really well. If you get the chance to go and see it, I don't think you will be disappointed. A good night out.

Here comes 2012

So it's New Year's Eve and 2012 is just a few hours away. Growing up I never thought I'd reach the millennium let alone this far into a new century. I think that was mostly due to that weird sense of what constitutes old when you're only eight years old. I remember reading an article in the Observer magazine (yes, I used to read bits of a Sunday broadsheet when I was eight) about people in their thirties who had "retired" from the rat-race to live idyllic lives running general stores in Cotswold villages or somewhere in North Devon. At eight, living to thirty-four seemed impossible.

Now, each year flies by with barely the time to take a breath. But 2012 is going to be different for sure. Making sense of the rejection of my ministry and the new direction we are taking precipitated by the events of the last two years is an enormous challenge. Are we stepping out into a new challenge, bravely doing what others are too afraid to do? Or are we just foolish? Are we choosing a selfish option because I have messed up our lives in a most spectacular way by not being what I ought to have been.

Whatever the reason, this is the story in which we find ourselves and only in eternity will we know the significance of the twists and turns. I find myself in the ebb and flow of thinking I've made a terrible mistake, and that God didn't bring us this far to abandon us to the hopelessness of rejection and failure.

So 2012 is going to be a very different and unpredictable year. It may the first year in maybe more that 25 years when I don't preach a sermon or lead an act of worship. I don't know how often we will find ourselves in church on a Sunday. Not because we think it is optional, but because of the growing desire simply to do things differently.

Apparently the Mayor of London's firework display to celebrate the New Year will last 11 minutes. Once the smoke clears and the eyes readjust after the bright lights, the year will start. it's more that an 11 minute firework display. It is another 366 days of faithful walking in the same direction. Like Abraham, we are trying to walk with God to a destination he has shown us, but for which we have no map by which to navigate our way.

Empty words?

I've had a few funerals to do recently. Just search the blog to find out why I think about doing funerals. It was while I was doing one particular funeral that I realised how empty some of the words I use each time might actually sound to those listening. You hope that the words bring comfort and a sense of hope without ever appearing to pass judgment. You hope that somehow you will be able to sow a seed of the gospel in to the lives of those who listen as you pray and reflect. Sometimes I probably do so more that I imagine.

But there's one phrase that I use every time that has been bothering me for sometime. It occurs early on at the very beginning of the funeral service.

We are here to renew our trust in God who has said: I will not fail you or desert you.


Personally, I find those words very challenging. If I'm honest I feel failed and deserted a lot of the time. I feel a sense of being abandoned by God, let down and insecure about almost every aspect of my life. I'm not depressed, and I'm not prone to depression. I'm just being honest. There has been little in my life recently that has given me any glimpse of God's enduring faithfulness in a tangible way. Prayers go seemingly unanswered, and I for one cannot figure out why God appears to say no to most of my prayers when I'm not actually asking for very much at all.

Is it just me? I don't think so.

Sometimes the Christian community is guilty of using language that suggests that we all get up in the morning and God speaks loudly and clearly into our lives, directing our decisions and choices. Most of the time this is simply not true. Most of the time we struggle to make sense of what we believe.

Perhaps the reason I need to say these words is to remind me that I do have to renew my trust and that life is far from simple and far from easy. Maybe faith has more to do with what is unseen than what is seen and verifiable.

The words are not empty, but they are not easy.

Christmas

The house is quiet, the cats are asleep somewhere, Anne has gone off to her parents for Christmas Eve, and I have the place to myself. I like it like this, so don't feel sorry for me being on my own on Christmas Eve. I will probably go out for a walk when I've done this post, unless laziness gets the better of me. I also have a sore foot, so there's my ready-made excuse!

Tomorrow for only the second time in 20 years I do not have to be in church. Normally Christmas Day is a juggling game of family and church. Last year I suggested we close on the Sunday, given that we'd been together on the Saturday anyway. I thought this was a great idea because it would give people a chance to spend the day with family instead of rushing about fitting family around church. I recently discovered that such a terrible suggestion was yet another indication of my lack of commitment to the church because I put my family before church. Clearly I'm not suited to ministry!

I'm not sure what it is about church that makes me feel frustrated at times, but such an attitude is high on the list. I'll be honest enough to say that I won't miss being in church tomorrow, even though it is a Sunday. So, I shall get up at a reasonable time. Maybe I'll go for a walk if the mood takes me (I doubt I'll get the chance later in the day). I'll go to Anne's parents and have lunch and I'll come home again. I'll wonder again at the amazing story of the incarnation, and I'll give thanks that God thought I was worth all that effort.

And when it's all over, I for one won't be putting God back in the box with all the decorations for another year because the gospel is more than the nativity and my commitment to him is about more that a single Sunday out of 52.

Psalm 137

I read Psalm 137 and wondered what it has to say about our current, and future situation. Of course, just because you read the Bible it doesn't mean that you have to find some sort of point of equivalence in every word. That was one of the faults of some of the early interpreters who found meaning in almost every detail of the parables. But it's always important to ask questions of the text you are reading, even if in the end you conclude that it is silent on the prevailing issue.

So, as for Psalm 137, I'm not going to equate our new home with Babylon, although I did remember God's word to the exiles in Jeremiah to settle down, build houses and pray for the prosperity of the city. Equally I'm not going to treat either Upminster or even Bedford as our Jerusalem. But there was one lesson to learn.

Don't forget the heart, the focus of your worship.

With the potential to be out of connection with a church, it would be easy to drift into a worship-less pattern, to become the Christian equivalent of the solider stranded on the desert island who doesn't know the war is over. We want to continue to grow and worship and develop as followers of Jesus and we need to guard ourselves against losing our way in this.

So there was a lesson to learn from Psalm 137, it just needed the right question and the right eyes to see it.

That was the weekend that was!

Well we had a very good weekend. I guess we would have to say that we missed not having to plan the All-Age and Carol Services for Christmas and we missed being part of those events, but we also rather enjoyed not having to do all that too.

Instead we travelled to Bedford to share in a wedding and we got to have brunch with some old friends and visit others. The wedding was the third of three sisters, and it was great to be part of that event. Brunch on Sunday was an exciting affair too!

During our eight years in Bedford we talked a lot about what it meant to be a church in the community, about how we could serve the community, about what it meant simply to be church. We were not afraid to ask the questions and think differently about the answers. Yesterday's brunch was some of the fruit of that thinking. About 30-40 people gathered in the loach village hall and talked and ate together. A whole cross-section of people. I met someone who had come for the very first time and I sat and simply asked him questions about is life and listened to his story. There were no songs, no prayers, no preaching.

Having the time to talk, which hopefully leads to building relationships, that in turn create opportunities to share faith, was at the heart of the purpose of the event. there was a bouncy castle for the children and some craft activities for them too. The adults sat and talked.

Okay, so it's easy for the Christians to drift into comfortable small groups around tables, but generally, with a bit of effort, that didn't happen. You have to be intentional about talking with others, but everyone can do it because everyone can listen to someone's story. All you have to do is ask questions and listen carefully enough so you can ask more questions.

So we had a good time. I got to share our vision for the future with some old friends over the course of the weekend and we got to spend time with our daughter. All in all it was good way to spend our first weekend away from full-time leadership.

Stretched and relaxed!

Well, I have to say, holy yoga was an interesting experience. Firstly, I'm not as flexible as I might be! That was one thing learned as I tried to grab my foot and tuck it into my lap! Beyond the obvious creaking of knees and muscles as they complained bout being asked to do things they'd long forgotten how to do,  I have to say that I did feel the benefit of having spent the time stretching and relaxing.

Of course doing Pilates would probably achieve similar goals and if I did the exercise I ought to do each day, my flexibility would increase vastly and with none of the theological issues usually raised around yoga.

So, what did I make of the theological issues then, I hear you ask.

Well, actually I don't think there were any. you see the thing is the whole routine was set in the context of worship. It was quite reflective and brought a fresh dimension to engaging spiritually and physically. Here's an example. When we were doing one particular exercise that involved a progressive stretch, we were encouraged to think about the principle of surrender. As you stretched and your body resisted you simply focussed on surrendering to the stretch. sounds odd doesn't it, but if you have ever done any form of serious stretching, you will know that you have to relax to stretch and relaxing is an act of surrender because your body naturally tenses up when it resists.

So there will still be issues that this is the thin end of the wedge and that Christians who engage with yoga, no matter how much Christian spirituality in incorporated, are opening themselves to negative spiritual influence. But I also suspect that the very people who reject holy yoga in this way will do so jet before they go of the play Modern Warfare 3, or watch some film or TV programme that lack a Christian ethical and theologically sound base.

Holy Yoga

I know, I know, yoga and Christianity doesn't mix well, particularly for evangelicals, but as a form of exercise it remains fairly popular. So what are we to do?

One approach is to reject it as a distraction or deviation at best, fraught with pitfalls and dangerous mystical beliefs and practices. An alternative is to think redemption. That appears to be what one group is seeking to by developing a Christian based alternative.

I'm in London today to see for myself what holy yoga looks like and to meet a Christian practitioner. Should be an interesting morning!


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What might it look like?

We were joking the other day with some friends about what we might be doing next now that formal ministry seems to be over for us. Amidst the swinging from crazy ideas and incredible vision to sheer panic and scary dreams about the future, we find ourselves reflecting on all sorts of things. The truth is that rather like one of the legendary large artworks of the inimitable Rolf Harris, it's difficult to, "see what is it yet."

In my dreams, it looks very different to the usual experience we have of church. It's rooted in relationships, built around common values and shared experiences. I know this is what all church experience ought to be, but it isn't. That's the truth. When faith becomes institutionalised it requires an organisational system to maintain itself. That system generates demands and expectations that are sometimes in danger of becoming the defining criteria above the core message. It's the nature of an imperfect expression of being the body of Christ with which we all have to do battle whether in or out of the local, traditional expression of church. Whatever we do in the coming years will not be perfect, it might not even be better.

Having a blank sheet of paper does give us the opportunity to begin from scratch and ask ourselves what are the key things, the non-negotiables that we would want to put in place. I don't have a definitive list, but one of the things I know will be important is a resolute determination not to criticise and moan about the established church. It doesn't help anyone. I also know that whatever happens, it will probably not happen spontaneously but will require a degree of intentionality about it. With that in mind, I think we will need to be able to describe the boundaries and the ethos of the thing really early. Like now would be a good time!

So here are a few thoughts about some key ideas:

Firstly, whatever group assembles, we will need a clear, shared vision that we all buy into. If some of us ultimately see the end game in terms of a gathered group of people in one place of Sunday mornings singing songs and listening to sermons, and others don't, then we would need to get that sorted pretty quickly.

Secondly, we would need to be fully committed to spending regular, quality time around a shared meal. Call it what you like, but relationships are built over time and not through worship services alone.

Thirdly, we would need to agree to live as an extended family. Put simply, we care for each other without abdicating that responsibility to one person alone.

Fourth, it's shared leadership. More like parenting maybe that CEO-leadership, but based on a plurality of leadership gifts distributed among a group of leaders.

Fifthly, and remember these are not in any specific order, a deep commitment to pray and to incarnational mission.

There's a lot missing I know, but it gives you a flavour of the things that are going through my mind at the moment. To those who have listened to me over the years, some of it will be instantly recognised from previous conversations.

More to come, I'm sure.

Kindle's and iPads

Of the things that I find really useful about my iPad is the ability to stick pdf's on it and read them wherever I might be. It doesn't matter about the style of the pdf, it just works and I haven't had any problems at all as far as I can recall. My iPad has a number of articles and short papers that are colourful and easy to both read and navigate on the nice bright screen. But it's not the most efficient reader, and an iPad is a complete waste of money if all you want to do is read stuff.

The Kindle, of which Anne as the Wi-Fi version with the keypad and I'm getting the non-keypad version for Christmas (yes, I know how lucky I am!), is just one of the alternative e-book readers out there. One of the things I like about the Kindle is the ability to email pdf documents to it. The problem is that the Kindle renders the pdf by page, which can make the typeface very small indeed.

For documents that I write, the solution is simple. All I have to do is to create a custom page size (90mm by 120mm) with 1mm margins and no headers or footers (they're not really needed). I then change the font size to 10 and email the pdf from the print menu of my Mac. Nice and simple, even if a bit time consuming.

Of course the big plus is that I can email this pdf to anyone who wants it, and they too can read it on their Kindle too if they have one. Perhaps there is already a neat and easy solution to generating readable pdfs for Kindle from applications. I know there is something that will convert a document into the correct format for Kindle, but I haven't explored that yet.

I wonder if some bright spark hasn't already, or maybe would like to write an app onto which you can drop a document and it will reformat it for you. Rather like the way Tofu puts a file into columns to make it easier to read.

Schrodinger's Cat

A couple of people posted this on Facebook. It reminds me of university days studying chemistry and physics. Long time ago now.





Credit: George Takei

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Ministry and mission preparation

Here's an article that's worth a read if you are thinking/wondering about the role of the minister in a post-Christendom world.

One key quote to think about:

One of the most disastrous effects of Christendom upon our systems of theological education has been the unhelpful assumption that the Church does and should exist at the center of our society. Under this vision, seminaries have equipped leaders who would excel at managing and maintaining this system. However, as the missio Dei and its implications for the Gospel and the Church come back into focus in Post-Christendom, we submit that our systems of theological education must be re-imagined for the purposes of training missionary leaders. These will be leaders whose concerns and skill-sets revolve not around managing churches as part of an ostensibly "Christian" culture, or in the interest of "church growth," but around mobilizing the people of God for participation in God's mission in the world.

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A Fragile Life

I'm not a big fan of football, but I do tend to watch Football Focus on a Saturday while we have lunch. Maybe it's tradition, maybe it's because I like sport and it was always the introduction to Grandstand for many years.

I watched it last Saturday.

If you did, then you too will have listened to Gary Speed talk about football. Like me you would never have thought that the following day you would wake up to the news that he had apparently decided to end his life. I sat stunned. Was there anything he said, any body language that gave away any sign that this was about to happen? No. Not that I saw. One rarely does in these circumstances.

I'm not about to pontificate about suicide and faith. There's no need. We do not sit in judgement on anyone who chooses when and how to die. Life may be precious, but God is a God of grace and mercy. If anyone understands the depth of human emotions and how we respond to them, then surely our creator does.

No, for me it's the numbness one feels when hearing such news, even when you never knew the person. I've only been involved with the suicide of one person. After a long illness, they decided that they had finally reached the point where they could no longer face the daily struggle.  But the numbness doesn't only arise from the sense of tragedy and loss, but also from the realisation that life is so very fragile.

We are a complex arrangement of emotions and feelings. We live in a fallen world that besets us with our own failures and insecurities. A world that constantly seems to push us to breaking point with deadlines and expectations. It is, to me, no wonder that for some the pressure becomes unbearable and that they choose to bring it to a premature end.

And what about faith? My faith doesn't protect me from such feelings, from the pressures. There are times when the hope it offers seems a very long way from the reality in which I find myself. Truth be told, sometimes my faith makes it even harder. Because of my faith I choose not to say what I really want to say or do what I think I really want to do. Because I choose to seek to be obedient to the call and example of Jesus there are times when the pressure makes me wonder if my heart isn't going to explode as I bear the weight of all that see and feel.

My life is fragile too.

The one thing I do know is this: my fragile life is in God's hands.

A friend and I were talking many years ago about Christians and suicide. For many Christians suicide is unforgivable, but in the end I'm not so sure. Perhaps we ought to think more about grace than judgement. Perhaps God's response to the person who chooses to end their life prematurely is simply to say, "You're early, but you're still welcome."

Dealing with uncertainty

How do you approach uncertainty? I think my preferred approach might be to hide inside a wardrobe until its all sorted itself out! I think part of the problem with uncertainty is that it brings with it a sense of powerlessness. Some of rise to the challenge and set about determining our own destiny. And that's okay, maybe even for followers of Jesus it's okay to take some control and plan and determine what to do next. But where does faith fit?

The problem with an uncertain future, one you cannot describe in detail backed up by evidence, is that no matter what your present looks like, you are about to swap something you know for something quite unknown. To others it might look very exciting, but they aren't the ones who will have to live with he consequences of the decisions you make and the outcomes you experience.

Our future is uncertain. We are making plans, but we'd be foolish to suggest that we are certain in any way about the absolute rightness of the choices we're making. Maybe this is where faith steps in and plays its hand.

I guess you might say that we are trying to make open choices and not to box God into a corner where he has to do what we want in order for our faith to be satisfied. It's an exercise in disciplined thinking and faithful obedience.

While the wardrobe offers a safe place to hide, and maybe even the possibility of another world (think Narnia at this point), it's not going to much of a walk of faith. More a crouching insecurity, a paralysis of faith, a timidity of heart. So I'll leave the wardrobe to be a place to store clothes and not a place to wait for the future to write itself.


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Doing what?

As I promised, here's the outline plan for the future such as it is. The more I talk about this idea, the more it seems to become real, but it remains a long off right now.

We have begun to look at houses not too far from where we are at the moment. We've made friends with some folk beyond church and in all honesty I don't want to give up those friendships and start all over again in yet another new place. I'm tired of doing that. When you move on from a place everyone talks about staying in touch, but few rarely do. Life is busy for us all, and although we can pick up the 'phone, send an email or even a letter, we don't. I don't!

So, living somewhere with easy access to Canary Wharf will be good for Anne's commute. But what am I gong to spend my time doing? I could spiritualise this and get all holy about it, but the bottom line is that I could make a case for prayer and other valuable spiritual pursuits as priorities, but I also need to be doing something that contributes to our household income. So I've decided to explore becoming a Sports Massage Therapist. It will take me a year to train, but while I'm training I will be doing some practice (any willing volunteer clients?). There are therapy logs and case studies to do. The course is one day a fortnight over about 11 months.

At the same time I'm going to do a short course on nutrition and maybe have a look at some life coaching stuff. In my ideal world this will provide me with opportunities to work flexible hours and leave sufficient time to explore how to do church organically and simply. This is a true expression of bi-vocational ministry. It's not full-time ministry on the cheap for the church that cannot afford it, but ministry done in partnership with others who all bring their gifts to the table and share fully the responsibility for leadership.

So there it is in the proverbial nutshell. A new adventure in a new area of skills with a new focus but the same heart to serve God. Hopefully that will never fade away. Perhaps it might even be renewed as the pressure and expectations of ministry fall away.

At the O2

Not the best photo in the world, but it wasn't easy to take pictures! This is the view at the O2. That's Andy Murray to the right, prowling around the court on his way to losing to David Ferrer this afternoon.

We saw a good game of doubles first up and then the singles. We had about five minutes between the two matches, so no real time to do much except stretch and sit down again.

After the Murray match there was a presentation to Roger Federer of the fair play award and the fan's favourite player award.

It was certainly a very good venue for tennis. I wouldn't have minded trying the court, it looked like a very nice surface to play on! Had to settle for the all-weather courts back home in the evening where I won my mens doubles match 6-2, 6-4!

A New Adventure?

It is now public knowledge that Anne and I will leaving our current church setting in a few weeks time. It's been a hard decision to make in many ways, but the truth is it was probably the only decision to make. I'm not about to dissect what has been happening that has brought us to this point. It's enough to say that things haven't really worked and it's time to recognise that.

The question is: What next?

The answer is: We don't know!

What we do know is that it's unlikely that we will be going to another church with me as the minister. We're not leaving the church or rejecting the church or losing our faith or anything of the like. God has, or at least I think he has, been challenging us both about the nature and expression of what it means to be the church. We've tried to explore this in an established church seeing, but it's become increasingly difficult to do so.

So, before we get too old, it's an opportunity to explore simpler, more organic ways of being church. I'm going to retrain in order to become self-financing if possible, and we're going to look to settle into a community and put down some roots.

This post is by way of introducing the plan, such as it is, and to open the way for me to share thoughts and conversation with others about the journey we are about to take. There is much that scares us. Finding a house, getting a mortgage, learning new skills, getting a job or starting a business/practice (I'll blog more about my ideas later), are all big things. But probably scariest of all is setting out on an uncharted journey without any maps and no familiar landmarks by which to navigate.

At the moment we feel very much alone in this, but by God's grace we will meet others who will join us on our journey, keep us company and keep us sane! As news develops I'll try to reflect on it through my blog. Please feel fee to enter the discussion through comments.

Shallow answers to deep questions

There's a man on the radio proposing a simple strategy about giving up your car. He is not saying that everyone should do this, or that it is practical that everyone should. He is not saying that a car is a bad thing, an unnecessary bit of equipment that destroys the environment and a danger to life.

But you'd think he had from some of the immediate responses. "Try living in rural West Wales without a car," was one text. "How do you go shopping with a family?" was one question asked. I grew up in a village with a limited bus service. We survived and we didn't even have our own dedicated telephone line. Shopping trips were made by bus and were a day out not a daily excursion.

My point is this: how easily do we get angry and upset with an idea primarily because we fail to engage with the idea beyond a very superficial level. We think we understand way before we actually understand. We open our mouths before our brains have done any useful listening and reflecting.

The lesson is simple. We must slow down, and listen more than we speak. It's always easier to produce a knee-jerk response to any question. And that is never more true than in deepening our discipleship. There are no shortcuts to a deeper walk with God.

Been away

So we've been away for a short break in Portugal. All very nice. Played tennis, walked around the marina, sat in coffee shops talking about the future and most importunely on a holiday like this... picking out a shortlist of villas and apartments to buy! If only we had the money!

That'a the thing about holidays, you can dream about what it might be like to live in a place without actually doing it. I don't know if we'd really want a place on the Algarve or in Spain or somewhere similar. Truth be told, I could list a whole lot of places I'd like to spend my unlikely early retirement years.

Anyway, let's not get all melancholy about it. A week away was certainly what we needed, and it came at just the right time. Now we're back we need to begin the process of focussing on the shape of our future. Before we left we'd made the decision with the church to step down from leadership. We will finish in December in terms of all the public stuff and then we will have several months to sort out where to live and what to do next. At this point we are not thinking about another pastoral role in an established church setting.

Quite what shape the future will take is uncertain, but I'm looking at retraining in order to be financially independent, which in turn might enable us to explore new ways of being church that doesn't require starting with an established congregation meeting on a Sunday morning to sing songs and listen to a monologue. But things are far from clear at this moment in time.

Now we are back, and now it's publicly known that we are leaving our current setting, I can blog a bit more about what's been on my heart and where that might take us. We are not giving up on church, and we are not giving up on ministry. We're just stepping out of what we've been doing for the past 20 years and into a new adventure.

The Protesting Church?

It's both fascinating and sad to watch the story unfold at St Paul's. Sad because of the distraction form the issues raised outside the building because of the events inside the building. and there's the sign that keeps popping up on the news bulletins: "What would Jesus do?"

What would Jesus do? Would he join the protesters outside in their campaign, would he sit inside the building teaching those inside about the implications of what is happening outside? What would he do?

Would he provide Latte's and Panninis for the gathered crowd? would make enigmatic comments about paying tax, taking responsibility and the dangers of increasing pay gaps and inequity in the workplace?

I don't know.

Maybe the only thing we might be able to say with any certainty is that he probably wouldn't be looking to the legal system to address the issues.