Searching for Significance

I was reading in Luke's gospel about the disciples of John and their errand to see Jesus. John sent them with a specific request to find out if Jesus was the one for whom they had been waiting or not. In his response, Jesus speaks about John as the greatest man who has ever lived. Quite an accolade. But Jesus goes on to say that even the person considered to be the east in the kingdom is greater than John. How does that work?

Well, it's clearly not a put down of John, Jesus wouldn't do that to him, and equally true is that it is not an aggrandisement of insignificance either. Perhaps the point is rather simple to state but hard to grasp and apply. Perhaps the point is that significance in the kingdom doesn't come from ministry position or the lack of it.

For twenty years I've been a leader of a congregation. Sometimes I've felt like the leader, but I've always understood my role as being part of a leadership team not the only leader. Sometimes it's been hard to convince the congregation of that principle. Twelve months ago I gave up trying and although I sought a painless way out, in the end we went through probably the most painful time of our lives in ministry (and believe me we've had a lot of painful moments over the years). Since December I've preached once and I can probably count the number of times I've been in church on one hand. Scary when you think of the hours it consumed before then.

I can't say I ever felt any great sense of significance during those twenty years, so its's not that that I miss. In fact I seem to miss very little. But being a minister at least gave me a sense of purpose and even value. It gave me a way of measuring my contribution to the kingdom and that's something I no longer have.

I don't have an uplifting message of self-discovery to conclude this ramble of thoughts. It's a bit like a joke without a punchline, a morality tale without a moral. I guess you'd call it a work in progress as I continue to work out what it means to be a follower of Jesus without portfolio. I have a dream, a vision of something that's way beyond my ability to make reality, and I'm humbled to still be asked to serve families at a time of loss and grieving.

Have I lost my sense of significance? Well not really, I never had one in the first place! What I think I've lost is a sense of direction and purpose, or maybe I've gained one because my purpose and direction is no longer determined by the constraints of what has been defined historically as ministry.

Who knows. I'm just glad that even if I'm the least one of whom Jesus was speaking, I have a place of significance in the kingdom of God that far outweighs my apparent significance in this life.

Just a thought

Listening to the news this morning about the introduction of a new Secondary Education examination, the newly names "Gove-level" and wondering if any has done the apparently obvious thing and actualy thought about education from an educators point of view, a learners point of of view and a business point of view?

You see it would seem to me that we need to educate business leaders that education isn't just about standard spelling and numeracy, important as they are, but it's wider than that. And educators already know that young people need to be able to count and spell and formulate sentences without urban punctuation.

Has anyone actually sat down and asked, business leaders, government and high education leaders what the skill set is that they are looking for from prospective workers/learners and then looked at how best to assess those skills?

When I look at the concept of a single exam at the end of a tow year course, I see a very shallow exploration of learning. If you can regurgitate the correct amount of correct information you get the grade. When I look at a modular system, I see other problems around how much help and assistance a given individual might get to produce their best work. Either way, the test is flawed. But maybe that's not the biggest issue. Maybe the biggest issue is that no matter what method of assessment we use, we only appear to be interested in driving an education system that teaches to the test.

The course I am currently doing is, if done properly, about developing a skill set. Sadly most of us are only used to taking exams and passing or failing. So we don't treat assessments as an opportunity to discover what we still need to learn, but we treat them as a hurdle to cross. The result? We stop learning once we've made it through the test.

I don't know how you shift the mind set away from exams to assessing the development of skills in the mind of either tutor or student, but I wonder if this is exactly what we need to do if we're going to develop a broad education system that prepares all of us for life in all its dimensions.

Training for a challenge?

Training is always a challenge, I guess that's part of the reason we both do it and give up doing it. Whether it's training for a new career (like Sports Massage in my case), or training for an event or just for fitness, it has to be enough of a challenge to make it worth the effort.

In fitness terms, if you don't progressively overload, you won't actually achieve any improvements. In other words, if your exercise routine is always manageable and doesn't leave you out of breath and sweating, then you're probably not working hard enough.

I'm aware that I need a new challenge if I'm going to take the next step when it comes to maintaing and improving my fitness and health. Sadly, doing 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5-7 days a week just to keep my heart healthy doesn't seem to be enough of a motivation for me to get out and pound the streets. I need something else to make me want to lace up my trainers or my new Vibram Five Finger shoes.

Since I first heard about the Oxfam Trailwalk, my interest was piqued. Could I walk 100Km in 30 hours? It doesn't seem too difficult, it's only just under 3.5Km an hour average (that's only just over 2mph), but it is 100Km! The furthest I've walked in a single day is around 24Km, but that was a while ago and I didn't do any training for that. So I reckon, with some proper fitness training I could manage significantly more, but could I get to 100Km.

This is where some short term and medium term goals might come in handy. So I thought I might set myself the goal of doing a 50Km walk sometime next year, maybe May. It's just a thought at the moment, but maybe this would be a good goal and a good stepping stone towards the 100Km trail! I'll need to work out a training schedule of course, but I can put all that PT training to good use.

Two years ago my 10k step challenge kept me motivated for a whole year as I played with various milestones (forgive the pun) along the way. If I'd have set out to do 4 million steps in a year, then that target would have seemed way to big to get anywhere near. Imagine how far away it would have looked after a couple of weeks! But I did it by setting a daily target. When I wanted to push the challenge a bit more, I went for 500,000 steps in a single month. I need to recapture some of that mentality for a new challenge.

So here's to the crazy idea of looking to walking to Southend and back in a single day! That's about 60Km from where I live, if you follow the main route. I wonder if there is a road to Southend that is the road less travelled?

In need of a spiritual heart monitor

Occasionally I wear a heart rate monitor so that I can check my heart rate during exercise. I do this to see what kind of training zone I'm working in and how it feels. There's a simple scale we use to do the job too, but a monitor is a useful bit of kit to have around. The important thing, when doing exercise, is to work in the heart rate zone applicable to your goals, so monitoring your heart rate is a key factor in doing that.

Jesus spoke in Luke 6 about good trees producing goos fruit and bad tress producing bad fruit. Figs, he said, do't grow on thorn bushes and grapes don't grow on brambles. He then makes his application to us:

A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.

It's that last little phrase that catches me: What you say flows from what is in your heart. Too often we excuse ourselves when we say bad things or react badly with words of condemnation and judgement. But our words aren't just the vocalisation of what we feel at a given moment in time, they are the fruit of what is in our hearts, which is something more significant, more personalised, a deeper expression of who we really are.

Look at what Proverbs has to say about looking after your heart:

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

Proverbs 4:22-24 

In the New Living Translation we read that it determines the course of your life.

And of course Paul points out that The peace of God, which is beyond human understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:7)

Two things at work then, firstly we have a responsibility to guard our own hearts. There are no excuses for how we act and speak. What comes out of our mouths is a reflection of what is deep within us. Secondly, we have access to the peace of God, something we can't easily fathom, but which serves as guardian to our hearts and thoughts.

Guarding your heart is not just about policing your words, it's about examining your life and allowing the Spirit of God to do his redeeming work in your life. Renewing your heart and mind, conforming you to the image of Christ and supporting you in your quest to become more like Jesus.

So monitor the health of your heart and adjust your spiritual exercise routine so that you are biulding a healthy heart not an unhealthy one.

Time to get back in the trainers!

Is it really two years ago since I embarked on my 10k steps a day for 100 days challenge? Incredible! I remember all the analysis and number crunching that went on throughout that year. Wasn't it something ridiculous like 4 million steps in the year? I also remember taking on the challenge to do 500k steps in a month!

Goals are really important for both focus and motivation. But you have to be careful. If you set them too high, you will suffer the disappointment of never reaching your unrealistic goals. If you set them too low, they probably won't help you achieve the bigger goal behind them, if there is one, or they will somehow become too easy to reach and demotivating as a result.

So I'm wondering abut revisiting those old goals and seeing if I can achieve them again. Will I have the same drive a second time around I wonder? Will I go out in the snow and the rain to complete my daily steps? Who knows. The only way to find out is to do it.

So it needs a bit of thought, but as I posted my morning walk via Runkeeper, I did notice that the pace was below my old 4mph target, so that might be a place to start and set a goal f walking 4 miles in an hour once a week (that's 6.4Km if my maths is correct).

I also need some strength training goals and a few goals not directly related to fitness! I wonder how many goals it's realistic to load into one's life at any one time! I suspect it's a personal thing, but trying to finish a course, start a business, get fit, lose weight, start church, and finish the house, well maybe I'm in danger of having a few too many.

As for now, I'll think about setting one goal for each thing on my list and look to plan towards that. Sounds to me like I need to dust off my copy of Getting Things Done and reread it for a bot of motivation.

What am I doing?

I thought I'd do a quick blog update about where I am in my massage studies etc. I realised the other day that we only have something like 7 days left of the course. After that it's final exams to sit and case studies and papers to complete before qualifying, which is not a foregone conclusion. And even once qualified there's no guarantee of a job or successful private practice ahead.

At the moment I'm still offering free treatments and I'm about to start a volunteer placement at The Daily Telegraph one morning a week. I'm also volunteering for a thing called Student Clinic that runs at the offices of the training school.

On the Personal Training front, I still haven't received my official certificate, which means I can't register with REPS and which in turn is hampering any progress in that area. That's rather sad because I was hoping to be able to make a little bit of money doing PT sooner than this. It's annoying because the insurance company was quite happy to insure me, but I's like to be able to say that I'm REPS certified too.

So that's that. Currently Im working on my next paper for the massage course which is due in a couple of weeks. I hope to make good progress on that next week and then I might turn my attention to developing some training plans and ideas. I have one plan to work with small groups through some church contacts, but that's only in a thinking stage at the moment and needs to become something more solid.

A Heart for Libya?

You might be interested in this website if you have a heart for Lybia.

The basic idea is to pray for Libya on a day of your choice at either 10:02 in the morning or evening. It's 10:02 because Luke 10:2 provides the text underlying the prayer: Pray, therefore, that the Lord of the harvest will send out workers into his harvest field.

I guess you could actually choose any country or community for that matter and do a similar thing. The prayer is "into" the harvest, "for" the harvest and "from" the harvest. See the website for more details. You can sign up to pray for Libya or just make our own commitment to a country or people group to whom you feel drawn.

One life at a time

Are you like me? do you harbour dreams of changing the world, influencing significant people and seeing lots of people come to faith through your endeavours?

What if it isn't meant to work that way?

I'm all for significance, but maybe we're not all destined for great ministries, maybe that's the realm of the few. Not specially chosen, but just the few on whom god chooses to pour out a blessing that is beyond the normality of the rest of us. It isn't that we are somehow less important or less committed or less able than these others, it's just that God has chosen us for a different task.

Think about Abraham and his obvious significance in our story, but the relative smallness of his experience. He only had the one son by Sarah in fulfilment of a pretty big promise to be the father of nations. Think of the prophets and the range of their ministries from single prophecies to multilayered, long-term prophetic ministries.

I read the story of the calling of Levi this morning, and it made me think about one life at a time. Jesus called Levi. He didn't call Levi and all his friends, or all the other tax-collectors. He focussed on Levi, a single life. It was Levi who then invited his friends to meet Jesus and no doubt some of them had their lives transformed through that meting. But it began with the call of one person, a single life.

What is the ministry Jesus has for you is to connect one life to the kingdom and that's all? What if it's that one life that he will use to transform a community, to build a church or start a movement? Would you be up for that? Would you sacrifice all your dreams and ambitions for a single disciple.

I'd love to plant a vibrant, growing missional community in the place where I live. But maybe my role is simply to find the person through whom Jesus wants to do that and introduced them to him. If I spend all my time dreaming of the big movement and not focussing on the one life, then maybe I'll miss something really important and the kingdom will be missing another disciple.

I will continue to dream, but I will do so with my eyes open to the possibilities along the way. If Levi is out there, I don't want to miss him!

Think about this....

There's a blog I follow written by Kent Shaffer. Like most blogs I follow, I skim the posts and decide what's relevant and what's interesting and what can pass me by this time around. You can't read everything and you should\t even try. It will just overload your brain!

Some time ago Kent Shaffer used a term that struck a chord somewhere deep in my heart. The phrase was simply "Open Church". I'll need to look back through the archives to get a fix on the original idea, but it's interesting to read most recently about the developments of the idea. When I first read the phrase my mind immediately began thinking about Open Source projects and what defines them and how that might shift my thinking about church. I can't remember where that particular journey took me, but I'm pretty sure it's had an influence on my current thinking somewhere long the line.

But the thing that struck me most from the most recent post on the blog was his reflection on moving to a new neighbourhood to engage in a new ministry. This was the paragraph:

Stuff was holding us back in a variety of ways from being agile and ministering more biblically. And the comfortable suburban, Evangelical lifestyle was desensitizing me from living out the gospel as I knew I should yet never did. I used bad theology to make convenient excuses to justify my lifestyle. I was using complex yet comfortable systems to try to replace the simple yet uncomfortable mandates of Christ.

Lots to think about here. Are you agile and able to minister biblically, and what does being agile look like for you? How desensitised have I become to the call to live out the gospel? How is God calling me and shaping me to incarnate the gospel in my community? And what of our excuses?

It's worth taking the time to let the profound nature of this reflection sink into your heart and for God to ask the deep penetrating questions that I think sit behind it for all of us. Read it in context here.

More Shoes

With my bent toes I was surprised that I got them into these Vibram Five Fingers, but in they went.

It feels very strange and I think the measuring system on the website might have underestimated by maybe a half size. but we shall see.

What a privilege

Although I felt totally out of my depth for the last three days, that doesn't take away the privilege it was to meet some amazing athletes. Here are two, but they were not the only ones.



Charles Narh Teye from Sophie Williams on Vimeo.


Alem Mumuni from Sophie Williams on Vimeo.

Imagine

Every time I hear John Lennon's classic lyrics something bothers me. I find myself getting ever so slightly angry, not so much with the sentiment expressed, but with the mirror the lyrics hold up to the church. I was reminded of this with the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

I think my reaction can be summed up in two questions:

1. Do they understand what they are singing? A children's choir signing about imagining no religion as the route to peacefulness, no heaven or hell etc. Has anybody sat down and thought about what that all might mean? Singing without thinking is something we're all familiar with in church. We sing bind us together and tear into each other, we sing about one faith, one Lord and then proceed to divide ourselves along sectarian lines.

2. How come we've become the problem? When the expression of faith becomes the reason for the problems in the world then we need to take a deep look at the way we express our faith. Lennon wrote:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

Okay, I know Jesus spoke about wars and rumours of wars, and I know that true peace won't come in a world as broken as it is, but to live in peace is a gospel goal and we must work at helping people see that faith is not the start of the problem but the solution to it. We don't do that by declaring war on others and justifying so doing on the basis of our insecurities.

John Lennon's song hold up a mirror, we need to see the reflection. In many ways perhaps the lyrics actually reflect a truer picture of the gospel than we might otherwise give them credit for doing. Maybe God's dream was not heaven above us and hell below, or a multiplicity of ethnic groups at odds with each other or even  to see people protecting what they think they own and leaving others to go hungry, poor and naked.

Maybe that's why I struggle with the sentiment. It's not anti-Christian it's actually more truly Christian than I can bear.

My new shoes!

Inspired by Born to Run to give something closer to barefoot running a go, I bought myself a pair of New Balance Minimus shoes. Tried them today and they feel so light and comfortable.

How good my form is I have no idea, but there were moments on my run when I think I fell into the forefoot/midfoot strike pattern rather than the heel strike pattern. Was it the shoes or my beginners attempt to focus and concentrate? Who knows, but they are nice shoes.

For some months now I've been thinking about my feet and the structure of feet in general. So many muscles and such an ingenious design of joints and soft tissue bears thought and investigation! It\s probably a massage thing, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense to try and find ways to exercise the muscles in my feet. I can't think of any gym-based training routine that targets the muscles of the foot. Yet without them, and the muscles that support the ankle, we have no stability.

So rather than cushioning and supporting my feet all the time, I want to see if I can strengthen them by simply being barefooted or as close to barefooted as is practicable. Of course it's probably not wise to go from supported shoes to barefoot overnight. And I won't stop wearing shoes! But it will be interesting to try a range of near-barefoot shoes and see what difference it makes over say a six-month period. I'll let you know. It certainly can't make my feet any worse!!

The Running Disciple!

Now be honest with me here, can you truly say that you enjoy your Christian life? Does everyday present you with joy or does it feel like a chore, a drudge, something to be endured rather than enjoyed?

I'd guess that most of us fall somewhere along a continuum from chore to joy, and that it changes through the course of a day or month or year. For some their life as a follower of Christ has become a rut in which they have become stuck and for others it is a continual adventure from start to finish.

I'm reflecting on this for two reasons. first. because I;m always aware of my own us and downs and secondly because of something I read in Born to Run. We are a fascinating creation. In fact, whether you subscribe to a creation or evolutionary theory of first origins (or even a combination of the two), we are a remarkable creature. The argument for an inherent running gene so-to-speak lies in our structure as much as anything else. For example we have a ligament in our necks that only mammals that run share. Those that walk do not have it. We have the ability to sweat away heat and breathe and run at the same time. something no other mammal can do. We may not have the fat out speed of a deer or cheetah, and we don't have the claws and teeth of a lion, but we do have endurance. We can't out-sprint a squirrel but we can run one to exhaustion!

But we don't generally run. Why? Because it's become a pastime, no longer a way of life, it has become a wearisome chore that's painful and un-enjoyable. We run to keep fit or to lose weight (unsuccessfully because we don't change our diet). And what's worse we run badly when we do run. If the book is correct, then we've been suckered by marketing into running in the only way guaranteed to hurt ourselves. As we persevere we invest in more cushioning and more strapping to make running bearable. Eventually we give up, buy a large screen TV and watch other run instead.

Now reflect those thoughts into discipleship.

We buy devotional guides to help us learn how to do what ought to come naturally. That's not to say that they are bad things. Just like running shoes, if you run properly then you can run in anything, then if you are a follower of Jesus then you can probably use any guide you like if you've got the basics of following down. And the worst thing we can do is sit and watch others do our devotional life for us. We're too busy, too injured too out of shape, so we watch others do what we ought to be able to do but can't motivate ourselves to do.

Somehow we've lost the joy of discipleship, of running with Jesus for the joy of running with him. It's become a checklist, a programme a means to an end instead of an intrinsic part of who we are. We are all made in the image of God. If we are born to run then we are also born to reflect God's image.

I went running this morning for the time in years. Proper running. not just running  part of the route I usually walk, but setting out to run all the way. I almost made it. I took a breather towards the end, but ran 90% of the 4Km I set out to do. I tried to run light and run properly. I ran for the joy of running. And now my legs ache a little! But that's okay because I ran. I worked my muscles in a different way and of course they will ache.

If you try following Jesus for the joy of following him it will be different. I don't yet have a recipe to offer you that will ensure it will work or a pattern to follow that will promise joy. Maybe that's just not possible. But I wonder how different our faith might look if somehow we could reinject a measure of simple joyfulness into what it means to be a Christ-follower.

Maybe the next step on from functional discipleship will be barefoot discipleship!

Born to Run?

Something interesting has been happening to me over the last twelve months or so. Actually let's make that 24 months. Ever since setting out to lose the weight I'd gained from becoming more sedentary, I found myself wanting to run. I'd go out for a walk as part of my exercise plan or my 10k steps challenge, and I'd find myself wanting to break into a jog. Occasionally I would, but only for a short distance. Each time I'd begin to think about running more. It was like a little voice in the back of my head saying, "Run, you know you want to!"

Now I'm not about to tell you that 2 years on I'm running every day and going further and faster because that isn't true. But a couple of weeks ago I found myself running half my usual 4Km walk and then a few days later I ran much further than I had for a long time out of necessity. We'd gone out for a short walk that turned out to be 9 miles and we were late so I ran the last 2 miles home to get the car and go back to pick Anne up. It wasn't speedy, but it wasn't walking.

Now I'm intrigued. If I could jog gently then why can't I run, is it just because I think I can't run or because I don't want it to hurt?

I heard about this best selling book about running called "Born to Run" that everyone seems to rave about a few years ago and elided with holiday coming up that I'd get it on my Kindle and read a bit while we were away. I devoured it. If you haven't read it then read it! It's a fascinating mixture of story and reflection and fun and questions. I couldn't put the thing down. And what's more, it's left me with this question, "Am I born to run?" Is it possible that this little voice in my head isn't just a throwback to being a child who ran everywhere and had to be told to slow down or the narcissistic call of some would-be self-improvenment image conscious self. Could it be that running is a lost joy that deep down is waiting to be rediscovered. Or maybe that's too philosophical and I just want to run again!

Who knows.

What is clear to me at the very least is that I need to learn to run properly. If the book is right, then I need to get on the treadmill and sort out my posture, foot strike, balance and cadence before I can really begin to explore the place of running in my fitness life.

Stop and look at Luke 4:40

Easily missed, Luke 4:40 is a verse worth pausing at and reading carefully:

As the sun went down that evening, people throughout the village brought sick family members to Jesus. No matter what their diseases were, the touch of his hand healed every one.

As the song goes, "just one touch from his hand, changes everything." Something we know intellectually but maybe not so personally, not so emotionally. I'm not about to get all dewy eyed and lamenting of the lack of dynamic spiritual intervention in people's lives these days. It's just not worth the effort. I just want to dwell for a while in the depth of this little phrase, "the touch of his hand healed every one."

What picture of Jesus does it paint for you? Compassionate, powerful, authoritative, awesome, amazing, gentle, tireless, to name a few. Forget for a moment the wrangling over the place of miracles and the supernatural in the life of the church, just sit in silent wonder at the amazing way that the Son of God touches lives and transforms them.

Beyond all the clever strategies and innovative approaches to Christian community, beyond all the training in personal evangelism and ministry, a simple touch from the hand of Jesus is what our communities need most of all. It may come in the shiny wrapping paper of the latest ministry movement or it may not. It may come in the shape of a simple smile and offer of help. Who knows.

Whatever shape it takes, if it incarnates the touch of Jesus Christ then it will change lives.

Overheard

I was in the local convenience store buying a treat for Anne and myself and overheard a wonderful conversation between a young child and her mother. The child was one of those great kids who never stops talking about something, anything, just as long as they are talking. The first thing I heard her talking about was someone, a friend maybe, who was on holiday for 45 weeks. Not 4-to-5 weeks, but 45 weeks apparently. Then came the priceless kind of moment you get with a talkative child.

"Mum, why don't you drink beer anymore? Is it because you're not married to my dad anymore?"

What a great line!

Opening Ceremonies

This is not a moan, just in case you were planning to misunderstand me!

I was listening to the news this morning and they were talking about the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games. This closely guarded secret will be revealed to an estimated 4 billion people over a three hour period tonight. Three hours! How long does it take to say welcome to the athletes and then tell them to get on with the games?

What was interesting in the broadcast was the discussion about those athletes that won't be there because the late finish and all the trappings of the ceremony could interfere with their performance. Think about the cyclist who take to the road the following day. So, if the Olympics is all about the athletes and the sport, how come the opening ceremony cannot be timed to allow them all to take part without affecting the games? Not an easy question to answer, but here's another, more personal question.

Are we more taken up with the celebration of God's mission than we are with the mission itself? Do you think there's a lesson for us to learn from the games that when the opening show is an event in itself, maybe the real purpose can get a little lost.

From what I've heard from those who were at the preview, and no they haven't given away any details, it sounds like a spectacular event awaits everyone who attends. But in the midst of the glitz and glamour and celebrity spotting of tonight's ceremony we should not forget it's meant to celebrate the games not the show itself.

Church is not a celebration of itself. It has to point to the greater mission of God otherwise it is quite simply a show that has little point. Let's not forget that either.

PS If you've got tickets to any part of the Olympics I hope you have a great time. Having wandered around London the last couple of weeks, everywhere there seems to be a buzz of activity. To quote Boris Johnson form this morning: The Geiger-counter of Olympomania of off the scale!

Luke 4

I decided to dip into a gospel and landed on Luke. Since finishing Hebrews I've been wondering what to read next. It's one of the hazards I guess of not having a devotional plan to follow. Anyway, I took a look at Jeremiah's call for a little personal encouragement, but decided not to read the whole book at this moment. So Luke it is, but not from the beginning. I wanted to start with the ministry of Jesus. I can do the nativity and infancy narratives later in the year. Right now it's the ministry I want to read about.

So I dropped in at chapter 4 and found myself in the middle of the temptation and fist steps into public ministry. A thought struck me. In 4:13 Luke tells us that the devil left Jesus after the 40-day in the wilderness "until the next opportunity". From the rest of the chapter it would appear that he didn't have to wait long for that opportunity.

Having come through the wilderness experience, the fasting and the temptation, it would have been nice to have launched the public phase of hi ministry with a great opening ceremony. Tomorrow of course we have the Olympic opening ceremony. Quite why they can't say, "Here are the athletes, welcome to the games, now get on with it!" Instead we will have hours of parades and lights and dancers and other things going on. The games almost overshadowed by the glitz.

Jesus chose to go to the synagogue on his hometown and, when the opportunity came, to read the scriptures. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon," he read and then announced that it was the day of fulfilment of Isaiah's prophetic words.  No resounding gasp of excitement followed this incredible announcement. Instead they got angry and upset. Dragging him outside they thought it best to dispose of him.

Not exactly what you might want for your fist impression, especially after the ordeal of the temptation and the preparation that was the wilderness experience. I suspect the devil took this early opportunity to have another go somehow.

There are times when I think we are guilty of thinking that somehow Jesus passed through his ministry without meeting temptation again until the garden before the cross. Perhaps chapter 4 of Luke's gospel tells us to be careful about such assumptions.

And what about your own life? what about its ups and downs? Have you recently come through a challenge hoping for some respite but just falling into a noter challenge? At the very least remember you are not alone. Jesus has been there too. This brings me great comfort.

I wish and if only

Today is Thursday. Thursday is social tennis day. From about 10:00-12:00 I will be enjoying the sunshine by the looks of the weather as I run around the tennis court. It's coming up to two years this October since I took up playing tennis, and there are times when It hunk to myself, "I wish I'd learnt to do this a long time ago." At school we didn't have tennis coaching, although we had plenty of courts available. But that shouldn't have stopped me, I just didn't know how to go about getting lessons and didn't have the money anyway.

It would be so easy to wonder about what might have been. I'm not for one minute thinking that I could have been a really good tennis player. In fact I suspect that had I started at school, I might not even be playing now. And that's the thing. Ho often do we live with some form of regret about what might have been when we know that like so many things we begin, we rarely finish them. Not because we're inherently undisciplined, but because we go through seasons. We have a season when something is important enough to pursue and seasons when it is not.

Had I lived out my life fully in the context of one season, then maybe I would have been single-minded enough to achieve something great. But that's not how I'm wired up and it's not how I'm ever going to be. Perhaps I should have found the one thing, and then chased it down with every ounce of effort and commitment I had. I guess that's the difference between champions and the rest of us. It's nothing to do with natural talent, it's more about the relentless pursuit of being the best.

But you can't live your life on the basis of the what if's and if only's. If we could, then I would go back in time and tell my younger self to sort out his eating habits sooner and learn about balanced diets and fitness before he puts on weight. I'd tell him to look beyond a science degree and towards other possibilities. I'd get him learning muscle origins and insertions and suggest physiotherapy as a study option. And I'd probably tell him to buy Apple shares when they are really cheap and to lend the inventors of Trivial Pursuits £100 the help them get the prototype made.

Then again, I probably also tell him not to follow that sense of call he has about ministry because it will only break his heart somewhere down the line and that people might never quite understand what it is that he is trying to show them. I'd try to point him away from the pain and heartache of what lies ahead. All of this because I want to revisit the possibilities that in later life appear to have slipped past without much notice.

So I can dream occasionally of what might have been, but I choose to live in the what is. I can change the what is, and I can affect what is to come, but I can't change what was, so there's little point dwelling on it. Perhaps in tennis I've found the one sport that I could have been good at. Well then, maybe I can be good at it now. At least I can be the best at it that I can be. I can put all my effort in to it in this season of my life. I can enjoy it and run with it and see where it takes me rather than wonder where it might have taken me. The same is true in ministry and with the Personal Training and Sports Massage. I could have done them years ago, but I'm doing them now and that's where I need to focus my attention.

Ministry is always unfolding and changing. I'm just as engaged with it I was, it just looks different. As I've said before, the Union might see me as being on leave of absence but I don't. It's not easy, but I have to decide every day not to regret the journey because win I do that I drop back into the what if's and if only's, and that is not a place I want to spend my life. It's too much of an adventure to live there.

Non-Religious Funerals

A while ago I mentioned that I'd been in conversation with a local Funeral Directors about doing non-religious funerals. I may also have mentioned the stir this caused in some circles around church. It seemed rather odd to me at the time that I was almost expected by some to turn down such invitations simply because they were non-religious and that was outside the parameters of my job.

Anyway, some people understood my reasoning and other didn't, and that's okay. even at the time it wouldn't have prevented me from taking an opportunity should fit have arisen.

Well, this last week I had two opportunities to serve families through doing a non-religious funeral. One turned out to be less than non-religious, with prayers and a hymn. The other was most definitely non-religious. And this raises an interesting point: What exactly do people mean by non-religious? For some it is quite clear that they do not want faith or God mentioned at all. For someone like me, that was quite demanding, and I had to work hard on preparing a positive, hopeful funeral that didn't include all the usual stuff. But I did it for the simple reason that even though they didn't want anything religious, I could still pray for them. I din't keep my identity secret, so they knew my faith framework, but I did as they asked and didn't mention God at all.

Did I let him down? Did I somehow fail to acknowledge Jesus? You might think so, but I don't. I believe I honoured him by serving he family in the way they wanted and not in the way I wanted. Just because God is not mentioned it doesn't mean he is neither present nor at work. Think of Esther's story.

So what have I learnt form these two experiences. Well first of all, non-religious doesn't always mean what we think it means. Second, it can be so easy simply to go through the standard process of a funeral without much thought. Sad to say that seems to happen a lot. I don't have a one-size fits all funeral. Yes, I use the same payers, follow a similar pattern and share the same basic message from the standard texts. But I always try to personalise what I do. Over the years I've developed a range of reflections of key passages, and I try to reflect on the passage in the context of the family and friends before me in the chapel or church.

My third lesson is that it is hard to plan a funeral that takes you out of your comfort zone of prayers and readings. These things so easily become the padding. Strip them away and you are left with very little if you can't improvise and think outside a religious box.

Being a minister who serves the community is not about imposing my faith upon them, but seeking to draw their faith out as I share the comfort and love of God with them as the opportunity aries. Maybe I even managed to do that as I sensitively lead my first non-religious funeral. Who knows. At least the door was open.

Introducing myself

I noticed another funeral directors in the village, so I called in today to introduce myself and offer my services. But how do I introduce myself? I can say I''m an ordained Baptist Minister, which for the present is true, but how do I explain my current situation?

I usually end up going down the route of church planting, but as I've said before, I really don't like that term very much. Too many images of a gathered community singing songs to get me excited. On the other hand, I have no idea how best to describe what the vision is without it sounding like a foreign language to most people. And you can't really tell people you are in a no-man's land sort of place, where you are not supported or, to use that favourite of phrases in church circles, accountable.

I sometimes think that accountable means justifying what you are doing as a valid expression of something. Maybe it's the cynical side of me raising its ugly head, but I find it difficult to be accountable to people I don't think understand the basic concept. A bit mean I guess, but I don't want to have to justify why we aren't trying to gather a worshipping community as our first step.

Maybe it has something to do with the metrics we use to measure the mission of God. Can we change our old metrics for something new, and we can, what would they be? Instead of people in church on a Sunday, what else might we measure? How about the number of people served in some way? By that measure I've served the man to whom I gave a lift the other day, five families for whom I'm leading funerals. Does the man who asked me directions the other count as someone I've served, was that part of God's mission? I don't know. Probably not, he was looking for a pub that had closed down! The girl at the station I met last week, she surely counts. But that was in Bedford, so would that count in the setting of Ockendon?

Interesting isn't it, to think about the things we measure, how we measure and even why we're measuring them in the first place. What I'm trying to do at the very least is to be there when someone emerges from a place of missing so that I can help them get found. At the moment my best opportunity of that is by supporting families at times of loss. Hopefully other avenues will open.

Maybe I should introduce myself as a guide for the missing, a kingdom games maker!

Another day another plunge

I'm not sure I've got it right, but I've taken the plunge and registered myself as self-employed. This is quite scary, yet another road down which I have not travelled before. Now I need to keep really accurate information and get better organised for so doing. Now I need to think about paying National Insurance and tax etc. Now I need to find clients!

First step, having registered, will be to set up a system for keeping all the bits if information. I\l have to revisit my tickler file system to adapt it this task. Then it's trawl the house for all loose paperwork again. Having moved recently and also having got out of the habit, I'll need a day simply to reorganise.

But I've done it. I've taken the first step.

Angels unaware?

I don't know if I've ever entertained angels unaware, and today's opportunity didn't look like an angel, but then again it wouldn't be unaware if it was obvious!

I'm back in Bedford for a meeting about the Paralympics, and I'm at the station waiting to collect a friend. Wandering around the car park is a young woman asking for change. She is tearful and distraught as we talk briefly and I part with some change.

Sitting in the car, I wonder if that's the best I can do. How will £2 get her off the street and out of both the rain and the danger? It won't.

I find her again. This time I ask her about her story. It's a sad story, then again they always are. It's so easy to assume that everyone lies. That way you can mitigate your reason for not helping. After al, they'll only use the money for drugs or drink and be out again later telling someone else the same story.

But what if it's true? Can we afford to assume it's a lie every time?

This time I asked how much she needed and if she'd found somewhere. She told she been to a place and what the cost of night's accommodation would be. Guess how much I had in my wallet. With the £2 I'd already given her I had enough to cover one night in a B&B.

She hugged me.

I didn't expect that.

Anyone attaching probably thought the worst, but who cares. Maybe I helped one soaking wet young woman get one night in a dry bed and tomorrow she'll find a place in a hostel. It's no way to live.

And if she was lying? Well I'm a few pounds worse off, but rather that than a sleepless night wondering if I'd missed the chance to bless anther human being or even entertain an angel unawares.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ongoing ministry

I have a little time between visits, so I thought I'd blog a bit about what's happening in terms of ministry at the moment. I've had a bit of a gripe about the lack of recognition from my denomination that I'm actually still committed to, and involved in ministry, I just am expressing it in a way that doesn't involve me in leading a church at the moment. It frustrates me that while local Funeral Directors recognise my ministry (although they wouldn't use that language), my denomination appears not to. Just today I was told that I was appreciated because I'm sincere without ever being patronising. And that was from one of the cemetery supervisors!

These visits are not pastoral visits in the traditional sense of the word as far as church goes, but they are funeral visits. I've done one funeral today and I have two visits to do. Altogether I have five funerals to do over the next couple of weeks starting today with a still born little girl.

And so I ask the question: Is this not ministry? Am I not engaging with my community? Am I not serving people by applying my skills and gifts as a church leader?

Please don't read this as me venting, I'm trying to raise an important question, and I'm thinking out-loud towards it.

If I'd set out to do funerals as my ministry then perhaps that would have been more easily recognised. Others have. But I didn't do that, and so I found myself in this awkward and uncomfortable position of applying for a leave of absence. I'm beginning to regret that part of the process now. I wish I'd set out my plan more clearly and my vision more succinctly. But then again, doing funerals was not part of the big plan. It's just that I appear to be rather good at doing them and so I get the 'phone call to say, "Can you help?"

I think I'm going to have raise the question more directly. I'm just not sure I have the will to do it!

Training for a purpose

If you are like me, then when someone asks why you train you probably say, "Because I want to get fit." The question, have you every thought about what you mean by that? Do you want to get fit enough to run for the bus or to run a marathon?

Fitness is just like anything sells you set yourself to do. It needs a goal. It might be to lose weight, but you need to quantify that by saying how much weight and by when. My goals are actually quite simple. I would like to get my body fat percentage down to 20% (I'm normal for my age, but I'd like to be lower), and I'd like to be more tennis fit. Now the second of these is much more difficult to define. Do you express in terms of how long you can play for or do you find some other measure. In the end it's probably an endurance thing, but I'm not sure I  going to be able to make tennis fit into a smart goal, so I'll have to look at other things that contribute to being tennis fit and set goals for them. Perhaps goal number one is to read a book about tennis fitness and conditioning.

Another simple goal would be to achieve the recommended guidelines for a healthy heart, namely 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5-7 days a week. Two years ago, or was it three, I did my 100 day challenge (walking 10k steps a day for 100 days) and then I did my 500k steps in a month challenge.

All these little targets kept me going through snow and wind and rain. Now my goals need to be remained and reset to meet new challenges. For one, I'd like to be able to a suspended abdominal exercise on the TRX for longer than 10 seconds before I collapse in a heap!

The thing is, without a goal you are likely to just keep repeating what you always do in a pretty purposeless way. I now know that there are different ways to build cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance and muscular strength.

I am not planning to run a marathon, although maybe next year we might get to do that 100Km walk challenge. If we do, then we will need a training programme. In the meantime I will keep experimenting with circuits and intervals, mixing them up to keep my training fresh and I promise I'll do some research about tennis fitness too!

Recently reading Hebrews

I tend to amble my way through the Bible these days, rather than devouring it in large chunks. I might spend days reflecting on a few verses or I might sweep through large sections hardly noticing what is going on in the text. My current readings are in Hebrews, a fascinating and enthralling letter at any time, but particularly significant to me because my call to ministry is embedded in this book.

Here are two verse from my recent reading that I found challenging.

So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.

 Hebrews 10:35-36

These words come towards the end of the writers exploration of the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf. They are powerful words, full of challenge. Withe everything we have been through in the last couple of years, it would be so easy to throw in the towel and give up. Battered and bruised, tired and exhausted, I could so easily have walked away from church altogether. ButI knew that there was more going on than I could see or understand. Faith is not always east to exercise.

Since moving to Ockendon we have been pretty busy with the house, but we made the effort (and it was quite an effort) to go to church. We've been loosely connecting ourselves with a church that seems to share out mindset about missional community, and we made it to their celebration in June. Hearing stories of other slightly crazy people and the ways they are trying to connect with communities was so positive that we were actually very sad that we couldn't make the July meeting because of a preaching commitment we had. Imagine that, missing church!

These verses from Hebrews were a timely reminder that my confidence is not in a system, a denomination or my own abilities, gifts and skills. That kind of confidence is unlikely to be rewarded and not what I think the writer of Hebrews is pointing towards. Their confidence is rooted in the cross and the finished work of Christ. It's confidence in that that drives, no calls me to faithfulness and adventure as I seek to obey God's will for my life.

Chance encounters

The more I think about it, the more interesting it becomes. Chance encounters are very interesting things. It's very easy to become deterministic about things, assuming that everything is somehow orchestrated in heaven and we, if we are not careful, become little more than animated characters in some grand cosmic play.

On the other hand it would be wrong to assume that somehow God is not involved int eh detail of our lives and the people we meet. Somewhere we have to find a balance. Here are two recent "chance encounters" that I've had that suggest to me at least that God is on the case!

The first happened a couple of weeks ago. I'd taken the TRX plunge and thought I'd go and try it out in the local park. The basketball hoop provided a great anchor point, and it felt great to be outdoors exercising. The TRX is quite a challenge to master some of the more adventurous exercises, but at its simplest it's challenging enough for a beginner like me.

Having completed my routine, I dismantled the TRX and set off home. The gate to the bowling green was open and I popped my head in to see what was there. Just at that moment someone came out and we began talking. He offered to introduce me to the club who were there setting up for an event that afternoon. We had a chat and I think I might go down one afternoon and start to build a relationship there. But that's the not the whole story. It turns out that the person I met just happens to be the Outdoor Sports Officer for the council, and we got talking about outdoor fitness, PT stuff and  sport. He invited me to a meeting about sport in the local area. How cool is that?

Perhaps PT and therapy will come together in the life of the local community.

The second meeting happened at the gym. I'm not particularly fond of being indoors, especially when the weather is reasonable. Machines don't really help with fitness, they isolate muscles too much. Great for strength but not for functional fitness. Anyway, I go from time to time and this time I;d just about finished when I got into conversation with another member. Turns out he's interested in sports massage, so I gave him my card. It also turns out that a friend of his has just bought the pub in the village and wants to make it a more family friendly place.

Now these are just two chance meetings, but I can't help thinking that God is at work somewhere in all of this. Firstly, it was really encouraging personally to have these conversations. The more I think about my situation with my denomination, the more frustrated I become. Things like these two meetings fit into out exploration of connecting with a community and seeking to live mission ally in the midst of that community. It is a walk both of faith and of exploration. But apparently I'm on leave of absence so none of it counts as ministry. Tomorrow I'm doing a funeral for a family that has just gone through a still birth. tonight I'm visiting another family about the funeral of an elderly family member, and then tomorrow another visit to family that lost a baby at two days. does that sound like someone who is not involved in ministry?

I'm not for one moment suggesting that traditional, church based ministry, is not open to these sorts of encounters. It always has been for me. So I don't want to harp on about the leave of absence thing. Th point is this: God is at work in my community. All around there are probably signs of his creative engagement with people that I am missing because I do not yet have the eyes to see. I've spent so many years focussing on the internals that I've lost the ability to see beyond the walls and confines of a gathered community. Chance encounters help break you out of that box, and at this time they also remind me that I am still engaged with the kingdom of God no matter what anyone else might think.

20 minute workout

I tried the full 20 minute version of my experiment this morning. It was tough. I got the chair out and added the dips and I tried a leg exercise that starts in a press up position and then you bring one knee towards the same shoulder and take it back, then do the same on the other side. So today's routine was:

• Tricep dips
• Star jumps
• Sit ups
• Resistance band row
• Static crawl-like exercise
• Lateral raises
• Squats
• Sprinting on the spot

I did the 30sec on 15sec rest. It's important to use the rest period to prepare for the next exercise, so you are actually moving all the time. I repeated the routine three times with a one minute rest between repeats. So altogether it was a quite intense 20 minute workout.

My thinking is to so this three times a week for the next 3-4 weeks. If I feel like I need to increase the intensity before then, I might trying doing four circuits or maybe I'll add two exercises and stay with three circuits. After 4 weeks, I'll need to up the intensity to continue to make gains. This might be as simple as going to four times a week. We shall see.

Where to start with health and fitness

Having done my PT course, and while I wait frustratingly for my certificate, I'm looking at ways to improve my fitness and how I would plan programmes for people I might train. I've decided to experiment on myself, a rather obvious thing to do really. My experiments include stuff at the gym, in the park, in the lounge and in the garden.

Body weight exercises are the easiest things to do because you can do them anywhere at any time. Resistance bands (I got mine from Amazon) add a little intensity to the workout and give you some variety too. The TRX is great and I hope to become more proficient at some of the exercises using that bit of kit.

For a simple, no-nonsense 20 minute workout I devised a simple routine using an interval approach that went like this:

Interval time = 30 seconds
Rest period   = 15 seconds

Having warmed up, which should have included a few stretches, but I didn't do that this morning, I did 8 exercises.

• Press up
• Lunges (one interval on each leg)
• Lateral raises (with resistance band)
• Sit ups
• Standing row (with resistance band)
• Jumping jacks
• Standing chest press (with resistance band)

I did as many as I could of each exercise during the 30 seconds and then took a 1 minute rest and did it all over again. Do three circuits of exercises gives you a 20 minute workout that should raise your heart rate and get the blood pumping. Obviously you can extend the workout by adding extra exercises, and there are plenty you could add. For example, get a dining chair and do triceps dips. And you can increase the intensity by using stronger resistance bands, or by putting you feet on the chair to your press ups!

I reckon that doing that three times a week will be quite a good programme for anyone who wants to build lean muscle and burn some fat, but we shall have to wait and see. I experimented with a few different resistance band exercises along the way, so I didn't actually perform the same exercises each time through the routine and I did it twice today because I have a tennis match to play and didn't want to overwork myself.

Tennis, fitness, theology and church!

Now I'm a PT I think I ought to look the part, so I'm working on a plan to improve my general fitness and lose some body fat along the way. I have a semi-final match tomorrow and I'm aware just how unfit I seem to have become, although I guess I've not be very fit for a long time now.

The thin is, how do you define fitness? It's easy to look fit but being fit is more of a challenge. There are fitness measures, and interestingly I came about above average in some fitness testing I did the other week. But I don't feel fit when I play tennis. So it's time to train again and see where we get.

An important aspect of this has to be the goal I set. We all know about smart goals, so let's not bother defining what that means, let's focus on setting the goal. Just wanting to be fitter is not specific enough, so I guess I need to work out something more focussed, but that's quite hard in a tennis setting. I have a book on my Amazon wish list that might help, but I think I can work something out myself.

So what's the connection between tennis and fitness and theology and church?

Well, it's obviously connected with the idea of functional discipleship, but do goals have a place in the life of the church? Some might say yes, others might say no. The problem with goals in church life is that church is not a business and any goals have to be more than smart, they have to be biblical and most decidedly Spirit-inspired.If we are not careful, our goals can be prescribed by our limited imagination or even dare one say our over zealous faith. Yes, God can do more than we ask or imagine, but that needs to be handled carefully God is not some sort of divine slot machine of blessing, whose purpose is to bless your brilliant idea.

I'm more conscious of the need to plan and pray and envision in one way as we face not having a legacy church to serve. I've always been a visionary sort of person, but historically it's been within a church setting. Now I have no church. I'm considered to be "out of ministry" and my context is undefined and in many ways unexplored territory.

Yesterday I had the privilege of preaching at a church we've been visiting on behalf of the denomination. It got me thinking about what we have left behind. There is a lot about church that I do not miss at all. In fact there is very little that I think I'd say I really do miss. I certainly didn't feel any great surge of desire to return to leadership in a legacy church. So it becomes more significant to think through what our call is in our new situation and to discern what God is doing in our new neighbourhood.

Perhaps, if I commit myself to getting fit by exercising outside, I'll get to meet people with whom I can build both a working relationship (I am a PT after all!) and some spiritual connection too. Who knows. What I do know is that the model of leadership in the legacy church would not have allowed me to explore this at all.

Taking the TRX plunge

Having searched the internet for TRX offers and alternatives, I decided to make my own. This, I thought, would give me a feel for suspension training and whether the hype was true. So I bought some luggage straps (Halfords, around £20 a pair), two carabiners and a figure eight climbing thing (must have a proper name, together they were about another £15-20 I think from Decathalon).

I trimmed the luggage straps to a more useable length and used some plastic tubing to fashion the handles. Each strap went through the ring and the excess strap became the anchor point, using the carabiners to connect everything up. It worked rather well, and although a bit tricky to adjust was a good place to start.

The only issue, and I'm sure I could resolve it, was the overall adjustment to the length of the straps. It wasn't very much and that limited it's use.

So putting aside all good sense and practical thinking, I took the plunge and bought myself a TRX. Now I might have gone for the less expensive versions, but there's something about the original that is just appealing. Perhaps it's the the ease of adjusting the straps to equal lengths because of the small amount of play in them, perhaps it's just the TRX logo and the black and yellow combination!

Having unpacked it and checked everything was in order, I set out for the local park to try it out.

My anchor point was a basketball hoop-not the hoop but the upright. It was just the right sort of height for me at least, and I had no problem wrapping the securing webbing around a fixed point and attaching the TRX straps.

I chose to do a series of fairly simple exercises. No point falling over trying to do a handstand press up first time around. My chosen routine wasn't scientifically planned, but included some simple bicep curls, chest presses, flyes, rows, squats and a core exercise that was very entertaining to try! Once you're feet are in the stirrups you discover quite how strong, or weak, your core muscles actually are on this thing.

If you want a go-anywhere, gym-in-a-bag solution then you have to try TRX or something similar.

Functional discipleship

I bet someone else has used this phrases somewhere else before I have, but it's a term I'm beginning to think about using to describe a pattern of discipleship that prepares us to function within the setting of our everyday lives. I know that all discipleship should do this, but too often our programmes are actually geared to making us better at being followers of Christ in church rather than in the world. Or so it sometimes seems.

From an exercise point of view, we talk about functional fitness to describe exercise that in some way mimics daily tasks and helps us develop appropriate fitness for those tasks. When you go into a gym you might see people using free weights (barbells and dumbbells) or resistance machines to isolate particular muscles. But very few of our daily movements isolate muscles. More often than not they are compound movements involving groups of muscles. Having big biceps and well defined pectoral muscles might look good in the mirror, but it won't help you get out of your chair!

A second principle of exercise that might be helpful when thinking about discipleship is about the core. Our core provides the foundation for all pour movements. A strong core means efficient and smooth movements. A weak core leads to poor posture and inefficient movement that typically involves compensation by recruiting other muscles to help with tasks done by muscles that have grown weak.

So how would this apply to being a follower of Jesus Christ?

First of all we would need to think about what constitutes our core. What drives every movement of the disciple? Are they simply the core disciplines of prayer, bible reading, fellowship and witness, or are there more things that are core, or maybe fewer things or even just different things.

Secondly we need to think about what is needed to help us function properly as followers of Jesus partnering with him in his mission.

I haven't got a prescription for this as yet, maybe you have some thoughts. I guess the thing that floats around the back of my mind is this idea that maybe we don't necessarily need lots of theological teaching in the church in order to ensure we're picking the correct doctrines, we just need to figure out how to live for the gospel. After all, we will have an eternity to discover how wrong our theology is, there are thousands of people around us who don't have that option.

On becoming a PT and leaves of absence

As you all probably know, PT is an abbreviation for Personal Trainer. I mention that because I know that all too often we get used to using language specific to certain environments and cultures that doesn't translate easily for people outside that community. Hmmm. Remind you of any particular community like the church for example?

Anyway, I finessed my level 3 PT course yesterday and am emerging back into the normal world of not getting up at 5:30 and not spending my whole day in a gym. It's been an interesting experience to say the least.

Now just to be absolutely clear again, this is not a career change. I have not left the ministry as many seem to think. What I am doing is exploring pathways that will allow me to be self-supporting while serving the mission of God. If someone came along and offered to cover the costs of a basic stipend I wouldn't say no, but I think I'd do it on the understanding that I would continue to pursue my studies while seeking to learn how to be missional in my community. Not because I like to be awkward, but because I think there is a need to find new ways of expressing leadership without having to add more and more paid staff to an organisation. I do not believe that the mission of God is a business that needs to be managed. It is an adventure that needs to be explored.

Because I am no longer in pastoral charge of a church or in some other form of denominationally recognised ministry, I have to take a leave of absence. I understand this, but it rankles with me. For the last four weeks I've spent my day with a great bunch of people who wouldn't normally cross my path or me theirs. We've sat together, learnt together, exercised and stretched together. We've laughed and shared stories, measured each others body fat, and debated the use of supplements (generally speaking, don't waste you money, just buy better quality food!)

Throughout all that time I've tried as best I can to not be overzealous and preach but rather simply be there amongst them answering whatever questions someone has for me, and there have been a few. I feel more engaged in real ministry even though I feel totally inadequate for the task. If that's what leaving the ministry means, then I'm glad I've left, although of course I haven't!

Time to leave that one alone I think. I must write to the ministry department in the next week or so and share my thoughts with them. I'm sure they understand more than we credit them, but the no-man's land feeling doesn't help.

Back to PT-ing. I'll write another blog post about how learning about exercise has helped me reflect on discipleship. Perhaps Paul was onto a good illustration when he talked about athletes preparing themselves. Perhaps we need functional discipleship in the same way we need functional fitness!

Suspension Training

One of the guys in the PT course was telling me about suspension training with a thing called a TRX. I'd never heard of it before, so I looked it up and it certainly looks interesting! Mind you at the price of a kit (£150+) it ought to be exciting.

A search for an alternative threw up some possibilities. So far the Rip 60 looks good value, but I just found a UK alternative called Flexstrap which looks rather inviting.

Short of poping to Halfords for some luggage straps and the Ellis Brigham for a Caribiner or two, these look good value at £60. I shall have to put them on my wish list!

Evangeliguilt

These past few weeks have been interesting to say the least. The learning curve has been quite steep, and if it were not for my previous experience and study of anatomy, physiology and nutrition, I don't think I could have passed the exams. It's not that they were particularly difficult, just that the time I've spent travelling to and from the gym hasn't left me much time for home study.
So what must it be like for those folk in our churches who commute everyday and upon whose shoulder we place the burden of Bible study? I say burden not because it's a tiresome weight to carry, although I wouldn't be surprised to hear it described that way, but because of the pressure it applies. It's hard enough to to get through and ordinary day without some sense of guilt over something, let alone adding a sense of failure because we're not reading our
Bibles and interrogating the text on a daily basis.
It's made me wonder again about how we can make the Bible accessible and engaging and yet avoid the extremes of either bit-sizing it to fit a busy lifestyle or making it unmanageable. It's a tough challenge and maybe it's a challenge that reflects on the role of preaching too.
I'm sure I'm repeating myself when I say that I think preaching should be inspirational all of the time. There is a place for teaching, no doubt about that, but our preaching should inspire people to go out and solve problems, address issues and live differently rather than look for alterations and keywords in texts. Perhaps our goal if we preach on a Sunday morning ought to be to give everyone one thought to ponder through the week. Something they can carry with them to turn over in their minds and figure out how to apply in their lives.
After my current course finishes, which should be Tuesday if I pass everything, I hope to take a little time to look at the principles of personal training and see what they have to say to the concept of discipleship. There are some interesting principles and parallels to be explored. Maybe I need to write a programme for getting spiritually healthy and spiritual fit while I write programmes for physical health and fitness.
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There's not really a lot to reflect on this week. It's just been another week of getting up at 5:30 to go to the gym to learn more stuff. We did have a good day on Monday at the tennis club Jubilee party. Like churches, clubs rely upon a few enthusiasts to get things organised and clearly the enthusiasts had done a great job. Now we're not "in a church", as people like to point out to me (I'll moan about that in a minute or two!), we had the chance to not be at a church-based celebration. Probably the first time for 20 plus years that we've been able to do this. In some ways it was remarkably similar to a church event, and in others clearly not. Somewhere there has to be a balance between organising a church-based event and inventing people to that, and on the other hand encouraging folk to attend non-church events where they can interact with friends and fellow human beings. Perhaps if we did more of the latter we'd realise that the missing are not as unhappy as we think they should be.

The PT course is now underway. The downside of doing a Personal Trainer course is that you think you know about exercise! I'm supposed to be a professional, but I feel like an amateur in comparison to some. As I've said before, I'm not a big fan of the gym. It's great to get on the treadmill and walk and run, and to pick up a few weights and put some of those hidden muscles to work, but overall the gym is not an exciting environment for me. Hopefully I'll be able to do some creative, non-gym based things in the community for people who don't want to be athletes but would like to not get out of breath walking to the shops!

Designing exercise programmes is quite a complicated job. There are lots of things to take into consideration. Repeating the same routine over and over again is not only monotonous bordering on boring, but in the end once you've adapted to the routine you won't see any changes because your body won't be asked to do more. So you need to keep upping the intensity or frequency or type or time spent exercising. Then there's this thing I've been reading about called periodisation with micro cycles, mesocycles and macrocylces. It might as well have a unicycle in for brain to get on and ride around in a state of confusion!

I have 7 more days to get my head around it all and then the rest of my life to build the experience to do it as well as I can. Maybe I'll enlist the help of few friends to practice on. At least if they injure themselves I can offer remedial massage!

Before I go, let me point you to a short post by Simon Jones. Simon and I were at college together and he often writes thougthful stuff on his blog. His most recent post raises a pertinent point about what we focus upon as churches.

Still on the planet!

Time certainly flies around here, and you don't even need to be having fun for it to happen! For the last two weeks Ive been getting up at 5:30, catching the 6:58 train and spending all day in the gym. Monday to Friday commuting just like I remember it. Ah, the joy!! The reason for all this resides in my brilliant idea to add a personal trainer qualification to my portfolio. So far I've passed the gym instructors part of the course and the next two weeks is the PT bit. To be honest, I'm not looking forward to it. I'm not the "in your face" sort of person that seems to be the industry standard for PT's. Ah well, as long as I get through the course I can then stamp my own personality of the world of personal training.

The point of all this is not to become some sort of gym-bore. I'd like to work with people where they are, in the park etc., and not be stuck in the gym environment surrounded by people lifting weights that are too heavy for them and the thing they are trying to do. Hopefully the PT qualification will integrate nicely with the sports massage and will open a few doors to a few clients so I can earn some money. But I also hope that it will help me get to know the community a little better. I have these idealised pictures of me and a small group of people getting fitter as we have fun in the local park and walking around the village. I told you it was rather idealised.

Away from the rigours of PT qualification, I've learnt a lot just by travelling daily on the train and tube. I've remembered just how draining it can be and how little you want to do when you get home at the end of a long day. I've realised again how important it is for those of us in church leadership (I may not be in  a church, but I don't see myself as having left church leadership just yet) to remember that and not prioritise church over family or even friendship. It's a tough balance to hold, but I think I'd rather sway towards the priority of family and friends than church meetings and even dare one say Bible studies. For me, I'd rather get to heaven having known a lot of people, sought to share my faith with them, sought to help them reconnect with the God who misses them, rather than be able to answer obscure questions about abstruse passages of the Bible. I'm not sure I'm going to get tested on my theology on that great and final day.

In the end this al comes down to one simple truth. We all have a fixed amount of time in any given day or week or month. How we use that time is largely up to us. Yes we have the demands of our jobs if we are fortunate to be in employment. and work is where we spend most of our waking time. If we are part of a family, this too takes up a fair amount of our time. The rest is up for grabs. This is Oldenburg's Third Place, and this is where the church must find it's place. If it can't find it's place here, then it will have to take time and resources away from the other two, and if it absorbs all of the third place time, then it will exclude connecting with those who are missing from the kingdom.

Working out the balance is the challenge we face. Perhaps I can figure that out on the train tomorrow morning between reviewing all the muscle origins, insertions and actions I'm trying to learn!

A Busy Week

In a moment of sheer madness I decided that adding a Personal Trainer qualification to my Sports Massage would be a good idea and might open a door to some potential income while I continue my trying as a therapist. So I signed up for a 4-week intensive course which began this week.

At the time of signing up I didn't realise how much online reading there was going to be. I knew there was some, but it turns out to be more than I imagined. So now I'm trying to learn Pt and Sports Massage and my brain hurts. It hurts a lot.

What this leaves me with is the thought that if only I'd behaved myself and been a a good little minister, then none of this would have happened. I could have continued to think that one day I might do something in the area of sports and bodywork and/or fitness, but never actually needing to apply myself to it. Dreams are easy things with which to live as long as you don't try to realise them.

I, of course, am mad. Completely and utterly mad. No one in their right mind would toss everything in the air at 54 and start over. At 54 you should be planning how you're going to spend your retirement.

So here I sit, after a long and draining week of learning to be a gym instructor (you have to do that first) and then a full day doing MET (that's a massage thing) and I feel like giving it all up as my brain slowly melts as I try and remember my ischial tuberosity from my anterior, inferior iliac spine.

Madness. Sheer madness.

Change-city, an uncomfortable place to visit

I was at a conference a long time ago in the US and the speaker kept referring to Scare-city during his talk. I thought this was some sort of colloquialism that all the Americans understood and I would eventually discover a context as I listened that would make it all clear. Well it did become clear when I realised that he was talking about scarcity not some mythical place called Scare City. The joy of a common language!

On the other hand, Change City is no error in wither pronunciation or hearing, but the place in which I seem to have tank up residence these last few months, and it's far from a comfortable residency I can tell you. Change is always hard, even good change. On Monday I start the intensive four-week part of a personal trainer's qualification. In my crazy, idea overloaded mind, it made good sense a month or so ago. Personal training seemed to fit nicely alongside the massage course and the nutritional stuff. Now I wonder if I've made an error of judgment and taken on too much. Why didn't I just get a job stacking shelves at Tesco or working nights at a hotel. Well because there weren't any for one thing. Add to that the sense of being unemployable, and you get the picture. It's a painful place to be.

Of course, in a year's time when I'm looking for premises for my new clinic and wondering how I'm going to fit all these new clients into my already busy schedule it will all be different. But that's a dream, not even a vision, at the moment and there is no promise of reality.

Somehow I have to find a way of living with the sense of failure and the fear of future failure that surround me in this oddly named city in which I've taken up residence. I need to get to know the neighbours. The one thing all the inhabitants of change have in common is the insecurity of what bough them here. Some are fearless in their pursuit of a new outcome, others are more tentative, hurt by their past and paralysed by their present, they can't see very far into the future. But you can't settle down in a place of change, you can only adjust to the pace of change. Change will go on around you, whether you want it to or not.

I want the change. I want to explore this confused and incomplete idea that church can be more than just a gathering of equally disappointed people who think the world is a dangerous place and needs to adapt to us before we adapt to it. But I'm not a good adapter.

Well it's time to stop rambling and at the very least help this bee that can't adapt to glass and is stuck in our new dining room tiring itself out in a win attempt to fly through the invisible barrier that confronts it.

Makes me wonder what my invisible barrier is. The existence of which would at least explain the headache!

It's not as bad you think it is!

On the way home last night I caught a little bit of a Radio Four programme about society. In a nutshell the discussion centred around the theme that society is getting worse and we're destined to destruction. There were arguments for, and there were arguments against. 

What was interesting was that there was also some discussion about how we are programmed to pay attention to negative stimuli. For example, if you're wandering around the African pain and someone shouts, "Lion!" you take notice. If they said, "It's been four days and I haven't seen a lion," you'll probably ignore that and go about your foraging.

Setting aside arguments about evolution, I think this has profound implications for being good news people. If we too are predisposed to hear the negative above the positive, then we will look at the world around us and conclude that it's getting worse, but we'll take another step. We will add a layer of Biblical interpretation to that perspective and conclude that this is the way it will be and there' little to be done about it expect wait for the inevitable day of judgement.

But even that is not all we do. We assume that everyone else sees the same inevitable decline all them and has a similar sense of despair. We offer hope against this interpretive background, but what if it's not true? What if things are actually better than they once were? What shape our hope then? 

Now I'm fully aware of what the Bible says about the future and how we can understand that. I know that judgement is coming, but our anecdotal evidence for a worsening society and a theology predicated upon that may not hold up to inspection. 

Here's another thought. John Kramp in his book Out of their faces and into their shoes makes an interesting point when he suggests that the so-called lost (I prefer Jim Henderson's "missing" to lost) are in fact quite happy. In other words, people who do not share our faith position are not as miserable as we think they should be!

Because we are predisposed to react to the negative more than the positive, we more easily reinterpret things within that negative context. We may not mean to do it, but do it we do. 

So here's my question: How would our mission look if we took a more positive view of the people around us? If we all, and I mean all, carry the image of God, then how do we celebrate that in the people we meet? 

Maybe, after the celebration, we'll find a way of pointing them to a fuller expression of that image in Christ, rather than offer him as a get out jail free card.

First prayer adventure

Yesterday, Sunday, Anne and I ventured out into our new community to walk around and to pray a little. We're going to take as much time as it takes to figure out what to do next before we begin anything church-like. We have no fixed model to apply and no fixed agenda to follow. We do have a vision, but aren't making plans beyond taking a few simple steps.

The first thing we are doing is to settle down into life in the new house and new community. We'll try to get to know the neighbours and seek out people of peace with whom we can build relationships. How do we do this? We have no idea! All we know is that we are not looking for a place to hold a Sunday morning worship event.

There's already a sense of home about the place. Even the cats seem remarkably settled to the new house. Once the carpets are down and the boxes unpacked, it will feel so much different.

Without all the trapping of legacy church life, it's quite a challenge to think about how you go about being the presence of Christ in a community. To be honest, the traditional pattern of church probably gives us a false sense of security about our profile in a place. Asking yourself what church might look like for this community is probably a good place to start, but so easily confused with what we think from an insiders perspective.

Our dream, our vision, is to see a group of people, gathered in community, doing life and faith together, engaged in the mission of God. It really is that simple. How hard can it be?!

Fixed heating

I'm tempted to claim that I fixed the heating, but I didn't do anything other than poke around in the wiring centre to see what was going on. Having had no pump running and no apparent reason for said lack of action, I left the programmer running and yesterday morning I suddenly realised I could hear the pump running! We've had a few noises in the system this boring, but it seems to be firing up and working after a fashion.

Curtains are up in the bedroom, so we can sleep in the dark now! My next job is to get on with some studying for my courses, but practically speaking, I need to sort out a damaged stair riser and start planning how to level the floor in the kitchen diner. Plywood and self-levelling compound are the order of the day. Getting the cooker out of its rather tight gap will be a challenge. If I had the time and inclination, I'd adjust the gap, but it's only a matter of 2 millimetres and I don''t think it's quite worth the effort.

After that, it's tiling and retouching the paintwork that got damaged during the moving process. Sad to say we have yet to encounter a removal company that actually take as much care of our possessions as they say they will. Maybe we just get assigned to the fact that things will get damaged, but it's frustrating to not be told and to discover it for your self. Does an apology really cost that much?

As if there were't enough jobs to do!

The chaos of moving is slowly giving way to the chaos of settling in. We're waiting to hear form the capet company about when they are coming to door the floor coverings, so we're not unpacking too many boxes at the moment. We have also begun to think abut a plan for moving stuff around while they fit the carpets and vinyls too! Yes, it would have been easier to have the carpets fitted before we moved in, but that wasn't possible.

We spent yesterday boring hauling boxes into the loft. literally hauling them. I rigged up a hoist with some rope a over a beam and lifted the boxes while Anne was in the loft on the receiving end. She did a grand job with some heavy boxes.

Today the builders finished, so we can now set about the jobs that are down to me to do. I ned to level the kitchen floor before the vinyl arrives and fix a damaged stair riser when I find my wood glue (or buy some more!)

I think the next photo's will be of completed jobs and the carpets down.

And the unwanted job? Well that's the heating system. I got it working at the weekend, but when I put it on the other day it didn't work. I think I've traced the fault to the 3-way value, which looks unpromising for a quick fix. Some valves have replacement heads, but this one looks like a whole value job, which in turn might  means raining the whole system down. Might be a job for a plumber, I'll see how I feel.

Moving Day

Everything is in a box somewhere, and if it's not in a box yet, it will be in the next few hours! It's just before 6:00am and moving day has finally arrived. In 32 years of being married, this will be our 9th move, and for me it will be number 13 overall if you don't count university, 15 if you do! That's an average of just less than 4 years between moves.

I don't like moving!

This time I hope we will be settled for a reasonable length of time, but how long is that? 4, 5 10 years? Who knows! The problem with moving is all the hassle of finding a new home and organising everything. It's quite exciting to go and explore a new place, but the pain of packing up and unpacking can far outweigh the excitement of what's new.

So, in a few hours we will be in our new, not quite finished home a few miles away. Not quite the cross-country move that has been the feature of our lives as we've criss-crossed the Eastern half of Southern and Middle England over these past 32 years. There's still much to do at the house, but it's certainly liveable and the builders should be finished by the end of the week, maybe next week.

Time now for a shower and breakfast, then it's dismantle the book case and wardrobes, take down the network and internet and get over to the new house to clean and prepare for the arrival of the furniture later this afternoon.

How long does a promise take?

For example, there was God’s promise to Abraham. Since there was no one greater to swear by, God took an oath in his own name, saying: “I will certainly bless you, and I will multiply your descendants beyond number.” Then Abraham waited patiently, and he received what God had promised.

Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is binding. God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary. Jesus has already gone in there for us. He has become our eternal High Priest in the order of Melchizedek.

Heb. 6:13-20

Read this passage yesterday. In the previous section, there was the great promise from God that he does not forget what I have done. It seems that this promise is reaffirmed as God speaks about blessing Abraham. Now I know that these are the words of the writer of the letter, and not God speaking directly and personally. On the other hand, God uses his word, the Bible, to speak directly, so I have no issue with reflecting upon the personal application of these words.

But the key is not the promise of God so much as the patience of Abraham. I know the story, I know how impatient Abraham actually was at the time. It must have been quite an internal struggle.

"Lord, how long do I have to be patient?" I ask this question a lot. Abraham waited a lifetime to see the ultimate expression of God's promise fulfilled. Am I willing to wait that long?



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Just in time

There are moments when a simple act or word of encouragement comes at just the right time. None more so than when God speaks through the Bible as one reads through it. Here was my "just in time" moment from yesterday:

God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. (Heb. 6:10)

Now you may not think it means too much, but to me it was a very important moment, and one I would have missed had I not slowed down long enough to read or been rushed into the busyness of the day to have though I could always read it later.

It's not so much the daily discipline of reading that's key, at least not for me, but the systematic reading that's important. I may spend several days pondering this verse, I may read something new. If there's one thing I've learned over the last 30+ years, it's that we don't really dwell in God's word as much as we ought. We move on to today's note, driven by some sort of evangelical legalism designed to prove we are spiritual. In truth, all it actually does is demonstrate how shallow our spirituality has become as we strive to add another star to our loyalty badge.

And I'm no different. My spiritual life is shallow too. I take my encouragement where I can find it.

I'm glad that today I can remind myself that God does not forget what I've spent my life doing for the last 20 years and more, even if it's been less than effective for some.