Off to preach at the weekend

In this odd world of ministry without church that I now inhabit, I don't preach or speak publicly much anymore. Sometimes I miss it, most times I don't. I don't miss staying up late on Saturdays trying to figure out if I've got it straight, and I don't miss getting up a few hours later on a Sunday morning to completely rewrite everything because it just doesn't sit right in my head. I never envied those folk who had Wednesday as sermon preparation day and seemed to be able to sit down at the desk and turn out the finished article by the end of a single day's work. For me, sermon preparation was a week long process of walking with the text, exploring it from a range of angles, reflecting on its context and generally letting is all coalesce in my head. Mind maps and sketchy notes were my route to a Sunday presentation.

So it's rather odd to be in a place where I don't have to do that on a regulars basis.

But this weekend I am preaching. Now I know that I've been asked because all the main stays of the church are at the BU Assembly. I also know that it's almost a racing certainty that it will be a one off invitation. So I could go in with the attitude of nothing to lose, but that would seem to be a somewhat arrogant approach. The truth is that I still believe that the local church is the hope of the world as Bill Hybels would say. And yes, I know it's the message that carries the hope, but the church remains God's chosen vehicle.

Having said that, it would be unwise to assume that the church as it presents itself in our times is somehow sacred to the purposes of God. We ought to remember the salutary lesson of those who believed Jerusalem could not possibly fall because it was God's chosen city.

So I will preach, and I won't go out of my way to upset or alienate anyone, but I won't hold back either in presenting a challenge to change. We shall see how it goes!

Bohemian Rhapsody... but not as you may remember it!

There are many version's of Queen's BR, I even have the original on vinyl in the loft. But this one makes me smile. I was looking for a piece of music for someone, and came across this brass ensemble version.

A Christian non-religious funeral?

I know, from conversations that I've had, that for some people the idea of a Christian minister doing non-religious funerals is at best confusing, at worst dishonouring to God. But just because God doesn't get mentioned during the service, and that's not always the case, it doesn't mean that he's not involved or taking the opportunity to catch up on a bit of paperwork because he isn't needed for this one.

If we believe that God is ever present, then non-religious doesn't have to equate to being without faith. One might not pray out loud during the funeral, one might not read the bible or preach a short sermon, but God will be there, of that i am sure.

Today I'm off to do funerals number 28 and 29 of the year so far. Some of them have been non-religious, one of today's falls into that category. But what I have noticed is that non-religious doesn't necessarily mean non-spiritual, or even non-faith. In conversation with the family, non-religious often turns out to be a preconception of overly religious language and style of presentation rather than specific content. I can only remember one funeral in the last year or so, the time during which I've been doing non-religious funerals, where I was expressly told that God was not to be mentioned at all.

So I will continue to do my duties, to serve God and families through this ministry, religious or not. Over the past 20 years I've learnt a lot about doing a funeral. I've learnt about being adaptable, about listening to families and helping them shape the life-celebration funeral they want. I never feel the need to impose prayers or readings on them, but rest in the knowledge that God is ever-present and my role is to partner with him in his mission to these hurting friends and relatives.

Some, I'm sure, will continue to raise issues and even criticise my approach, but that's okay. As far as I'm concerned, God has granted me a rare and special privilege for a season. How long it will continue I do not know. But what is interesting is that it is far more challenging to work out how to share some element of faith when you can't simply follow the script of the service book to do it.

Oh, what fun!

So, as I was wandering around the internet, aimlessly looking at a few things, I found myself reading the Slim Fast website to see what they have to say about diet and weight loss. Rather like fitness programmes and tennis videos, it's something I look at from time to time. I also quite like the Slim Fast milkshakes, not sure why.

Anyway, apparently you can buy their products through Amazon, so I wandered over the Amazon store, and there they were. All flavours, in multipacks, or singly, available to the determined milkshake dieter! But wait, What's this?

Slim-Fast Summer Strawberry Flavour Milkshake Powder 438g (Pack of 3) Starring Richard Dean Anderson

Sorry, what's that? Could it be that the ultimate weapon in the fight against the system lords is a milkshake! Or maybe it's the secret to escaping from a locked room (you've seen McGyver haven't you?) I'm sure Richard Dean Anderson has been in other productions, but this must be the strangest!

And then it just gets better. Follow the link to the product specific page and you discover this:

Slim-Fast Summer Strawberry Flavour Milkshake Powder 438g (Pack of 3)

Richard Dean Anderson (Actor) | Rated: Parental Guidance | Format: DVD 

4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews) Like(3)

---

Available from these sellers.

4 new from £23.85

Watch thousands of films and TV series instantly online at LOVEFiLM Amazon’s film and TV subscription service with unlimited access to thousands of titles to watch instantly, many in HD at no extra cost. Go to LOVEFiLM for title availability. Enjoy a 30-day free trial and watch across many devices including the Kindle Fire. Learn more at LOVEFiLM.com

Well it made me smile anyway.

I wish Richard Dean Anderson every success as he seeks to protect us from alien attack and lose those extra pounds along the way.

PS. According to one reviewer it "arrived well packed and on time".

 Just what you want from the military leader of SG-1

A Better Argument Needed

I was watching the news this morning and listening to the discussion about the right to die that has been raised again. As someone who does a few funerals, 29 so far this year, I see the pain and sadness that goes with such an event. Yes, almost without exception, I get told that the person who has died wanted it to be a celebration of their life and not a time of tears and sadness. But the reality is that it is a time of sadness and tears for most people even though they try to celebrate. Emotions are well and truly mixed.

Having said that, I can't conceive of the challenges that one might face
living with a life-limiting condition or near constant severe pain. Dark days must be a regular companion in such circumstances.

So what about the issue of assisted dying?

Those in favour seem to edge towards the right to self determination, and those against towards the sanctity of life and the fear of opening a door to pressure and abuse, pushing the vulnerable towards a choice they may not want to make.

I have no simple answers, but I do wonder if there's a question we are missing, common ground we share that could help us help each other understand and explore the issue together. Rather than an argument, could we not take a journey as partners? Why is the debate always polarised in the bite-sized media into for and against? Where is the informed discussion involving those who care for the dying, the palliative care experts alongside those who support or question the proposals?

I suspect those in favour of a right to die are equally concerned to protect the rights of the vulnerable and to not create a open door to abuse. Could we not start there? How does grace and compassion influence the debate and how does it challenge the pro lobby?

Perhaps we are simply too used to the idea of an adversarial debate to be able to listen thoughtfully to all sides.

You may have noticed that I've not offered a theological reflection, I've not spoken about a specifically Christian or Evangelical perspective. I do have one, but I hope that it informs and shapes my understanding while still allowing room for continued reflection.

Personally I try to remember that theological answers work for those who share a similar conviction that God is at work in our world. For those who do not, it's not an argument at all. I respect that, and want to think with them, not against them.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Has Spring sprung?

Last year, the magnolia was well and truly finished by this time. This year, it is just coming into flower.

Clients welcome!

It's quite a challenge, setting out to start your own sports massage practice. I've tried a few avenues, but the reality seems to be that it's going to take time and perseverance to get going. So far I've visited the local golf club, three gyms and written to several local sports clubs (rugby, hockey, volleyball etc). A couple of the visits were fairly positive, but the emails have yielded very little. I shall press on however!

One thing I've noticed is that many local sports clubs that have a website have no information about how to advertise through them. I know not every club does a match-day programme, but those that do ought to say something about advertising via their websites. I must admit that until I was offered advertising space at the local rugby club I'd never thought of that as a possible route, but now I'm looking at local clubs and trying to find out if they have programmes. The other frustrating thing is that you simply don't get a reply to an email. If you have a contact form on your website, then please, please have the courtesy to respond to contacts!

So, at the moment I'm still treating one or two clients at my house. I'd like a nice treatment cabin in the garden, but I need to take out a few trees first.

This weekend I'll be working at the London Marathon, and I will take some cards and flyers with me. I'm not sure how useful it is to do volunteer work, I guess you have to be thoughtful about choosing the right events in the right places that might produce the right contacts.

Oh, and I have the possibility of starting a clinic at a leisure centre not too far away.

Iris Notes Executive2

So, how do you go about translating hand-written notes into electronic files? One way is simply to scan them and store them as PDF's. I came across a special offer on the Iris Executive notes system that now looks easier to use with a Mac than when I first thought about trying it a few years ago.

It's simple to set up, and ought to be really simple to use, unless you're left-handed like me! You see I have a rather unusual writing style, even for a lefty, so it was gong to be interesting to see how the device coped with both my script and how I orientate the paper to write.

Logic told me that the device wouldn't know whether the paper was rotated in one direction or the other, so it ought to work. The issue is getting the clip on receiver out of the way of my trailing hand. Ideally I'd like to put it at the bottom of the page, but then I reasoned the text would be upside down. In the end the choices are top centre, top left or top right. I tried top right, the place least likely to be affected by my writing angle. The result was okay for an image, but totally scrambled when the software tried to convert my text to typed text.

No matter what I tried, the results were pretty awful each time, and I'd just about given up on the idea of it ever working for me when I put the device top-centre. The results were very good.

Here's the handwritten note:

It was very awkward working around the receiver, so much so that long-term I think I'd probably suffer some sort of RSI issue in my wrist. I have the same problem with clipboards where the clip gets in the way. As far as I can see the only solution is to start lower down the page!

Anyway, the software sees the text as horizontal and the resultant conversion is very impressive. I haven't "taught" the software my version of handwriting, so you have to be impressed with its interpretation of what it found. Only the lowercase S and the apostrophe are the only errors I can see. 

The device comes with a connector to link it directly to an iPad. I haven't tried that yet, but now I've got it reading my writing it might be worth exploring.

So why not just use the iPad I hear you say. Well, good question. The problem with the iPad is that I haven't found an app yet that will do what I want it to do when it comes to taking therapy notes. Nothing has what I want, so this might just be a way of getting my handwritten notes into an electronic format. On the other hand, I might just stick with pen and paper until it becomes too cumbersome or I decide I don't need pretty little pictures for posture notes and squiggles!

New Blog

I thought I might try a new blog where I can talk about stuff to do with Sports Massage and other related items. I will probably repost a few older items from this blog there, but there will be new stuff too.

If you're interested in that side of things, then you can read the blog here.

Touch Rugby

I've been wondering about playing touch rugby. It's something we used to do at school, many, many years ago, and I think it's probably a great way to get a run about and gain some fitness. Running for long distances can be quite boring, and if like me your knees are increasingly reluctant to be pounded mile after mile, then maybe something like touch rugby is a alternative for that cardio workout you crave.

The rules have developed somewhat since my schooldays, which makes it an easier game to play for anyone, and a few cones, a ball and a good spirit should make it possible. There's even a couple of official websites with leagues! Sadly, there's nothing I can find this far east of Kingston or Clapham, so maybe it's time to start something in deepest Essex!

I'm not sure exactly how to get things started, but it would only take a minimum of 10, ideally 12 people, men and women, to get underway.

Any takers? Vets like me welcome!!

The Church, mental illness and suicide

With the recent news of the sad death of Matthew Warren, there are probably questions surfacing for many people in our Christian communities. Ed Stetzer has written a helpful blog post about the church and mental illness and a longer article here.

Church, Easter and the power of stories

Why did Jesus teach using stories? We call them parables, but they were stories. Sometimes I think we try to make them more sacred by using theologically loaded terms, or at least terms that have become theologically loaded.

Anyway, this question crossed my mind as I reflected on our experience of church on Easter Sunday. This is not a mona nor a criticism of what we attended. It's more a critique of how we do things and why we do them and how that might or might not connect with those we are trying to reach. You see, Easter Sunday is a significant day for the church. Everyone in church nows that, but for a lot of people outside of the church it's just confusing because for some reason the shops aren't open.

The message we preach or resurrection, hope and forgiveness are easily understood by those who have been around the church for long enough to know the language. But for others, I wonder how much of it actually makes sense.

As one who has been involved in the preparation and delivery of Easter Sunday events, I am just as guilty as everyone else of making the gospel complicated. Not by design, but simply by explanation. There are times when we probably tell too much of the story, explain too much of the theology and obscure the simplicity of how to respond. We are never going to make the resurrection more believable simply by offering more tangible explanations of the empty tomb.

Perhaps this is why Jesus used stories. Yes, there was an element of mystery, and method to what he did. I'm not going to ignore the challenge of his words about seeing and understanding etc and the use of parables. But maybe it was the need to engage the people at their starting point and not the starting point we would like them to have had that made stories so useful.

Maybe, if we can declutter the method we can let the story explain itself.

It's odd. I've never really struggled with the idea that Jesus came back form the dead, or even the concept of the incarnation. I've never really been bothered about the arguments over creation or worried about eschatology. Maybe, if we spent more time helping people explore the stories, the truth will speak for itself without the need for all our careful explanation.

Just a thought.

Marathon time!

No, not running it, but volunteering again! I've long given up any pretensions of ever running a marathon, but like last year, I've volunteered to do post-event massage for those who are brave enough to take on the 26 mile challenge.

Turns out I'll be working for the same charity as last year Phab kids, and in the same place, so at least I should know where I'm going! I wonder how strange it will feel going as a qualified therapist rather than a student only 6 weeks into their course.

Anyway, if you see me dragging my massage couch up the stairs at Embankment station or trundling it along Horse Guards Parade, you'll know what I'm up to on that warm April Sunday that will hopefully materialise.

Older Brother?

“See both of the sons are trying to avoid coming to the Father; they’re both runners. The first son is running away from the Father, the other son is running for the Father. Some of you are running for the Father right now. You’re just tirelessly running, seeking His approval, desiring that He say ‘well done good and faithful servant. And you’ve forgotten that after Jesus came out the baptismal waters He already said it to His Son and if you’re life is hidden in Christ He said it to you. I don’t know if you believe it, but God doesn’t really care that much about what you do for Him. The doing comes out of knowing that you’re loved…That’s why we don’t love people. Because we don’t know the depth of love of which we’ve been loved.”

So reads the quote from Jeff Vanderstelt taken from a short video available here.

Four interesting principles for missional communities

From the blog of David Fitch comes an interesting piece about one particular missional community and the principles behind it. Here are the principles, (edited slightly):

• He got a job. Wayne Gordon came to Lawndale humbly, expecting nothing and got a job in the community. He said, “because I didn’t need money it gave us freedom to do things. We didn’t have to focus on getting people into church seats and tithing.” He was able to be “with” people on their terms not on terms dictated by needing to get a church going that was self-sustaining.

• He inhabited humbly incarnationally. He came to be “with” the community resisting any colonialist impulses. He came to listen to the community, hear the issues, and ask God how he could cooperate with His salvation in this neighbourhood.

• He gave it time: He said “the number one reason things don’t happen is we don’t give it enough time.” He said “if you would have come here when we were fifteen years into it, you would have said nothing is happening here.

• Money comes from God: Wayne talked about money as being a provision from God. For Wayne Gordon, faith does not mean we take crazy risks. Faith means we trust God that if we’re meant to do this we will wait long enough and God will provide the money. He said average time a project takes to go from initiation stage to completion is seven years. It takes perseverance.

When people ask us what we are doing or what we've done about planting a church in our community, we have very little to show them or to say at the moment. It can sound like we've done nothing. What we would say is that we believe that God wants us here, we believe that he is at work in our community, the thing is we just haven't worked out what he's doing at the moment. We've consistently said this is a long-term project, and we're not expecting an overnight success (no matter how nice it would be to be able to point to a flourishing community!) Time is really important in this process.

The other point that struck a chord with me comes in the first principle above. Succinctly it describes two of the big issues with legacy models of church planting. One is getting people into a building and the second is on who's terms do we do mission. So much of our historic mission has been done on the basis of inviting people into our controlled environment where we set the agenda. As the communities we try to reach continue to move further away from our the locus of our building-based activities we are faced with the stark choice of staying in our buildings and becoming increasingly irrelevant, or leaving the building and connecting with our communities.

You can read the whole post here.

Lessons from Luke 12

I've been mulling over Luke 12 for weeks now, ambling my way backwards and forwards through the text. I've long since set aside the practice of reading a few verses, learning a quick lesson and then moving on to tomorrows text. On the other hand, I'm guessing I've become somewhat undisciplined at the same time.

Anyway, this is my pattern for now, and it may very well change again.

What I've noticed in Luke 12, or rather what I've be mulling over, is the connection between the stories. What do they tell me individually and together as a narrative? What lessons can I learn, what might God be saying to me through this collection of stories as a whole?

There's a sort of work pattern, kingdom thing, priority theme going in it seems. The rich fool fails to take any counsel from anyone other than himself. Even if he ultimately rejects it, he never looks at the bigger picture or his wider opportunity to act less selfishly. Selfish too seems to be a concern of the second story where we are challenged to prioritise the kingdom over self-interest.

The third challenge comes in the call to be ready. Ready for what? Well in this case it's the return of the master, but it struck me that there was also the possibility of simply being prepared, being abut the daily business of the kingdom as preparation.

I don't want to push these things too far, after all these are my thoughts form my devotional reflections not a commentary on the text or an exegesis of the text for that matter. In fact, as I went to the text, my main question at that moment was about what we were doing and what we should do. I'd been for a walk, and as i looked at all the new build and recent build I wondered about the process of connecting with the people that would be living in those properties. wondering if any of them would share our vision for a missional community and how we would find them or they find us.

It was then that I read Jesus' words: “Be dressed for service and keep your lamps burning, 36 as though you were waiting for your master to return from the wedding feast. Then you will be ready to open the door and let him in the moment he arrives and knocks.

Rather than a challenge, these words came as a comfort. It was almost as if there were to simple questions to answer:

1. Are you being selfish?

2. Are you putting the kingdom first?

If the answer was yes to both, then you are "dressed and ready for service" for when the master arrives. There is no need to panic about what is not happening.

Time to remember that it's not about what I can do for the kingdom, but about Jesus is already doing and how I can become more involved in that. I've always had great plans about how useful I could be to God if only I was in the right setting with the right people, sharing the right vision. But my plans are not the point.

My dreams are not the issue here, for they the hammer holds

What have I done!

Oh no, in a moment of madness I've not only gone an entered a tennis tournament!

Last year I played in the club's Winter League and men's over 55's competitions, but this is the first competition beyond that. And it's indoors, something I'm not at all used to. Better get some practice somewhere!

So far I'm only the second entrant, so I'm either in the final or it will be cancelled. We shall have to wait and see.

Shameless self-promotion!

So, here we are. This is my new venture!

I have to say a big thank you to Ally, my daughter, who helped me create the logo. I still haven't got to grips with Illustrator, so her help was invaluable. She also came up with a few alternatives, which might appear later on the website once I get to grips with that!

Of course the most important thing is to get treating people, and that's a challenge. I'm planning to approach a number of sports clubs and I'm going to look for local events where I might be able to offer pre/post event treatment. Better, in my opinion, to build slowly with a good reputation than try to build too quickly without a clear plan. It's quite a scary thought, putting my new skills out to tender so-to-speak. Will anyone actually pay me to do this? I have dreams of a nice clinic somewhere, but that will have to in the future.

It has been quite a journey this far, as I've blogged already. We were with the church over the weekend, celebrating the vision and hearing stories about what God is up to through his people. For me it was a positive sense of God's affirmation that we're on the right journey even though we have very little to show for it at this time except a mortgage and three new certificates for me. But even as I write that, it seems to me that it is only part of the story. I've discovered that there is more to me than I ever imagined, that I'm not too old to learn something new and I am capable of being a good soft tissue specialist.

Apart from CPD courses, I do hope that I've finally sat my last exam. I'm not sure my blood pressure or emotions could face any more. But I've learnt not to say never again.

And yes, part of me wishes I'd done something like this a long time ago. I don't think Sports Therapy was an option in the 70's. If it was, I might have tried it.

Is it just a means to an end?

So, I'm now a qualified Sports and Remedial Massage Therapist. Still not quite sure I believe it, but it's true. Over the course of the last year I've been asked quite a lot about how I came to be doing sports massage and what I did before and what Im doing now. Trying to explain all of that while you have someone's leg over your shoulder stretching their hamstrings can be quite entertaining let alone a challenge to do in the 10 second cycle of stretch, relax and rest! I try to share a bit of the journey and the context of exploring how to do church without all the buildings, people or resources that normally go along with church and how being a therapist allows me to be self supporting and yet still with enough free time to find ways to be part of the community. I'm not sure I fully understand what \i mean all the time.

Anyway, now I'm qualified, I really need to work out how to build my practice and integrate that with becoming more intentional about missional community in our setting. I read Luke's account of Jesus talking about prioritising the kingdom this morning and glanced across the page at the story of the rich fool too. Two sobering narratives! I began to reflect upon the temptation that being self-employed as a therapist can bring. The "going rate" for therapy seems to be around £40 an hour. Do the maths and see what that means annually for a typical working week. Yes, that's what I thought. It's very easy to get dragged into to thinking about a villa in Portugal and a nice new car on the drive.

But I've always said that this is a bivocational thing. It's not about a change of career, it's about seeking the kingdom of God, serving him and being self-supporting so that others can share the leadership and without there being a professional paid leader above the unpaid, otherwise employed others who can abdicate responsibility for ministry to the paid pastor because it's their job.

On the other hand, being a therapist is not just a means to an end. It's not just about earning enough money to be able to pay bills, or to make a contribution to the household income, or even to secure a state pension whenever that becomes payable. I want to be the best therapist I can be just to be the best therapist I can be. It is an end in itself in that sense.

I've read too many articles that view bivocational ministry as a way of securing ministry for a congregation that can't afford a full-time stipend. The secular job, as it often is, is simply a way to put food on the table while the real work is the work of ministry. That is so wrong. What was it that Paul said to the Colossians? "Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly, as if serving the Lord," or something like that.

The truth is, I wouldn't be a very good therapist if it was only about the £40 the client hands over at the end of a session. And I wouldn't be a very good bivocational leader if half my life was just a way to support the other half. Somehow it has to be integrated. I'm not half therapist, half church leader.

Perhaps, if we took such an approach to ministry, we could release more people into ministry, better deploy their gifts and widen leadership. More importantly, I think we could move away from what seems like an inexorable drive towards an increasingly professionalised ministry.

Done!

Well, thats' it. On Saturday 23rd February at approximately 10:45 I breathed an enormous sigh of relief as I heard the the words, "Congratulations, you've passed." For the last year I've been stuffing my head with information and details about anatomy, physiology, neuromuscular techniques and all sorts of other things in order to become a Sports and Remedial Massage Therapist. And I did it. At the tender age of 55 I've once again retrained.

Back in 1979, when I completed my first degree in Environmental Science and Chemistry, I said that that was the end of doing exams. Every summer since I was 1o years old had been about exams, and I thought that was quite long enough. Little did I know that i would turn out to be a perennial student.

In 1986 I returned to college to study theology, and face yet more summer exams with the added blessing of regular essays throughout the year. I'd never written an essay before, and the thought of writing even 1000 words on a single subject was a little daunting. Of course, but the end of the course I could hardly introduce a topic in less than 500 words, and my final essay ran to nearly 12,000 before it got edited down a little. Even then I didn't really do my chosen subject justice.

So you might think that would be the end of it. Having promised no more exams once, surely that would be the time to stop, but no, I carried on and did my Masters. THat was a significant point for me. I never felt comfortable about exams, and although there was only one exam for the MA, I knew I'd reached my emotional capacity to cope. Maybe it was just having done four years of study and I was drained, but I knew it was time for a rest.

So naturally, a year later I started a distance learning programme! This time I chose Clinical and Pastoral Counselling, and with real dedication and determination I managed to squeeze a two year course into five years, or something like that.

And that was it for a long time. I wondered about doing a DMin. (a professional doctoral programme), but apart from learning to swim and getting a 10m certificate for that (of which I remain very proud), I had no desire to add to my collection of certificates in the filing cabinet drawer. I toyed with the idea of doing an exercise qualification, mainly out of interest, but didn't follow it up.

Then came the events of three years ago, when I began to realise that my future lay outside of the mainstream of what I was doing in church life. I began to wonder about what avenues were open to me and my growing sense of the significance and importance of bivocational ministry and my interest in sport made me wonder what I could do.

So now I know. A diploma in Nutrition, a Certificate in Personal Training and the primary goal of a diploma in Sports and Remedial Massage have been achieved.

I dare not say, "No more exams," because you never know. I hope for no more!