Doing what?

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

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

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

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

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