The price of Christmas

Here's a quote from Max Lucado:

The blood of Christ does not cover your sins, conceal your sins, postpone your sins or diminish your sins. It takes away your sins, once and for all time.

If you are human then concealing sin is probably your preferred option. Failing that you might try to diminish them by comparing them to sins that are, in your opinion, much, much worse.

But you can't do either of those. 

A final option is simply to ignore your sin, simply postpone dealing with it.

But God sees, and God has chosen to act on our behalf.

Perhaps we are overly familiar with forgiveness to remember the awesome nature of what God has done for us. It's good to be reminded that we stand forgiven at a high price. In these days of super discounts and cash-back offers, The price for our forgiveness remains out of reach, too high for you or I to pay ourselves. 

That God steps into our history to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves is still the amazing message of Advent.

Reading Ruth

I don't know how you organise your devotional reading, but I've decided to try a fresh approach for a while, and read the stories in the Bible of people and their lives and how their lives were impacted by God. Now I know the Bible is full of these stories, and I know that the story of the Bible is the story of God interacting with people. But what I'm trying to do is read the stories as biographies rather than part of the bigger narrative of Scripture. I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, I decided to read Ruth, starting yesterday. As I recall, Ruth is the only book in the Bible where God is not mentioned in terms of active involvement in the story. He gets mentioned, but he doesn't appear so-to-speak. But that doesn't mean he isn't there.

The story opens unpromisingly. There's famine, relocation, death, loss, despair and separation. Not an uplifting picture. And the author never tells us that it's okay because God has it all in hand and Ruth will marry, have children and become David's great-grandmother.

It made me wonder: How many lives are lived in the gloom of chapter 1 rather than in the light of the hope that unfolds through the story? How many people do I know who, because things are not going well, cannot see the hand of God anymore?

And then I thought, and why can't I?

I am no different, I have good days and bad days. I have days when life and busyness overwhelm me and I'd rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, than what I have to do. But I am not called to give up, I'm called to persevere.

As a follower of Jesus I have a hope that ought to infect everything I do. I can live with hope, I can grieve with hope, I can face challenges with hope, I can face failure with hope. I am not defined by any of these obstacles, I am defined by my relationship with Jesus. I am, first and foremost, "in Christ" . That is who I am and that is what defines me.

And what of Ruth? She got on with life, and as she persevered she discovered God's involvement and care as he met her needs and the needs of the despairing Naomi, and then went way beyond just meeting her needs and gave her a fullness of life no one could have predicted when she left her home to travel with her mother-in-law.

Omnifocus now available

I've been waiting for this to come out of the early beta phase before trying it. I also had to wait for a Mac!

Anyway, Omnifocus is now available and I'm giving it a try.

You can download it from the Omnigroup website.

Goals for reaching others

I was wandering around the internet this morning and decided to revisit the Withreach website to see if there was anything new. I began to read the article about an example of a withreach strategy. What caught my attention was this list of goals:

• My first goal is to create meaningful conversations.
  
• My second goal is to create meaningful friendships.
  
• My third goal is to discover the treasures and God-given dreams in those friendships (I see them as prime community assets) and to find out how God is already at work in their lives, and work alongside Him, rather than pre-judge what should come next.
  
• My fourth goal is to see how God incarnates the conversation and the dreams of this small group in a way that brings creative transformation to the community.
  

This struck me as a good starting point for any approach to reaching the missing (that is, those formerly known as the lost). That it doesn't start with looking for an opportunity to share the gospel isn't a problem for me. If I'm in the right place at the right time, that opportunity will come, of that I'm sure.

What I like is the intentional relationship building that is at the heart of these goals. Caring about a person's eternal destiny must begin with caring about the person. They must matter to you if you are ever going to help them see how much they matter to God.

iGTD

As you know I've been working at improving my organisation and to that end I've used Thinking Rock on my PC to help plan projects and keep track of my to do lists. Since moving to the Mac I've started to use iGTD.

It's taken me some time to adjust to i'GTDs way of working compared to the world of Thinking Rock, but there are some nice touches.  For example I like the way the date  displays as "Today" or "Thursday" rather than just a plain date string. I also like the way you can put stuff in the inbox from other applications. Being a new boy on the Mac block, I'm not really familiar with things like Quicksilver, but there's QS functionality in iGTD too.

Then there's the ability to synchronise iGTD with iCal and even Mail, so that your to do lists are all the same. This isn't for everyone, and it's a bit unsightly to have a new calendar for every context. I'd prefer to have a single iGTD calendar although I can see the point of having a calendar for each context as long as there aren't that many contexts. In fact having started to use this, I've narrowed my contexts down somewhat. I did create a separate iGTd folder for all the context calendars so that I only see iGTd in the list, which looks a little neater.

Another feature I like is the way all my projects get put in alphabetical order. This makes it easier to find a project compare with TR.

I'm sure there are more functions and tweaks to discover as I get to grips with iGTD, but first impressions are that it's a positive alternative to TR.

Are you Church of England?

There are moments when God surprises me as he shows me a glimpse of his purposes through everyday conversations. I live on the church site. The church is 30 seconds walk from the house and there are days when I wonder about living so close. But then there are days when I realise that it's a gift from God to be where I am. Today has been one of those days.

Because we're only five minutes walk from the local school, we open our car park for parents to use at the beginning and end of the day. If I'm outside I chat freely to some of the parents and wave at them as I go out and come in from walks or visits or trips away from home.  I never really know if this has any value or meaning but it's the kind of thing I imagine Jesus would do if he lived in my house! Today was no different except for one thing. A conversation. 

One of the parents was checking the oil in his car while he waited for school to end. We spoke and chatted about cars for a few minutes and then he asked the question: Are you Church of England? That took us into a short conversation about being baptist and then he told me he'd given up going to church when he was 25 but he had never stopped believing in God. He's 40 now and I get the feeling that as he has sat in our car park day after day God has quietly been working in his heart.

I don't know what the outcome of this will be. I took the chance and invited him to church and maybe he will come. I simply don't know. What I do know is that God so loved the world that he went to extraordinary lengths for this parent, his partner and his whole family. And if I have to spend a bit more time in the car park to help him move closer to discovering that for himself then the car park is where you will find me.

Pastoral Care Training

Further to my post recently about Pastoral Care Training, I came across a resource on the Methodist Church website called Encircled in Care. Having bought the pack it does look rather helpful.

The course, for want of a better word, is broken down into three foundation sessions:

Why we care

Developing skills

Good practice

and then there are 9 further modules that look at:

Prayer in pastoral visiting

Connecting care and discipleship

Children, young people and pastoral care

Across the Generations

Extended communion

Health, healing and Well-being

Mental Health issues

Loss and Bereavement

Domestic Abuse

Each session had a Bible passage for reflection and useful handouts, and itt's all on a CDRom too.

I hope to run the three foundations units as an introductory course in the New Year.

The MacBook

So, it's been almost one week in the company of the new MacBook and I think I'm beginning to understand the thing. It's a very different beast compared to a PC running XP. I've eventually found the forward delete key and I'm getting used to using the key instead of the key.

What has been really useful is having two people nearby who are Mac users. Ally has made me a list of useful commands and hints, and Mark, a friend from church, has loaned me two books by David Pogue (Switching to the Mac and Mac OS X Tiger edition). I'm actually running Leopard, but the book is still very handy. Without these I think I might have wondered what on earth I'd done moving away from a familiar interface to this strange new world. There's just so much to learn but I'm surprised how much I've got used to already. 

Something that came with the package was OmniOutliner. I've been experimenting with this today and I'm quite impressed. There are some helpful introductory tutorials on the website (Omnigroup) which helped me get started and I think it will prove to be very useful for all sorts of things. 

So overall, I'm pretty impressed with the MacBook.

And so the revolution begins...

Although my previous story about the barefoot man may lead some to think I gave up on pursuing the MacBook dream, the truth is that I was only waiting for Leopard to arrive. 

The trip to the Apple Store was a convenience precipitated by a journey through London. 

So, here I am sitting with my new MacBook trying to figure out if I've made a sensible or crazy choice! My daughter is of course convinced that it's the best decision her father had made for some considerable time!

What I have learnt so far is this:

1. When you get a new toy the 'phone never stops ringing

2. Staying up late to play with said new toy does not help you get started the following morning

3. A new MacBook is no substitute for a conversation with your wife, whom you haven't seen all day.

4. It's not like Windows!!

5. It's addictive

6. I think I'm going to like it

All jokes apart, it's a very streamlined little machine. I chose to have the extra gig of memory added in the hope that it will whizz along and I won't spend too much time waiting for an application to run.

There's a lot to learn and the curve looks quite steep, but I'm pleased that I've already figured out how to run a presentation using the remote control and how to build transitions for a slide. I've added some photo's from my digital camera and I've got a trusty little list of useful commands supplied by my Mac-crazed daughter. 

So here we go, a brave new world is dawning on my desk!

A funny thing happened on the way to the Apple Store

My Daughter, Ally, and I went to an Open Day at a University in Twickenham the other day. We chose to go by train because it's easy and we like travelling by train. The journey involves travelling to London and then across town to Waterloo and from there to Twickenham. Because we were going through London we decided that on the way back we'd drop into the Apple Store and see if there was a sneak peak at Leopard. We knew it wasn't due for release until the Friday, but hope springs eternal where Ally and Macs are concerned.

So, having finished in Twickenham we returned to Waterloo and then made our way to Regent Street to visit the store. Turning the corner onto Regent Street you can see the Apple logo beckoning you down the street. Secure in the knowledge that we were going in the right direction we plunged through the crowds of people avoiding the temptations of all other retailers.

And then I saw him.

Sitting, shivering, ignored but not unnoticed by everyone who passed him by. It's not an unusual sight on any street in any town or city, but what really caught my eye was the fact that he was barefoot. No shoes. No socks.

In the rush we too, like everyone else, hurried on to our destination, but as I wandered aimlessly through the cavernous Apple Store, I could not get the image of this man out of my head. Here was I working out how much a shiny new MacBook was going to cost me, and there was he, barefoot and shivering. I couldn't just keep walking past.

So we left the Apple Store and I told Ally what I had seen. Being the amazing daughter she is, she understood and agreed that we should do something so we did. It wasn't some grand gesture, we just bought socks. Eventually we found him again, he'd moved because two policemen were patrolling nearby, and we handed over the socks. I wish I'd have done more, I wish I'd known his shoe size so I could have bought him shoes too, but I did the simplest thing I could think of to do so that I could at least let him know that he had been seen. Seen not as a nuisance nor as a beggar but as a human being, loved by God, noticed by God, someone who deserved the dignity of a pair of socks.

Staying healthy in ministry

One of the blogs I track is churchrelevance.com. A recent post was titled 10 Tips to prevent scandal, but I think it has much to say about ministry anyway. Here's the post:

The world has seen quite a few ministry scandals over the past year.
Fortunately, Charisma magazine’s J. Lee Grady has 10 tips on how you can prevent scandal in your own life. Here is a summary.

• Live a humble, transparent life.


• Stay open to correction.


• Audit your actions regularly.


• Stay in touch with the real world. Ministry is about loving people. But you will never develop compassion unless you are close enough to the grass roots to smell the poverty, lay hands on the sickness and cry with those who are in pain.


• Don’t allow people to make you a celebrity.


• Make family a priority.


• Live modestly and give extravagantly.


• Don’t build your own kingdom.


• Develop keen discernment.


• Maintain your spiritual passion. People who experience moral failure almost always lose their spiritual passion first.
  

Now it seems to me that this framework provides a good basis from which we can all develop a checklist for ministry health.

Pastoral Care Training

Does anyone use any form of training for their pastoral care team/ workers?

At Cotton End, we're looking into how we can develop a better model for pastoral care in and through the church and we're looking for training material to help our care team in their role.

If you know of anything that might help, please point me in the right direction.

Thanks.

Simple theology

I dip into and out of a variety of "thought for the day" style of books. One I may have bought or been given some time in the last year or so is a daily thought from Max Lucado. Now I like Max. I like the simplicity and clarity with which he writes, and I've read most of the books he's written that are available in the UK.

Today's thought centres on the atonement. This is how Max describes it:

In an act that broke the heart of the Father, yet honoured the holiness of heaven, sin-purging judgement flowed over the sinless Son of the ages.
And heaven gave her finest gift. The Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world.
"My God, my God, why did you abandon me?" Why did Christ scream those words?
So you'll never have to.

When I think about the hours of theological study that have gone into trying to unravel the meaning of those words, that cry of abandonment, the simple truth is that it was all for you and all for me. Simple, yet deeply profound.

We're accepted, we're forgiven, we're united with him.
Not rejected, not forgotten, not abandoned in sin.
(From Jesus loves the church by Michael Sanderman Kingsway music 1999)

Make a difference

According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. That's one every 3 seconds, 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year.
According to the statistics there are 2.2 billion children in the world. Almost half live in poverty (1 billion). 1.9 billion of these children live in the developing world. 1 in 3 (640 million) are without adequate shelter, 1 in 5 (400 million) are without access to safe water, 1 in 7 (270 million) have no access to health services. There are an estimated 120 million children out of education.

When it comes to child mortality, 10.6 million children died before the age of 5 in 2003 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy). 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized. 15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom).

Basic education for all would probably cost around 6 billion $US. That 2 billion less that the US spends on cosmetics and 5 billion less that Europeans spend on ice cream. Military spending in the world is 780 billion.

Basic education, health care and safe water would cost an estimated 28 billion dollars. That's less than 4% of the military budget.

All these numbers can seem overwhelming and leave you feeling like there's nothing you can do that could ever make a difference. But you'd be wrong.

For less than £20 a month (40$), you can change a child's life through a sponsorship programme. Sponsorship helps to break the cycle of childhood poverty, through education, health and welfare. Often, child sponsorship is connected to a wider project in a local community. You not only change the life of a child, you are influencing change in a community.

Go on, make your own dent in those numbers!

Compassion; World vision

For UK readers:

Compassion; World vision

Observations

I wonder what things you notice that no one else sees? Maybe it's not so much that they don't see them, it's just that it doesn't bother them like it bothers you.

If you asked folk at Cotton End Baptist Church what bothers me, they'd probably mention the chairs! I'm not obsessive, but I do like them to be right, or at the very least look fairly neat and tidy. Other people of course are less worried and just stick the chairs roughly where they think they remember them being. And that sentence in itself probably tells you a lot about how I like to see them!

I guess there are things about me that people see that I don't see. And when they point them out, as some are apt to do, it can be quite painful to hear. How you handle such moments is truly a measure of one's maturity.

This train of thought was triggered by something I saw this morning in today's post. My denomination has an annual assembly around May time each year, and today the early publicity for it dropped on the door mat. Inside the envelope was a glossy flyer all about next year's event. So what caught my eye, and maybe only my eye? On the inside page there's a photograph of the worship band leading a song during a past event. The photograph is a good photograph, nicely composed from a good angle. And it's printed the wrong way around. It's a mirror image of the real thing. How do I know this? The first clue was that both guitar players are left-handed according to the picture. I notice this because I'm a left-handed guitar player and I thought 'how odd, two lefties on one platform'. Then I realised that the writing on the amplifier was in fact backwards (it's a Marshall amp by the look of it, and the M is on the wrong end). Thirdly I realised that the cello player had the cello over the wrong shoulder.

Now none of this is really important. I guess graphic designers invert pictures all the time and no one really notices. It's not the key feature of the brochure, it's just an illustration of how sometimes we notice things that others might not notice. to us they become important, to the other people around us, they are less important. And it just got me thinking about the whole subject of spotting the difference between the important things and the less important. Seeing a thing is one thing, understanding how important it is is quite another.

Electric cars

A few weeks ago we were out shopping when we came across an exhibition about environmental things. Among the exhibits was a new, electric Smart Car. Now if you don't know what a basic Smart looks like, it's a simple two-seater car designed for city driving. The electric version has a range of 50 miles, which would actually suit us fine for getting in and out of our local town. Anne could use it everyday to go to the station, and a single charge would most likely last her a week.
But here's the catch. I've always had a concern about electric cars because the electricity you use to recharge them comes from power stations that burn fossil fuels or maybe even from a nuclear station, which while CO2 clean, is not that environmentally friendly over the long haul. So while the car may be clean, the power generator is isn't. But now there's a choice. Green energy. I'm seriously considering switching to a green energy supplier like Good Energy. By doing this an electric car, I think, becomes an option because neither the energy generator nor the consumer product produce CO2 emissions. The downside? For some reason it seems that Smart are only releasing the electric Smart to companies, not the ordinary consumer.
There are probably good alternatives, especially for longer journeys. I particularly like the look of the hybrid technology that's available. The problem here is that the choice is also limited, but maybe that's just an excuse.
I guess the point is that I really don't have to keep buying cars that burn lots of petrol or diesel anymore, and next time I change my car, I'll give some serious consideration to buying something that's good for the environment and good for me too.

Me and my environment

It's very easy for Christians, especially those of us from an evangelical perspective, to become complacent about the environment. After all, we have the eternal destiny of humanity on our minds and hearts, is there really enough room for the environment too?

Well, the short answer is of course that there has to be room for it. After all we are stewards of creation and I can't imagine that anyone of us would interpret the Bible as giving us the authority to strip our small blue-green planet of all it's resources and drive it to near extinction. Whatever our theology, we can all take seriously the challenge to do something that will make a difference to the health of our ecosystem.

In my ideal world these are some of the things I want to work towards doing:

1. A carbon neutral church. I know it will cost money, but I'd like to see the day when churches lead the way in using renewable energy. We have a large, south-east facing roof. I'm sure there's room for a big PV cell and/or solar panels. I wouldn't be surprised to find that we could derive a considerable amount of heating and hot water resources this way, even in our northern climate. If ever I'm involved in a new-build project, I will be a strong advocate of such a system.

2. Recycle what we can. Recycling is still a bit hit and miss in many parts of the UK. Different councils use different systems. Unfortunately it's not possible to recycle everything that could be recycled in my local area, but I'm sure we could do more. I watched as we cleared up after an event the other day and was saddened to see how much recyclable stuff was just thrown away for the sake of convenience. Recycling is not pain free. You have to sort your rubbish and that take more time and effort than simply tossing it all in the same bin.

3. Change the lights. Low-energy lightbulbs are getting smaller and more cost-effective. It's time to get the ladders out and change the bulbs in church. We must have three to four dozen lights in the main building alone that we could change to low energy versions.

4. Walk when ever you can. I once saw an interview with a man in his 70's who was very fit. When asked how he'd stayed so fit his answer was simple: If it's less than five miles, I walk. Whilst I can't imagine walking five miles and carrying all the equipment and stuff I sometimes have to carry, it is possible for me to arrange some things in a way that means I can walk. And you know what, when I walk I get to meet more people. As a church we could at the very least organise our housegroups so that everyone could walk if they are able. And just think what that might mean for the neighbourhood.

5. Change the car. I'll confess I drive a people-carrier. And I'll also confess that when I next change my car I'm going to have a good look at the current crop of hybrids (it shouldn't take long I only know of two in the UK!) We're also considering a small, maybe even electric, car for those short journeys of 5-10 miles. Now I know that an electric, whilst it sounds good on paper (zero emissions), it has to be recharged using electricity normally supplied from a power station that does produce greenhouse gases, but there are renewable energy suppliers out there, and maybe it's time to switch to one of those.

I could go one and write more, but I guess the point is simple: work out what steps you can take and then figure out how to take them. Remember, God gave us the responsibility to care for our environment, let's not shirk that responsibility.

Things I remember

Here's a random list of things I remember from growing. It's in celebration of turning 50 and a vain attempt and seeing what actually sticks in my memory. So in no particular order...

I remember:

Neil Armstrong stepping onto the surface of the moon
England winning the football World Cup in 1966
The day decimal currency was introduced to the UK
The assassination of JKF, his brother Bobby and Martin Luther King
William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and John Pertwee as Doctor Who
Black and White TV
Only having two TV channels to choose from and no day-time programmes at all!
Penny chews
Making ice slides in the school playground
Fred Truman playing cricket
Aztec chocolate bars
My first trip to casualty (the "emergency room" and the first of many I have to say)
My first broken bone (left jaw fractured by my own knee having fallen off a roof.)
The chimney sweep who had a heart attack in our lounge (I don't remember what happened to him)
The first flight of Concorde
My first try in a rugby match for the school (Actually I only scored two tries in my whole school rugby career and both came in the same match!)
The only hat-trick I ever took in cricket (Also for the school. I actually took four wickets in five deliveries that day)
Walking on the cliffs with my father (we didn't do many things together, but we always went for a walk on holiday)
Lucky bags
The first X-men comic (Oh, if only I'd kept the thing in a plastic cover along with all those small cars and Meccano bits)
Fireball XL5; Stingray; Thunderbirds; Joe 90
My first chemistry set (And the first experiment I did, which was to add water to anhydrous copper sulphate and watch it turn blue. Not very exciting, but I soon graduated to trying to blow things up as I recall)
My first school prize ( I was "top boy" for three years and then they changed the prize to "exceptional effort" and a friend of mine won because he made an exceptional effort, whereas I hadn't!)
The first time I opted for the truth over a lie. It wasn't a big thing and I was no angel believe me. I remember it because it was the first time I realised there was a choice to make. I was about 8 at the time.
Sitting the 11+ (I passed and went to Grammar School as a result)
Having dark brown hair

And many more things I'm sure.

On turning 50

So on Sunday morning I turned to Anne and asked her, "Do I look a day over fifty?" The reason for the question was quite simple, on Sunday I was a day over fifty. Fifty. I remember when 34 seemed old!
When I was about 8 or 9 I used to look through my father's copy of the Observer a Sunday newspaper here in the UK. The only thing I remember from my Sunday reading was an article about people who had left the rat-race in the city behind them and bought General Stores, or something similar, in some village or small town in an idyllic corner of Cornwall or Dorset. 34 seemed so old then, I never really thought I'd ever get to be that old. And yet here I am at 50!
Now without being morbid, if I live to a similar age to my parents, I've got another 30 years left to make a difference somewhere, somehow. I'm not a driven kind of person, but I do look at my life and ask myself what exactly it is that I can do to influence the people around me.
Being the leader of a local church is an enormously privileged position of influence. It carries great responsibility along with the potential for influence. Just the other day we were talking about what has changed during the time I've been the minister here in Cotton End. It was deeply encouraging to hear the positive things that were being said. I'm truly grateful to God for the opportunity I have here.
So, given that it's "pastor appreciation month", at least in the US if not in the UK, let me encourage any other minsters out there to keep on doing what you do to influence the people you serve to become more and more like Jesus and to make a difference wherever you are and wherever they are. Especially if you to have reach the gran age of 50. Now, has anyone seen my reading glasses and that over 50's vitamin supplements catalogue?

GLS 2007

Once again the Global Leadership Summit did not disappoint. Bill Hybels was inspiring in both sessions, Jon Ortberg was moving and insightful in the way he unpacked the story of Esther against the background of a leader's greatest fear and Marcus Buckingham was outstanding in his presentation. The interviews with Richard Curtis, Carly Fioria and Colin Powell were all different and all challenging in their ways.

If you haven't had the opportunity to attend one of these summits, either as a live, satellite or videocast event, then I encourage you to consider signing up for next year as soon as you can. For me personally, it's becoming a "never miss" part of my year. Even if I can't get to the event, I'll buy the DVD's and share them with my leaders. (I buy them anyway so that we can keep the material at the front of our minds throughout the year).

This year three members of the core team plus myself and two ministry leaders outside of our core team attended for all or part of the summit. I'm seriously considering making attendance at the summit an essential part of being a leader in our church. I'd do this because it's such a great event.

So get the brochure and mark off the dates in your diary. I absolutely believe that you won't regret it.

For UK based leaders go here, for non-UK leaders start here.