Blogging Commandments

Whilst searching for something else I came across these ten commandments for Christians blogs. They come from the Evangelical Alliance, and the original post is here.

1. You shall not put your blog before your integrity.

2. You shall not make an idol of your blog.

3. You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin.

4. Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog.

5. Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes.

6. You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings.

7. You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind.

8. You shall not steal another person’s content.

9. You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger.

10. You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content.

Artwork at the docks

The old docks were redeveloped for the Olympics as far as I could tell.

This piece of sculpture stands at the gateway to the port area. It's quite impressive on either a sunny day or even a dull, rainy day. 

Under the sea

Fancy setting sail in this submarine? This is a replica of a very early submersible vessel. 

There's a cutaway version in the museum of Catalonian history that you can stand in to get a feel for what it was like.

I can't imagine it was particularly pleasant!

Bikes for hire

You see these bicycle racks all over Barcelona. For a fee you can get access to these bikes. From what we saw, you enter a key-code and the bikes are unlocked so that you can lift one from the rack. 

When you've finished with it, you just leave it in any one of the 200 racks around the city. 

Barcelona has a network of bicycle routes criss-crossing the city, so this is a really convenient way of getting about with using a car.

We walked everywhere, the knees aren't up to cycling anymore, but we saw plenty of people using these community bikes to get about.

Me and my camera

I've always enjoyed taking pictures, ever since I was given a Box Brownie and a roll of 120 film to play with on holiday in Wales one year. A couple of years later I got my hands on a Kodak Instamatic and colour film, which I think came in a cassette. I'd be about 12 and I took it on holiday to my Aunt and Uncles in Dorset. 

I set about taking photographs rather than just holiday pictures as I told my sister, and talked about framing the shot and looking for light and shade. I don't think I really had a clue what I was talking about, but some of the resultant pictures turned out okay as I recall. 

The cost of a good camera was way out of reach, so it wasn't until I got to University that I had the money to buy my first 35mm camera, a Zorki 4K range-finder. I quickly learnt to use a light meter and make adjustments for the idiosyncrasies of the camera. The shutter speeds never quite matched the numbers, but then again every camera is different.

My next move was to a 35mm SLR with a built-in light meter. This time it was a Practica with a 50mm thread mount for the lenses if I'm remembering correctly. I had several prime lenses and a telephoto. What I do remember was the weight of the thing. But it performed really well and I had many years service from it until it was stolen in a burglary. 

I replaced it with a Miranda. The name had just been bought by Dixons and the cameras were manufactured under licence somewhere. This was semi-automatic, with a full manual mode. The single point metering meant that you could choose your light source so-to-speak and the manual focus was simple and straightforward. I used this camera for a long time until I just drifted out of taking photographs for a while.

Then, one half-term, I took Ally out with the camera and let her try her hand. She really enjoyed it so we bought a pair of Minolotas. A Dynax 4 for Ally and a 5 for me. With a shared long lens we had a lot of fun exploring photography together.

Eventually we bought a Nikon D50 to try digital and this became Ally's camera more than mine although we always saw it as a shared camera. Wanting to make use of my nice Sigma 105mm macro lens I always dreamed of getting the Minolta Dynax 5D until the stopped making them when Minolta withdrew form camera manufacturing a few years ago.

So that brings me to the present day and my recent purchase of a Sony Alpha 300. The 300 is a special edition version of the 350. Same camera but with a 10 mega-pixel sensor rather than a 14.2 mega-pixel sensor. Given that pixel count is not the be all and end all of digital photography and the 10MP version has some better reviews, I took the plunge and bought the camera.

The Barcelona trip was my first opportunity to give it whirl and whirl away I did. 205 times in fact. That's a lot of pictures and would have involved at least 6 rolls of film. The nice thing of course about digital is that you can check your picture there and then and don't need to take two or three extra ones just in case you missed something the first time around.

The Alpha has all the usual features as far as I can tell of a typical DSLR, but with a few interesting quirks. It has a button on the top to tun the live view screen on and off, I don't remember that on the D50, but I haven't used it that much. But the most novel feature is the fold out screen function. The, quite large, LCD screen has a hinged bracket and it can be folded out to give you a horizontal screen. This means you can hold the camera at waist height and view the image on the screen. Very neat. The camera also has built in camera shake correction and a nifty tele-converter, although this only works in live view.

Overall, my first impressions is that this is a very nice camera and I look forward to discovering more of its abilities.

Telefonica Tower

A truly iconic 20th century piece of architecture. This is the Telefonica tower at the Olympic Park. It's 188 metres tall and I got dizzy just trying to photograph the thing.

It's not your average telephone mast!

Barcelona in pictures

Here are a few of the photographs I took on our recent trip to Barcelona. It's a city of architectural contrasts and bold planning decisions. There are old alongside new, renovated and rebuilt across the street and sculptures on almost every corner.

There are old fashioned squares where the tall buildings create a calm interior space.

On the redeveloped waterfront there are floating sculptures looking skyward with a star hidden behind their backs.

This tree stands in a square beside the Church of Santa Maria, near a memorial with an eternal flame burning.

The church itself is big and imposing. The odd thing is that it doesn't appear to dominate the area, it just fits in. When you get to the Cathedral and then the Church of the sacred family, these two buildings definitely dominate your view!

Iron work is all over the place too, and not just in the streetlights but intrinsic to the architecture. Cast carvings decorate everything.

Barcelona

Been in Barcelona for a few days. Very nice. Took my new Sony Alpha DSLR with me. 200 photographs to sort through. Will blog all about the trip and the camera soon!

Politics and faith

I guess the debate about the place of faith in the world of politics will continue to simmer even now that the Presidential election is over. Faith will always, probably should always, present a challenge to politics and policy at all levels of government. 

I certainly would not be original in suggesting that no one political party can ever hold claim to being the true politics of faith. And I'm certainly not alone in worrying about the polarising of politics on and around single issues amongst evangelicals. Our problem is of course that we elect a government with whom it's inevitable we will disagree over some things. But a choice has to be made if we are going to exercise our democratic responsibility.

So how do we make that choice? It was interesting to read recently what Alan Beith had to say about liberal politics and faith. There's a short article about here.

What I thought was most interesting was his comment that:

The tolerance which is a hallmark of liberalism does not rest upon a visionless and lifeless political creed, but on a passion to serve humanity without enslaving it.

Is it me, or does that not sound a little like the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from Christians who are grace-filled and who share God's heart to love others. With vision and passion we seek to serve humanity in order to demonstrate God's love and earn the right to share the message of the cross. 

So, is it possible for a committed Christ-follower to be liberal? That, in part, seemed to be one of the many question being asked about Obama, his faith and his politics. 

You will have to answer that question for yourself. As for me I'm probably more liberal than conservative, just in case you were wondering!

Leaders Gathering

So I got the invitation to this thing called a Leaders Gathering a couple of weeks or so ago I guess. A day with Bill Hybels talking about leadership issues. Interesting I thought, and the day was free in my diary, so I booked myself in.

It seemed like a good idea right up to the point where I had to get up early this morning to catch a train to London. To be honest I didn't feel particularly well and wondered all the way down whether to just turn around and catch a train home and go to bed. But I didn't. Which means I can tell you about my day with Bill rather than my day in bed feeling sorry for myself.

The format of the day was simple, we asked questions, Bill answered them and we clarified, added to and generally explored the issues being raised. Most of the day followed this pattern. We talked about how to handle conflict, how to share with the church the new things God was speaking to you about, what impact the downturn might have on budgets. This last point raised some helpful insights.

Firstly, don't look at the potential for the pot of available finance through giving to shrink, rather look at the reasons some people don't tithe. Willow's own research suggests that of the highly committed group within the church, less than 50% actually tithe. That suggests that there is a large resource that isn't being released for ministry. And then came the question. Do these particular people not tithe because out of fear or rebellion? In other words do they not trust God to have their best interests at heart and their future in mind. Interesting.

Another good area of discussion was the vexed question of meetings. One comment stood out: Don't have meetings to manage people. Have meeting to energise someone or something.

Leadership capacity also came up. Romans 12 speaks about ministry being done according to the measure of faith given, or words to that effect. We were challenged to fulfil our potential and neither under-do or over-do our ministry. 

Someone else raised the question about how divorce rates, abuse etc don't look statistically different between Christians and non-Christians. Bill's take on this was quite interesting. While not denying the truth of such statistics he suggested we looked at where a person began rather than their current behaviour in order to make our assessment.

If a Christian's behaviour portrays them as difficult, abrasive or generally downright nasty, they may have started out life much worse! Where they are now is a point on a journey, it's not the end of the journey.

We finished with some reflections on how to guard your heart as a leader.

Overall quite a tiring day, but there was enough in it to have made the journey worthwhile. And although I don't feel great, I'm glad I chose not crawl back under the covers.

Serving in the midst of grief

I've blogged before about the privilege it is to walk alongside folk through times of grief, but some times are more difficult than others. In September a young man in our community took his own life. He was 31 and for whatever reason had reached that point of despair that resulted in his choice to end his own life.

Today was his funeral. It was a quite affair. In many ways the people that attended were still struggling with the issues surrounding his death. You wouldn't expect them not be. His family are in South Africa, so today we said good-bye and committed his body to be cremated so that the ashes can be flown home.

His name was Aidon, and although I didn't know him very well at all, today I stood with his family and friends, both absent and present. Suicide is hard to comprehend and almost everyone I know who has been close to someone who has completed an attempt on their own life asks exactly the same question: Why didn't we see it coming?

I'm not sure you ever can. You can sometimes see the signs that they are vulnerable, but you rarely see the signs that today will be the day.

And what does God make of it? A friend of mine once suggested that he rather thought that God's response was to wonder why you'd arrived early. It was not meant to be trite or flippant. It was a serious attempt to say that he didn't think that God condemns a person because they reach such a point of despair that they see no other options. I tend to agree. 

Lord, may we be a place to which anyone can turn at any time. Let no one go unnoticed in our community. May we be a place where hope, faith and love are lived out and open for discovery.

Shoe boxes

We had a shoe box party at church this afternoon. It was a lot of fun. I covered a lot of boxes and other people filled them with gifts. For those who know, this is an annual appeal with shoe boxes being packed all over the country and in fact the world. 

I should have taken pictures but I was too busy wrapping!

We managed to wrap and fill 54 boxes this afternoon, which was a great effort and hopefully we'll have a few more boxes before the collection day a week on Thursday.

Obedience

I checked in with Henry T this morning. Here's a quote from what I read:

Have you done what you know to do?

When we encounter God and he gives us a direction, it is not enough to write down the date in our spiritual journal, or even to tell our friends and church of our "decision". God's call is not to "make a decision" but to obey! Deciding to obey is not equal to obeying... Making commitments, even publicly, is not the same as obeying our Lord.

From Experiencing God Day-by-Day

Who votes for whom?

Every four years we get to watch the American Presidential elections from afar and wonder at the processes involved and the apparent polarisation of voting patterns focused on single issues. I suspect that politics is neither more nor less complicated in America than it is here at home in the UK.

There's no doubting that among many Britons, Barack Obama is seen as the man for the job. In fact he's the most popular candidate across Europe. In a recent survey of British attitudes towards the candidates Obama would win the election by a landslide if Britons voted. (I'm sure there is some relief in the States that we don't get to vote!) Why might this be?

Well, according to the same research, Britons are more liberal in their voting strategies than Americans. Here are some figures:

In other areas there are big differences. 7% of Britons would not vote for a divorced person (compared with 30% in the States), 23% would not vote for a gay or lesbian leader (compared with 43% in the States), and 20% of the British public would not vote for a political leader who was an atheist (compared with 53% in the States).

There's some encouragement for me in these numbers, albeit possibly a little odd for me to say so. I'm encouraged because the statistics about British voters suggest that we are less likely to focus on a single issue than I thought we might be. On the other hand the survey does not discriminate between how Christians (evangelical Christians particularly) compare to the general population. Having sat in various political pre-election meetings and listened to the questions Christians ask, I suspect that there's a lot of single issue focus to many an evangelical vote. And that bothers me.

It bothers me because I'm concerned that some of those single issues are not the issues that matter to God. He's probably a little miffed that many people don't give him the recognition he deserves for his creative work in establishing the universe, but I suspect he doesn't see the teaching of creation in the classroom as a truly important political issue. I may be wrong.

On the other hand he does care about the poor and those who suffer injustice. Micah 6:8 ring any bells? Or what about Luke 4?

So I just wonder how different our elections would be if we sought to discover who had the policies that we believe would best fulfil God's heart for justice for the oppressed, the poor, the alienated and marginalised. I wonder how different foreign policy might be if we asked, "How can we help you?" rather than, "Why can't you be just like us?"

My prayer for all American voters is that they will take their responsibility seriously and vote with their hearts and minds engaged with those things that matter most to God. I know no single candidate will ever have the monopoly on these things and, dare I say, just because they express faith doesn't mean they will have it right by default either.

And when our election comes around, I hope that we too will look with fresh eyes at the choices we will have before us.

When boys ask the wrong questions

You hear the strangest things in the supermarket sometimes. Strange and sometimes truly funny. I remember the day Anne and I had completed the shopping and were proceeding through the checkout when an item failed to scan. Holding up the multi-pack of 20 denier black tights Anne had bought, our checkout assistant called to her friend, "Tracey, what do you put these on?" Without thinking I responded, "I know I'm only a man but I think the answer is 'legs'."

Flushed with embarrassment, our assistant sank into her chair and entered the code Tracey had now helpfully supplied. I smiled, we paid and left.

You'd have thought by now I'd have learnt my lesson, but I still find all sorts of things amusing. When informed by a waitress one evening that the special tonight was corn-fed chicken breast, I had to ask how you get a chicken breast to eat the corn. I blame Gary Larson and the Far Side cartoons. 

Anyway, there we were, Ally and me, in Tescos looking at shower gel. All of a sudden I heard a voice behind me declare, "If they haven't got wings, I don't want them!" Knowing which aisle we were in, I intuitively understood the nature of the product in question, but it still made me laugh a little. But more was to come. Clearly the "winged only" shopper was not alone. Apart from the younger female member of the shopping party there was a younger boy, a brother probably, brothers are always trouble, ask my sister. 

Intrigued by the wings/no wings debate, he wanted to know what was under scrutiny. "They're not for boys", he was told in no uncertain tones but his curiosity was now well and truly piqued. He persisted with his questions and his mother, as I suspect she was, persisted in trying to side-step the issue. 

At this point Ally and I had made our considered evaluation of the shower gel and with said product in our basket we headed for another part of the store. As we went, I wondered to myself if the mystery shopper in the body wash and other items aisle had successfully negotiated a conclusion to the conversation, or had opted for the simpler solution of a trip to MacDonanlds!

One day that young boy will grow to be a man and know not to enquire about such delicate matters. But until then may he bring joy and laughter into many lives, even if it's not his mother's when in Tescos!

Faith in the Future

A couple of weeks ago an interesting monograph landed on my doormat courtesy of the postal service. It had come from my MP, Alistair Burt, who had been involved in a cross-party  committee studying life in the UK. The resultant document is just under 60 pages long and entitled Faith in the Future.

The paper caused some flapping of coat-tails in wonderment that Christians, more precisely Christian politicians, might have ideas and views that were influenced by their faith. Apparently, if some of the articles are to be believed, we are supposed to operate in some sort of faith-vacuum where what we believe about matters theological are not supposed to affect what we believe about matters political.

The report itself is rather interesting. Firstly there are some interesting observations about life in the UK. Based not upon their faith but upon the work of others in the field of social analysis, the writers observe that as a nation we are simply not happy, or at least not as happy as we think we should be (Introduction p10). Furthermore:

For all our material and social progress, as a nation we are still radically dissatisfied.

Again based on survey data, the report observes that:

Although vaunted as the solution to all our problems, and despite having clearly revolutionised the way we interact with our homes and our world, the societal evidence demonstrates that ownership of more 'things'... is not the route to emotional or physical well-being

.

The conclusion would seem to be that rampant consumerism and selfish accruing of personal wealth have not made us a happy society. In fact one could argue that it's made happiness less achievable than ever because it has pushed society towards independence rather than interdependence.

So, what's the solution? Well our authors don't provide new policy ideas to be enacted on our behalf (hooray!) but they do offer a series of defining questions that, if taken seriously, present quite a challenge to our current way of doing society. Here are their five questions:

• Does my action encourage people to develop positive relationships in their families and communities?
  
• Is my action socially and globally responsible?
  
• Does my action promote a climate of trust and hope?
  
• Does my action promote self-esteem and respect for others?
  
• Does my action encourage people to fulfil their God-given potential?
  

How interesting that only one of these questions mentions God directly, yet for some people that is once too often. This does not strike me as a bunch of fanatical Christians trying to foist their personal beliefs on the nation as some newspaper article may have suggested.

I find these questions fascinating. I'm not sure they are the questions I would have chosen as defining questions for our age, but I've never really given it much thought more's the pity.

What I do wonder is what shape the ministry and mission of the church should take if these questions truly are the questions we need to answer in order to build a society of hope and optimism. They certainly raise the bar for personal responsibility both for our actions and for the potential for change. 

I am certain that society will only change for the better with both a large scale move of God and a realigning of our lives away from selfish gain and towards generous living. But that doesn't mean that we give up and stop trying. And I wonder too if these are the questions of a missional church?

If you want to read the report, then follow the link of this webpage.

Preach the word of God

Yesterday's Bible reading was 2Tim. 4 as I continue to make my way through the Pastoral Letters of Paul. The first 5 verses consist of Paul's solemn charge to Timothy. 

Paul tells the young leader to Preach the word of God, whether the time is favourable or not, a phrase that makes me wonder what constitutes "favourable". Is it about the general climate of society or is it about the local church's readiness to hear what needs to be said? Given that this sits in the context of the rejection of sound teaching in favour of that which soothes itching ears, it would seem that the context is clearly the church.

Whatever the context, Paul says that Timothy is to teach with patience, encouragement and faithfulness (i.e. not in a way that soothes those ears). 

In order to fulfil this call, Timothy will need to be: clear minded, not anxious about suffering as a result of his commitment to preach the truth, and evangelistically active. He is  to carry out fully the ministry God has given him.

This is quite a charge. As I read that yesterday I wondered aloud what made me worthy of such a call. I've long since stopped wondering why God called me, and I've just accepted that he has. On the other hand, this is still a serious call and needs to be taken seriously.

So as I read those words I wondered about how encouraging the ministry , my ministry, is within the context of the local church I serve. I wondered how committed I am personally to doing the work of evangelism. And I wondered too how clear my own mind is in all situations.

As ever, there is work to be done!

Are you an ipod?

Apparently the Yuppie has been replaced by the ipod.

Insecure

Pressurised

Over-taxed

Debt-ridden

Probably a good idea, but mock with caution

Christians welcome Atheist London bus campaign

So reads the banner headline for an article on Christiantoday's website. 

Whilst it's good to see Christians taking a positive and dare one say humorous view of the proposed campaign, I fear that we are in danger of going over the top. The more we ridicule atheism, and who doesn't find humour in the proposed wording that  there "probably" isn't a God as if even the atheist can't be sure, the more likely we are to alienate them from meaningful discussion.

Personally it looks to me like a great opportunity, in the right circumstances, to actually ask people what they think. I just hope we don't add fuel to the fire by getting drawn into some great debate and, heaven forbid, a series of special prayer meetings to pray against the campaign. Some of us remember the calls for prayer about the EU and the beast!

Simon Barrow suggests that the campaign slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" is the unbelievers equivalent of "God may very well exist. Now have a nice day" in case anyone is short of an idea for an answer or an alternative publicity campaign.

Popego

Once again Jeff Noble (now possibly famous in Poland!) has stumbled on another life stream application on the internet. Popego looks quite interesting and I've set up an account to see what it's like. 

At first look it's quite a nice application. It grabs feeds just like Swurl, but it has the edge insofar as it doesn't seem to mind that I'm in the UK. Swurl does seem to have some problems, but, having played with Popego, I may now have more of a clue as to what might be happening at Swurl.

In the end the whole idea is to have one place that folks can visit if they want to see what's happening in my world beyond my blog. Not that I'm necessarily sure that anyone wants to do that, but it's a fascinating next step in the development of a life on the web.

I guess there are ways to use this kind of thing to keep in touch with one's wider family who are spread about all over the place.

Anyway, it's on the sidebar if you want to chck it out or you can just follow this link.