August Step Challenge: The results!

So it's the end of the last day of the August Challenge to walk 200, 000 steps over the month. And here are the results of my efforts.

Total steps: 340, 007 (that's approximately 170 miles!)

Average per day: 10, 968

Counting the first 10K only: 297, 168

Number of consecutive days over 10, 000: 18

So my official total for the purpose of the challenge works out at 9, 586 steps per day, which is quite good I think. As you can imagine, some days have been easier than others, but overall it hasn't been a drastic change to do this. Keeping it up through darker, wetter winter days might be a challenge, but it's certainly been an interesting exercise and it's contributed to my overall falling body mass!

Did you take up the challenge? How about trying in for September.

Another London Walk

We all decided to hop on the train again yesterday afternoon and go for another walk around the city. Leaving Fenchurch Street we headed of in the direction of St Pauls once more, stopping at Costa Coffee in Cheapside for a drink and to escape the rain.

From there we made our way past St Pauls,  a place that both worries and inspires. It is a quite remarkable piece of architecture, but then again it's a church. So many people go to see the building, I wonder how few go to meet with God. Ah well, this wasn't a philosophy walk!

From St Pauls he headed off to Fleet Street, pointing out to Ally where Anne used to work in Shoe Lane and just beyond. From there we went up to Kings College and looked at all the picture of the more famous alumni. Maybe, if I do my DMin there I might become a famous ex-student too!! We also had a wander around a very busy Covent Garden on our way. Eventually we decided to get back on the Tube at Embankment and make our way home.

I'm sure there are lots more things we could do and sights we could explore. Maybe we will have a few more Sunday strolls, visit a few of the parks and maybe explore the Thames path. You never know!

All this is of course very good for us. The August step challenge has been a little responsible for our expeditions. Tomorrow is the last day and I'll probably post my results at the end of the day. I've been doing quite well, only four days below the 10K target and quite a few 11-13K days, although only the first 10K count towards the challenge. I'm sure someone has managed 10K every day, but not me alas.

Why pigs?

As I've been preparing through the week for this Sunday I find myself pondering the fate of the pigs in Luke 8. Typically the explanation usually offered is connected with Jewish dietary laws and the fact that pigs are unclean animals and that they represent a suitable host therefore for unclean spirits.

That aside, I still wonder about the significance of what happened. Then it struck me as I thought about this, what does this all mean for the man who had been under the influence of all these spirits or the singular powerful spirit called "Legion"?

He was humiliated, isolated, feared and tormented. And all that for a long time. Matthew talks about two men who are so ferocious that no one dare pass that way. What a state to be in. The torment through which this man went was so intense that when the evil spirits entered the heard of pigs, the pigs went wild and ran down the bank into the lake and drowned.

Perhaps the significance of the pigs is in their demonstration of the power of the evil spirits that had ruled this man's life.

And Jesus set him free. Jesus broke that powerful hold on his life. The wild man became the calm man. Let's not forget that this story is about the power of Jesus to transform lives radically and not primarily about a herd of pigs.

The Rhythm of Life

I've been thinking about the rhythm of life and how a Christian rhythm differs so much from the world's rhythm. We start the week on a Sunday with worship and celebration. We look forward to living lives of availability to God. Or at least we should. Our week flows from celebration through work and leisure back to celebration.

The world starts on Monday with work and longs for the weekend to spend how it wants. The week is defined by the job you do and not the person you are. The week serves the weekend because it's the week that provides the resources to enjoy the weekend.

Like it or not, we've allowed the world's week to invade the Christian week. The rhythm has been upset and we are drawn towards the same view of life as our secular counterparts. It's not good. Worship and celebration now are things we fit in around all the other weekend activities. It is no longer the essential starting point. It has become an inconvenience to be managed.



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Location:Parkland Ave,Romford,United Kingdom

Discipline

I remembered something I heard Jim Collins say a few years ago at the Global Leadership Summit about disciplined people doing disciplined thinking and taking disciplined action. We are mostly not keen on discipline. It smacks of punishment, of reminding us that we've done something wrong. But of course that's not what it means in this context.

It's interesting though how the choice of a word can make such a difference to the way we perceive what we are doing or experiencing. We can understand an athlete having a punishing training routine in order to prepare for competition, but we find it difficult to translate that idea into developing a deeper walk with God. And maybe that is why, at least in part, we shy away from the thought of using discipline in connection with discipleship too. It sounds like hard work and we don't really want our relationship with God to be about hard work.

But discipline is not just about hard work and self-denial and pushing oneself harder and harder. It is simply a matter of the choices we make. Make it even more simple. It's about choosing to make a choice rather than just letting things happen around us.

I'm learning a lot about discipline at the moment.

Anne and I have both embarked on a programme to lose some weight. Over the last five years or so I've been monitoring my mass as it's steadily gone down. It has wandered up and down, but the progress has been downwards over all. It takes discipline to do this. Old eating habits that were fine when I was running and playing squash and riding a bike, are no longer helpful. I've had to make some disciplined choices about what to eat and when to eat it. Our current success is down to a more rigourous and disciplined approach to eating than we've had. It is in essence about establishing long-term habits and not just about a quick fix.

What I find fascinating, and obvious really, is that it is easy to remain focused and disciplined when you can see positive outcomes.  So the fact that my weight has dropped over 8Kg in something like 6 weeks and some of my clothes are distinctly loose encourages me to remain disciplined in my habits.

The problem with spiritual growth is that the outcomes are often less obvious and harder to measure. That makes staying disciplined much more difficult. I don't have an easy answer for that one. But what I do know that is that it can often be the little things that can make a difference. If only growing spiritually was as easy as shrinking physically!

Anyway, I ought to stop blogging, get changed, and get walking. Otherwise I won't achieve my other target of 10,000 steps today!

What kind of preaching do we need?

I came across this quote in Countdown to Sunday by Chris Erdman. Not  name I recognised, but the subtitle of the book caught my eye: A Daily Guide for Those Who Dare to Preach.

"But what I think we need most is for the preacher to get away from the notes, look us in the eye and help us see."

Light and Darkness

There are some simple yet profound truths that seem to penetrate your heart and reshape the way you think about certain things. I've had a great many such moments of encountering a truth in that way. So many in fact that I doubt I could recall them all.

But reading the opening of John's gospel reminded me of such a truth. The prologue of the gospel does a great job of setting up the themes that will follow. Light and darkness is one of these themes. In the opening verse we are told that light has come into the world and the darkness cannot overcome it.

It is light that changes darkness and not the other way around. Although it may appear that darkness takes over, it doesn't. Darkness occurs where there is no light. Light is the agent of change.

I remember hearing someone preaching about mission  and they got talking about darkness. I remember them saying that darkness is by nature dark and we should not blame the darkness for being dark. The problem lies with a lack of light. Jesus told his followers that they were the light of the world and Paul urged the Christians in Ephesus to live as children of the light. 

It is so easy for us to blame the world for all its ills and to see the people beyond the Christian community as the problem. They are not the problem. Darkness exists where there is no light. If we are the light, then isn't it our place to enter the dark places and let the light shine?

If only we knew how.

Walking in London

Yesterday Anne and I were trying to work out where to go for an afternoon walk. We ended up on the train to Fenchurch St and spent a great couple of hours wandering down through the city and back along the south bank of the river.

Exploring London on foot is really quite interesting. We saw statues and monuments and excavated old buildings. So much history!

We wandered back to Fenchurch St via St Katherine's dock, the show piece of the redevelopment project over 20 years ago. Part of me rather wished I'd seen it then just to see the difference.


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Missional Map Making

I'm part way through Alan Roxburgh's book Missional Map Making. It's quite a challenging read, but as I work steadily through the chapters I recognise much of my own journey in ministry and leadership. Things like the sense of unease I feel when I get the feeling that we're trying to do church like a business. Things like the creeping awareness that things are not as they should be but not knowing quite how they should really be. And many more.

Roxburgh's book is not an easy read. For some it may well appear to go too far, throwing out the institutional baby with the traditional bath water. But it doesn't. On the other hand it does challenge the received wisdom of doing church like we've always done it.

The simple truth is that in our current cultural context, the old ways are highly unlikely to work as they did, if they ever truly did. Somehow we need to contextualise our message and our methods.

One of the truly challenging things is that we need to recognise is the way we think, and realise we may be following an out-of-date map. The people we are trying to reach do not share the same story we have grown up with or come to faith within. They may not even be asking the questions for which we have carefully prepared answers.

It's a confusing context, but Roxburgh encourages us to encounter God in both the Biblical text and the local context and thereby learn to draw new maps. A job not just for leaders but for everyone whowants to partner with God in his great mission.

Alan Hirsch on reaching the non-churched

This short conversation is well worth reading if you are wondering why or if church needs to change. Given the differences between America and the UK, our challenge here is possibly greater than it is in North America. Where they may have 40% of the population that would be drawn to an attractional model (read the article to get picture), we have probably less that 20%.

In response to a couple of questions, Hirsch had this to say:

Ever since Constantine, who gave us the institution, we've seldom been able to see the church outside of that paradigm. And so you have the high church going into Protestant churches and traditional into contemporary, but all of them are really variations of the same paradigm of church, the institutional paradigm. I'm not saying it's all wrong. But if we think that simply rejiggering the same old paradigm is going to solve all our problems, I think we're going to be very disappointed. We need to change the paradigm. We need to fundamentally shift the way we think about church.

The contemporary church is an example of the institutional paradigm. Basically, it's still an attractional model, which only works with people who are like us. The people who come to our churches speak the same language, follow the same socio-economic route-basically, they are like us. Their normal form of engagement is attraction.

The attractional model can work well when the people we're trying to attract are within the cultural distance of the church. But when everyone is moving further away from us culturally, it's not going to work. Because what you do then is extract people from their environment and then inculcate them into a different environment. If we assume that people have got to come to us on our cultural turf in order to hear the gospel, we remove them from the natural cultural environment from which they were extracted.

I really sense God is saying, "You're not meant to tell people how to live. That's my job. Your job is to introduce people to Jesus and a true understanding of who Jesus is. You don't have to control their lives." And I find that incredibly liberating. When I play Holy Spirit, I usually do a very, very bad job. Christians are certainly known to be moralists, and I think we need to chill out a bit.

It seems to me that we're in a time of potential change provided we're willing to have our imaginations stretched and reshaped. Our problem, and Hirsch's analysis puts a finger on this, is that whenever we think about what needs to change we do so within the current model. We may think that by being contemporary we're naturally going to think in contemporary terms. But if our model is a reworked version of the institutional church, then our thinking will be a reflection of that underlying model.

To engage our shifting culture we will have to seek out a fresh imagination beyond the predefined restrictions of the institutional church model. So, for example, when we think about mission, the question is not how to get the community into church but how to get the church into the community.

August Steps

I was wondering if anyone had taken up the August Challenge?

Up to yesterday I'm averaging 10204 steps a day and my cumulative total is 183668.

I've had a couple of low days, but overall I'm keeping up. It's fairly easy for me if I choose to walk to the church and to meet Anne in the evening, but I'm also going for a specific walk most days. I'm combining my walk routine with praying for the community. Redeeming the time as they used to say!!

Two more online collaboration tools

Here are two more tools I'm exploring. The first is somewhat similar to Wridea and is called Symbyoz. I signed up and created a goal page but sadly I can't seem to get access to it today. Perhaps there's an internet problem, but the stuff I did yesterday seems to have disappeared. not a great start.

The concept is simple enough. You create an idea and other people can comment. There are tabs for people and resources and you have your own ideas and network ideas. There is no facility to add files to share.

In the end I think it will be a preference thing, not withstanding today's lost idea issue, between this and say Writeboard, that does the same sort on thing and does it well.

The second tool I've had a quick look at is Reviewpad. Now this looks very promising. Easy to navigate, able to add files (in fact you can't crate a "pad" without adding at least one file). Actually the whole point fo Reviewpad is to give you a place to review files with others. You can add comments, give permission to download the file and all with a free account with 500mb of space. You can even save a pad as a pdf which show everything including all the file contents. So if you wanted to, you could take a pdf version with you your mobile device to read on the train! No internet access required!

In looking for something simple and easy to use for less adventurous partners, this might just win the day.

The Short and Long Endings

I'm just about at then end of Mark's gospel and I will soon need to decide where next in my daily reading. I think I've probably mentioned before that I have a soft spot for Mark, having studied it in some details at college. Mind you I'd probably say the same for John, and Luke is interesting for all sorts of reasons too!

Anyway, here I am at the end of Mark, but which end? I'm not sure how important it is to come down on one side of the argument or the other. The longer ending presents some problems, but it isn't so out of character, whereas the shorter ending seems to fit well with Mark's sense of immediacy and his focus on the identity of Jesus.

The NIV that we use at church ends rather abruptly with Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. A rather incomplete ending that begs for a fuller explanation of the resurrection, something the longer ending supplies.

Interestingly the NLT adds Then they briefly reported all this to Peter and his companions. Afterward Jesus himself sent them out from east to west with the sacred and unfailing message of salvation that gives eternal life. Amen. which at least gives a neater finish to the shorter ending.

I'd need to get my books out to look at why this should be included, my memory doesn't retain all the details!

Such things, fascinating as they might be to some, can be a distraction. After all, the whole point of chapter 16 is that Jesus is not dead- He is risen! He is not here.

As the three women approach the tomb they are wondering who is going to help them get in. There is a large stone over the entrance that they can't move on their own. But the stone had already been moved. Not, of course, to let them in but to let Jesus out.

He is not here! He has risen.

How much does that change the trajectory of your life? How much hope does it bring? If death no longer defines the end of life, where is your life going beyond death?


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Questionnaires and other things

As September rapidly approaches, I'm working quite hard on getting things in place. I have to confess that I struggle sometimes with the expectations of strategies and programmes. Mostly because I'm not convinced that they deliver as much as they promise. They are useful and helpful and necessary in order to plot a course, but without participation they achieve very little. somehow we need to balance that sense of needing order with doing life that is quite unpredictable.

Anyway, as part of the autumn plan I've been working on both a prayer questionnaire and a spiritual health-check assessment tool. The latter has been developed from a resource I came across through Willow Creek. It takes a snapshot of where we might be in our walk with God and should help people identify some areas for change and development. it's easy sometimes to see these things as a way of probing the personal lives of the church, but that is not the intention. Both of these tools are designed to encourage growth and release ministry.

If you are interested in seeing these two tools then you can get there via my public Dropbox. The Prayer questionnaire is here, and the health-check here.

Am I worth all that?

The gospels all provide details about the death of Jesus. It is, after all, a central feature of the story. They all talk about what happened and the things Jesus did and said in those final hours of life. About being mocked yet offering forgiveness and hope; being taunted yet not responding; the sense of separation and abandonment; the cry of completion.

Mark has his own little take as the centurion declares, "Surely this man was the Son of God", a clear echo of the opening of his gospel account.

But this is not just about narrative styles and content. This is the Son of God dying. The immortal and invisible God become mortal and dies. No pretending, no clever tricks. A real life ended by a cruel death.

Can I possibly be worth all of that? Jesus certainly thought so. As for me, my best response is not to question it, (that Jesus thought I was worth it), but to embrace it, to accept it, to receive it, to live it.


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Writeboard

I've just signed up to Writeboard and the difference with huddle and GoogleWave are immediately apparent.

If you are looking for a shared space to have that conversation I mentioned without the bells and whistles of file sharing, task management and other things, this could be just what you are looking for in the world of online collaboration.

Easy to set up, simple to use. even the most technically averse person would surely be able to contribute to a discussion using this tool.

Online Collaboration

So, with the demise of GoogleWave at the end of the year I've begun my search for a possible replacement. I had a quick squint at a few offerings but settled on giving Huddle a shot.

It looks quite promising although it takes a bit of getting used to after the style of waving I've been exploring. There are certainly features in Huddle that didn't exist in Wave and of course the inverse is also true.

What I liked about Wave was the concept of a single conversation. I guess in Huddle this is replicated by the idea of multiple workspaces where each idea or project has its own set of files and discussions. The free version only allows one workspace, which with some thought can be adapted to hold several active projects. I just feel that having easily identifiable space for a few projects would suit my needs better. I can get this facility if I opt for a paid version of the product (a monthly subscription is required).

Having said that, the extra features of being able, for example, to assign tasks to team members and send them an email reminder is very nice. I got one this morning about inviting people to enter my workspace.

Uploading files is easy and smooth, although I haven't tried uploading a file again after editing it. Huddle keeps an audit trail for each file you create or upload, which is useful too. I work with pdf's a lot because I don't use Microsoft software if I can help it. As a Mac user, I find Pages really easy and flexible for producing all my documents. Sadly Word is the standard for most people, so a pdf is almost guaranteed to be openable on every platform. Huddle accepts all sorts of file types and provides an online editor for excel and word files.

So, my first impressions are that although it doesn't have the feel of Waving, Huddle looks like a really useful online collaboration tool. Used properly I think it could help all sorts of groups and businesses to work together more effectively. These tools allow you to reduce the clutter of an inbox full of rabbit trail emails and they allow you to centralise a single copy of the most up to date version of a file. Everything in one place for every project.

Of course if you just want to share files, then Dropbox is great for doing that. But what Huddle gives you is all the facilities to discuss and organise around those files.

The downside of Google Wave was that it didn't work in the most common browser (Explorer) and it didn't work on one person's G4 Mac for some reason. Huddle doesn't look like it will suffer from those problems.

The question is, can I get the technologically averse to dip a toe in the water of online collaboration and join the Huddle? That may well be the defining criteria for success.

And by the way, thanks to the company for the courtesy call I got yesterday for signing up to Huddle. Both unexpected and thoughtful.

An alternative to Huddle might be Writeboard, but I haven't explored that yet.

30 Days of Prayer

Starting today, Evangelism Coach is blogging a 30 days of prayer for personal evangelism. It's aimed primarily at church leaders from first glance, but anyone could adapt it to their situation. I thought today's first entry was very helpful.

Making the Transition

As we prepare for the launch of our Autumn programme at church I'm acutely aware that if we are going to thrive in the new cultural reality that is the post-modern 21st century world, we must be careful not to assume that it will work because it's well planned and carefully packaged. As I've said before, we must let go of the idea that if we build it they will come. They won't.

I'm in the process of reading Alan Roxburgh's Missional Map Making, and a fine read it is even though it's quite difficult to get to grips with at times. The central point is that the world is no longer what it once was and it no longer behaves according to the story that shaped us in the past. In other words the maps don't work anymore and we need new maps to navigate our way through the new reality.

In church, the only map we have for growing the church is usually an evangelism map. So we develop strategies for outreach programmes and missions and invite big name preachers to come and fill stadia. But the map doesn't work anymore.

To draw a new map we need a new imagination. And we need to ask some important questions. Questions like, "What made the early church attractive?" Yes there was some planning, but the fundamental shape of the church was decidedly different. Take the foundation for example. Yes, Jesus is the rock on which we build, but Paul said the first layer of bricks were the apostles and prophets. Our first layer by contrast tends to be pastors and teachers. It's an important difference.

The new map we are beginning to draw, albeit every so subtly, is that whatever happens it must begin with spiritual formation. With discipleship.

So I was pleased to come across an article posted a while ago of a non-exhaustive list of important things to consider when moving from what church has been in the past towards what it can be in the future. Yes. that's all about the buzz word missional, but we're not trying to stick a new label on an old model, as some seems to be doing. We are trying to think afresh about what it means to the church, the body of Christ.

Our Autumn programme is all about discipleship, about trying to encourage everyone to take seriously their spiritual life and set some goals for personal development. Out of this we hope that relationships will be forged with the people missing from the kingdom and opportunities for mission will arise quite naturally as we cultivate them rather than transplant them.

Fasting and Worship?

On Sunday I've got an away fixture. I don't preach elsewhere very often, mostly because I don't get invited! Or maybe my reputation precedes me? I also suffer from what yo might cal "I'd like to preach that one!" syndrome. You see, every time I put a preaching plan together I look at the topics and think to myself "I'd like to preach that one!" So it can be quite hard to give a topic away.

Plus you are only supposed to have four Sundays a year free to preach in other churches, and I'd rather have Sundays off to be honest. It can be quite hard to go to another church. If it's a fairly traditional Baptist Church, they will want you to lead the service, but I don't want to do that. I'm trying to get other people to lead services at my own church, I'm not about go running off to another church and lead theirs!

Anyway, back to Sunday. The topic I've been given is rather interesting. It seems everyone is doing the Sermon on the Mount at the moment. We've just finished, my previous church is in the middle of it, and the one I'm visiting is working their way through it too. The subject I've been given for Sunday is "worship and fasting" or is it "fasting and worship"? I'm not sure it makes a big difference which way round it is. The reading is possibly the shortest every reading in the whole of church history. Three verses. So I guess we don't have to worry that people will forget what the reading is about!

But the topic is interesting. When Jesus talks about fasting in Matthew 6, the context isn't worship, it's prayer. We most naturally associate fasting with prayer, and understandably so. But what might the link be between fasting and worship?

So that's my task. To think outside the box a little about the purpose of fasting and where it fits in the context of worship. There aren't too many clues in the three verse reading, but there may be more to this than meets the eye.

It rather reminds me of the somewhat odd title I got in January when I was asked to preach for the united service for Christian Unity. Actually the title was fine, hospitality as witness, as I recall, it was the reading that was odd. It had so little to do with the theme that it took a while to figure out how to do justice to both the reading and topic.