Ah, Meccano!

When I was growing up I had Meccano, and I loved it. My first set came at Christmas one year when I was probably around 6 or 8. It was the old red and green stuff as I recall. The first few projects mainly involved me sitting watching my Dad put models together. He was engrossed in what he was doing, I was "helping" but mostly wondering who had got Meccano for Christmas, me or him!

My father did make me a wooden tray with a sliding lid in which to keep my construction kit, and when it was added to another year, I was allowed to make things myself. My favourite project was a large crane with a roll-out bogey on s swivel platform that I could use to raise and lower things from the landing over the stairs. 

Eventually the Meccano was packed away and passed on in later years to another member of the family. Sadly not all of it came back, and the disappointment I felt even as an adult was palpable. I don't think I realised just how much this simple construction kit meant to me. It was more than a toy, it was a world of creativity. Even now I can hardly bear thinking about opening the box in which I have what's left of my original sets, knowing what I'll find. My Meccano was probably the only thing I ever put away completely when I'd finished with it. I could account for every item, it was that important to me to have all the parts exactly where they should be.

Well, it's obviously been a long time since it saw the light of day, but I have been thinking, rather wistfully I have to say, about the possibility of reinvesting in this wonderful engineering toy. Maybe I'm just daft, but perhaps it might be fun to build that crane, or something similar once again. I know I don't have all the parts, and I don't even have the books (they were lost too) so I can't even write a list of what's missing and try to replace it all. But I have seen a great set and maybe I could argue that it's just in case I ever become a grandparent!! After, what grandchild of mine wouldn't want to sit for hours watching me put together a model crane!

An Equitable Society

I have, among my list of posts, a number of "draft" pieces that I've never quite figured out how to finish or what to do with them. This is one I started a while ago after a report on the news one morning. It's far from a complete, even thoughtful exploration of an idea, but it's an emerging theme that I want to think about in more depth. It concerns the growing divide between the wealthy and the poor and everyone else in-between. Theologically, it is the starting point for thinking about what the gospel has to say about economics and issues around greed, power, and wealth. 

Am I getting old or is the world actually becoming a less equitable society? I choose the word carefully because I'm not advocating equality, an equalised distribution of wealth and resources. I have no problem with there being a degree of differentiation, but the current state of economics leaves me wondering if the first world economic dream can be anything but unrealistic  and inequitable.

This morning the news carried the story of the referendum in Switzerland to limit executive pay to 12 times that of the lowest paid worker. It will probably fail. Vested interests will make sure of that. Apparently businesses will leave the country in droves should it pass, or at least that's what we are told. For years we've been fed the half-truth that you have to pay high salaries to chief executives if we want the best, but as we all know those people we thought were the best turned out to less than capable of leading the way anywhere except into a financial meltdown.

And whoever came up with the idea that the performance of a business is based solely on the performance of the person at the top? Good as they may be, they rely on the performance of those lower down the ladder for the success of the company. I'm not sure at what point along the way we lose sight of this simple truth. Is it when we reach a position of authority where we have more to lose financially, or is it just a matter of personal greed?

So, apart from being just a rant about executive pay in the top 100 companies going up by 14% while most workers have lost money, hours or jobs, what am I trying to say? I'm not sure. I just know that something must change. A new model is needed if we are going to dismantle the growing divide between rich and poor and replace it with something that reflects an understanding of society that doesn't concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few. The issue isn't that some people are rich while others are poor, it's that the difference continues to grow wider and deeper.

Perhaps, if the top 100 companies took a longer term look at themselves they would invest across the workforce and encourage their senior executives to see themselves as part of the package and not the icing on the cake. There are examples of this, executives who don't pay themselves excessively, but they are probably too few and too far between.

Maybe if we stopped measuring our value in terms of what we own or what we can buy, then that too might just make a move in the direction of a more equitable society.

Perhaps this is all just tilting at windmills, but while the divide grows, so too it seems does a presumption that the poor are poor because of something they have done. It's their fault. While we buy into such an argument, we will never ask the truly tough questions about our first world greed and the kind of model we are exporting to the rest of the world. Concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the few cannot be good for society as a whole.

Where was I in '63?

I was six years old when John Kennedy was assassinated. I remember, vaguely, the events and the news, but I can't say I belong to the club that remembers where they were the day it all happened. I guess as a six year old in the UK, it actually wasn't that high on my list of important events that day.

I have clearer memories of the events of 1968, when in April Martin Luther King, and then in June Bobby Kennedy where both assassinated. By then I was a more mature ten, going on eleven. I was getting ready to go up to secondary school. I managed to pass my 11+ and secure a place at a Grammar School, starting in September 1969. Most of that year, '68-'69, was focussed on this transition and getting used to the idea that I was meant to feel both privileged and grateful for achieving this goal. Needless to say I felt neither, and wondered more about what I'd done. After all it was me who passed the exam!

On the other hand, there was something about the three political murders that nagged away at the back of my young mind, but chemistry, maths and biology, along with cricket and rugby soon occupied rather more of my thinking than political changes and the under current of conspiracy theories.

As the '60's turned into the '70's I was probably still too young to to either fully understand or appreciate the nuances of the political world, but things were changing. I started to read about the political events that lead up to the Vietnam war, I became more interested in what society was like and what it meant to choose a political ideology. Naive I might have been, but brainless I certainly wasn't!

Although I was later to discover that John Kennedy wasn't quite the hero he was portrayed to be, there were aspects of his life that were far from ideal, I guess his death did have some impact on me even though I was sonly six. Somewhere deep in my subconscious questions-political, social, moral, ethical questions-took up residence, and they shaped the way I began to think about the world.

The assassination of the Kennedy's, Martin Luther King and many more are acts of evil. Looking for the positives in them cannot diminish that truth. Perhaps, because of their untimely end, we can still aspire to something bigger, something ultimately less selfish because we have their examples. History is less kind to the memory of such individuals than popular culture.

Had Kennedy lived on and served out his time as President, then as one historian put it on the news this morning, he'd probably have been blamed for many of the social and political ills America endured in the latter part of the 1960's. Because he didn't we have an enduring image of a young president who looked forward to a better world and sought to challenge his generation to do something about it.

Doing workshops

So, here's an interesting turn of events. I've been asked to run a workshop for dance students on the subjects of nutrition and physiology as it relates to stretching and movement etc. Quite a challenge, but one I'm really keen to explore.

I don't pretend to be an expert, but this is a great opportunity for me both to share some of the things I've learnt over the last two years, and to reinforce some of that learning by reviewing it and passing it on. I've sketched out a rough idea of what I could cover, and as usual there's way too much for the time allowed, but I'll get it better organised. I'd also have too much to cover than not enough. I'll work out a plan of what is top of the list and what could be left for another time.

The workshops will be in January, but I'll need to have it planned in the next few weeks.

Holiday reading

We've just come home from a week away in Portugal. Wall-to-wall sunshine, lazy days walking around, sliding into the pool, playing tennis and reading.

I took my trusty pedometer with me and recorded my steps each day. I managed a creditable 124, 200 steps over the week (that's 17, 742 a day, or the equivalent of 8.9 miles a day!) It's staggering how far you will walk when there's no rush to get anywhere! Although we had a car, we didn't use it, except to go to and from the airport and one shopping trip.

I took my Kindle with me. I think it's possibly one of the greatest bits of tech kit I own. It does one job and does it really well. I can carry a wide range of books and reading material without getting my bags checked at the airport (it has happened to me once when I had a lot of books with me) or adding extra weight to my luggage.

I read "Zoo Station" by David Downing. It's set in pre-war Germany in 1939. The story begins on New Year's Eve '38 and centres around John Russell, a freelance journalist who sees the regime for what it is and how he drifts into spying and uses his connections to help get a Jewish family out of Berlin. It's the first in a series and I've got the second book to read now we're back home.

I also read "How to like Paul Again" by Conrad Gempf. I haven't quite finished this, but I've thoroughly enjoyed what I have read. Conrad was one of my tutors at college many years ago (over 25 years now I think about it). It's a really helpful book for those who have issues with some of the things Paul has to say and how best to handle them. There's great encouragement to get stuck into the task of understanding the nature of the text and the context too, before ploughing into interpreting.

Perhaps what Conrad does best is to make hermeneutics and exegesis something that lives and breathes rather than just some dusty academic exercise. He humanises the text, reminds us that these are "other people's mail" and that Paul was doing his best to address real situations among real people and not writing some abstract theologise treatise on your favourite topic!

Beyond those two, I dipped into a short monograph about exercise and health and I read the free e-book short from Jim Wallis about politics, Conservatives, Liberals, and the Fight for America's Future. It's abstracted from a longer work, but popped us a free offering just before I went away. It's well worth a read even if you're not interested in America or politics. The call for a more civil society, one in which we can honour each other even when we disagree is a call we all need to hear. As TV programmes seem more and more to be predicated on the principle of how insulting we can be about each other, and while live audiences boo judges with whom they disagree, a little civility wouldn't go amiss. Maybe our own political leaders would do well to read it while it's free!

Turning corners, changing cars and cleaning house

I just noticed that it's been a month since I last posted anything on this blog. There was a time when I posted something every day. Thankfully that was only an experiment and I've slowed down since then! I have written a few posts, well started them, but not finished any of them. There was one about the need to pray for Syria, a still current concern, and I thought about writing something about stretching quad muscles, but that was for my other blog.

Then there have a been a few reflective thoughts on 1Thessalonians around the connection between Paul's opening prayer and words to the church and missional thinking. I'm constantly trying to figure out what exactly it mans to live missionally. It's such a slippery turn of phrase, easier to recognise what it isn't rather than what it is. Perhaps I'll get around to making sense of those thoughts.

As we continue to think about what it means to live in a community, serving among the members of that community, working with them and living out our faith as we do so. One of the things that we had to decide concerned our relationship with the denomination we've served for over twenty years. In order to remain an accredited minister of the denomination I needed to be in membership of a church in the denomination. The thing is the nearest church to us that fits that bill is the one we left!

So, in the end, we decided that it was time to call it a day. We didn't feel we could join a church just to retain accreditation and then not attend, that runs counter to my view of membership of a local church. Had we not taken the decision to resign then others would have made the decision for us, so it was better we decided. To be honest, the debate about accreditation just seemed to get in the way of meaningful conversations with other baptist ministers about partnership and relationship.

So here we are. We're not alone. We have a faith community that shares some of the same vision and vocabulary about the missional journey as we do. To all those who keep asking how I'm doing now I've "left the ministry", my answer remains that I have not left the ministry, I'm just doing it differently.

So, we've turned a new corner in our journey and in some ways we've cleaned house by tidying up some of the loose ends concerning our relationship with the denomination. A sad day, but a liberating one too. As to cars, well, if the dealer can get their act together, that too will change in the next few days!

Steps again

So, after a few weeks of "normal" activity it's fairly obvious that some days I easily reach my 10K target, and some days I don't. Nothing unexpected there. We've had a few weekends when we've gone to visit family and that's one reason my step count has been down, but as I said before, this is about seeing what normal looks like.

The next step, excuse the pun, is to work out some routes and their approximate step count. When we lived in Upminster I knew that if I walked to the station with Anne in the morning and then to meet her in the evening, it was going to take me past 10K steps a day even if I did nothing else. I also had a series of routes I followed and I pretty much knew what I needed to do in order to add that last 750 or 1000 steps at the end of the day.

Part of the fun of working on a routine for me is doing this kind of number crunching. Just putting in the miles is too tedious for me, so having a plan of where to walk and see how many steps that takes keeps me interested enough to get started. It takes time to build a new habit. When I was setting targets a few years ago I discovered that actually getting out and walking was fairly easy because I had a goal. Just churning out the miles or even the steps can become monotonous if you don't have a purpose that motivates you.

After a few weeks, I'm not sure how long it takes, I usually find a rhythm and I know I've got into a routine when I feel like running rather than just walking. I don't run long distances any more, mostly because of a knee problem that I haven't solved yet and that get irritated by running.

So, I think I'm all set to set a goal for September, and now I seem to have addressed a minor issue with my plantar fascia (see here for that story), I'm ready to set myself going. So fire up Runkeeper, dust of my music library on my iPhone and let's hit the mean streets of South Essex!

Wimbledon Photo

We might not have been allowed on Centre Court, but we could at least stand outside!

Counting steps-again!

I'm revisiting my walking 10,000 steps a day principle, easing myself back into at the moment. This time around I've decided to start by simply measuring how many steps I take a day without setting out to achieve the 10K goal. I think this is helpful because it gives toy a baseline from which to work. Anyone who has ever set themselves a health or fitness goal knows that starting is the first hurdle, but once you start, the initial phase is full of enthusiasm. This can lead to over extending your efforts, and then it's down the slippery slope of relapse and failure through injury or boredom!

Getting a baseline is also useful because it tells you the truth about how sedentary you've become. It might surprise you and tell you that you're more active than you thought, but I suspect the former is more likely. It's important at this stage to record the data. It might sound a bit OCD to do that, but you need to know where you started. Getting fitter and healthier (the two are not the same) takes time and discipline. You will need a way of measuring the changes and it won't just be through the scales.

Once you have your baseline data, then you can start to get a bit more active. I'd suggest (assuming you have no medical reason not to do this) that you find a route that's a mile long and see how long it takes to walk it comfortably. Then maybe try it again and do it as quickly as you can without having to stop. control your pace and note down the times. This will give you another measure.

Having done my challenge before I know that I can walk 4 miles (6.Km) in an hour when I've been practicing. That's not too fast but fast enough. I also know that I can sustain that over at least 5 miles without any problems. That will be one of my first tests, to go out and see if I can walk 4 miles in an hour. This will help me work out how fit I am compared with two years ago.

Being healthy is another thing, and that really comes down to getting out of breath for at least 30 minutes 3 to 5 times a week. Given that I play tennis 3 times in an average week and at least 1.5 hours of that is playing singles, doing the extra walking will do the healthy part. fitness only improves with a progressive increase in effort. The technical term is 'progressive overload', and you get this by changing at least one of the following principles:

Frequency
Intensity
Time
Type

So, for example, if you're walking your 10,000 steps a day and your fitness has improved over say 3 to 4 weeks, the next stage will need you to change of of these principles. But you might not have any more time available, so you can't walk for longer or more often. The easiest thing to do is to find a hill to add to your route. That will change the intensity. Easy if you live in Nottingham, where I grew up, less easy if your out in the fens! The other choice would be to change you speed. Walk faster, even add a little bit of running. When I go out walking I sometimes run for short bursts, say 3-4 minutes. That pushes up the intensity quite nicely.

The point of this is that it's not actually that complicated to do something about improving health and fitness. small changes, discipline and determination go a long way, provided that is that you get off the couch and into those rather too clean pair of trainers you keep hidden at the back of the wardrobe.

Refocussing

I've known if for some time if I'm honest, I've just been avoiding as best I can. It's the old issue we all face at some point in our lives. I'm not talking about getting older or going grey. I'm not even talking about coming to the realisation that your eyesight isn't what it was and you're reactions aren't as quick and your body is so much slower.

No, although all of that it true, I'm not thinking about those things today.

I've been setting up my bright shiny new MacBook that arrived yesterday. It's a replacement for the one of which I was relieved of a week or so ago during the night while we slept peacefully at home. My 13" Black MacBook was my first step into the world of Apple and I've never wanted anything else since! I shall miss it. I have set it to self destruct when it's opened, but so far it hasn't connected to the internet. We wait and see. The insurance company have been very good, and they've dealt with the claim quickly and efficiently, so that's the end of that.

Anyway, I decided not to go down the migration route for some reason, but rather to sit and work out what I wanted on my new machine. It's rather interesting to look at all the applications I've got and how little I use some of those I once thought I couldn't live without. It was also interesting to think about apps that have laid dormant because the way I do things has changed or because I simply don't do those things anymore.

Take Scrivener for example. One of my all-time favourite writing applications, but I haven't done the kind of writing that it is best suited to for a long time. Maybe I should start that book project or do a case study and put it to good use. Similarly there are mind mapping tools, notebook tools, outliners, archivers etc, etc. All of which, if one is not careful, mean that you can lose your files and threads simply because you can't remember which application you used to create the thing in the first place.

Which brings me to my original thought in a somewhat circuitous way. Focus. Focus is the thing I am in need of today. Well not just today. I installed my task tracking and planning app on the new MacBook only to realise it's been several months since I used it. Now reinstalling an application, cleaning up the contents and synchronising across various platforms isn't going to focus my attention. I need a project.

More than that, I need to make myself accountable for a project.

Since stepping out of formal church leadership I've focussed most of my efforts on completing the soft tissue therapy course. But that happened in February when I qualified, so I need to pick up my brain and get it stuck into something meaningful and challenging. I'm not busy at the moment so it's ought to be an ideal time to learn more, research things and really consolidate my learning and knowledge.

Rather than see the present quietness of work as either a negative thing or just an excuse to become lazy, I should take control and do what I can to find clients but also to redeem the time by doing something useful with my time.

So here's the plan. Over the next few days I'm going to think about a few ideas I have for things to work on. Something related to missional church and the vision for our community and something to do with therapy and practice. For the latter I have some thinking I want to do about lower back pain and hip mobility. For the church thing there's lots of things to think about, vision is one and a study project I've had on my wish list is another.

I've got other things to do to. Things like tennis coaching (I passed my Level One qualification), PT stuff and practical project around the house. The list will be long, but it's time to get stuck in, get the brain up and running and get some focus back.

You see, without a focus there doesn't seem to be a vision and without a vision there is no real direction and without direction there can be no plan and with a plan there is no purpose and without a purpose self-esteem plummets and the couch beckons. I'm not ready for that.

I might even start to blog a bit more as a way of being of accountable, but don't hold me to that!!

Dare I buy one of these!

Helpful instructions

We had quite a busy weekend that culminated in a small family lunch on Sunday. It was a great day, and as usual in such circumstances, we over-catered. Better to have too much than too little. Anyway. I was checking the sultana and cherry cake to see if we could or needed to freeze it, and came across these most helpful instructions:

Preparation guidelines: Remove packaging - Place the cake of a flat surface - holding the cake and with a long clean serrated sharp knife, cut the cake into slices using a sawing action - It is important to keep the knife clean.

So, that explains why balancing a cake on a ballon and cutting it with a blunt spoon doesn't work then! It just strikes me as odd to think that someone might buy cake and not know how to cut it. And why doesn't cheese come with similar instructions? Maybe it does, I'll have to check. I wonder if it deals with the hazards of cutting cheese when you stand in on it's narrow edge rather than its flatter surface? And coffee too. I don't drink it, but I occasionally make it for Anne, I wonder if the jar has details about how to stir and whether it should be clockwise or anti-clockwise. This could be a most interesting search through the cupboards later today!

Everyone laughed when Delia Smith was teaching people how to boil an egg, but that doesn't seem so daft now!

Another String to the Bow

Well, I'm part way through getting my Level 1 tennis coaching certificate. It's not a long course, three days with a few hours of practice along the way. It's the first step almost anyone needs to take if they want to become a registered coach. I'm not sure I'll ever go quite that far, but it's an interesting thought.

The reason I'm doing the course is quite simple. Over the past couple of months I've been asked to look at running some sort of social tennis activity in the local park where we have a couple of tennis courts. I've had a bit of interest, mostly from beginners and others for whom a bit of help would increase their enjoyment. So it seemed like a good idea to go and learn some coaching skills. I've played sport with people who like to coach, even though they clearly have no skills in that area. I don't want to be one of those people!

The Level 1 course is really a coaching assistant qualification, level 2 is directed at those who want to work on their own with adult beginners, so I may have to do that course too. Will it never end? The course is based around what is known as mini-tennis, the form of the game used for under 10's. I guess it makes sense to start there, but part of me wonders why working with children is not a developmental stage rather than a starting point. It seems much harder to get children to understand what you want them to do than it does an adult who can ask questions. But that's probably me!

I suppose the obvious question is why am I dong this? Am I doing it as pre-evangelism as we used to call it? Actually, no. I'm doing it because I think it's a good way to get people active and I rather like playing tennis. It gets me involved in the life of the village by engaging with sport and activity. This is part of what it means to live in and serve the community. It's about building friendships that are not predicated upon an evangelistic opportunity.

Where it might lead I simply don't know. Perhaps I'll end up running a summer sports camp, perhaps someone will start talking to me about an issue or problem and all my other skills will come into play. Who knows!

Jim Wallis used to say, "Find out what you're good at and then do it in a way that makes a difference." Could I add to that, "Do something you love in a way that makes a contribution."

A Little Project!

So, I've been busy building a log cabin in the garden. The idea is that this will become a treatment room rather than using the lounge. Of course this is rather dependent upon whether I can heat/cool the cabin sufficiently, but only a winter and summer will answer that question.

I may look at insulation for both the floor and the roof if that proves necessary, but we will see how things go. At the moment it is quite hot in there.




As you can see from the second photograph, it doesn't overpower the garden itself. we have about 150/160ft of garden and the cabin is only 13/14ft wide and 8 deep.

I built the cabin onto a 4" frame which, with the floor bearers in place, gives enough room to add a deck if we decide to do that.

I will need to sort out getting power into it and also broadband, although the wireless signal in the garden is pretty good considering it's probably somewhere near 100ft from the hub. The wireless doorbell doesn't reach that far!

Fun with telemarketers!

So, I'm working away at a project in the kitchen and the telephone rings. "Hello, I'm [whatever her name was] calling about personal injury compensation. Have you have an accident or injury?"

"No. I don't need or want compensation for an accident thank you."

"Ok, Goodbye."

So went the first conversation. But we have two telephone lines, and a few minutes later the other 'phone rings and hear the same background noise that I heard in the first call, preceded by the same silence. So I guessed it was the same company.

" Hello," said the same voice I'd just heard.

"Hello," I replied, "I don't need personal injury compensation, I haven't had an accident, and I guessing you're trying to figure out how I knew what you were going to say!"

Silence. Possibly stunned silence. Eventually the voice returned, said thank you and hung up. What joy to feel like you scored a direct hit. It won't stop the calls, even though we're signed up to TPS on both lines, but it did make the second interruption bring a smile rather than a frown to my face.

Back to the kitchen project then.

Dreams and visions

I have many a dream and vision. I dream of having a well-euipped workshop where I create furniture and make things. I dream of having a successful private practice where I treat clients effectively and work with a partner or two. I dream of a church where it's less about filling a building and more about incarnating the gospel into the life of a community.

I have many a dream and vision.

The problem is not only in seeking to realise any or all of these dreams and visions, but living with the tension of what is, what might be, and the journey in between. The truth of the matter is that some dreams and vision may never become a reality. But if you don't have a dream, then there's no way it can become a reality!

So what do you do in the meantime? Well I guess one of the things you have to hold in tension is the now and the maybe. It's the Wimbledon tennis tournament at the moment. It is, as I'm sure everyone knows, one of four Grand Slam events through the year. 128 players start the first round in the singles draw. Only one can win it. Even if you take the view that it will probably be one of the top 8 players, it remains a strong possibility that most tennis players, even some of the very best, might never win a Grand Slam tournament.

What does this have to do with dreams? Well, a dream can drive you but it can also destroy you. Think of Captain Ahab. Somehow we have to find a way to be inspired by our dreams but not being imprisoned by them. I think you can tell the difference in part by how much of a sense of failure you carry each day, how much you are weighed down by that consuming sense of the unattainable that dreams so often seem to generate. I'm not talking here about the unrealistic dreams of the tone deaf singer or the unskilled sports person. I'm talking about those of us who carry the burden of being able to see what others cannot see and knowing that the reality may be that our dream will outlive us.

If you can't be comfortable about not realising your dream, you might find yourself in a dungeon of dashed hopes and angst. If you can find a place of comfort, then you stand a chance of seeing the possible along the way as well as holding onto the dream that draws you forward.

As for me? Well the garage is much tidier and looks like a workshop in progress. I continue to dream of making things and even have a few ideas in my head and a list of wonderful gadgets and tools I;d love to own! I'm building a log cabin as a place to relax but also a place to treat clients when they come to see me and I'm exploring opportunities to involve myself in the community. The latter not as a minister but maybe as a tennis coach! Now honestly, who would have thought that wold ever be on my agenda!

Spending reviews and easy targets

When I first read Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change I was struck by the simplicity of the premise that if the gospel is good news it must have something to say to about the big questions we face as individuals, families, communities and nations. I was thinking about this again as I listen to some of the reports of the government's plans and proposals for the future of our economy. Grand plans for infrastructure, cutting departmental spending and predictions of recovery that might just turn out to overly optimistic again. Maybe I'm a bit too cynical.

What bothers me is that some of the ideas seem rather too political, designed to assuage the cries of middle England and do little in the present other than make life harder for the most vulnerable. It is hard to see how we are in this together when the poor get poorer while the wealthy appear safe and secure in their tax havens.

There was some humour in the whole process, but even describing Eric Pickles as a shining example of lean government cannot hide the hard truth that welfare was once again the target. Is it any surprise that alongside the stringent cutting of benefits and spending on services we have seen a rise in pay day loan companies and food banks?

Perhaps we need a more reflective approach to the economy alongside the accounting reality. We certainly spent money unwisely in the past, but we've also encouraged more selfishness too. I'm no economist, I was once told off for suggesting that the idea of a constantly growing economy seemed like an unsustainable as a model to apply across the whole world. Surely someone has to pay for it?

So, what does the gospel have to say to such things? Answers on a postcard please. There do seem to be some basic principles that could be teased out and that do not require a particular political stance in order for them to be applied. What we need to careful to avoid in simple grabbing a few texts here and there and building our perspective on them alone. Perhaps we could start by asking ourselves how did God intend to make Israel distinctive, and then look at how Jesus interpreted and expressed that during his ministry. Interesting to think about the Old Testament views the alien and the poor and how that transfers to the gospel.

Back in the 80's, when I was at college, I read some stuff about the poor. I seem to recall something coming out of the Lausanne Conference that spoke about the poor in three ways. There were the relative poor, those people who are poor in comparison to the rest of their society. Then there were the indigenous poor, those who are poor by nature of the situation and circumstances. The their group were those who were made poor by the exploitation and abuse of the wealthy and powerful.

For what it's worth, I think the gospel is more concerned with equity than equality, but I think we might also be judged by not only how we treat the poorest in our society but how poor we make them.

Building a treatment room

Ever since we decided upon our current house a year and a half ago, I thought some sort of summerhouse or cabin in the garden would be a good idea. There are so many form which to choose but I need somewhere that is big enough to work comfortably. I decided that something around 4m x 2.5m was about right and I've been searching the web for ideas.

It's taken me a long time to choose, but I think I've made my choice based upon available space. We have quite a big garden but we have trees and borders, so choosing a place for a building involved working around all these things. The next step was to decide on a foundation. I didn't want to do a solid concrete base, so in the end I've opted for a recycled plastic framework filled with gravel. Here's a picture.

The next step will be to build a raised base from 100mm x 50mm timber. I'm doing this to lift the building just enough to allow for the addition of a veranda a later date if we want to do that.

The timber is coming next week, and I'll order the cabin soon.

After that electrics and a path.

Can we change?

I've noticed a little trend in my social media feeds recently. It goes along the line of new problems needing new solutions, not being able to solve new issues with old thinking, that kind of thing. Einstein gets quoted (the one about expecting different results, even though we do things the same way), and I've even quoted Craig Groeschel a couple of times on this very blog in the past (if we're going to reach the people other people aren't reaching, we're going to have do what other people aren't doing). They are great quotes, challenging and thought provoking. But are they changing anything?

In order to think in new ways you have to innovate, and innovating can be a very lonely endeavour. To be a pioneer means to be leading the way to a place we have not been to before. We may have a sense of what it might look like, but we have yet to experience the breath-taking wonder and beauty of the new.

When we sense the call to pioneer, to move out of the comfort of what we know and towards something yet to be realised, we face the double challenge of the journey into the unknown and how to take people with us. We can go alone, but alone isn't usually a great plan. Casting a vision for the new can be the most frustrating thing you ever do. I know from personal experience that it's very tough to get some people to see what you see, to understand what you say and to want to change and embrace a new adventure.

The problem seems to be that what you are offering them in this new vision is a swap. You're asking them to swap the thing they know for the thing they don't know. Their something for your nothing. So what do you do?

In the midst of all these hints and calls for new ways of thinking and new solutions I think it's worth spending some time reflecting on something I've heard Bill Hybels talk about a couple of times in the last year or so. Bill is a great vision caster, he's had a few years experience doing it! He knows a thing or two about the way vision leaks as people grapple with what they've just heard and how important it is to reinforce the vision and revisit it regularly in order to keep in the front of minds that get preoccupied with other stuff. But he's recently tried a new approach when casting a vision.

Rather than just describe what things could be like, he urges us to describe how things are right now and how unimaginable it is to stay where we are. In other words we have to be able to see the future in the context of the present and the present in the context of the future. We have to agree together that we simply can't go on as we are and that we have to journey somewhere new.

Perhaps, in church life, we have not yet reached that place where staying as we are is not unthinkable for most churched people. Perhaps until we do, little will change.

I'm not sold on the idea of importing business ideas and practices into the church, but I am struck sometimes by the difference in approach to innovation in church and in business. Would anyone have said to Steve Jobs when he announced the first iPod to the world that he needed to make sure he didn't upset or alienate users of portable CD players?

If the gospel is the power of God to change lives, if the church is God's chosen vehicle for the proclamation of that message, why are we so afraid of breaking it? Why are so we so afraid to try something new?

The church must change, we must innovate, we must pioneer, but do we have the courage to see it and to acknowledge that where are in not where we should stay.

The cost of discipleship

A link to an old article by Mike Breen popped up on an RSS feed a couple of days ago. As I recall from the first time I read the article (it's about why the missional movement will fail), the gist of his argument lies in the principle that if you make disciples you will always get church, but if you make church you won't necessarily get disciples.

Well yesterday, in one of those wonderfully relevant but totally unconnected ways, I found myself reading what Jesus had to say about being a disciple in Luke 14. We all know that Jesus said the cost of being a disciple was high. Love for others would look like in comparison to loving him; everything you own would be surrendered; you'd need to carry a cross; home, family, personal ambition, security and comfort would all be sacrificed. No wonder then that it is through these disciples that Jesus will change the world. Having given up so much for the cause of Christ, they are the ones who live wholeheartedly for the kingdom.

But what about those of us who have stuff? How exactly do we live out the radical call to discipleship that Jesus makes in our 21st century world? We have savings, houses, cars and clothes. We have goals and ambitions, dreams and plans. All must be subsumed under the authority of Jesus if we are going to live out the discipled life that will change the world.

I guess the issue most of us face is how do we balance the call to give away everything we possess and follow Jesus, with the simple fact that most of us would find that impossible to do. space in the wardrobe and garage wouldn't be a bad thing, but reducing my relationship with God to something measured by what I don't have seems just as ridiculous as measuring it by what I do have. Is a poverty gospel any more spiritual or less harmful than a prosperity gospel?

Discerning when Jesus uses hyperbole to make a point is sometimes glaringly obvious and sometimes really difficult to see. To what extent does Jesus push the thinking of the rich young man beyond rote obedience to the law by raising the stakes and calling him to abandon his wealth, but actually not expecting him to do it? I don't know, but clearly the young man has much to think about how he measures his life and its worth.

I guess in the end we have to keep asking questions, we have to keep searching our hearts to see where our treasure is located. Do I possess my possessions or do they possess me? Do they get in the way of following Jesus, or rather how much do they get in the way?