Winner!

Well here it is, my certificate that declares me a winner!

Even though I say so myself I had a pretty impressive run. As they in sport you can only play what's in front of you and I managed to come through with four wins out of four with no dropped sets!

Two of the others in the group I'd played before and won, the other two were new to me. My first match was a nervy two set affair that I eventually won 6-3, 6-1. The next day I played what would turn out to be the deciding match of the round. The first set was a topsy-turvy affair swapping breaks and reaching 6-6 to set up a tie-break. Suddenly I got some momentum and won the tie-break 7-1 and then made a fast start to the second set winning that 6-1. 

So two matches down and two matches won. 

After a couple of cancellations we finally got the third match arranged and I won that quite comfortably 6-0, 6-0. My final match was against a good friend, which always makes it a little more difficult although there is the added bonus of being able to have some fun too. The score, just for completion was 6-0, 6-1. Winning that meant for the first time ever I could say I'd won a tournament, and with quite an impressive record too. 8 sets, only 1 tie-break, only 12 games lost, half in one set!

Now it might not a very high level tournament, you might not even think of it as a tournament at all if you're that way inclined, but for me it was quite a moment. In the next round I will probably be playing in the top group and I'm sure that will be more difficult. I might be back to counting points and games won rather than matches, but for now I have certificate and a prize to celebrate. Pass me a mother Coke Zero and an Eccles cake please!

Our continuing journey

I hesitate to talk about "our missional journey", partly because missional has become a somewhat overused buzz word and partly because our journey might not look that missional by some standards. But a missional journey it is all the same. Our particular journey may not be as intentional as some, but it is moving along. Sometimes we don't see the movement, it just seems to happen around us. Perhaps that's a good thing. When people ask us what we are doing, I usually reply that we are learning to live in the community as ordinary people and that we're trying to see what God is doing and join in with him.

We've never tried to define that with any sense of accuracy or precision. On the other hand, we've always known that it has a lot to do with building friendships that are not predicated on an evangelistic goal. We are friends because we are friends and not because we're looking for an outreach project. Somehow we have to balance that with a sense of intentionality, the idea that we want to share our faith with the folk we've come to know, but never as the sole goal of being friends. As I've said, we are friends because we are friends.

So it is that we find ourselves doing things we might never have imagined doing 5 or 10 years ago. I coach tennis and I look after a rugby team doing therapy and pitch-side first aid. We'd never have thought that this is how our journey would take shape. And even if we did imagine it, it's interesting how it's grown through others and not ourselves. I was asked to get involved with the rugby club through a contact made through my time volunteering as a student therapist at another club. I tried to start some adult tennis on my terms, but that didn't work and then along came someone else asking about courts and lessons and here we are.

It makes me think of one of John Kramp's "laws of lostology" from his book Out of their faces and into their shoes. Over time I've probably adjusted his original intention, but a quick look at my blog post about the book reminds me that what we are currently trying to do is to be involved in the search (Law 23). Simply by being out there, wherever "there" might be, in our case it's a tennis court or a rugby pitch, we're putting ourselves where people can meet us and we can meet them. Conversations happen, friendships form, relationships build. Always praying and hoping that an opportunity will arise to share something of our faith that will nudge people towards the kingdom.

Is that enough? For some it isn't. That's okay, I can live with that, I can give thanks for the difference. I'm not one for measuring my missional effectiveness only by how many times I get to share the story of Jesus, important as it is. I want people to hear, the understand and to know they have a choice to make. But I'm also convinced that we are often only part of one person's journey and leaving them ready for the next step is a crucial part of our responsibility.

So we will continue to take a slow approach. We won't try to pouch things along any faster than they are able to go. Sometimes that will probably mean that we won't push hard enough, but rather that than push too hard too often. It's a learning curve anyway.

Cracking on!

Well, so far I've managed 18 consecutive days of my 10k steps a day challenge. And all without resorting to wandering around the house late at night in a desperate bid to pass the target! It's very interesting both physically and mentally to engage in a challenge. There's the obsessive side of things where you find yourself checking your pedometer every so often through the day to see how you're doing, and the frustration of discovering you haven't gone nearly as far as you thought. Then there's the knowledge phase where you've figured out how many steps it take to do the weekly supermarket shop and factored that into you Friday plan (we shop on Fridays). You also get to know that it's 750 steps to the postbox or that an hour on the tennis court might give you 7k or even 8k if you have to run a lot. You might even become familiar with how many steps there to the bottom of the garden and back.

One of the biggest factors in any challenge is the motivation to keep going. There are ups and downs, highs and lows that catch you unaware from time to time. Just when you think you've got it cracked and that getting up, slipping into your trainers and pounding the streets has become part of your routine an injury or illness looks to stop in your tracks. Then you realise just how hard it is to motivate yourself to either keep going or get going once your back to fitness or health.

I remember the first time I did the challenge I suffered an injury to my calf. Determined not to miss a day, I iced it, elevated it, compressed it and fortunately got back out the very next day with no significant ill effects. I don't recall how far through the 100 days I was at that point, I just remember thinking I needed to keep going. Then we had the snow and the ice that followed, making walking quite difficult. But by then I was well into the challenge and I persevered.

Any of these things could have set me back and caused me to give up, but they didn't. I think that was because the walking challenge was part of a health and fitness programme I was committed to at the time. Both Anne and I wanted to lose some weight and get healthier for our daughter's wedding the following year, so that in itself was a motivating factor.

This time around it's mostly about doing the challenge. Hopefully I'll improve my fitness too, but I want to see if I can achieve the goal just for the sake of the goal. It's a bit like walking coast to coast just because you can. Maybe one day we'll do that too.

I don't know if anyone else has taken up the challenge to do 100 days that I suggested at the beginning of September, but you can start anytime, and even if you have to make two or three restarts it doesn't really matter.

Friday 12th Sept

The only mention yesterday of it being September 11th came at out Thursday morning social tennis. I can't recall anything in the news, but then again I may have missed it. Perhaps 13 years on it's time that a day many of us won't forget finds its resting place in history. No TV specials about what really happened, no drama documentaries, just a simple acknowledgement that the world changed and the impact of that change continues to reverberate today.

We had just move to Bedford and I was wandering in the garden when our new neighbour asked me if I'd seen the breaking news. I went back inside and put the TV on to see the events continue to unfold through that afternoon. Hastily we arranged to open the church. No big fanfare, just making sure we were there if anyone wanted a space to think, to pray. Some did.

At the time I wondered whether world leaders missed a chance to declare peace rather than war, but that time has passed and we find ourselves facing yet more difficult times and challenges as militancy rises across increasingly unsettled parts of our world. Some will see evidence of eschatological fulfilment, others simply the turmoil of the times. Bill Clinton, after his final term as president, came to the UK and spoke at the Labour Party Conference. He suggested that one of the things we desperately needed to do was to ask the question: "Why do they hate us so much" Not as some introspective search for our own guilt, but as a realistic, honest enquiry about our relationship with those who choose to attack us. We may think we know, but do we really know the answer to such a question? Perhaps we'd discover that the situation is as intractable as it appears, perhaps not. Sadly we cannot go back and try another solution.

The same is true for the impending vote on independence for Scotland. They too will not be able to run the clock forwards or backwards to see if the decision made in the poll is the best choice or not. I still think remaining a union is the right choice, and then within that union deciding how best to live and work alongside each other as nations within a nation. All the talk from both sides seems to be peppered with its fair amount of accusations and scaremongering. I hope that no matter what choice is made that we will be supportive of each other through whatever changes need to be made. I hope too that independence isn't just a reaction to some centuries old bitterness.

A Grand Night Out

So, last night we went to see Art Garfunkel at the Royal Festival Hall. When we booked the tickets back in March, the event was billed as an "intimate evening with Art Garfunkel". I'm not sure you could describe the Festival Hall as intimate, but it was a great evening and a real pleasure to listen to him sing live. You get a true sense of the nature of the voice when it's not polished through a studio production.

He sang, he told stories, he read prose and poetry. The audience was both attentive and appreciative. Accompanied by a solo acoustic guitar he gave us his interpretations of Kathy's song, The Sound of Silence, The Boxer, and a host of other songs from five decades of music. His poetry was funny, sensitive and thoughtful.

We both really enjoyed the whole thing and it's great to have now heard both Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel live in the past two years.

We don't go out very often, and always wonder why when we live in such close proximity to so much. But that's probably true of many others. After the concert we walked back over the river to Temple tube station to make our way back to Fenchurch Street for the train home. Crossing the river at night is quite a delight. The lights along the river and along the Embankment give you a whole new view of the city. Standing on the terrace of the Festival Hall you can see what we assumed was Charing Cross Station. It took us a little while to work it out, we don't usually see it from the above ground and from the south bank at that!

Years ago stations were mostly just stations. Bleak, uninteresting places through which you passed on your journey from one place to another. Rarely did you enjoy spending any time in them, but now they are hives of activity with shopping centres and restaurants that serve something far more appetising than curled edged sandwiches and questionable sausage rolls. I certainly feel no wave of nostalgia for the hours spent at St Pancras waiting for the train north to Nottingham. These days I could happily while away a couple of hours in a coffee shop or bookshop, even the champagne if pushed! Railway stations are not what they used to be and thank goodness for that!

2000 to go!

I know it's only been a week and a day, but I'm beginning to get back into a routine of doing my 10k steps each day. Getting through the weekend was a key this time around because of my new weekend routine of tennis and rugby. If I were simply playing tennis, then I'd probably notch up 10k quite easily, but because I'm coaching it's not quite so easy. And rugby takes up the whole afternoon but doesn't involve me in a lot of exercise. So I was quite pleased to have managed to hit my target both days.

Today I have about 2,000 steps left to do and that shouldn't be a problem. In fact I might go out for a stroll when I've finished this post. Tomorrow marks day 10 of the challenge, which was the initial target set to get me into a routine. My next target will be 25 consecutive days.

I had a quick look at the first time I did this 10k challenge. The statistics ares till quite impressive. Over the course of the year I kept a record I managed a total of 4,565,972 steps, which is about 2,283 miles. That's  about the length of Britain twice or the equivalent of walking from Seattle to Chicago by the looks of it on the map. Given it was only just over 6 miles a day, that suggests a coast to coast walk across America could be done in maybe 100 days? An interesting thought!

In the September of my challenge back in 2010 I managed to do 10k everyday, averaging 12,510. So far I'm ahead of that figure, but it is only the 9th! Still, it will be interesting to see how it goes.

It's not too late to join the challenge. It's good to have company, even if it's only virtual, and we can encourage one another to keep going when the rain and wind and cold and dark closes in on us. I remember days when I watched the rain and in the end had to pull on the waterproofs and just get out there. Then there were the days when the snow had come and then refrozen to create an ice-rink, but somehow I managed to stay upright most of the time and hit my stride each day.

So although you might have missed out on 10 consecutive days by the 14th (I think that's what I suggested), there's still plenty of time to get out and get moving. Of course you might want to include a bit of running now we know we actually does burn more calories, or maybe you could just breathe a bit harder when you walk!

Move more!

As a follow up to yesterday's post about energy consumption (runners are probably still rejoicing over the news), I remembered something I read in one of Mark Sisson's books about his approach to health and fitness. If you don't know of Mark he is the author of The Primal Blueprint and writes regularly on his blog Mark's Daily Apple. I don't remember the exact quote, but the principle could be expressed as move more, run sometimes. I think it was more like move slowly, run sometimes, I'd have to look it up to get it absolutely precise.

Anyway, the thing I want you to pick up is that you don't have to run all the time. If you're only just thinking about getting fitter, a little more healthy, and you either don't want to run or know you'd really struggle, then this simple mantra of moving more and sometimes moving a little faster might just be what you ned to get started. It's akin to what is called interval training in the fitness world. Forget going to the sports shop for some nice tight lycra running clothing and trying to choose form the bewildering array of trainers. Forget wondering about whether you're a pronator, supinator, or whether you should go barefoot or five- fingered. Just get something in which you can walk comfortably and maybe run a bit when you feel the urge, and hopefully you will feel the urge at some point!

Then set yourself an achievable target. You know I like the 10k steps a day challenge. As part of that challenge I like to try and do at least half in one hit as continuous exercise. Sometimes that will just be about walking, but sometimes I will run. Not very far. Maybe I'll alternate walking and jogging between lampposts. Sometimes I'll sprint! There's a nice row of posts on a path not too far from home, sometimes I start at one end and run from the first to third post, then walk to the next one and run the next two until I get to the end. Then I'll walk around the road in a half circle until I get to the start again and repeat the cycle. Other times I'll run for a couple of minutes and walk for a minute.

Whatever you do, make it fun and vary it when you can. There's nothing as dull as doing the same thing over and over again. What's worse is that your body gets used to it and you get less benefit, from a fitness point of view, as a result.

So go on, give it a try: Move more, run sometimes, have fun!

Running or walking?

According to simple physics, running a mile or walking a mile should require the same amount of energy, and by implication that means it should make no difference to the number of calories you use whether you run or walk. But the problem with that argument, and it's one we've almost all subscribed to over the years, is that it doesn't really take into account the differences between the way the body works when you run and when you walk.

I haven't done a lot of reading around this at the moment, but I did come across some interesting research that has been done that suggests that we will have to concede that running does in fact burn more calories than walking.  While simple physics might tell you that if you move a fixed mass over a fixed distance you will require the same amount of energy no matter how fast you move it, the physiology of our bodies means that we work (as in use energy) differently when we run compared to when we walk. We use more oxygen when we run and consuming oxygen requires energy which in turn raises our metabolic rate. One study found the overall difference in energy consumption to be around 100 Kj or about 25 Kcal (1 Kcal is what we would usually use as a dietary calorie).

So, if you can run, you will burn more calories over a given distance than you would walking it, but of course the point is that whether you run or walk, exercise is good for you. If by running you can only run say 3 days out of 7, but by walking you could walk 6 out of 7, then maybe, over the course of a week, you'd be better off walking.

The other thing that I want to look at, but I'm not sure I'll get the time or have the deep desire to do it, is the way some of the apps you can use measure the calorie burn of exercise. I use two apps, one for exercise, and one for food. The tow are linked and often report quite different results, probably because of the maths they use to make the calculations. That's okay, measuring my energy use is neither a high priority nor an exact science and certainly not the reason for using these particular apps. No, the algorithms aren't the issue, it's whether they take into consideration how much energy is being used above my basal metabolic rate.

So, yes we have probably got to concede that runners burn more calories than walkers over the same distance, but just because you're not a runner doesn't mean it's time to hang up your trainers. You might just have to go a bit further instead!!

Friday, Sept. 5th

Last night we watched the BBC drama about the development of radar through the work of Robert Watson-Watt and his team. How accurate the dramatisation was I don't know, that's a job for the historians. What I liked about the story was the portrayal of the creative process. Perhaps you have to be wired up a certain way to appreciate the way ideas developed as they sought solve the challenges they faced. For example, the problem of power. Solved not by sitting at a desk with a slide rule and sheet of paper, but by playing cricket on the beach.

This is the thing about creative thinkers, they have the imagination to connect dots into patterns that most people cannot see. But are they the only ones? Is it possible that we all have some ability to think outside the box, it's just that it's either been educated out of us or we've become to frightened of the consequences of failure to try it anymore? It's probably a bit of both, and it's rather.

Radar didn't just drop form the sky in a moment of absolute inspiration. It grew out of a project exploring the use of radio waves to detect storm clouds and thereby give pilots advance warning. But I still think the step forward marks Watson-Watt and his colleagues as giants upon whose shoulders we have the privilege of standing. Had he not conceived of the idea, would anyone else have done it?

It make me wonder whether some of the solutions to some of our problems, from the mundane to the world changing, are simply waiting for us to have the imagination of them. Maybe we need someone to start writing some inspirational science fiction that paints a picture of the future which is not about a burning, uninhabitable or inhospitable world, or a world fraught with technological or biological danger due to "science gone mad", and not some utopian dream gone right or wrong. Just a picture of a future full of possibilities that might stir our imagination and create some new solutions.

Okay, maybe that's a bit too prosaic for a Friday, but what about the challenges you face right now? If you could set your imagination free then perhaps you too could dream a solution that has so far eluded you. You just never know!

Taking up the walking challenge again!

I can't believe that it's 4 years since I set myself the challenge to walk a million steps in one hundred days. It all started with a challenge to walk 200,000 steps in August 2010. From there I started walking every day and kept a record of steps for the next year. I remember purposely choosing not to walk my daily target of 10k steps around day 105 to try and avoid becoming overly obsessive about it all, but continuing to record and challenge myself over the course of the following year. In August 2011 I set myself the target of walking 500,000 steps in a single month.

Well I think it's high time I took up the challenge again, so I've started to load up my pocket with my trusty pedometer and hit the streets. When it comes to being achievable, targets have to realistic. I'd like to do the 100 days again, and I think I can do it but it's more challenging this time than it was 4 years ago. Back in 2010 I could easily hit my target by walking up to the station and back twice a day. I'd get up and walk with Anne, call in at the office or just walk home again and then later in the day walk back into town or wait until the evening and walk up to the station to accompany Anne home. Now the station is only 8 minutes away, about half a mile, and so I have to make a plan to go and walk each day rather than simply incorporating into my schedule.

We're back to the discipline thing again, something I discovered last time and often talked about when asked how I managed to keep to the plan. So discipline it is. Actually, the last couple of days have been interesting because I've had a cold and not really felt like exercising. So instead of seeing my walk as exercise, I've simply gone out to get some fresh air. I've wandered more than walked purposefully and the steps have accumulated. I find getting a good 30-40 minutes done in one hit is great. It makes a good dent in the numbers game and rather than looking at the pedometer in the afternoon to discover I've only done 1,000 steps I might look and see that I only have another 2,500 to go to hit the 10k marker.

So how about joining me in this challenge? Let's make the first target to achieve 10k steps on 10 consecutive days over the next 2 weeks. That give you 14 days to do it and the chance for a couple of restarts if something should get in the way. I might even offer prizes to those who are nearby enough to not need me to post them!! Or maybe you can offer yourself your own prize. It doesn't have to be extravagant, a water bottle for example might be all you need, or if I'm giving out prizes, all you will get!

The rules will be simple enough: I'll trust you to be honest about what you actually do and the only criteria is that you manage 10 consecutive days. If you don't have a pedometer then I'd recommend the one I use. It's an Omron Walking Style II. It's been replaced I think by the mark III version, but I've seen the MkII still available in a few places. I like it because it seems to work quite well and you can stick it in a pocket rather than having to strap it to your hip like you have to with some devices. You can of course get an app for it with some devices I'm sure.

If you don't have a pedometer or can't wait for delivery to get started, then why not use a mapping app to measure the distance of your walk to the station or the office. For the purposes of this challenge we'll assume that 5 miles (8Km) is equivalent to 10K steps. Or you could use something like Runkeeper or Map my Run on the iPhone to measure a walk.

So that's it. 10 days is the first marker. If you don't quite make it first time around, keep going. when I first started in August 2010 I spent the first month working out was normal for me. That's not a bad idea, there will be plenty of time for you to pick up the challenge, it's never too late to have a go. It might be that hitting 5K will be a big step up for you personally and that 10K is just a step too far (puns intended and apologised for too!)

I hope to get fitter and healthier as a result because in the end just being able to say I've done 100 days again isn't really the point.

Friday, 29th August 2014

It's been one of those weeks where the weather has had quite an influence on my diary! Mostly because I was due to play in a gras court tennis tournament, but the rain washed out the first two days and I decided that time had run out and I needed to withdraw.The decision was helped by having commitments later in the week and the likely probability that the courts are so wet that I'm not sure they'll dry out much before the weekend anyway.

Fortunately the weekend wasn't so bad. In fact Sunday morning was really nice and rather interesting. I"d been asked if I'd coach the child of one of the adults who plays on a Saturday morning in our little social tennis group that's come together at the local recreation ground. In the process of preparing I met another parent with their daughter who was interested in joining and then two more and finally another parent came to me to ask if I would consider coaching their son. Now until they sign up and pay the money it's just a possibility, and by next weekend it might all have come to nothing, but you never know.

Just around three years ago we were in the final throes of our time as local church leaders. Things were pretty clear that how we wanted to pursue ministry didn't fit with the model the local church wanted. To be honest, we knew right from the start that it was going to be tough, but it turned out to so much harder than even I imagined. Anyway, that situation precipitated our buying a home of own and a change of direction. After two and a bit years in our new community we've begun to see signs of things opening. Working with the community, learning to be in the community, we're taking small steps through sport to engage with people.

Over the last couple of years we've often been asked how the new church is going, have we got a building yet, what have we been doing? Many of these questions presuppose a particular expression of mission and ministry that produces some gathered group in a building somewhere on a Sunday morning as a sign that we're succeeding in mission. For good or ill we've fought against that. Not that meeting together is unimportant or that gathering a group for worship and discipleship is irrelevant. It's just that we didn't want to be be defined by a model too soon, and we didn't want simply to reproduce what many others are already doing in our community.

So, instead of describing what church is and then trying to fit that into what we are doing, or worse still trying to fit what we are doing into a prescribed definition of church, we're simply trying to see what God is up to and how we can be part of that, building relationships as we go. We've talked about what else we can do if the Sunday morning coaching grows. About how we could open up the Pavilion for tea and coffee during the colder months, maybe have the Sunday papers out.

The pattern is simple, it is about responding to what we see around us, the opportunities that arise from just being amongst ordinary people doing ordinary things. We haven't cracked it by any means, and we're not celebrating some sort of breakthrough in mission. It may all come to very little. It may all disappear as quickly as it appeared. The council might ban us! Who knows.

What is exciting is that we don't know. There are no predictable outcomes, no established measures. When I was training as a therapist we were constantly told that we must learn to see through our sense of touch. We even spent one training session working with blindfolds on. Living a missional life is, in many ways, a process of learning to see without using your church-conditioned eyes. It's about setting aside the filters through which we always used to see things.

Measuring missional success is a tricky business. For some, the measure will always remain pretty much as it was in the legacy model of church. For others the measure may drift too far from the intentional outcomes of the kingdom. When I get worried about outcomes I remind myself of something I tell myself constantly while I play tennis. Process not outcome. Between points, especial when I mess up a shot or make an error, I flick my wristband and say to myself, "Process, not outcome." It's a simple reminder that if I focus on the process, the outcome will take of itself. On the other hand, if I focus solely on the outcome, the process invariably gets messed up.

When it comes to the kingdom, God does the saving, he takes care of the outcome because that's his job not mine. If I pay attention to the process, the being there for people,  making relationships, forming friendships, sharing stories and hearing stories, then I believe the outcome will take care of itself because it's in God's hands and not mine. This, I believe, is being intentional without being gladiatorial in mission.

What was it with king Saul?

Every time I read through the story of Saul I find myself wondering what went wrong with Saul. If you fall into the trap of comparing sin, then you might come to the conclusion that his offences were no worse than David's or even that David's sin was the more serious. But we know that such a comparison is pointless because all sin is sin from a Biblical perspective (Jas. 2:10). So what went wrong for Saul?

It seems to start with hiding in the luggage. It would be rather odd, to my mind at least, to suggest that God chose Saul because he knew he would fail and that would prove a point about how worn the nation had been for asking for a king. It's pretty obvious that God was displeased with heir demand to be like the other nations, but I do not believe that God is so petty that he would do such a thing. No, I'd rather look more positively at the way God would use the monarchy to continue to work out his plan and purpose.

So Saul was not chosen to fail. He had all the potential to be a great king, a good leader of the people. But he became driven. His call became lost in the need to hold on to power. Dare one suggest that this might even be true for one or two of the high profile church leaders of our own day? Rapidly growing a church from nothing to thousands seems to come at a price. When churches become corporations it must be very hard not to become the king of your own empire. Peter Parker's uncle had it right when he spoke of great responsibility being associated with great power.

When he first became king, Saul was greeted with scepticism that soon turned to adulation when he won his first battle. But within only a few chapters the king who had led thousands had only a few hundred with him. What was more important was that he was becoming less and less connected, making every more rash decisions and vows.

Did Saul confess his mistakes, did he repent of his sin? Is this what makes him different to David? Saul was not described as a man after God's own heart, but then neither were a number of good kings either. David was not a "special one", but clearly something was different.

I once caused a minor tremor when I wondered aloud about what set Peter apart from Judas? Both had betrayed Jesus to some extent, Peter through his denial, Judas directly. But once again you can't weight their actions and say one comes up worse than the other. No, the thing that seems to distinguish these two is that one of them dealt with it through confession and therefore found forgiveness and the other chose to deal with their sin on their own. One judged himself, the other trusted the judgement of God. Could this have been Saul's problem too? Did he become so selfish, so driven that he paid the price for his own sin and never put himself in the hands of God? I'll keep reading and I'll keep trying to make sense of it all.

Of ice buckets and challenges

Social media is awash with videos of people doing the ice-bucket challenge. I haven't looked up the origin of this movement, and quite honestly I'm not that interested. I'm not saying I don't care about ALS (or Motor Neurone Disease as it is more commonly known here in the UK). I'm just not that interested in how it all began.

What is fascinating is the way peer pressure and social media seem to be working. I haven't been nominated, and there's no point nominating me anyway because I'd probably just ignore the whole thing. Again, not because I'm some sort of callous uncaring individual but because I'm an individual who makes their own decisions and choices. And who's to say whether I have or have not made a donation anyway.

As I understand it, the basic idea of the challenge is to drench yourself in ice water or make a donation to the charity. I'm rather hoping that everyone who soaks themselves also chooses to make a donation and not just a soggy nomination of three other people. If you've yet to see Patrick Stewart's challenge yet, then find it, watch it and think about it. Without words he makes the point wonderfully well.

Then read some of the comments. You won't get too far before you come across those who miss the point entirely. Perhaps we need a few more silent videos of people writing cheques to remind people that this isn't just about getting wet, but there's a serous side to it all as well. In the meantime, if pouring ice cold water over yourself is something you want to try, then make sure you put plenty of ice in the water first. Just using cold water is surely cheating!

You can donate to the Motor Neurone Disease Association in the UK through their website mndassociation.org.

Friday, 22nd Aug 2014

It almost feels as if I ought not to reflect on the things I'm going to share just in case I somehow jinx them and they come to nothing. Ah well, here goes!

It's been an interesting few weeks when it comes to opportunities to live out this missional life. Defining missional remains challenging and the more it becomes a buzz word the more undefined it seems to become. Something doesn't become missional just because you attach the tag missional to it.

Anyway, to the things we've been doing. I mentioned last week the sports event we ran in the village for junior aged children. We didn't have great numbers of kids turning up, but those who did had a good time and I got to meet some people (parents, passers-by, local authority representatives) and share some ideas and vision for the park with them. Is this missional? I suspect the answer could be both yes and no. What was interesting was that everyone with whom I spoke was very positive about what we were doing. I don't know how many of these people would have come had it been a church based event. Not because it was in church, but because it would probably have been run totally internally and not have engaged with organisations and authorities beyond the church. It was a community run project and that made the difference.

Perhaps, in the process of sharing a vision for the park and the story of how we got to where we are at this moment in time is one component of our missional journey as we seek to be part of the community. The gospel after all demands incarnation and where better to live it out than amongst the people Jesus misses most? We've been living in our new community for just over two years now and slowly we are beginning to make connections. It is a slow process, but hopefully slow will also mean deep rather than shallow.

Other things have begun to take shape include some tennis activities in the park and my new role as club therapist at May and Baker RFC. The tennis has taken shape through connections made via Streetlife, a social media platform about community life. We now have a small group of 5 adults playing on a Saturday morning and I do a bit of coaching with them. I've also been asked to provide a bit of coaching on a more formal basis. With a couple of the adults who are playing regularly we're talking about how we can access some school tennis courts where we might be able to start a local club, which would be really interesting.

And then there's the therapy stuff with the rugby club. That's an interesting challenge too in so many ways.

So it seems that finally, after two and half years, that things are beginning to emerge and take a little bit of shape. It's not what you'd describe as runaway success and it certainly won't mean a book deal and lots of invitations to speak at conferences, although I did get an invitation to write an article for a journal that was only going to cost me £400 to take part. And I thought they paid you for writing!! Still we don't do this for fame and fortune, and when you look at what happens to those we raise up onto pedestals, then who would want that anyway.

Which bring me to my final thought this Friday. Reading some of the evangelical news this week, we are once again reminded that success, whatever that looks like, is no guarantee of continued faithfulness and integrity. It's tough, I assume, to remain humble and spiritually grounded when your getting the applause and praise and the criticism that come along too. The latter sometimes out of jealously, sometimes out of genuine concern. We seem to expect so much from those we admire, and even in church circles we haven't learnt much at all from the cult of celebrity that pervades our modern culture. I even heard on the breakfast news one morning this week the newsreader describe President Obama as a celebrity, the biggest one of all no less. The man is President, he a politician, a world leader, He is surely not a celebrity.

When it comes to church leaders we would do well not to create a cult of evangelical celebrity around them. It doesn't help them and it doesn't help us. There are no superstars in the life of the church. Pedestals are for vases and works of art, not servants.

Friday 15th Aug, 2014

It's been quite a week. The tragic loss of Robin Williams sadly produced some negative comments, but there were also many positive things said. That his daughter has chosen to close her Twitter account reminds us there are plenty of mindless, thoughtless people who fail utterly to understand the nature of the emotional and mental turmoil he was undoubtedly experiencing.

For me, it's been a very positive week, with several highlights. Several months ago I proposed the idea of a sports week for children at our local recreation ground. I wasn't sure we were going to be able to organise it, and we definitely needed lots of help with admin and just knowing what to do to put something like this together. Well, the week arrived and on Monday we had our first day. We haven't been packed out, but all the kids seem to have had a good time as we've explored football, cricket, bowls and tennis. With all the talk of children staying indoors and playing computer games all day, it's been nice to see a few running, jumping and generally having a good time in the great outdoors.

On Thursday I got to do some tennis coaching, and realised how much fun that can be and actually how much I really enjoy doing it. We had some great help from a local tennis club, but it turned out that I was the only one with any coaching qualification. So I ended up running one group with the help of another adult and we had a lot of fun.

On Tuesday I started work as the therapist for a rugby club. It's lower league level stuff and really only expenses for pay, but it's really good to be putting my skills to use. I guess that's what's been so good about this week, that I've been able to do things I like doing and things that I'm actually good at doing! That also includes leading a couple of funerals, winning a tennis match and "networking", as they say, with various people with job titles at the local council that I can't remember let alone understand what they are!

So I'm ending the week feeling quite positive. It's not that often that I get to be so busy doing such a wide range of things I love to do. Saturday will be my first day on the side of the pitch ready to run on and administer the cold spray and vaseline. That of course is after leading the adult tennis group we've started in the village.

Maybe one day I'll actually make a living from it all.

Why I prefer rugby

There are lots of things that commend rugby over "football" in my world, but I accept that some have yet to see the light! On the other hand this clip makes two things really clear. First , the respect the players have for the referee, and second the authority of the referee. Listen carefully and you will hear Nigel Owens tell the No.9 that he will get penalised if he carries on with his behaviour.

Notice too that neither player nor captain say a word!

This most definitely is not soccer!!

Why I have't switched energy companies or bank accounts.

A number of months ago there was a lot of talk about investigating energy companies and their rather predictable response that power cuts are imminent as a result. It's all wrapped up in the issue of prices and the apparent reluctance of consumers to switch suppliers. The same argument comes around about banking and current accounts. apparently we're reluctant to do that too.

In all of this the basic assumption is that somehow the consumer is either apathetic or confused about how simple it is to switch. But there's one question they seem never to ask, Is the consumer happy with what they have? You see I haven't switched either my bank account or my energy supplier for the simple reason that I'm actually quite happy as I am. Perhaps I could save a little money, perhaps the benefits of another a bank would better suit my current needs, but I don't care because I'm happy as I am. I like the service I've had from my bank over the last nearly 40 years so why should I change?

Quite honestly, I get rather annoyed that regulators and financial whizz kids or consumer champions suggest that I'm too apathetic or uninformed to change. It's more likely that I'm a little too cynical, particularly when it comes to energy suppliers. If they could all save me the money they say they can, they'd be paying me to use their gas or electricity!

When it comes to energy supply, I find myself wondering whether privatisation was ever in the interests of the consumer. We were told, back in the day of selling off those assets, that energy prices would drop as competition drove the market. Call me cynical, but I don't remember being told about the need to satisfy the demands of shareholders, or the implications of our energy supply being owned by overseas companies, or anything about what the likely scenario would be when our natural gas and oil resources began to run out. It was imply assumed that a privatised industry would lower consumer prices whilst maintaining investment and research. It didn't.

The old nationalised energy industries might have been somewhat cumbersome, but private industry is rarely any better run. Senior executives still get paid over the odds for the job they do and they don't necessarily seem to do it any better just because there are shareholders to whom they are accountable. I know we can't go backwards, and we can't assume that things would have been better or worse under a nationalised system. So I'm just wondering out loud really about in whose best interest are these private companies run and how will breaking them up even further help refocus them on the needs of the consumer? If privatisation was about consumer choice, how come most of the big companies want you to get both your gas and electricity from them and while you're at it buy your insurance, telephone, internet and banking through them at the same time.

And the banks, well their reputation couldn't get any more tarnished. Fixing interest rates, mis-selling insurance, the list goes on. I suspect that the debates and arguments about current accounts will go and on. They will continue to threaten to charge for account services, but I guess things will pretty much stay the same. Stay in credit and it will be free. This is possibly unique to the UK. Friends from America certainly find it amazing that we generally are able to access free banking on private current accounts.

I have checked the comparison websites, and the savings or benefits are marginal at best insignificant most of the time. So I haven't changed and I probably won't. If they have been for you then that's great.

What I really don't like is someone on the TV or radio telling me that because I haven't switched that I'm somehow responsible for the low levels of switching and that this in turn is somehow keeping prices up. It would be nice to hear someone suggest that companies and banks failing to recognise and reward loyalty is the reason they maintain higher prices and not because consumers don't switch supplier every year or so.

Friday, August 8th

On Wednesday I happened to go into London to meet Anne. The plan was to walk from Canary Wharf to Fenchurch Street for no other reason than we can and the exercise is good for us. Our route takes us along the Thames Path and down a few streets that have some interesting buildings hidden away on them.

The exercise was somewhat negated by the stop at a small Italian restaurant we found last time we were out exploring for a park where we could play rounders with anyone from Anne's work who might be interested. Having eaten, we set off on the final stretch of the walk from Wapping to Fenchurch Street mindful of the time and knowing we would probably miss the next train home and have to wait a while for another. As it turned out we caught a train to Upminster and arrived just in time to ump of a bus that stops right outside the house.

Now, I'm telling you all this because rather than take the street route up to the station we decided to go under Tower Bridge and up past Tower Hill. It's a bit further round, but it's a nice detour. We hadn't intended to do this, we just decided on the spur of the moment to make the detour. I don't think either of us was aware of the sight that would greet us as we passed the Tower. Although I'd heard about it, I hadn't realised that the ceramic poppy sculpture, for that's the best way I can describe it, was at the Tower. Appearing to spill out of the side of the building and flowing around it in both directions, our first sight was at the river side as the poppies took the form of a waterfall entering a pool. It's quite a sight, a poignant one at that, and worth seeing if you're coming to town.

With the world in what seems like a never ending circle of turmoil, as nations continue to fight with each other and seemingly with themselves, it's not a bad time to reflect on the past and present loss that is the constant companion of war. It is surely something of a miracle that we haven't been sucked into another worldwide conflict. How easily could the Middle Eastern conflicts of the last two decades created a wider scale of conflict. Or what about the Balkans or the present situation in Ukraine and the Crimea, a place not unfamiliar with fighting.

When you think that the Great War was finally precipitated by the assassination of single head of state, how much could any of these situations have been the catalyst for something more all-encompassing?

If there is hope to be found, and surely there is hope to be found, then this is where it is. Not in the fear of what might happen, or even in the fear of what is currently happening, but in the possibility of peace because we've experienced a long period of relative peace for so many years. War is not like a sleeping volcano or dormant geological fault line to which we apply some simple statistic and arrive an the inevitable conclusion that sooner or later it will erupt or shift. War is something we can and must manage, for it is of our own making. And the hope is that if we can wage war we can also wage peace.

This in no way reduces the theological route to peace and the hope those of us who share a faith perspective have for the world around us. It fact it ought to strengthen our resolve to pray and work for peace in the world. To support and encourage those who do and challenge those who don't. How we do the latter I'm not too sure, but there are those who do and who stand for peace in powerful places. At times we've allowed our theology to get in the way of peace, but we are hopefully wiser than we were!

If you'd have told me then....

It's a classic start to a story, the line, "If you'd have told me 10 years ago...", and yet somehow it may be cliche but it's so true. If someone had said to me 5 years ago that I would be doing the things I'm doing now, I'm not sure I'd have believed them and if they'd told me 10, 20, or 30 years ago I think I most definitely would have considered them to be wide of the mark.

So, if I could access time travel, would I go back and tell my younger self to do things differently. Would I tell them not to do certain things because only pain and heartache lay that way, or would I accept that I wouldn't be who I am and where I am if I had not followed those paths? We find ourselves living in South Essex because we've gone through some very painful times. The truth be told, form an outside point of view, the move to Upminster was a disaster and possibly the most painful period of our lives. We will never know whether we would still be serving churches full-time had it not been for that two years. On the other hand we would not have considered buying a house where we have and doing what we are doing had we not been through that particular mill. I may have to live with the pain of feeling a complete failure, and the pain of rejection we both felt, but that may be the price we have to pay to engage with the future we now have.

Perhaps I was never shaped for ministry and church leadership. Perhaps those twenty years were the error and this is what I should always have pursued. Who knows! What I do know is that were I to discover time travel, I think in the end I'd probably leave things pretty much as they are. I wouldn't interfere. It's an appealing thought to be able to go back and rerun the experiment and compare results, but you can't keep dong it until you get the answer you prefer. Life doesn't work like that. Life is not a repeatable experiment, you have to live with the results as they come along, good and bad.

If I changed anything it might be to tell myself not to get on that bike in '74 that resulted in my broken collarbone, or maybe even earlier I'd have suggested not climbing up the outside of the slide in the park, the slide from which I fell onto the concrete below and knocked myself out fracturing my skull (just a little fracture). Maybe I'd tell myself to go to university for a year, meet Anne and then change course and study physiotherapy instead. On the other hand, maybe I'd leave well alone and just hand over a book on nutrition and fitness and say don't ever let yourself get unfit and unhealthy!

There go my Saturdays!

So, yesterday I had a meeting with a local rugby club about working with them in my capacity as a sports & remedial massage therapist and I'm starting next week! It will be quite a challenge, but I'm looking forward to it, albeit a little apprehensively.

My role is to look after the players and help with injury rehab etc. I'll also be doing pitch-side stuff. I've booked myself onto a one-day taping workshop and I've already done pitch-side first aid and a kinesio-taping course. What I hope to do is to apply my particular skill set to the role rather than try to be something I am not. I'm not a physio', and I've made that clear, but I do have skills and knowledge that I think will be really useful to the club.

The next step is to figure out what needs to go in the first aid bag and how much tape to buy! The club doesn't have a lot of money, show me an amateur sports club that does, so we will need to be careful and buy wisely.

I haven't seen a fixture list, but the first game is set for a couple of weeks time and the season runs through into April. It's strange to think that after 20 years of my weekends being shaped by the needs of the church that I've now swapped that for the needs of a rugby club! I guess that makes the last two years or so a bit of a sabbatical from weekend busyness!

I'm hoping that by taking on this role it will open opportunities to run more clinics and expand my private practice. We shall have to wait and see. What's exciting is the possibility and the thought that things are beginning to take a bit of shape. I wonder if I will feel the same way when we reach to dark cold night of mid-winter training!!