Making a start in self-organisation

Jeff said:

Ooooo aaaaah. More more..! ;)Still trying to find time to
take this plunge. I know that sounds like I'm not committed to wanting to be
organized, but give me a first step here...

So here’s my first step.

1. Plan the date you’re gong to do this. Don’t think about it, plan it, make the decision to deal with all the stuff and set the time aside to do it. If necessary, plan several dates for the different parts of the process like stray papers, books, desk drawers. I know that David Allen advocates doing the whole sweep in one go, but I’ve found it more rewarding planning different things for different days. It was a big win for me to get my desk clear and tidy and it encourages me to attack the filing and the bookshelves.

As a recovering disorganiser, I know it’s a disciplined choice to change the habit. So take out your diary now, block out a couple of days in a week’s time and keep the date.

2. Go shopping! If you want to make this fun, and believe me it can be fun, go shopping for some supplies. My friend Mark introduced me to the really useful box idea (You can just see it sitting to the right of the picture) and so I went and got a box and the 1-31 and 1-12 files. You can make your own of course with square cut folders. If you can get them, the tabbed folders are really useful and the post-it tape also very useful. I’m an A4 person and the 9-litre box takes the A4 files and folders nicely. In the UK you can get A4 versions of the index files from Amazon. I also bought a label maker (I said you could have some fun, although a label maker might not strike you as fun!)

3. Collect all your unprocessed stuff into one place. If you’re going the whole hog, then that means everything, but if you want a step-by-step approach like I’m using, then start with all the paper that’s accumulated. I took over the dining room table for several days. Fortunately we have a separate dining room so it wasn’t going to be a problem for a couple of days and the truth is, a lot of stuff gets left on the table anyway.

4. Begin to process it. My first pass through all this unprocessed paper was to separate it into discrete piles. I know this isn’t necessarily the GTD way, but it worked for me. I had a pile of recyclable paper, a pile of stuff that needed shredding, a pile of stuff that related to church, school etc. I then did the recycling and the shredding. It would not be an exaggeration to say that two thirds of the paper disappeared at that point. I then took the stuff that just needed to be filed and filed it. I’ve deferred actually doing a filing purge until another day.

I then took each pile that was left in turn and made a decision about each piece of paper. The decision was simply a choice between “do it”, “defer it”, “delegate it” or “dump it”. At this point “defer” simply meant putting it to one side, whereas “do it” was for things that I could sit down right then and deal with very quickly. Eventually the “defer it” pile got turned into scheduled actions or moved into a review folder to come back to at review time.

This narrowed the piles and daylight began to appear.

As I went I also began adding things to my task list, my diary and TR (Thinking Rock). I must admit I put some easy wins in the list because that made me feel good about what I was doing. As an aside I actually found it quite refreshing to write something on the list, then do it, then cross it off. It sounds silly, but it really helps to see those tasks disappear and feel like you’re winning the battle.

After about three days of sifting and processing I had a clear desk and all my stray paper had a home. That doesn’t mean it was in the right place, there’s still a lot of files to sort out, but I’m on the way.

I found that as I processed there were many things about which I felt I couldn’t make a decision in the moment. So I deferred those into the tabbed files for review at the end of the week. This really helped as fatigue set in and my mind was slowing down.

The key is to keep reviewing. I now check my lists and files everyday.

I’m refining how I use my tabbed folders. For example, I have a tab for receipts. When I come home, I take my receipts and put them in the tab. Then, when I get a space when I need a break from a more demanding task, I open the tab, take out the receipts and start entering them into my accounts software.

Remember: Collect; Process; Organise; Review;Do. (As David Allen says!)

How my desk (and study) is changing for the better

I know it might seem like I've become an evangelist for GTD, but I assure that's not the case. It's just that I'm actually quite amazed, and a little thrilled, about the difference getting more control into my study is making to me overall. I just happen to have alighted on GTD and I'm experimenting with it.

What I like is the simplicity of the approach: Collect-Process-Do. Actually trying to implement this strategy has given me the reason to tidy up my study, but it's not the whole reason.

The story begins with a number of realisations. First, I needed to be organised. My study was a mess and that meant my mind was a mess too. A mess in the sense of no order and no system to track and monitor what I was doing. Second, I came to the realisation that one thing that needs to change for us as a church is accountability. And if I'm not holding myself accountable for getting things done, then how can I hold other people accountable for what the should be getting done? Third, I want to be more effective in what I do. I have so many things with which I have some level of involvement that it's impossible to keep it all my head. Well now I'm learning how not to store it there but elsewhere.

These then were some of the reasons that I took the plunge, not only to tidy up, but also to try and instill some discipline into my workflow. Look at the results. The first picture is my desk as it typically was. The second is my desk as it is now. The thing is I haven't tidied it up for the picture, it's actually like this most of the time! At the end of most days, I put stuff away, I process it in order to leave my desk empty for the following day just like I now leave my email inbox empty. I know I'll have days when it gets a little messy. But at least now there are no piles of loose papers piling up on the corner.

And my filing cabinet top is the same. It used to have an 18" high pile of papers with three full trays behind it. Next to my printer was another tall stack and there was another unruly bunch of stuff on the floor. All this has gone and order is emerging.

And you know what, it feels good to finally be breaking the pattern of years of marginal, fly by the seat of your pants, disorganisation.

Have I missed anything in the last 2 weeks since I began this process? Yes. I meant to email a document to someone but didn't because... it never made it to my list of actions. On the other hand I think I've actually delivered in some ways that were not the case before.

I'ts a strange experience, but one I hope to get used to. So please forgive me if I sound like a compulsive organiser, I'm not, I'm just enjoying the freedom that comes with a bit of structure.

At hand files

Many thanks have to go to my friend Mark for supplying me with ideas and products to help me in my quest to get organised.

Whenever I've tried to reorganise my stuff in a more orderly fashion in the past, I've always come up against what to do with the things I need close at hand. The things I'm working on right now, or the things that I can't deal with in the moment and need to check back on in a few hours or days. In the past this has been my desk-side pile, which inevitably got out of hand, became two piles, then tree, then just a heap of stuff mixed together. Well, thanks to tabbed folders, those days are over!

I currently have two tabbed folders sitting in my "Really Useful Box" that I got from the stationers. I have one folder for church related things and one for non-church. I'm hoping that these won't grow too much into amorphous storage systems, but only regular reviewing (the cornerstone it seems of making any organisational system work) should prevent that happening.

As an example, my church folder has tabs for:

Things I need to give to other people

Preaching plans

Pastoral care

Core BPV's (beliefs, practices and virtues: This is something I'm working on derived from The Connecting Church)

Church magazine

Church display stuff

David and Kylie's wedding

David and Tina's wedding

The two weddings are fairly short term projects, one this weekend and one in September. Once the wedding is over anything useful can be filed and anything not useful can be binned. The church magazine can accumulate ideas for the next issue, is a place for the draft of the current issue, you get the picture.

The great advantage of these files is that they are right there where I can reach them, so I can review them, process them and work on their contents very easily. I like this a lot.

The other great thing Mark introduced me to was post-it note tape. Just like post-it notes it sticks and peels off, but it's on a roll. That means you can put a strip down the front of the tabbed folder and write on it. When you've finished you can remove the tape, put another strip on and reuse the folder. Marvellous! I write in pencil too, so I can erase an index when I've processed the contents of a tab and no longer need it.

Organising my inbox

I made some recent comments about handling email and mentioned that some of the folders I use may need to change. Well, after a week of the new system it works fine but there are some rough edges. Here's what I've done.

I now have a folder structure that includes the following sub-folders under my inbox:

@Attend to: for emails that I need to do something about but can't do just at the moment (if you are a GTD-er they fall into the "more than 2 minute" category of actions).

@Follow up: For emails that are threads of conversations that I will need to follow up at some point or that I need to track in a non-urgent way.

@Read/review: For emails that (as it says on the can) I want to read and review because they contain something of potential interest that I can't look at right now but don't want to lose sight of.

@Replies no follow up: I have some emails to which I've replied but that don't need following up. I could just put them into the archive folder or delete them, but I've decided that this choice should be part of a review process. So this folder is just a place to store those replies during the week. Then, at the end of the week, I can review them and process them.

@Waiting for: This is for emails I've sent and am waiting for a response from some else.

The "@" symbol means that these folders appear alphabetically directly below my inbox. This is very useful in terms of seeing the folders among the list of folders.

The change has been to add the "read/review" and the "replies no follow up" folders. I found I was looking at emails and wondering where they fitted in my system. I have my main archive, which I review from time to time (hopefully a little more often now I'm getting organised!) and I have different folders for different archives (things like online orders and receipts for example). These new folders give a place to put new emails before they disappear into the vault of my archive. More than that, they allow me to review the status of all current and recent emails on a daily basis without having to wade through too many messages.

The end result is that my inbox is rarely going about 10 messages, and is usually empty once I've processed incoming mail.

Exploring GTD-Paper notes

As you know I'm exploring GTD as a mechanism for organising my workflow more systematically (and thereby less chaotically). To that end I'm reading the book and experimenting with Thinking Rock.

In a recent leaders meeting I even found myself asking out loud, "What's the next action we need to take on this?" And I found myself doodling in my notebook trying to arrange my notes to take account of this new-found determination to know what we were going to do and who was going to do it. What I needed was a notebook, or a notepad, that had all the relevant boxes on it to help me focus on getting things like "next actions" down on paper. The problem is that I can't find one.

The only thing like it that I've come across is Action pads and notebooks. Although available to international customers, the shipping rate is too high to make it worth my while ordering some to try. So, I decided I'd have a go at setting out my own note sheet. I've called it "Thinking Paper" simply because I've tried to tie it in to Thinking Rock and I needed a name for the file. It looks like this:

It's a first draft and I'll try using it over the coming weeks and refine it as I go. Or maybe not if it works.

It has space for the project or meeting, the vision or purpose and organising/who. Date and topic are on the right. There's a large box for notes and at the bottom a box for Sub-project if there's a project within this project that needs to be developed.

Bottom right is a box for Maybe/someday. The Next Action boxes have a space for the action and for a context and waiting for. I've also included a "Do ASAP" check box and a space for a date if this is a scheduled task. Below that is space for a name if the action is delegated.

I thought I might turn it into a notebook by printing it double-sided and then using a comb binder to make the notebook. I seem to remember when I was at college you could pre-punched sheets through which you threaded a spiral binder thingy.

If you'd like a pdf version of it, leave a comment and an email contact and I'll send you one, or just email me direct if you know my email address!

You may want to visit D*I*Y Planner to look at their range of pages for all sorts of organisers.

Reaching the end of the path

So here we are, the intrepid explorers at the end of the Greensand Ridge.

After 40 miles of varied walking, Jeremy and I finally reached our destination in Gamlingay.

We've walked by canals, through meadows, alongside woodlands and up and over a few small hills. We discovered an area of Special Scientific interest that I don't know was there, and view Bedfordshire from a great number of different places.

The path was generally easy walking, although around Millbrook and Ampthill and then Maulden, there were one or two climbs that needed negotiating, but nothing difficult. For me the hardest thing was crossing the A1 trunk road on the footbridge. Not my favourite thing, heights, but it had to be done and I'm quite proud of myself for making it across. Here are a couple of views which made the walk worthwhile.

And finally, a big thank you to our transport officer, Anne (my wife) who drove around the countryside dropping us off and picking us up.

Stepford cars?

In a conversation with my daughter Ally after watching Stepford wives I was reminded about the story of Bill Gates comparing the computer industry with the car industry.

I managed to track down a version of the story on the net. Here it is:

If cars were like computers

At a recent computer exposition, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If General Motors had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, GM issued a press release stating: "If General Motors had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason, you would simply accept this.
Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive -- but would run on only five percent of the roads.
The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.
The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

Handling email

In my newly organised world (!) I'm trying to find better ways of handling my inboxes and emails are one of those inboxes that can easily get out of hand. To combat this I'm trying a new strategy which aims to empty my inbox every day. I used to wait until my inbox had about 100 messages before I would go through them and weed out the stuff that didn't need to stay there. I do have a folder structure for archiving emails, but it was a bit hit and miss. So I'm trying a new approach.

If you're a PC user, and I still am, you may use either Outlook or Outlook Express to handle email. I used to use Outlook Express to do emails, keeping them separate from my diary and notes etc in Outlook. At the moment I'm trying Outlook. All I'd say is that the two programs are different. Outlook has some functions that I never knew existed, and probably a few I haven't found yet, Outlook Express seems to do things Outlook won't, or can't do. For example, I haven't found the button yet in Outlook that will auto-complete email addresses in the way Outlook Express does so. Perhaps my old 2000 version of Outlook doesn't do such things!

Anyway hopefully my new approach can be modified for either and adapted to other email handling programs.

The first thing I've done in Outlook is create some new folders, one for emails which are waiting for a response, one for emails which need my attention, and one for emails that I need to follow up in some way at a later date. It's early days and these categories may need to change. In Outlook, if you start the name of these folders with "@" they will appear directly below your inbox. You can do the same in Outlook Express, just highlight the inbox and click .

When I check my email, I put incoming mail into either the "attend to" or "follow up" folders. Anything left in my inbox that's not assigned to one of these folders is either filed in an archive folder (church, school, invoices etc.) or left to be moved to the delete folder at the end of the day.

The folder for emails that are waiting for a response from someone else is quite useful. In Outlook you can populate this folder using a simple rule. I picked up this tip from David Allen's website at davidco.com. Having created the folder, you then set up a rule which puts a copy of any outgoing mail with "wf" in the body of the text into the "@waiting for" folder. I then just have to remember to type "wf" after my name (some of you may have seen this beginning to appear in my emails) and Outlook takes of it. Sadly, Outlook Express does'nt have the same ability in it's rules, at least not that I could see.

All this got me looking for software that might help me organise my email and I came across something called ClearContext. I haven't downloaded it (there's a free personal edition) because I want to try my new system to see how that works and because I'm using Thinking Rock to organise tasks and the like and using Outlook to do the same would add confusion and complexity to my embryonic workflow system.

ClearContext allows you to create tasks from emails and categorise them and do a whole lot more. It looks quite interesting and if you're at a different organisational place you might want to give it a look.

Overall I have to say that's it's quite satisfying to open up my inbox at the start of the day and see it empty. It's also nice to know that I can click on a folder and see all the messages that are waiting for a response from someone or that I need to do something about in the next hour or day or whenever.

Thinking Rock

What I like about Thinking Rock so far is the way I can list all my projects (Things I'm thinking about, or working on right now) and then list my actions (what I need to do) and give them a context in which to do them. My contexts include things like "preparation", "research", "with leaders", "at church" etc.

So, on Monday I had a church leaders meeting and I pulled all my "with leaders" actions. It was great! Now, if I use the system properly, I can enter actions onto my list and forget about them until they come due.

I guess the baseline simplicity of this is that I now have a place to capture all the thoughts I have over the course of a day or a week or a month about a meeting or event, or anything. I no longer have to try and retain all that data in my head, which was my fundamental problem with organising myself.

I know this isn't rocket science, and I don't expect to suddenly become the best organised person in the world, but I'm actually excited about having some structure, and for those who know me, that's a really strange thing for me to say!

The other side effect so far is that my study is now almost completely clear of stray piles of paper that don't have a home.

For quite some time I've tried to work with one notebook in which I capture ideas, 'phone calls, meeting notes etc, ready to transfer to more appropriate storage (appropriate to the data that is), and TR will help give a place to the "to do" list stuff that never really made to a list because I could never manage to write down everything on one list using paper.

If you've got any helpful suggestions about how you corral paperwork, let me know. I'm starting on my filing system which has to said is more a place to hide stuff than find it!

getting organised

Okay, confession time. I'm not wired for great organisation but I know that I need to get better at it if I'm going to minister effectively. So I keep reading and looking for things that might help me in my search for the Holy Grail of a well organised life.

Recently, by an odd route, I found myself watching a demonstration video about a product called Omnifocus. It caught my imagination and I followed the trail to David Allen and the GTD (Get things done) approach. So impressed I've bought the book to read!



Now, I'd never heard about GTD until my friend Mark threw it into a conversation this week. So my curiosity was piqued and I began to read and search the Internet for something like Omnifocus that was available now. This is how I found Thinking Rock.

Thinking Rock is a GTD based idea munching, project organising, action taking bit of free software that runs on Mac or PC (a good thing considering I'm looking to try out Mac-dom in the autumn).

Last year I had a stab at Open Workbench, but I didn't really find it very intuitive and it left me more exasperated than organised. I think that's because I've never used project management software before and I was lost from the very start.

Enter Thinking Rock.

I've been using it for just a few hours and it's fun. Not everything makes sense to me yet, but I can see some really helpful things arising from this kind of system. It's less demanding than MS Project style software and I've already begun to organise some of my tasks and thoughts into projects.

So if you're like me and you're looking for something that might help you plan projects without mangling your brain, you might like to try Thinking Rock. I know there are other applications out there, and I have to say I'm really looking forward to Omnifocus reaching the market at some point, but TR looks like a good solution for the in-between time.

The walk (2)

Yesterday, Saturday, we did the second section of the Greensand Ridge.

Setting off from Eversholt we made our through woods, along tracks and over a few ups and downs to Clophill. We covered just short of 12 miles and have now complete 22 miles of the 40 mile route. Interestingly, from Eversholt to Clophil we dropped about 200ft overall. On the other hand we had many a climb and descent along the way. If I took my time I could work out how much climbing and descending we did. I'll have to look at my digital OS mapping, but I think we climbed up and down at least 4 times. My feet certainly knew I'd been out for a walk.

Along the way we passed through an area of special scientific interest that would, and probably does, go unnoticed by almost everyone who passes by. The walk detours from the ridge to take the area in, otherwise we wouldn't have known it was there. It sits just alongside the A6, half a mile or so north of Clophill.

Our lunch stop was by the golf course at Milbrook.

In the photograph you can just see a small section of the test track tot he left of the buildings. Just left of centre, on the mid-horizon are the airship sheds at Cardington. They're about 6 miles away at a guess and the far horizon might be 12 miles or more, but I'm not sure. Visibility was good yesterday!

We're hoping to do a short section next weekend and then maybe finish the walk the weekend after that. I'll keep you posted

A little bit of maths fun!

While we were coming home in the car the other day Ally, my daughter, asked me a maths question. She'd been looking at all the small change that sits in the cup holder of my car and wondered aloud how many coins you needed for it to be probable that two came from the same year. Now for those non-UK readers, we went decimal in 1970 (?), I don't remember exactly but I know I was at secondary school. That means the earliest date for any coin was going to be 1970 and the latest 2007, which gives a nice beginning and end for this problem.

Now I can't remember exactly how to do the probability maths (it's 30 years since I did any!) so someone may need to help and that's where the fun comes in if you're mathematically inclined. As I remember it the way we'd work this out is to calculate the probability of two, then three etc, coins coming from different years and then subtracting that from 1 to get the probability that they'd be the same. did we use something called a Laplace transform to do this? Once this number dropped below 0.5 then the probability that they were the same year was greater than the probability that they were from different years. Or something like that. Anyway, if I'm right then I think the answer is 15. But I'm not at all convinced that I'm anywhere near right!

I do seem to remember than we were asked to do the same thing to calculate the probability of two people sharing a birthday the answer was 23. In other words, if you have a group of 23 people or more, then it's more probable that two of them share a birthday than that they all have different birthdays. If that's true then 15 seems a little high for the coin question given that there are 365 days to choose from for the birthday thing!

If there's a mathematician out there who can do the maths properly and knows they've done it properly, I'd love to know the answer. I'd be even more thrilled to discover that I'd got it right in the first place!

Programmes and cultures

In a conversation with some other church leaders over lunch the other day someone used a phrase along the lines of: ".. we've seen things like servant evangelism, a.n.other form of evangelism [I can't remember the other types of evangelism that got mentioned] come and go."

I guess it was hearing SE mentioned that made the phrase stick in my mind. Couple that with our decision this week to adopt a strategy document I, along with other leaders at church, have been working on this year and it got me thinking about programmes and cultures.

The biggest challenge we face is changing the culture of church more so than changing the programme. When you treat something, anything, as a programme, you can keep changing the programme, you can keep blaming the programme. But that is not the root of the problem. The problem seems to lie in the culture. I suspect that at some level you can make any programme work if you get the culture right in the first place.

I remember Clive Calver back in the 80's (at least I think it was), posing the question, "Have we become universalists?" because it looked that way when you considered the priority we gave to mission at that time.

Now we are certainly not universalist, but the reason we are doing so poorly in mission (and a recent survey of evangelicals in the UK shows that we are in decline albeit at a lesser rate than non-evangelicals) is not a programme problem but a cultural one. We invest most of our time and money and effort in maintaining the happiness of the churched community. But isn't the church here primarily for those who don't belong to it yet? I'm of the opinion that since I know Jesus Christ as leader and forgiver I'm destined to spend eternity with him and have, therefore, an eternity to work out some of my unresolved issues and problems. My friends and family members who are not part of God's great family don't have that opportunity.

At Cotton End we're looking to shift the balance significantly and I'm excited about that. I'd have to say that I think we've come a long way anyway and what we've decided to move towards is another step along a road that God has been leading us for some time. But unless we shift the culture too, unless we all take responsibility for and engage in reconnecting our friends and neighbours with the God who misses them and loves them, nothing much will change and worse still nothing much will have been achieved.

We're in a good place. We've got loads of potential and bags of passion, but we are not unaware of the challenge ahead.

The Character of Community

I didn't get a lot of reading done on holiday. That's no bad thing, since I was supposed to be on holiday! But I did read a little more of The Connecting Church by Randy Frazee. In his chapter on Finding a common place he list five characteristics of community built around a common place. Here they are:

Spontaneity: This is about unplanned contact. In our modern-day, high paced, highly mobile society, we've lost the space and time simply to bump into people as we walk to the shop or the the school. There are very few unplanned moments in our lives and most, if the surveys are true, are taken up with with watching TV. We don't "drop by" anymore.

Availability: To make spontaneity work you need availability. I'm as conscious as the next person about how often I have to consult my diary to see if I'm free. When we organise a meal with friends or a visit with our families, it usually has to be booked a month in advance. This cannot be good for us.

Frequency: If Acts 2 is a defining paradigm for the church, then we can no longer afford to say we don't have time for community. Okay, so things are different, but how often is often enough when it comes to building true, biblical community?

Common meals: I wonder if half the attraction of Alpha is the meal. Common meals are important to community. We have a monthly fellowship meal at church after our Sunday morning celebration. I'm always saddened by the number of people who choose not to be there. Common meals provide a place for some of the spontaneity and availability and frequency issues that affect our communities.

Geography: Frazee argues that: The simple fact is that in all places of effective community people live in close proximity to each other-and the closer the better!

What's in your rucksack?

Having just posted something about walking, and because it's summer, and because blogging should be broader than just book reviews and church, I thought I'd take a look in my rucksack and, for a bit of fun, list what I take with me when I walk! I wonder what it says about me?

In my bag I have:

1. Lightweight waterproofs (you never know when you need them in Great Britain)
2. A lightweight fleece top (again, you never know and it can be cold on top of a hill)
3. Maps.
4. A mat to sit on (it's about 400mm x 200mm)
5. a plastic "ziploc" bag for small electrical items like my 'phone and electronic car key to keep them dry if it rains really hard.
6. A small first aid kit (the only time I've ever used this as far as I remember was to do a running repair on someone boots!, but I still wouldn't walk with out it.)
7. Painkillers (in the first aid kit. I'm a migraine man and so I always carry something just in case, and I also have a painful knee joint that a little ibuprofen soothes)
8. A small pocket knife.
9. A whistle
10. A compass (most useful for the scale if you want to pinpoint your location. You don't have to be a great map reader and compass user to enjoy walking)
11. A small GPS (I use my GPS to find my position and to check distances. More functions just complicate the issue, so I have a Garmin Geko 101. It tells me everything I need to know.
12. A handheld weather station . I love gadgets and this is just fun. It measure barometric pressure and shows the up/down/ steady trend.

Other important items are:

1. My hat. I never walk without it, if only to embarrass my fellow walkers!
2. My walking poles. If you think there for wimps, think again. The extra stability going up and down hills is great and they take a lot of pressure of your knees. I tried using two on Saturday and it was great once I got used to it.

So that's my list. The only thing I can think of that's missing is probably a survival blanket, so maybe I'll pop into the Pound Shop and get one (you be surprised what you can pick up in the mos unexpected places!)

The long way round

I love walking. I'm not a massively experienced walker, but I like getting out on footpaths etc and exploring. One day I hope to walk the coast to coast path from St Bees to Wallsend, although I will probably miss out the mainly metropolitan area at the easterly end. This path follows the ancient wall built by Hadrian.

Anyway, on Saturday I began, with my friend Jeremy, to walk a local path called the Greensand Ridge. It begins in Leighton Buzzard and wanders for 40 miles through Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire to Gamlingay.

We did the first 10-11 miles from LB to Eversholt, a small village just outside Woburn.

What is interesting is that by walking from place to place rather than doing a circular walk, you get see such variation in landscape. There are some quite spectacular views to look at and maybe next time I'll take my camera along. The problem is that we don't stop that often to do a photoshoot.

The first part of the walk took us alongside the Grand Union canal. At one point we should have crossed a meadow but it was under water, so we followed the canal a little further and rejoined the footpath on higher ground. The meadow had boardwalks which looked more like jetties that day. After that we climbed up through woodlands and eventually reached a small hilltop that looked down to Woburn house. From there it was a short walk to Eversholt where we finished for the day.

For the most part of our journey we didn't meet another walker at all. A few folk were walking along the canal-side, and a few more exercising dogs in various wooded areas, but for most of the time we had the path to ourselves.

If you're the kind of person who sees walking as what you do between the car park and the shops, let me encourage you to go and explore. I'd bet that wherever you are there are some old trails that are worth the effort of finding.

And, as you can see, whilst most of my time is consumed with church and theology, there are other things that occupy some of my days.

Personality test!

Jeff Noble blogged about this personality test. I've had fun doing several of these as a result of Jeff pointing them out. So here's the result for me from the latest one:

Leaving school

Today I acted in my capacity of chair of governors at the local school. I had to give out the presentation gifts to the children who are leaving us this year to go on to their next school. I was also asked to do a little talk.

My talk was very simple, and short, and based around two quotes which I think are helpful reminders to me about who I am and what I do. The first was this:

God does not make junk. (Ethel Waters)

Rick Warren quotes this in The Purpose Driven Life. What I like about this thought is that it reminds me how special and precious and individual I am in God's sight. When I'm tempted to think the very least of myself, I remember this quote and remind myself that whilst I'm far from perfect I'm not junk.

The second quote comes from Jim Wallis.

Find out what you do best, and do it in a way that makes a difference.

Ah, I hear you say, if only I knew what I did best!

I know the feeling, but the more I share thoughts and ideas with other people, the more I interact with them, the more I'm beginning to understand what I do best. It's quite a long process and it takes courage, I think, to stick with it and learn all you can about how God has shaped and prepared you for what you do best.

So if you're struggling a bit at the moment, remember that you are not junk, that you were made with a purpose in mind and there is something you do that only you do and it makes a difference because you do it.

Back to the blog

I'm not sure how much I have to say at the moment. Been processing a lot of thoughts about church recently and also been on holiday to the wonderful Greek island of Rhodes. So very peaceful and so very hot! I actually swam in the sea (some of you may remember that I only learnt to swim last year). I say swam, is was more like waving my arms around and going nowhere in particular as the waves lifted me up and down. I probably chose the day with the least benign conditions, but at least I got in the water and had a go. My efforts in our pool were more significant!

Anyway, got home to find two parcels, always exciting, one containing two books I'd ordered form Amazon sometime ago. One was Bill Bryson's The life and times of the the Thunderbolt Kid. The other a more serious book altogether called The Big Idea by Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson and Eric Bramlett. The subtitle of the book is focus the message-multiply the impact and in the introduction they talk about the increasing amount of information that is available to us through the media that we have around us. Of this exponential increase in information they say:

... more information is not bad... But more information that leads to less action is a big, big problem, particularly when the action we desire is to accomplish Jesus' mission.

The challenge becomes therefore, to focus less on information and more on action!

The chapter heading that caught my attention was this:

Communities of transformation, not information.

This is going to be a good read, at least I hope it is. You see I've been around church for a while now and one of the refrains I hear from church after church is: "We need more teaching." As if the only thing stopping the church breaking through into effective mission and ministry is more information. It seems the priority has become leaning as much as possible about what we believe without ever having to turn that understanding into action. For a long time now I've thought that what the church actually needs is more opportunities to serve not more teaching about stuff we should already know.

So I'm looking forward to at least one chapter in the book and I'll try to remember to blog some thougths as I go. On the other hand do you really need any new information, especially if sitting reading it is keeping you from actively engaging in God's ministry and mission to a lost world he made, sustains, loves and died to save?

Building a great church

After hearing Jim Collins talking about principles of greatness at the 2006 Global Leadership Summit, I've been turning over in mind the idea of great church. I've preached about it, thought about, even blogged about it! Just recently I revisited it as I thought about where we are at this point in time with respect to our vision and purpose.

Once again I found myself wondering aloud about the church as I prayed and reflected. Once again I found myself using the language of greatness. I even wrote the following definition which some of you will recognise if you've read Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life.

A great church is built upon a great commitment to the great commandment and the great commission.

It seems to me that whatever style of church you are and whatever core values, mission statement and purpose you have, if you're going to become a great church the statement above must be true or becoming true for you.

What, by the grace of God, we're trying to build at Cotton End is a relationally based, Biblically taught, contemporary styled, relevantly involved community of faith. We want to be effective, influential, growing, disciple-making and caring.

The tough part is that when you cut through all the nice phrases and words, you need a strategy that is clear enough so that everyone can see where you are going, and flexible enough to change and adapt as you discern more clearly the precise call of God at any given time.

Perhaps these too (discernment and adaptability) are hallmarks of a great church.

I'll keep thinking and reflecting and exploring, hope you are doing so too.

Great quote

Came across this great quote from Wayne Cordeiro of New Hope Christian Fellowship:

You can teach what you know, but ultimately, you are going to reproduce what you are.

Found the quote on the churchrelevance blog.

You have a good heart

Over the last few weeks, maybe even months, I've been thinking and praying for some friends who I know are feeling the pressure of walking with God at the moment. I've often wondered what I could or should say to them. Wondered what encouraging word I could share with them, or what gift I could give them to let them know that God is still there for them and still loves them and still hungers for them. Something that will let them know that whatever the situation is at the moment, set in the context of eternity it's so very small.

So here's something really simple that sits in the back of my mind and occasionally comes to the forefront.

King David was a great poet, that much we know. He was skilled in many things musical and things to do with looking after sheep. He was described as a man after God's own heart. But he made mistakes. He messed up big time with Bathsheba and paid a heavy price for his mistake.

One of the things God says about David is that he was a man with a good heart. David wanted to build a temple for God, he had the plans drawn up and the money set aside. He did all the work he could, but he didn't get to build the temple. Solomon got that job. In the story, not building the temple, was a direct consequence of David's moral failure. But although God punished his sin, he never denied his heart.

When it came to the temple, God said he didn't need one, he was happy with the old tent, but he knew David had a good heart and meant well with his plans, so he accepted the temple. When it came to David's sin God challenged him, rebuked him, punished him and forgive him, but he never rejected David's heart. He never told him, "I don't want your temple now you've messed up."

God simply said, "It was good that David it had it in his heart to build a temple" (1Kings 8; 2Chr. 6).

I wonder about what it is in your heart that God is saying, "It's good that you have this in your heart." You may not see the fulfilment of it, you may have to hand it over to someone else to do, but God says of you: "It was good that you had this in your heart."

These words were precious to me when I realised that my first ministry was to come to an end. 18 months before moving on, God spoke through these passages of the Old Testament and I realised that if I was going to walk with God then I needed to have a light hold on everything I considered my ministry to be.

Maybe they will be precious to you too.

Make your own reusable bag

I was watching BBC Breakfast this morning whilst tucking into my low-fat Greek yoghurt and granola (we're into low GL/GI eating these days) and I saw a piece about some folk who were making bags from old clothes and duvet covers etc. and giving them away for free in exchange for plastic bags.

It looked like a really good idea so I tracked down their website and you can find it here.

Recently I watched a documentary about the waste problems in the Pacific. There's one particular beach where all the rubbish washes up and it's appalling to see the amount of junk that's been thrown into the oceans.

According to statistics we use around 300 plastic carrier bags per head a year in the UK. So when I saw this piece this morning it caught my imagination.

We're going to have a go at making our own bags, if only to remove the bags we would use through a year from circulation. I guess that even though we reuse and recycle our plastic bags, reducing how many we use is always going to b e a good thing.

And then I wondered if we could make enough at church to give them away as an outreach event. Nothing too bold, just a simple way of expressing our concern for the environment as Christians.

When we've made our first bag I'll post a photo!

Preaching themes or expounding texts?

I read a letter recently in my denominational newspaper that suggested that thematic preaching was the "junk food" of modern church life. By contrast, a healthy diet consists of good old expository preaching like we used to have. The problem is that the church has had centuries of good teaching, systematic theology and expository preaching and yet it remains largely ineffective when it comes to fulfilling it's primary mandate.

The letter writer went on to suggest that a "thematic" sermon was something that could be thrown together with some ease and without any real hard work or study. A few well chosen verses, a few hand-picked stories and or quotes gleaned from the Internet and the job was done.

But I happen to disagree with the premise that thematic preaching is to good teaching what a burger and fries is to a healthy diet. I know that a thematic sermon can, and should be, a carefully developed expository sermon too. I know that it takes as much, if not more, study and preparation to do a good job with a theme compared to a straight exposition.

And maybe the thing about a theme is that it forces you to think. It forces you to ask big questions of the text, and it forces to seek to hold together the whole message of the Bible and not just a small part. But then again that's probably true for the kind of expository preaching of which the letter writer spoke.

Perhaps, in the end, we need both. Perhaps the key to good preaching is making a connection between the Biblical world and the 21st century world. Between the world in which we live our day-to-day lives and the world of God's great revelation. Good old application as they used to say in my Bible study group.

A prayer for the day

"Lord, here I am. I want to be available to you today to do whatever you ask, nothing more, nothing less. Give me an open heart and a willing spirit to follow your lead. Help me connect with the people you bring across my path today. Help me to point them towards you and leave them ready for the next step on their journey towards your kingdom."

Amen

The Connecting Church Association

When I found the Connecting Church blog I didn't have time to explore any further than the blog, which as I said is very new (and there's still nothing much on it!). Anyway, I eventually had a little more time and found my way to the website (not rocket science I know).

You can find it here.

I discovered too that I have the book on my bookshelf in the "books to read" section. I have a big "books to read" section, and I keep adding to it. I wonder if Amazon would survive if not for church leaders like me!

knowing the times

Remember the men of Issachar? They understood the times and knew what Israel should do (1Chr.12:32).

Well, I'm currently reading Building a Strategic Church by David Beer, and this thought seems to come up early in the book. In chapter 2 on Strong Leadership he begins by referencing Dr Sam Keen who said that a wise person was someone 'who knows what time it is' in their own life and the history around them.

David Beer goes on to say that: A strategic church is a church that knows 'what time it is' in their church and in their community. (p34)

So it seems that good leaders are people who have this sense of both destiny (I was born for this) and context (I was born to do this here and now). I guess it might be easy to become arrogant if you thought this way without a servant heart and the humility that goes along with that. I'm certainly conscious of my shortcomings, and that anything I achieve I do so by the grace of God and not by my own efforts. But I guess I do need a sense of destiny. Perhaps calling is a word that will sit more comfortably, but either works for me I think.

What I do know is that God does not want me, or anyone in my church or in my community, simply to fill time or fill a pew. God wants us to fulfill a destiny and knowing the times and knowing what we should do is part of that process of fulfilment.

Apparently, the men of Issachar still live!

Related posts; The men of Issachar; The men of Issachar again

The world deserves better

You know how it is, you're standing in front of the congregation preaching away and you hear yourself saying something that stops you in your tracks. You keep going of course because it's usually important to do that given that there are people waiting to hear what's coming next! But in the back of your mind and somewhere deep in your heart and soul you've heard God speak something into your life.

In my experience this doesn't happen every Sunday, but it did this last Sunday.

We were exploring our third big theme: The community. We thought about how we understood community and how we could relate better to our wider community I talked about becoming part of the DNA of the community. I talked about how a cell is defined by the DNA it contains and that our communities are defined by their DNA. If the church is at the heart of the community then the com unity should be different because of it. And then I said it, a little phrase that God used to penetrate deep into my soul.

The community deserves a better church.

Now this is in no way a criticism of my church. I think we're on the right track, I think we're holding on to a dream and vision that God has given to us that is deeply rooted in this idea of being the DNA of our community. But the world deserves our best shot. The world deserves the church being the best that it can be at being the family of God. I don't want to settle for anything less.

I haven't figured out what it means yet, but I know deep down inside of me that God has something profound to say. Church can no longer be mediocre and irrelevant, the world deserves better than that.

As I spoke those words on Sunday I felt the emotion rise within me, I felt as if I'd touched the heart of God and shared, for a moment, his passion for the missing members of his family in a way I've not felt it before. Call them lost, call them missing, call them unchurched, it doesn't really matter, Jesus misses them and they deserve a church that points them back home and shows them what it means to be reconected with God.

The Connecting Church

I'm working on the third in our series of big themes (The Community) this morning and I ran a search on the internet to see what might be out there. I came across a really new blog called The Connecting Church. It's really new, nothing much on it at the moment, but it might grow.

If you're interested in the concept or have some questions, stories or ideas, then you might want to visit the blog here or at the very least monitor it through your feed reader.

Doing an ordinary thing

Tomorrow I'll be doing an ordinary thing. It's not a big thing, just a simple thing. Tomorrow I'll give someone the help they need to get a job done. It will cost me some time, it will cost me some effort. I'll have to make conversation with someone I don't know that well, but I hope I'll know a little better by the end of our trip.

I could spend my day doing extraordinary things. I could do some big things. I could, but I won't because often I find God in the small things.

I'd love to do some big things. I'd love to tell you stories of how God has used me to influence this person and that person. I'd love to tell you all about the people who have come to faith because of the amazing ministry I have, but I won't. I can't. Mine is not a ministry like that.

Mine is a ministry of small things. I don't minimise what I do, after all I'm in the business of doing things that have eternal significance. There are people wandering around this small green/blue planet who are living lives closer to God, not because of me, but because of something God spoke into their lives through me.

This is not a delusion of grandeur, it's what I do, it's what God does through me, and I like being used by God. It's just I'm a minster of small things, and I don't despise the day of small things because maybe a big day is coming. And if it's not, then I'd be wasting my time waiting around for it and I'd be missing out on such a lot of opportunities to do something significant for the kingdom when I do a small thing in a small way at a small cost.

So here's to the small things.Here's to my little road trip tomorrow.

You never know, I might be reporting something big because of it!

One small step

A little while ago I wrote about our aims and objectives at church. This last Sunday we began to explore them together as a congregation. Rather than just give everyone the answers, we decided that it would be a good idea to try something a little more interactive. So I presented the first of our big themes "The Journey".

Briefly I went through the background and then some basic principles of what I believe is a Biblical approach to walking with people on their spiritual journey. After that we invited the congregation to divide into small groups and answer three questions. These were:

1. Who is on your heart at this time? This could be someone for whom they have been praying for a long time, or maybe someone with whom they have recently made a connection.

2. What groups of people are on your heart at this time? This could be "the elderly" or "the homeless".

Neither of these proved too hard for anyone. We had a big board at the front with a line on it to represent the spiritual journey and we wrote the names of folk down on post-its and stuck them on the board along the line. Not very scientific, but it served to illustrate the point that every person can be in a different place on their spiritual journey and that means that we will need to do something different for them to help them along the way towards Jesus Christ.

The third question stumped almost everyone.

3. What should we do differently to help these people take another step on their spiritual journey?

Over at withreach.com there's an interesting quote from a survey done about church credibility in the community. I'll simply quote the thing in full (if you want to go to the webpage it's here):

• A large religious publisher asked on a nationwide survey what churches ought to do more of in order to be credible and true to purpose. Among respondents who are active in a church, the predominant answers focused on sharing Christ (and on worship). The predominant answer from non-church attenders:
  
  Do more for the poor and the hungry
  
  We often validate ourselves by outreach, by the Great Commission. The people we want to reach validate us by the Great Commandment.
  
  But it’s slightly more subtle than that.
  
  The subtly has to do with the very concept of outreach. Outreach categorizes people as “in” or “out,” and targets the ones who are out. We tend to be very skilled at this. We name committees and annual campaigns “outreach,” we have “outreach” training, buy “outreach” programs. But few people like to be targeted.
  
  What people do respond to, is when we seek to come alongside, connect with them naturally and at a meaningful level, develop community with them, listen for their heart’s dream as well as their hurts and needs, discern what God may already have begun within them, and journey with them toward God and toward God’s dreams for them and for us.
  
  As to the matter of doing more for the poor and hungry, people in contemporary America – think of your neighbors – are far more likely to respond to being asked to help, than to be the “target” of our charity. “Withreach” applies to the Great Commandment as well.

I was quite surprised by how stumped we were when it came to thinking differently. Eventually a few things emerged, but it was a real challenge.

Perhaps the nuts and bolts of the answer lies in the coming alongside and the listening.

I'm looking forward to next week when we talk about building great Christian community. Let the revolution begin!!

Just a thought

Been away at Spring Harvest. Quite enjoyed ourselves too.

While away, I read this verse in Luke's Gospel:

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach.
(Luke 15:1 NLT)

Now I know this is not true of my ministry, and I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing it's not true of many other ministries either.

This is not a criticism, it's just an observation. I mean, wouldn't it be really great if people who needed Jesus actually came to listen to us talk about him? But they don't. Perhaps we just don't have the same draw that Jesus had. Perhaps they don't think we want them to come into our nice tidy world, a world where they fear judgement rather than expect acceptance.

Perhaps.

Finishing well

Last Sunday I finished off the series on The Sermon on the Mount that we've been doing at church. We reviewed what we'd been learning about character, influence, righteousness, disciplined discipleship, and relationships. The final part of course is all about the wise and foolish builders.
It strikes me that one of the reasons Jesus finishes with this illustration is that the gospel is all about choice. It's your choice whether to follow Jesus or not. So he says make a wise choice. But secondly, I think he is also making the point that you need to make a wise choice of foundation precisely because the storms of life will come. You will have days when the rain pours down and floods rise up against you. And on that day, you need to know you're on a sure foundation.
This got me thinking, and I asked myself a question and I asked the congregation the same question too. Why is it that too many Christians appear to start strong and finish weak? Why do they, do we start well and finish poorly?
I have an unwritten goal for my Christian life and that is to make my last day my most effective day for the sake of the kingdom. I want to finish well. I haven't defined what finishing well might look like, perhaps I don't need to. Perhaps that's best left to God who will, one day, welcome me into heaven. If I do need to define it, it won't be defined in terms of numbers or how well-known or influential I've become on some grand scale. I just know that finishing poorly is not on my agenda. I want to finish well, I want to finish strongly.
A few years ago my Dad passed away, and a couple of years before that my Mum died. Both of them were around 80 years of age. By my calculation that leaves me around 30 years if I reach the same age. Maybe I'll live longer, maybe not, only God knows that one. But 30 years is a long time to wait if it's going to be a poor finish. So I'm thinking 30 years is long enough for me to make a real contribution to the kingdom.
So, in the words of Isaiah, a favourite among the prophets, "Here I am Lord, send me."And maybe, my epitaph will be, "He finished well!" Or maybe not.

Burying my head in the sand

According to a raft of emails I've received over the last week or so, this is exactly what I'm doing if I don't protest about a planned mosque to built in time for the 2012 Olympics in London. According to the email Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, plans to use taxpayers money to build this mosque and we should, as good Christians, protest at this.

Now I don't know what Mr Livingstone's actual plans are, and I have to say that I would be a little concerned if the plan was to use so-called "tax-payer money" for the whole project. But another part of me is really concerned at the way we're being drawn into protesting about these kind of things. I'm just wondering if it's the right approach.

I went to see the film Amazing Grace the other day. I was deeply moved by it. I'm still not sure if it really did justice to the issues and the story, but it was okay. Here was a man, Wilberforce, who was moved by God and encouraged by others to protest at the highest levels of government. For years his protests led nowhere, but eventually the transatlantic slave trade was ended.

Through Wilberforce's Bill, the world was changed and he went on to be involved in many other examples of social change in the UK. This is Christian "protesting" at it's best.

If you are going to sign, or have already signed, the petition about the mosque then let me ask you what you're doing about modern slavery or issues of social justice. Are you as vocal about these issues as you are concerned about a religious building? I know for some this building project is another step along the road towards the eventual suppression of all things Christian. I know many people fear the rise of philosophies and religious movements that might one day remove our rights and erode our Christian heritage. But maybe the best way to preserve our heritage is to focus on the issues that move God's heart. Remember the words of Amos the prophet:

He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with the Lord your God. (Amos 6:8)

Taking it on the chin

One of the key leadership skills that I don't hear many people talk about is how to handle criticism. It's bound to come your way from time to time, and how you deal with it is key to moving forward. So here are some of my random rules for dealing with criticism.

1. It hurts. Criticism always hurts. Recognising that it hurts helps me to process it more objectively. I think that's because I know it's okay to hurt but it's not okay to lash out and strike back or to dwell on it or let it fester.

2. Don't make snap responses. I remember a good friend of mine saying that once you're in ministry, you're in the firing line. The best thing, he said, was not to respond by justifying yourself. That just produces an argument. In fact make your first response a thank you for the other person's courage to be honest and their care for you in bringing the matter to your attention. You'll be surprised at how often that calms the storm.

3. Reflect. Often, no matter how poorly handled and presented, there is a seed of truth in the criticism. The things I most often get criticised about usually reflect an area of my character, ministry or life that needs addressing. Not necessarily in the way the purveyor of the criticism thinks, but in some way. Sometimes they are so wide of the mark, that there is no basis for the criticism. If, after reflecting, I feel that way, I try and check out my conclusions with someone I trust. Rule 4 kicks in.

4. Always have someone who can help you process the big stuff. Actually processing the little stuff can need help too, because unprocessed or processed badly just makes it big stuff sooner or later.

5. Discern the voice behind the criticism. My friend Andy White blogged about working alone and the issues surrounding the inner voice of doom. Discerning the root of the voice of criticism is vital to healthy processing. When criticism comes it often arouses feelings of low self-worth after you've finished being angry. (If you're only ever angry about criticism see rule 3!) The inner voice begins to tell you that you have no value, that you're not cut out for leadership, that God can't possible use you etc. etc. It's simply not true. I'm doing what I do because God has called me and gifted me to do it. I just don't do it the way some people want it done. Sometimes that's my fault because I get things wrong, I focus on the wrong thing and I'm not too hot on organising myself. But if I'm anybody's failure then I'm God's failure and I know he still loves me even.

6. Be kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up, there are plenty of people out there in the wider world who would gladly do that for you, and they'd probably do a better job anyway.

7. If the first 6 rules haven't worked, go buy yourself a cup of your favourite coffee, or in my case fruit smoothie, and put the criticism to one side until you're in better shape to deal with it all.

Now, where are my car keys....

Take an ordinary walk

Back in 1991 I attended what I believe was the first Willow Creek conference in the UK. It was in Birmingham, and I remember driving from my then home in Newark in Nottinghamshire each morning at 6:00am to be there.

That conference radically affected my view of church. For many years I’d wondered about the relationship between the “unchurched” and the church. Like many events, and books, and conversations since then, that conference opened up a whole new vocabulary for my thinking.
Since then I’ve wandered through the worlds of Ordinary Attempts, emerging church, organic church, servant evangelism and a few others along the way. All the time I’ve been trying to synthesise how I feel about the church, about mission and most importantly how God feels about it.

I’m still trying. But what I’m beginning to find is that there is a thread running through many current ideas and approaches to outreach. I’m hoping one day to find a way of connecting the dots and seeing a bigger picture emerge. At church we’re getting clearer about our vision and the kind of church God is calling us to become.

Recently I got hold of a new resource from Willow Creek called Just walk across the room. It must be two or three years since I first heard Bill Hybels talk about this approach to evangelism. One of our small groups is about to engage with the four-week programme and I’m looking forward to being a part of that group.

In a nutshell the course is all about how to take simple steps that point people to faith. For me, it sits comfortably alongside everything I’ve been learning about serving others, doing OA’s and simply trying to connect people who are far from God with the God who loves them.
A quote from the book helps explain where it all begins to connect up:

If we share the dream to become radically loving, outwardly focused, grace-giving people, then we ought to be the first ones to expand our hearts and invite folk to come into the kingdom.
Just walk across the room, p66

I’m desperate to become more effective in inviting others to join this journey of faith. And I believe passionately that it was never meant to be as hard as we’ve made it over the centuries since Jesus began his world-changing movement.

Later in the book, Bill Hybels talks about the incident in the gospels when Jesus heals the man with the withered hand. He talks about how the Pharisees were looking for something to hang an accusation on and how they might even of found the guy with the withered hand and invited him to the synagogue to see what would happen He finishes by speculating about the conversation Jesus and the healed man might have had.

… I envision Jesus saying, “… what are your plans? Juggling? Piano? What is it that you dream about doing, my friend?”
In my imagination, they chat about this man’s long-awaited passion pursuits. And possibly the man turns to Jesus and says, “Well, what are your dreams?”…
I imagine Jesus articulating his dream with words that are absolutely captivating to me:
“You know, I dream that someday, places of worship will be filled with people who lay awake at night concerned about the human beings my Father created. Who care about broken bodies and broken souls and hopeless futures and hell-bound eternities. I dream of the day when people who gather in my name are so filled with the love of the Father that they go out and spread his love and extend healthy hands to withered hands-praying, coaching, and encouraging them to live walk in the fullness of life. I dream of worship centres filled with radically loving, outwardly focused, Christ-sharing people. That’s what I dream about.”
Walk p 74

These extracts don’t do the book justice and they certainly don’t tell the whole story. But I dream about it too. Do you?

Another "Proud Dad" moment

Here's Ally talking to Kevin MaCloud, the presenter of Grand Designs about her photographs.

She was asked to submit some of her work to be used in a new Estate Agents in the town. Six of her photographs were chosen.

Apparently they were well admired.

Here's a picture of the display.

Say thank you, and see if it makes a difference

I was reading through various blogs this morning and came across two things that tweaked at my imagination. The first was a post on Tim Sanders blog about the need to make sure we compliment each other.

He comments:

The premise is simple: You cannot let your people wither away and die at work. Many of them desperately need their talents recognized by you, be they as small as they might be in your P&L view...

...When it comes to management strategies, remember, Love Is The Killer App.

It seems to me that this principle applies at church too. As a leader I make it my business to say thank you to people. I thank the members of the worship group each Sunday. I also try to thank everyone who has made a contribution that day, and I guess I ought to thank folk for just turning up and being a part of what God is doing in our midst.

This kind of connected with the next thing I read from Total Leadership on the leader and corporate worship.

Tad Thompson writes:

Now this one may sound easy for a pastor or even a lay leader. But for me, it is possible to preach and not worship corporately. See the temptation is in viewing the preaching as my job and not as worship. Ministry can become a job and not worship. In the days of Josiah, the temple was no longer the place of worship and the book of law had been lost somewhere in a dark, dusty corner. The temple was in disarray because corporate worship had been ignored.

A true leader worships God with God’s people. This is a non-negotiable. Today worship has become negotiable because it is seen as entertainment. It is not seen as a means for the protection of our very soul.

Now what struck me is that whilst not everyone will agree that worship has become entertainment, we must agree that it certainly has to compete with many other things for a person's commitment. Perhaps they get thanked for their involvement with Sunday football, but never thanked for being at worship. Perhpas people are not committment shy but feeling under valued at church.

I know it's not about us, but we live in such a self-centred world that we need to connect with people where they start and not where we want them to finish. So let's try saying thank you a little more often.

Wisdom to live by

Check out these 6 principles of wisdom form the churchrelevance.com site.

Beeson's wisdom.

My favourite:

Just keep doing the next right thing.“I don’t have to worry about everything, I just need to focus on doing the next right thing, right now, in front of me in this very minute. Then, after that decision is made, I can move on to the next right thing.”

Looking for unity

There is a well known phrase drawn from the Old Testament that goes something like this:

Where brothers (and sisters) live together in harmony, that's where God commands a blessing.

It comes from Psalm 133, but, as I far as I know, it's not a verse form the Bible although it's often quoted as such. I've searched in as many ways as i can, and as ever I have this nagging thought that I've missed something, but as I said, as far as can tell it's not a direct quote.

That's not the point though. The point is that in-fighting in the church has to stop. There is too much at stake. The world needs a better example of problem solving and difference resolution than we currently give it.

We are one, church. We share one faith, one Lord, one baptism. Now I know how hard that is to accept, but it's the truth.

I've just read a blog entry outlining a talk given by Thom Rainer, and he speaks powerfully about the choices we need to make to work towards a better unity in the church. I know he's speaking from the perspective of the SBC, but surely it goes beyond our narrow denominational boundaries too.

Here is his list of commitments. I know nothing about the first one, but everything after that is a challenge!

Though I am a fallible and sinful person, I will seek God’s power to stay true to the following:

1. I stand firm on the inerrant Word of God. I support without reservation the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

2. Though I may disagree with some on secondary and tertiary issues, I will not let those points of disagreement tear down bridges of relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ.

3. I will seek to join with those who will work together on the common causes of missions, evangelism and the health of the local church.

4. I will seek God’s will in prayer before I write or speak a word of disagreement against another brother or sister in Christ or even a non-Christian. I will seek to see the plank in my own eye before pointing out the splinter in another person’s eye. I will follow the truths of Matthew 18 when I feel that I need to confront a brother or sister in Christ.

5. I will spend more time rejoicing in the Lord (Phil 4:4).

6. I will seek God’s power to have a more gentle and Christlike spirit (Phil 4:5).

7. I will pray that the lost and the unchurched world will know me by my Christlike love.

Such is my commitment.

If God so leads, I invite you to join me in building bridges.

Aims and Objectives

We, the leadership team at Cotton End, spent the day away together to talk about various leadership issues. One of the things we've been trying to do over recent months is to get some real clarity about the vision and call that God has for us.

As part of that process we worked on some aims. There's still a lot to do, but when I and a helpful church member distilled it all down, we came up with the following.

Cotton End Baptist Church - Aims & Objectives:

Our Five core values are a deep commitment to: (1) Jesus, (2) each other, (3) The Community, (4) authentic Christian lifestyle and (5) to prayer & worship.

Our Purpose is: To love as many people as possible into a deep and growing relationship with Jesus. To support everyone on their spiritual journey so that everyone can be involved in ministry and mission. Enabling more people to follow Jesus better.

In order to fulfil this call from God, our Aims are to:

Walk with people on their journey with God (recognising that we are all on that journey).

That means:

• Being a place to ask questions about life, that is safe, without prejudice or pressure.
• Enabling all to come under Biblical Teaching and adopt increasing Biblical lifestyles (which are authentic Christian lifestyles, or Holiness).
• Giving people space and time to grow in their understanding and experience of God.
  Accepting people who wish to belong before believing.
• Helping everyone learn to worship & pray, in ways honouring our God given diversity.
• Offering support to all at every age and every stage of life and spiritual journey.
  

Build Great Christian Community (based on the Bible’s teachings)

That means:

• Building great friendships
• Spending time together
• Opening our lives to each other

Play Our Full Part in the Rest of the Community (because churches are part of it too)

That means:

Getting involved in what is already happening in The Community
Work “with” The Community and not just “for” The Community
Engaging on issues of justice, poverty and oppression
Seeking to improve education, health and social welfare.
Social responsibility and caring for our environment
Being part of the DNA of The Community

Reach Out to our Neighbours

That means:

• Being intentional about building relationships and doing mission.
• By planning (disciplined thinking) and disciplined action.
• Loving as many people as possible into relationship with Jesus. (including: through kindness, influence, generosity and genuine love, helping people and serving people.)
• Showing and telling people that God loves them and Jesus has shown it

What are you saying Lord?

And as we follow your heart
We are led to the lost
Finding there a place of praise
No matter what the cost.
So, we will stand with the weak
Give our most to the least
Serving you with all we have
Your kingdom, God, we seek.

From Life of love by David Gate 1999 Kingsway's Thankyou Music

I listened to this for the first time in a long while yesterday. Made my heart slow down and wonder about what God is saying to the the church today.

I am desperate to see the church grow into what God wants it to be. I'm passionate about seeing people reconnect with the God who so loves them that he is willing to die for them.

I'm haunted by Jesus' call to feed the hungry, heal the sick and to do for the least of these what I would do for him.

What are we to do Lord? How then shall we live?