I have been quiet for the last few days. This is not because I have had nothing to talk about, as I can normally ramble about anything. I have been quiet because Sarah has been at Soul in the City and I have been looking after the children.

I missed Sarah loads while shge was away, but also really had my eyes opened to how hard looking after the children on your own is. The reason I have not been blogging is simply because I have not been organised enough to get everything done on time and still have the energy or desire to come here and type for 20 minutes or so. Before you laugh and say it … I know! Sarah does this normally and still is organised to teach half a week and be youth worker the other half. I want to go public and say ‘I don’t know how she does it!’

Sarah came home last night and the sheer look of joy on her face was fantastic to see. It was clear that she has had a great time working in Peckham (which is VERY different to Gillingham)working in the community there. She had loads of stories and I must admit I was quite envious of the experience that she has had of seeing God work in real peoples lives.

And, it has had an effect. It will be a while to see what long term effect it has had on the young people she took but at the moment they are saying they want to do something similar along the community project in Gillingham. I really hope they continue and look into this. The thought of a small group of young people mobilising the church to do something in Gillingham to support and help people with no strings or expectations to attend Christian meetings really feels me with great excitement. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of alternative agendas and doing things to get people to come in to the church.

I don’t care of people come to church! (well … that probably is not strictly true!). I care that people out there know that God loves them and that God has time for them and that God is there for them if they ask. In Peckham that is what they did. Sarah thinks the t-shirts they wore provoked a question or comment. They said ‘I love Peckham’ on the front and ‘God loves Peckham’ on the back. Apparantly comments like ‘no he doesn’t’ were the start of opportunities to open dialogue. They chatted to people and offered to pray for them on the streets. It was quite amazing the overwhelming number of people that grabbed at the invitation. There is a spiritual longing out there; but we need to get out there to realise that, rather than waiting for it to come to us.

Today Sarah has said that it feels wrong to be back in Gillingham. She wants to be out there in the community still. She is asking the question ‘Why?’ Why can’t all of us act like they have been for the past week in Soul in the City. Why when we walk around our own towns can’t we offer to pray for people? Why don’t we just pick up litter or run clubs for school holidays to help? It’s a good question and a challenge. Why do we need a special festival, event or whatever to do stuff like this? Surely a provocatice church does it just because Jesus cared and loved and we know he wants us to show others that he loves them to.

Sometimes I wonder what holds me back? Maybe the strength in the event is that lots of people are doing it and suporting each other. A whole church living a God centred life and all going into the community … now that would be an exciting thing to see.

Now that Sarah is back we are off tomorrow for a few days with the children to have a break and some fun. We are taking the caravan to Battle, near Hastings. Apparantly battle is where the 1066 thing and all that happened – time for the Ryan family to become all cultural and historical methinks! Maybe some time too to reflect and chat more about ‘what next’.