It was great to get to Blah last night and listen to Ben’s story and ideas. I was very fortunate due to a slow mind (I got the timings wrong and turned up early) and so got a chance to chat with Ben before many turned up.

Ben started by showing how ‘new age spirituality’ stuff is becoming mainstream. Most towns have an alternative therapy shop – even small towns like our Gillingham have a regular mind, body, spirit fair / psychic fair. People in the media are mixing different spiritualalites and, in some cases, re-defining and creating their own beliefs from the mix that is around them.

Ben introduced a term I am unfamiliar with, Occulture, to describe this process where all things new are being influenced by the new age. (The Occult part of this term refers to all new age spirituality, not the meaning that many of us may associate the term with). In a sense it’s like an underground movement slowly, and un-noticed, influences and changes culture so that their practices become mainstream and have an impression on everything. We are seeing this in music (listen to Sinead O’connor, Robbie Williams, Madonna and many others, in everyday language (karma, auras, therapy, clothing and everywhere we care to look.

Just for fun I thought I would do a google search on ‘spiritual clothing’. There are over 5 000 000 references! At number 4 is spiritual fitness wear who claim, to a background of calming pipe music tell you their clothes are designed especially for your mind, body and soul’ and that spiritual Fitness Wear is designed to help you believe in your unique mind, body and soul’.

This would once have given me a lot of concern – but I think my studies at the moment are causing me to think ‘is this really a problem?’. Does it matter how people connect with God. Don’t worry – I still see Jesus as God incarnate and the way to the Father … but I do question what seems to be the assumption that the church has the monopoly on that – God is bigger than the church and so he must be able to speak to people without using the church. Before you shout … yes I know the church is Jesus choice, he created it and all that blurb … but the church has done a crap job! Maybe God has got impatient and decided that despite the church he wants to connect with his creation and his people. It’s only a view! My view is also that there will obviously be some dodgy stuff at such places, not everyone is open and honest; but there is a difference between what is harmful, and what makes us uncomfortable due to the way we have been brought up.

Ben talked us through the sorts of people you meet at Mind, Body and Spirit Fairs. (quite normal people if you were wondering?). He chatted about what they did – which in essence is listen and pray and with people. Ben said something like ‘we offer free healing, we chat, we listen and our prayer with them reflects their concerns back’.

As I know with young people – we are not listened to anymore. Maybe like to tell their stories and be heard, these people wish to share their story and are looking for listeners. The church, us, can be and should be so good at that.

I found my mind flitting between two extremes, which for me, who can be quite stubborn and very committed to a cause, is quite unusual. The two extremes of ‘Yes, this is sooooo obvious, we just have to go for this; spiritual people are here, Christians aren’t and so we need more people involved in this – people like me!!’ to the other extreme of ‘My good evangelical upbringing has taught me to stay away from these things, and to pray that other people will stay away due to their extreme harm and extreme dodginess’. There is no obvious middle ground between those two points of view.

Ben shared his concerns and difficulties and was, I think, quite honest. People are prayed with at their stand, and then they go off to others to have auras read, or visit another healer and the question begs ‘should we be involved here?’

Our groups answer? It was a yes … as with sowing seeds, we do not know what God is doing in peoples lives. I can look back now to that time before I was Christian and see that God was clearly working in my life. I was connecting with God long before I was a Christian, yet I did not recognise that at all. Is it so bizarre to think that God can communicate through some other stuff as well.

I have come away with lots of thoughts and questions, probably more than I had before I listened to Ben and chatted with others their last night. There is, though, to me one definite opinion or view I have come away with … if Christians do not get involved at such places, what chance have these people got of ever connecting with their God?

I had another great day today despite a naff start due to the closer of the M2 after what sounded to be a horrible accident. I was thankful for Lara (the un-enlightened would call Lara GPS) as she talked me through many country lanes that I would never have seen before to get me to the Dartford Crossing.

I visited Jerry, Jemima and Katie at Newmarket YFC in the morning. Big congratulations to both Jemima and Katie who were proudly wearing their engagement rings and looking forward with quite a bit of excitement to wedding days sometime in the summer. We all chatted together about how things were going, moving into new buildings and struggling to meet demands for schools input.

I heard of exciting plans, a desire to change, a yearning to make an impact in the lives of young people that will last – I heard a passionate God looking at the young people of Newmarket!

After spending cool time catching up I shot across to Mid Norfolk to meet up with Cle, Dave, Marie Ann and Mark. Again, top quality people involved in loads of excellent stuff and always asking the question ‘what next’ with a healthy ‘should we keep doing this/is this still meeting a need/should we change/should we close this and start something new’. I always think those in ministry that regularly ask questions like this as ‘the norm’ see exciting things happen.

I heard stories today of groups of girls becoming Christians in school, of young people praying for other young people in school who then experienced God, and of young people being healed after others had prayed with them. The exciting things and the challenging self analysis go hand in hand.

Also … Mid Norfolk YFC kept up their fantastic standard of a great lunch!!! (not that I am fickle or easily swayed … but I will return soon!)

I felt a tinge of sadness as I started to drive home – I though how great it would be to spend longer, to get involved again, to invest in more young people … but the role has changed and someone has to invest in the investors.

I removed one boulder and filled in one pothole today!

… like today when all things go well.

A load of admin and phonecalls covered in the morning before shooting off to Bluewater to meet Sarah for lunch and but her Christmas present – surprises are out this year!

I then traveled off to North Greenwich Tube car park, had a fight with a ticket machine that decided to debit my card but give me no parking ticket before traveling across London to Putney to meet up with Pauline of Solid YFC.

We chatted through her plans for a couple of hours and got really excited about what she is starting to see happen around her. She is such an enabler and non-precious about what she does that it’s a pleasure to listen and see how God is working.

I then shot back across London to Waterloo to visit Blah and was able to chat with Ben over glass of wine before hearing of the exciting and challenging stuff that he is up to and how he is engaging with people on a totally different plane to many orthodox Christians. I am both incredibly challenged and incredibly excited!

I then shot home from North Greenwich and have just spoken about all this excitement to my poor wife who I kinda preached at for a while. I like these days but not sure Sarah does!

Anyway … I’m totally washed out now and need to leave early in the morning for a round of visits in Norfolk and so will put off writing my reflections on tonight until tomorrow.

Hey ..I feel I may of ended with a “chaptery” type nail biting finish … you just can’t wait to hear the next installment can you!!!

It is now 40 days until Christmas, the start of Celtic Advent – the 40 days of preperation for Christmas mirroring the 40 days of Lent.

Preperation for Christmas should mean focussing on repentance, humbling and interior housecleaning. It is a time to remove the boulders that stand in the way which symbolise those things I have done which I shouldn’t have, and fill in the potholes which are the things I should have done but have not.

It is a time for focus which I hope will protect me a little from the commercialisation and stress of Christmas so that I can focus on this cosmic changing event of the incarnation in a way that will have a fresh and vibrant impact upon me. Being a naturally slower person, the 40 rather than 24 days may give me a better chance.

I found this illusion via Johnny’s blog and it is great. I suspect loads will link to it.

Met with Phil Greig, the DYO for Rochester Diocese, in the local noodle bar.

It was good to catch up and make plans for a half hour slot we have next week at Bishops staff meeting to look at youth work and YFC working with churches in the diocese. I’m quite excited about this meeting and the possibility of working with Phil to encourage churches across the diocese in different forms of youth outreach and mission.

I have felt for a long time that the YFC centre set up is a good model for a Deanery project to bring churches together in a strategic and incarnational outreach to the young people of a particular community.

I really hope this meeting on Monday will be what my old boss in Nailsea, John Simons, would call a ‘red letter day’; a day that we can look back to and say ‘yeah … that was the starting point for something really exciting’.

I am looking forward to going to Blah on Wednesday night and hearing more about Ben Edsons mission journey within contemporary spirituality. Its interesting how I have heard nothing about this for years and in the space of a week I will have heard from two people called to mission in the world of mind body and spirit fairs.

Is anyone else I know going to be there?

The title is basically part of what I am studying with SEITE at the moment. If I’m honest I do not yet see how this links with where I am feel God is leading me next, but I understand that an understanding of how things have developed is important as it helps us to see where we have attached traition and baggage, and so what we can discard and change, and what is core, and so unchangeable! I thionk that makes sense!

Tonight we were looking at how the liturgical year developed. One thing I found amazing and will share with you so you can see how boring I really am becoming – maybe the cloning process is starting. I am relying on those of you that see me regularly to start the rapid process of de-cloning!

What I was amazed by was the whole thing around the dating of Christmas. I had always believed that we had just nicked a pagan festival and christianised it as Jesus was born sometime around that date. That is one theory.

There is another, weirdly interesting one, called the computation theory. The idea is that the incarnation must have been perfect and lasted anexact numberof years. Some believe Christs actual death was on March 25th. If this were the case, the computation/perfect incarnation/full number of years theory would mean that Jesus was conceived on March 25th. If he was conceived on March 25th, 9 months gets us to … Dec. 25th! Others felt Christ died on April 6th … the same patern followed brings us to Jan 6th for a birth – Epiphinay.

Ok … tell me, I am being sucked in!

Today, as part of my SEITE training I visited The Chatham Memorial Synagogue with other SEITE students.

We were met by Gabriel Lancaster who informed us of some of the important beliefs and practices of Judaism before showing us the inside of the synagogue.

The picture does not really do the building justice, it looks beautiful inside, but you can pick up from the photo how very similar in many ways it is to a church. I found myself To be quite surprised by this. I am not sure what I was expecting, but a church like structure was not it.

There were prayers on the wall as you would see in a church, including a long prayer for the Royal Family.The stained glass windows would have looked amazing although it was dark!

There were some interesting differences and interesting stuff I learnt. Although the synagogue is used, in essence the centre of Jewish worship is the Jewish home itself. It is here that through meals and story telling that the faith is passed on and the young are educated. Even on their central festival, Passover, the synagogue only runs a brief service – and this is with a hospitality aim. The thought behind it is to be available for ‘strangers’ as no one should be alone on Passover. If people were they would come to the short service and then be invited to join with a family in their home.

One major difference struck me. The leaders ran their service from the reading desk which you can see at the bottom of the picture in the middle of the synagogue surrounded by the lights. It s from here that the Torah is read and service led.

I learned tonight that Synagogue means ‘house of discussion’ and that rather than preach, the scripture is read and then the people like to discuss and argue what it means, the implications for living today and do on. It seemed to me to be a very healthy, affirming and inclusive way to learn about God.

In some ways it is not too far removed with what we are attempting with new expressions and alternative services – it seems we are trying, maybe without realising, to get back to our early Judaism roots of discussing and learning from each other rather than listening to the ‘expert’.

Tonight I started to think that maybe there is something in looking at the history of my religion which will equip me to work today.

It’s fascinating to think that we in church are looking to be more inclusive, more discussive, less directive and more enabling in how we look to God, how we receive from God and how we interpret and apply God’s standards to our everyday lives.

I have always struggled with the idea of the up-front expert, and never been sure of the value of the sermon as the only way to educate and impart knowledge. I know that for me personally I learn a lot more in discussion with others and trying out theories and ideas on each other than I do in a listen to the sermon setting.

It’s incredibly interesting to think that this has been happening in many a synagogue around the world for thousands of years; the simple reading of scripture and discussing it meaning and implicaion – ensuring that we have God earthed in our (personal)history (a comment made by a friend, Iori, at SEITE tonight which I like)

So … church history, history of faith – all of a sudden I love it!