It was the annual Remembrance service at St Marks church today.

This is always a mixed service with some of the ‘regular’ staying away as they do not like to rigid style of the event. This is counter-balanced, however, by the loads of visitors, many in uniform, who do come to this annual event.

I’m always struck by this at of remembrance and today I find myself asking ‘why’.

Why … does God allow such atrocities to happen. Where is God in the ripped apart families, in the pain and horror, in the tears and heartache, in the blood and gore. I know he is there suffering alongside, but how is he obvious, how do people connect with him?

Why do people come back each year to remember the dead? In some ways this seems macabre and self -torture in remembering lost loved ones and friends. Why submit oneself to an incredibly painful experience on an annual basis? What is it that people want when they come to such an event? Are people coming to say thank you, are they coming to say sorry, are they coming due to guilt with a ‘it should have been me’ feeling? I guess it could be a mixture of all of these? I also wonder if people are coming to search; after all of these years to still ask why and what next?

Why does the church change its whole normal program for host such an event? The church is there for the community. This is a time when the community choose to remember, when they choose to stop their normal Sunday morning events, whatever they may be, to mark this special occasion. As part of this community, we choose to do the same. The church is the people, an for the people. When the people need somewhere to remember, the church should be the natural place for that to happen.

Why should wee choose to remember? We choose to remember so that we do not forget, summed up in the words of the service said all over the UK today:

(said by an older person)
They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old;
age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn.

(said by a younger person)
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning,
we will remember them.

(said by all)
We will remember them.

Great game I saw today – this has really boosted my confidence over the world cup (please not my lack of mention of Gillingham who sadly need a new manager before they will make any progress).

Rooney and Owen wer a fantastic partnership with Roons himself being everywhere and easily man of the match!

Could it be true …. it’s coming home, it’s coming home…

The equipping your church course was excellent. Well thought out, well planned and loads of excellent networking and discussions. I’ve got great mind maps from each of the sessions and have returned (via the sea) inspired and exciting about the possibilities of engaging with people on a spiritual level.

We looked at the 6 big questions that people seem to ask:
about their destiny
about their purpose
about the universe
about God
about the supernatural
about suffering

We then looked at how to engage with people in light of this.

A number of people spoke about, and many were involved in, visiting psychic fairs and, amongst other stuff, offering free prayer. People want prayer and at psychic fairs they are willing to pay for it. A Christian stall can offer prayer for free! Where this was happening, churches were encouraged to offer more prayer at other places throughout the week.

Today there was a fair bit of emphasis on praying for people. This reminded me of when Sarah was at SITC last year. They offered to pray for people on the streets of Peckham and not once were they turned down! People want prayer! People are into the spiritual and, surprise surprise, they do not think the church has anything to offer in this department!!!

Young people are interested in God and yet see the church as irrelevant.
The nation generally is interested in spirituality, and yet sees the church as having nothing to offer!

As Christians we have done such an excellent marketing of our message over the centuries!

At the end of the day I bought the workbook ‘Equipping your church in a spiritual age’ and a few sets of the angel and nature cards I mentioned a little while ago. They look good and I am keen to see what people say about them.

I’m excited by what I heard today – but some stuff does concern me. If people move ahead and take this stuff on board seriously and try missional incarnational stuff with different spiritualities of people then church is going to look very very messy. We are going to have to work hard at encouragement, at acocuntability, at recognition, at releasing gifts and at acknowledging as real and valuable stuff that we do not understand or even like! Now … which is going to be the biggest challenge?

I am glad the vote was in my mind the correct one.

I shared with my good friend Sheena that this feels odd. I have always supported the Labour Party and I did trust Blair before Iraq, against public opinion. I now find myself disagreeing with Blair, but also again against public opinion as on this issue of 90 days he seems to have the nation with him!

I hope this makes the governmebt look up and listen. I hope the arrogance disappears and the ears start to work again to enable ministers to really hear what is being said.

Tomorrow I am off to Brighton for the Equipping your church in a spiritual age tour. I’m really looking forward to this for a couple of reasons. I am intrigued to hear what Steve says, meet and hear from others.

I’m also pleased to be going to Brighton. It’s been a while and this is a city that I really love. After the conference no doubt I will take a walk along the sea front and the pier – it just has to be done!

I grew up in Weymouth, and in my formative years everything I did revolved around the sea. I grew up with the sea. We became ‘old friends’. It’s really quite strange, but I feel unusually ‘at home’ and ‘at peace’ when I am in front of the sea. Whenever I visit anywhere that is remotely near the sea I have to go and stare and listen to my old friend.

There is nothing at all in the world like the experience of listening and gazing across the vastness of the sea. Somehow it shows my finite-ness and how my troubles and stuff are so insignificant in the wider scheme of things. It’s good to get a realistic outlook sometimes. The sea helps me achieve that.

Today I caught up with Dave, the new director of Aylesbury YFC and Derrick, Director of Wycombe YFC. One guy who has been in post for 7 days, and one who has been in post for 7 years. One starting to make links and discern what God wants him involved in, one with many links and known in schools with a clear idea of where to go next with the centre’s mission. Both creative, dedicated, and committed to reaching young people in their area in new innovative ways. Both collaborative and enabling people who genuinely want others working with them to do better than them, who do not want the work based around who they are. Two great examples of leadership.

I had masses years ago. I kept a little a few months ago, but it has been disappearing for a while now. I think now it has all gone. I have lost respect for Tony Blair.

Blair seems at the moment to have a dogmatic air of arrogance around him. He has a healthy majority and yet even when that majority disappears in votes he refuses to listen to his party, he refuses to listen to human rights groups, in fact he refuses to listen to anybody.

We are a civilised country. Well, actually, after my last post I will change that to ‘we like to think of ourselves as a civilised country’. How can we even be considering holding people without charge for 90 days and, I personally think worse, debating whether evidence obtained during torture is admissible.

These 2 things undermine our identity as a country. They undermine our strong base of human rights. They take away all dignity and respect for human life.

A little while ago we were shocked as a nation at photos of mistreatment of Iraqi people. Now our courts are considering whether evidence obtained from that abuse can be used in courts! This is madness.

The police and government tell us that the Terrorism Act will be used wisely and only those which they have real suspicion over will be detained. The only problem I have with that is that here you can find a picture of the last person I remember to be detained under the act.

Today I went to the annual lecture and agm of NCVYS.

The Keynote speaker was Al Aynsley Green, the new Children’s Commissioner for England. I was impressed by how he spoke, and by the challenge he presented to us.

He was basically asking the question ‘who cares that all this crap is happening to young people?’ and challenged us, as the voluntary sector, to speak out, challenge and stand up for the rights of young people. He drew attention to some horrible facts of inequality:

young people in poverty in the city have a life expectancy of 15 years less than that of their peers outside the city!
40 000 teens are on ant-depressants
only 1% of care leavers go on to higher education.
we still (after a decade of work) have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.
Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rapid increase.
Teen suicides are the highest they have ever been in the UK.

We looked at how the media is demonising young people: hoodie horrors, naming and shaming minors, be-littling good exam results. Young people can’t win!

Aynsley Green then went on to outline how no one stands up for young people, no one has been challenging the advertisers, the companies that put inappropriate slogans on t-shirts for girls who are only 5. He drew reference to one, with age 5/6 in the label, with the slogan ‘so may boys … so little time’. What is the point! Where is the justification.

I think we need to open our eyes. Our children are being sacrificed. We are sitting back and letting it happen. I’ve mentioned this before, but I believe this is the spirit of Molech all over again.

One of the marks of Aynsley Green’s job so far has been to go out and talk with young people and children. He outlined an incident at an immigration centre. He wanted to see how young people were treated so did the tour, following the route asylum seekers would follow. He shared how he arrived in reception and saw a 12 year old boy with shiny shoes, school uniform with tie, blazer and badge. He was tearful and looking bewildered.

Aynsley Green asked the boy why he was here. He replied that no one had told him. Next to him stood his tearful mum. He then outlined his morning. Mum had sent him to the shops at 730am to buy some milk. On his return he saw police cars and 2 police vans. He and his mum were put in the van and taken to the centre. He was not allowed to collect belongings. He was not allowed to say goodbye. He was not told what was happening.

I was angry! I was hurt by the sense of injustice! Are these the actions of a civilised country? Is this what we mean by freedom and civil rights? Is this the ‘respect’ that my government talks about? Is this what persecuted people flee their country to come to?

He gave a fourfold challenge today to the voluntary sector:

we need to expose
we need to challenge
we need to examine
we need to inform.

He asked ‘who will do this’ ‘who is speaking out against the victimisation of our young people’ ‘who is exposing the consumerist cut-throat advertising campaigns’.

My immediate response was – ‘we are’. By that I mean the church. I believe that the church has been speaking out on some of this for a while, and we have been ignored. Over 10 years ago there were articles in Youth work magazine warning of the dangers of alco-pops and promiscuous magazines aimed at teen girls. We were ignored – and now the government is seeing the result of that ignoring. These 13 and 14 years old girls and boys that we were concerned about, that we asked for protection for, are now 23 and 24 , involved in binge drinking regularly, sleeping around and contracting STD’s. We allowed their innocence to be sacrificed and look at the mess now!

The nation needs icons. The nation needs people to speak out, to stand up, to cause change. The nation needs the church to explain. The nation needs God.It’s been done before, and it was the church that did it. The time has come for us to make that stand again – we can’t say ‘I told you so’, we need to say ‘lets sort this!’

Today Aynsley Green outlined stuff but he had no explanations or remedies. He could not share any secrets that would turn these behaviours around. There was, there is, something missing. The missing element is a nation that looks to God for guidance. By that I don’t mean a nation of Christians; I have faith but it is not big enough to believe the whole nation will turn to Christ. The nation can, however, turn and follow Christ’s morals. They have forgotten how to – and we need to find ways of helping more than we have ever done before.

God forgive us and help us to change!

If we ignore the football the weekend was a cool one with lots of quality time spent with friends and loads of excuses to eat, drink and be merry – and it’s still weeks until Christmas!

Friday night we did the fireworks thing over at Terry’s. The children loved this and, if I’m honest, so did the adults!

On Saturday we celebrated Sheena’s 30th. At least, I think we did, but the DJ referred to both Serena and Sheila as being 30 too – maybe it was a treble celebration! This was a great time and it was fantastic to celebrate with Sheena and her friends!

Talking of friends it was really cool to meet up with Sam and Laura and their partners, Mark and Rob. When I was a youth worker in Nailsea these 2 great people were people we naturally got on with and enjoyed spending loads of time with. More than 10 years on I find it still such a great privilege to be able to still spend time laughing together. It’s a pity we don’t see more of each other, but last night was really cool. I actually feel quite privileged that, years after being their youth worker, that great people like Laura, Sam and Sheena still speak to us and spend time with us. I suspect they are just humouring us and enjoying the observation of the onset of old age! Friendships like this, though, seem important to me.

Today was a good end to the weekend. We celebrated Becky’s 10th birthday after church in the Noodle Bar. Just as last Sunday in the curry house, there were around 30 of us all together. Experiences like this are really cool for the kids, and I’m seriously starting to think this kind of thing should be compulsory after church! All this getting home for lunch crap is a pain and prevents people from chatting – lets just go out each time; it stops the need for washing up an cooking too!

As I reflect on the weekend I have suddenly realised that my outlook and priorities as I get older seem to be very people based. This is quite a change from the Rob who only a little while ago would have been totally task and target based. Relationships are becoming more and more important – relationships with friends and a desire to take any and every opportunity there is to meet up. I find these time to catch up to be key. Meeting up and catching up is great as it sees so easy to lose touch so quickly. Time flies,as they say … maybe we just need to land sometimes so that we can all get off and take the time for those important things, and people, of life.

So … if you fancy meeting up, get in touch – especially if you are in some warm climate and wnt to pay my air fare to0!

I saw this on Marko’s (amongst others) blog. I know its mindless and daft, but I thought I’d give it a go. The idea is you type your name followed by needs in quotation marks in google (e.g. “Rob Needs”) and copy down the first 10 sentences. Well, some could acually have been written by and/or for me. Here goes:

Rob needs your support and donations
Rob needs a job
Rob needs to realize that although conditions look similar, the laws are not.
Rob needs a refresher as to the meaning of perjury.
Rob needs 1 demonstrator in each room
Rob needs credit for steeping up and fighting the biggest guy on the show
Rob needs replacement
Rob needs to first go public
Rob needs to get serious about living the Bible
Rob needs Net Clued Lawyer, urgently