Monthly Archives: October 2006

Chatting with friends

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Today was an excellent day. Today was a day of chatting with friends. YFC is one great bunch of friends united under the task of youth mission.

YFC staff from London and around the south east got together to listen to each other, catch up and pray together. We heard news, looked at new resources and trialled a new resource called Overcoming to help teach about HIV in schools. This is a great resource developed by YFC and Samaritans Purse and I think it will work great in schools.

It was a pleasure to meet up with so many people that I have not had the chance to speak with for a while. The day started with a brief examen as we looked at what energised and what didn’t. I remembered that meeting with people energised me, and traveling drained me – hence my feelings of excitement now!

After the YFC day I was able to meet up with 2 of my very generous supporters. I had a coffee with Barry who has been supporting me for a year or so despite not knowing me! It was good to meet him and learn a little more.

After leaving Barry I caught up with Leesa in a local curry house. It’s always cool catching up with Leesa and today it was great to hear of Leesa’s wonderfully innovative course that she has written around the subject of pampering to help local church connect with women outside the church. This sounds a cool resource which I am really looking forward to being able to see.

A great day just chatting!
But it’s amazing what happens when people with similar outlooks and desires chat!
It’s not idle chat. It’s not just friendly chat.
It becomes creative chat. It becomes a chat of accountability and a chat of challenge.

Today it’s easy to stay behind computer screens and not really engage with people.
If we do that too much though, I think we start to take ourselves too seriously.
We forget how to laugh at ourselves.
More importantly we forget how to listen to the thoughts of others.
If we do that we start to think we are always right!

Today has been a great day for listening to the thoughts of others and in doing so becoming excited by hearing of how God is blessing friends in many different ways.

Big thanks to all I have chatted with today – you are all individually great and special people.

Bridge

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While having a read of Moot Blog I cam across a link to Bridge, by Michael Cross, which is part of the London Design Festival.

This sounds and looks like it could be quite strange, maybe a little scarey, but I’m interested to go see and take part, if only to see what a church looks like flooded with water. I’ve never walked on water – what better place than in a church! I like the idea of standing 12 metres away from ‘safety’ and wondering what that feels like.

Somehow I’ve got to check this out. Now, how do I engineer a meeting near to Canada Water?

It clicked!

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For what seems like an age I have been trying to put a strategy down on paper.

Today things just seemed to fall into place and I’ve just added up that I’ve worked for about 8 hours on this today, re-drafting and rethinking and all the time getting a little more energised, rather than deflated which is what normally happens when I try to get stuff on paper.

It’s strange as I look at my work now and think ‘that’s flipping obvious’, and ‘how come I never thought of that before.’ It’s probably not a great strategy, but on a day when I planned to be doing other things the ideas for this just flooded in.

Seems like that when I took my focus of this task which has given me a headache in the past that the ‘de-focusing’ allowed my creative brain to start to work on the problem. I’m pleased with what I have so far.

The day ended well chatting with Malcolm from GYFC and then with a good short governors meeting at my local school.

Tomorrow I am off to Loughton to meet up with a good number of YFC friends at one of our annual get togethers.It’s a highlight of the year for me as I look forward to catching up with so many people.

SITC, OPM, SEITE … confused!

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Yesterday I had a great, but long, day in London. A day of acronyms, a day of conversations.

I started at the HQ of the Church Urban Fund to meet with some great people looking at Soul in the City (SITC). We looked at some of the amazing things that had happened over the summer. There were a mass of projects and loads of young people mobilised and involved in their communities, involved in the beginnings of transformation.

We then chatted around how our respective organisations could be both involved and a support to SITC.

This was a great meeting, full of energy and a genuine desire to support each other and move forward, bringing together as many as possible to serve the city. I’m looking forward to being involved in whatever capacity I can be, and am asked to be.

Following that I grabbed a bit of time at the Tate Modern before meeting up with Lincoln who has just joined the staff of SEITE to look at Ordained Pioneer Ministry (OPM) and how the training could be changed and adapted. Obviously I have an interest here! We looked at reflective practice, ideas for types of placement and how we can enable pioneers to be prepared as best they can be. This is a whole big area but I am keen that some of my training will be adapted quite soon.

The day ended with me joining my SEITE friends in Southwark. Monday was going to be impossible and rather than skip a week as I was in the area I thought I should gate crash the Tuesday session instead. It was good to see everyone – thanks for making me welcome!

‘Dad … why?’

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I watched the Dispatches program on Burma on Monday evening with Tom and Beth. There was a weird silence as we heard of villages burnt, land mines hidden outside the front doors of people, children killed or press ganged into the army.

Burma has a massive army, but no enemies other than its own people. These soldiers are involved in a brutal process of ethnic cleansing.

As the program outlined that the military in Burma would seriously struggle without western funding through oil and tourism, the main two countries being France and the UK – she asked a question:

‘Dad … why doesn’t our government do something, or at least stop our money being used?’

Good question.
Interesting to see that a 10 year old girl understands the brutal injustice on display here.
Why can’t politicians?

Noodles may help in starting a local ministry

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Met with Phil today in the noodle bar in Gillingham, probably still one of my favourite places to meet in Medway for lunch, probably only bettered by New East India Tandoori – but it’s always hard to work in the afternoon after one of Ray’s Jal Frezzis!

It was good to catch up and hear and think about stuff going in the Rochester diocese. It’s been a dream of mine for a while to see more YFC centres at key places as I particularly think the YFC model is great for a deanery model of youth outreach – in any diocese not just the Rochester one.

I think the model is a good one as we as YFC give support through a franchise type covenantal model while local people drive the project and have full responsibility and to do things their own way. It’s because of this that no two YFC local ministries are the same. Running this way, rather than insisting on particular models, means that we can see YFC ministries around the country that accurately and relevantly reflect the local community.

This means that in some areas YFC work in prisons, in others in nightclubs, others run early morning breakfast clubs, others late night clubber drop ins, others work with young parents, while others work within sports and creative arts, some run buses in rural areas, others cafes in urban centres, some are school chaplains, others football club chaplains … the list goes on and on.

This has turned into a plug … so is anyone doing this kind of stuff in your area?
If the answer is yes, and in many it is, excellent – can you do anything to help them?
If that answer is no … why not get in touch and see what we can do together.
You can find more info on what it all means to start a YFC local ministry by clicking here.

Burma on C4 tonight

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Tonight from 8pm-9pm, Channel 4 will be broadcasting a major new documentary about Burma. The programme, Dispatches – Burma’s Secret War, was filmed inside Burma by an undercover journalist, and exposes the regime’s mass ethnic cleansing and forced labour, and the role of the UK in funding the regime.

In Burma’s Secret War, Dispatches exposes the new surge in violence inflicted on the Burmese people by their own regime. Enslaved by a brutal military dictatorship which wields absolute power, Burma is a secretive state where suppression reigns and dissent is not tolerated. Journalist Evan Williams, who is banned from entering the country after reporting on Burma for more than 10 years, goes undercover to investigate the mass ethnic cleansing, forced labour and vicious clamping down of political opposition which characterise the dictatorship.

This is happening today and every day and does not reach the news, I believe, because th country has nothing to offer us as far as successive governments have decided.

Please watch the program and, if moved, write to your MP and the PM and Foreign Sectretary afterwards. Things can be changed, but only if the international community speaks out.

Silence condones the action.

Weekend fun

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The weekend always goes well when Gillingham win the match! This started the weekend off to a good start!

Saturday saw th chairs shipped out of church and a barn dance held inside. Barn Dances are not really my cup of tea but it was good to catch up with people after the summer and have a laugh – although I must say that last year when we did the event with the Funky monkeys in church was much better! Also – I need to ask, why did we put all the chairs back as it would be a far more versatile worship space of we didn’t. Why do we have to sit in rows and all face the front?

On Sunday morning it was exciting and challenging to hear back from the two teams we sent to Uganda – far too much and too many stories to write about here. It’s cool to see all the people returned with a much wider vision of what God can and does do – that in itself is exciting as well as all they achieved in serving the Ugandans while they were there. The service ended with a Ugandan style auction.

Apparently in Uganda after the service it is common for items placed in the collection plate to be auctioned to provide extra income for the church and vicar. There were things like pineapples, nuts, apples, sweetcorn and onions. We ended up with … yep you guessed it; the onions – due to the £5 bib placed my Tom! Cheers mate!

The weekend ended well by having good friends Jim and Mags here with us for lunch. A weekend which ends with good food, good wine and laughter can’t be bad!

Now … anyone for onion soup?