Monthly Archives: December 2006

Christmas Card

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For the last year or so I have been making my own cards for certain things as the cards I find in the shops seem either incredibly overpriced or tacky.

At Christmas and Easter in particular, cards seem to be either nothing to do with Christmas or they use 1970 meek and mild baby Jesus pictures, with a nice comfortable stable which smeeled sweet, which I dislike intensely!

Yesterday I spent part of the day being creative by producing this Christmas card to send to my financial supporters. I wanted to show this was no meek and mild baby, but that this was a baby that had come with a mission, the painful task of saving the world.

I was quite pleased with this result. I was even more pleased when the house’s resident artist, aka Tom, said they were cool!

Advent

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Great advent reflection here.

New Director for Chislehurst YFC

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I spent the afternoon in Chilsehurst YFC today interviewing for the next director there. We’ve offered the job to an excellent person so I hope they accept it!

Why did it take so long to play Monty?

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you never step in the same river twice

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One good thing about being in the car for a large amount of time (nearly 9 hours over the last two days) means that I have loads of time to think and pray. It also gives me loads of time to rehearse both conversations and talks that I am going to give.

This quote has been swirling around my head for a good few weeks now. I can’t exactly remember where I first saw it, but I think it was at creative thinking blog.

I think it is an apt quote for the church of today. I have lost count of the number of times over the past six months where I have heard something that sounds like:

‘we have tried that before , but it did not work!’
Such a mundane outlook!

We never step in the same river twice.
We are never in the same time space twice.
We never exerience two identical times when all the possible variables are identical.
We think it.
It may feel like it.
But time, circumstances,opportunities are always progressing, always changing.

‘we’ve never been here before, we’ve never tried it before, and we don’t know what will happen when we do it!’

Now that’s quite exciting!
That’s quite intriguing in a scarey sort of way.
I used to get scared over what may happen because I was unsure.
I think recently I have stopped taking risks!
I want to experience that kind of fear again!

Kim Update

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A number of people have asked via email or phone call on the situation.
The situation is not good.
Kim is back in hospital.
Just pray.

I’m back!

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I had a good few days away.

The meetings at head office were great and we got a good amount of stuff covered.
The real highlight, though, was catching up with Cassie and Chris. We ate curry (thanks Chris!), drank beer and chatted about loads of stuff and it was a genuine pleasure to spend some good time with two very special people.

I learnt new things about them both – Cassie can’t wrap presents …!

Roll on May 2008 when these special people get married!

I must be getting old … no matter how good a time away is, I always notice my speed increasing the closer I get to home and the great pleasure I feel when I arrive home. I am lucky to have such a great family.

Travels

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I will be away for a few days.
I leave in the morning at around 5.20am to get to YFC head office for some meetings. I hope to beat the traffic and find somewhere for breakfast!
Tomorrow night I am going to shoot across to Nottingham and stay with good friend Chris and catch up there.
On Wednesday I am back at Head Office to plan some mission stuff before heading back home sometime Wednesday afternoon I hope.

I think I’ve done too much driving of late and I’m looking forward to a Christmas break!

EOT and orthodoxy?

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Tonight was the last SEITE session for the year.
We did our Pelagius vs Augustine debate which seemed to go quite well.
We then went on to look at orthodoxy and heresy generally and on pondering I wonder about what is seen as orthodox.

Does orthodox mean everyone having to believe the same thing with no room for questioning? Is it about deciding who is in and who is out? Is orthodox thought for ever or can it change with age?

For example – Augustine seemed to think of original sin and new-born babies condemned to hell because he had a view of conception based on Aristotle’s thoughts; i.e sperm contained humanity and the womb was just a vessel for growth. So he believed, on which he based his orthodox thought, that all attributes of a baby were passed down from the male. An idea that we now know to be incorrect. With the knowledge we have today would Augustine have thought differently about this one part of his orthodox thought?

So can something that was an orthodox in an age, become unorthodox is another?

Time to think …

The Inspector is Coming

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You may have noticed posts have been short an infrequent recently.

This is due to the DfES deciding they want to do a monitoring visit to look at the young offender and pre-offending project that they have given us a grant for. The funding means we can do exciting things with Reflex and Energize.

In essence this is very similar to an OFSTED visit that a school would get. The main differences are we receive one inspector that myself and a friend will spend 2 or 3 hours with looking at progress and how we monitor and assess what is happening, with the ultimate sanction being a withdrawal of funding for next year. That won’t happen – but I have found it quite an interestingly stressful exercise. I have spent most of this week collating information and writing reports in the format that they want to receive it in. All other work, and study, has had to be put on hold to enable this to be done. Bizarrely we make a quarterly report – so packing information out has been weird as we have submitted vary detailed reports.

After 3 full days last week I think I now have everything I need to send to the DfES before they visit in January. If it takes that long for one project, no wonder head teachers get stressed when they get the phonecall!

I had planned this term well – I had intended to have all work and essays done by Dec 18th so I could enjoy the holiday with the family as I have not been around much this term. I had quite a strict timetable to help this happen.

Sometimes, though, plans have to be laid aside for the sake of the immediate. Often this has happened because people need support, but I find myself unusually stressed by this because paperwork has had to be put on hold for more paperwork as we live in a world now with little trust, and a world that depends not only on targets being met, but a world where we need evidence of the meeting too.

A bit more trust and belief in the truth of our quarterly reports wold men we could do a lot more work!

Thankfully this tarhet culture has not hit churches yet – but beware … I reckon it’s coming!