I have just returned from my 13th YFC staff conference which I think has been one of the best I’ve attended.

We were fortunate and blessed with some great teachers such as Ajith Fernando who has been national director of Sri Lanka YFC since 1976. Being a 42 year old who started secondary school in 1976, that level of faithfulness and commitment to a role struck me as being quite special.

Ajith was topped in my mind, however, by Paula Gooder who was only with us for 24 hours but had a refreshing way of unearthing greatt stuff from the bible. I could have listened to Paula for hours and was enthralled and challenged by what she brought out of the passage.

As always for me, though, Staff Conference is about the people. Conversations both with friends of long standing and new friends were great times and on one particular occasion while ‘sharing icons’ and chatting about ‘stuff’ that matters I lost track of time and did not get to bed until nearly 2am!

Highlights are too many to list (this entry would be very long!) but here is a feeble attempt:
chats in the sauna with various groups of people
drinking at the bar with the London possy and the South west crew
enjoying the company of the ‘Chislehurst massive’ and their sense of humour
that late night iconic conversation in the bar with Helen
coffee with Lucy
hearing dreams of others in their locations
various mealtime conversations with great people
the major highlight was simply spending time with so many wonderful YFC people who have become friends at some stage over the last 13/14 years.

For once there is a lowlight.
The 13th staff conference will be my last as I start a new ‘ordained’ role in September. As I even type those words of leaving YFC it produces tears in my eyes. It is not often that you get to live your dreams but that is what I have experienced over the last 14 years, and particularly in the last 3/4 years when I have quite seriously had the best job in the world working with ‘national’. I sit back and have an overwhelming feeling of gratitude with a strong sense of the sheer privilege it has been to be part of something so dynamic while serving very special people in their mission roles. I hope the next 6/7 months go quite slowly!

I shared on the last morning where ordination seems to be taking me in a pioneering/fresh expressions setting. It is an exciting opportunity on which I will write more later. For now, however, I need to get my head around leaving what I believe to be the best Christian youth agency in the country, probably the world. In many ways it is still a step that I don’t want to take, but I think (and hope) that I am right in believing that it’s a step that God wants me to take. My prayer is that this is a God idea and not simply a good idea.

So 14 years …. a large part of my life, and over half of my life in ‘ministry’ is all about to change. I look forward with a healthy and natural mix of fear, excitement and sadness with a hope that I will manage to stay close to at least some of those wonderful friends of the last 13 years.