Monthly Archives: March 2008

Chislehurst YFC vacncy

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This will be a cool job with a great line manager!

Youth Worker for Chislehurst YFC

South East London Area

We want to see local young people’s lives changed by the transforming power of the love of Christ

Are you passionate and enthusiastic about evangelism?

Do you have a calling to unchurched young people?

Chislehurst YFC is pioneering work with unchurched young people in the local area through schools, clubs & detached work. We are looking for an experienced youth worker to work alongside our Director in building upon existing work and launching new projects.

We are seeking a passionate and committed Christian for this exciting role. You will be led by the Holy Spirit, keen to take initiative, adaptable and ready to work with challenging young people without judging them. Ideally you will have worked with marginalised young people but you will need a heart for all young people regardless of background.

Salary £18,000 – £22,000 depending on experience

For further information, copies of the job description
and application details contact Lyndsay Smith on

07767 867761 or chislehurst.yfc@btconnect.com

Closing date 22 April 2008 CYFC 102 High St Chislehurst Kent BR7 5AG

Burma action needed – please respond!

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Email UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon now calling on him to go to Burma.

On Monday 10th March the UN Envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, left Burma empty handed after the regime rejected every proposal he made for restoring democracy in Burma.

It was the 35th visit to Burma by a UN envoy in the past 18 years, and there has not been a single reform to show for any of them. In fact, the human rights situation has got much worse.

We can’t have another 18 years of suffering in Burma, another 18 years of torture, rape and ethnic cleansing.

It is time the UN woke up to the fact that this regime has been lying to UN envoys for almost two decades. It does not want reform and it is not interested in democracy.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon should take over the process. He should have the backing of a binding Security Council resolution, which under international law will force the regime to reform.

Take action here:

Thank you.

Anna Roberts
The Burma Campaign UK

disrupted plans

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I had a good plan for today.
Leave at 730ish and meet Dave in Aylesbury before then meeting Andrew in Wycombe.
By 9.30 I still had not reached the Dartford Crossing due to the storms causing problems and accidents and so I turned back.
I eventually got home at 10.30 and so my travel time of 3 hours racked up a massive mileage of 40 miles!
It always amazes me (I don’t know why it always amazes me, you could ask why don’t I learn?!) that no matter how advanced we think we are s humans that nature can still gain the upper hand.

We like to think we can control our environment, that we are more ‘in control’ than we are but the events of the last few hours show us that we are still very subject to the laws of nature. That would be Creator God’s laws of nature.

It’s not just humanity that is fragile, it is human lifestyle and technology as well. We think we are so great, and yet a strong wind and a lot of rain can still grind us to a halt in exactly the same way it did hundreds of years ago.

(not) passion (less)

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If you are in the UK it has been an interesting weekend in sport – particularly in the FA Cup competition. People are surprised, but happy, that none of the top 6 teams in the country have progressed to the semi-finals. It’s been a long time even since one of the top 4 did not win the final.

There will be many views on what has happened but I wonder if it is due to passion?

The teams that won over the weekend, played with a passion. They wanted to win, they were desperate to progress and keen to get on. The ‘big stars’ were passion-less. My personal view is that they have lost sight of the ‘true beauty of the game’ by having what was once a passion of theirs relegated to a mere job by the amount of money they are paid and the self-important lifestyles they are encouraged to lead.

This weekend showed that the passion and desire to win can outmaneuver even the best in the world.

It can be the same in our Christian lives. It is easy to lose passion, to allow stuff we once held dear to be relegated to mere activities, or jobs.

How do we keep and maintain that passion we first had?
How can we ensure we don’t become passionless?
How can we stop ourselves from falling into seeing mission as just another job?

I guess it is something about reminding ourselves what we are about. For me, that’s being a person who loves mission and wants to see lives transformed. For me, its about continuing to see this happen through my work and not being distracted by things that give me apparent security.

SUMO: Shut Up Move On

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Three times a year the whole national YFC team get together for full team meeting (FTM) at head office. For me this is a 5am start but it is usually worth it and today was no exception.

This morning we had great motivational speaker Paul McGee do some stuff with us based on his new book, SUMO.

Paul was engaging, lively, funny and quite deep in some of the stuff he shared. I’m going to find his book to have a read but he shared some stuff today which made me think on a personal level about how I react in certain situations.

Paul reminded us that outcomes are not just results of events, but results of how we react to events. I think this is correct as I can think back to when I have said ‘I had no choice but to …’ after an event has stressed me. I’ve also heard this excuse from others a lot of the time. But Paul reminded us that we are not like Pavlov’s dogs.

As humans, we are created in the image of God and as such we are distinct within creation. One of the distinctives is that we have free-will. Freewill means we always have a choice in how we react to a situation which means we can decide what we do when something else happens to us. AS we have a choice in how we react, it follows that we have more of an influence on the outcomes of the situations we find ourselves in.

Today was great – why not go check out the SUMO website.

building a new community?

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This is a copy of an email I sent out on various networks a few months ago as a response to some encouragement from those praying with me.
It seems the right time now to post this in a more public setting:

I have been challenged over the last few months by two ordained people who have been mentoring me.
These two people have been listening and praying with me for a little while.
Their challenge and question – to start to research a new pioneering community now, and why am I waiting?

While doing this worried me – they have suggested I send out an email such as this and see what happens … so here goes!

I believe there are a few people, and the number will be small, who live, or soon will live, in Medway and share a common vision.
These people long, maybe are even too scared to dream, of church being a place which really connects with people outside, but also with them.
They dream of a church where differences are celebrated and add to the communities flavour.
They are not worried so much about what people believe, but more concerned about how people believe: how they live out faith, how they are Christ-like.
They don’t care so much about worship style, but interested in something that’s authentic and enables them to connect with God where they are emotionally and spiritually.
They really do believe Christianity is a journey, and that we can all exist at different points on the road, or even off it, with no fear of condemnation.
A community where it does not matter how they look, sound or by what they believe.
They want to see a community that loves and has people at its heart rather than a program that must be delivered.
They believe a community should be one that meets throughout the week to enjoy relationship with each other and with God, and is not restricted to any one day or meeting.
They are willing to pay the cost and experience the pain that comes with developing relationships.
They want to see this as a place where people belong because they are connected and on the journey, not a place where they can only belong if they turn up at a particular time, day and place.
They want to see a community that really believes in mission, that not only welcomes in strangers, but expects and allows the community to change due to what that new person brings with them.
They believe church is about participation and engagement of the majority, rather than being consumerist and led by a few specialists.
They are tired of being told the same stuff and want to discover together how to live Christian spirituality in their world!
They long for their experience of church to inform their experience of the world and vice versa.

This journey will be tough.
Not many will want to share it.
But a few will.
I am not looking for something better than we have.
I am looking for something equally valuable.
Something to add to the mixed economy of church.
But I’m putting this out there as I would really love to meet people that share this vision.
In particular…I am praying for 2 or 4 other people who share the vision as a start so that we can pray.

So … if you have something to add to this, please get in touch.

maybe you could pass this to various people who may have an interest?

Way to church closed!

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Amusingly the road to the church holding the meeting this morning was closed.
The name of th road was Church Lane.
I needed to take a two mile detour to get to the church as the short 400 metre straight road was no longer accessible to me. It was all dug up!
There’s a message there I thought!

expressions

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Today, at Kerry’s invite, I met with the Emerging Churches Group which is a group of practitioners who are all involved in some way in something new or different from Canterbury Diocese that meets twice a year.

I was quite surprised by the number of people I knew at the day, and it was good to meet up with Sha Coburn, Karl Rudd, Mike King, Eric and many others. It was great to have a brief chat with Diana who is the nightclub chaplain in Maidstone and it seems we have been hearing about each other for ages. It was also a privilege to hear from Bishop Graham and have a chance to pray with him before the end of the day.

Today was a day of hearing lots of peoples stories, some more innovative than others but all new in their contexts. Today was a day to hear from people who are attempting new ways of being church and it was good to hear some of these stories. It was an informative day and yet I had many questions about some of the day – and that is not a negative as we should be challenging, asking and not always necessarily agreeing.

It seemed to me that there was a lot of examples of new ways of DOING church, but not really new ways of BEING church. There was, for me, still too much concentration of ‘music group’ for worship and ‘speakers’ as it left me thinking we were taking an old format, packaging it differently and calling it a new way of being church.

I don’t criticise this, merely challenge the thinking, as all the evidence shows that these initiatives are growing and bringing people into a relationship with God for the first time. I believe, though, that we need to break further out of this mould of ‘a worship service’ and look to different ways of worship and learning that are more organically connected with those outside the church.

Marginal Identity

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I had the privilege of speaking at Harvest this morning. I spoke of hope, and used Matthew 9:35-38 to illustrate how Jesus brought hope to communities.

As I was thinking on this I was brought back again to my thoughts last week of identity. To a post here, Darrel made an interesting comment which has been sitting with me for a while:

Identity is always stronger when you’re from, or perceive yourself as being from, a minority group. This is particularly the case if there is prejudice against this group either now or in the recent past.

I agree, but I also wonder whether we are not seen as a minority group already. There is certainly prejudice against what is perceived to be Christianity, and if this is so, should we not be seeing a stronger identity should already be developing.
For a group identity to develop does there need to be a minority, or a marginal, mindset. Before an identity develops, do we need to feel that others are against us? This seems rather negative, but many Christians do feel they are in a minority group and yet there is still a lack of identity.

I wonder if when a group moves from marginal to mainstream and returns to marginal again that the development of tat identity can no longer come from the marginalised feeling, but needs to come from a total re-think of what that group exists for?

I wonder whether what we are seeing now is a marginalised group that was once mainstream fighting hard to reclaim ground and ideals that are never going to return. The old ground has been lost (and I’m not so sure that is a bad thing)and there is a need now to claim the new ground before us.

Our identity cannot come from past events but from an agreement of a new paradigm and a commitment to re-assess where we are, who we are, and where we are going.