I’m loving my new role – its tough a lot of the time, but it gives me lots of opportunities to smile and sometimes that maybe because of the irony of the situations I find myself in, or because of the way God is surprising me.

This weekend I deaconed at the Eucharist on Sunday morning. This is still something I am getting used to. One of the roles of the deacon in this service is to process in with the gospel and later process to the centre of the church before reading from it. This week I was handed the thurible and had to incense the gospel before reading. While my anglo-catholic friends would have been proud of me, my YFC friends would be asking what was going on. As for me … I smiled thinking here I am, an ordained pioneer minister tasked with developing a fresh expression of church, wearing an alb and stole, with a thurifer standing in the middle of the second oldest cathedral (over 1400 years old!)in the country.

It made me smile to think that I stand in two distinct worlds. On a Sunday I am comfortable in this traditional and often beautiful setting whereas during the week I am found in ‘downtown Medway’ in pubs, coffee shops and the gym looking to see what God is doing in the normal everyday lives of people and looking for connections. Here I feel equally comfortable.

A while ago, particularly while on placement with Ian and Moot, I came to the belief that whatever develops or emerges should not deny or ignore what the church has developed in the past or the journey the church has come from. While some of that stuff may need to be re-assessed and thought about, other stuff will be kept and possibly re-framed to be used in a different, postmodern if you like, setting.

I think it is important to consider where the church has come from and what can be useful and helpful for today’s spiritual tourists or pilgrims. It’s so easy to say a lot of stuff needs to be rejected, wheareas actually, some of the symbolic stuff that we have lost can be quite powerful and helpful for people as they develop their understanding of their relationship with God, and from that develop their knowledge of who God is.

I believe knowledge comes from experience. As people experience God, their knowledge of God develops. Traditional practices such as incense, candles, chanting can be things that help draw people today into the presence of God in a way they have never been able to before. Practices from the past that were essentially there to help people from a non-book culture understand more of God could be useful again as we move deeper into a virtual cyber world where many people could equally be classified as coming from a ‘non-book culture’.

Standing in both worlds is not always comfortable and sometimes it feels pretty weird, often it can be draining with the odd spark of excitement here and there, but as I said earlier – it does give lots of opportunities for a smile with God.