Tomorrow I am up to the city again, and this time to go to a conference with the above exciting title which is being held in St Barnabas church in Kensington. I am traveling up with John and Judith, who is the vicar of St Marks Gillingham and the in-laws, who are also excellent people.

I am currently experiencing a ‘trinity of excitement’ due to:

1. the actual title of the day

2. Archbishop Rowan Williams is the key note speaker

3. I am interested to see what friends, both new and old, I’m going to see there.

The church I have grown up in, the Church of England holding a conference on fresh expressions of church – how exciting is that!

I met up with Nick Shepherd today who is a great friend who used to be Director of Greenwich YFC. He is now working on a PhD at Kings to look at how we can best disciple new Christian young people.

As part of that research we have the pleasure of being able to see Nick each Monday at GYFC as he observes our young people and gets to know them and learn from them what ‘being discipled’ is like from their side.

I love chatting to Nick, he is an incredibly academic person, who has great ideas with the ability to be able to do something with them.

Congratulations to Nick and Bridget on the birth of Evie – thankfully the pictures show she looks more like Bridget than Nick!!

We did it! England are through to the next round and we keep getting better each game we play. I feel elated to have watched a good performance and to know that at the moment we are the team who have scored the most goals. Excellent! Sorry if you are not into football … but it is ‘The Lord’s game’.

I found this great link on the BBC website where you can make yourself look like the stars. Go on be a hero and download a a mask for Thursday night. I particularly relate to the Collina one myself.

I have pasted some new links … in the link section of my blog funnily enough … that I have found useful over the years.

Labyrinth is excellent and well worth a visit. I have visited here many times and chilled with God when I have needed to. This was developed by Jonny Baker when he was with YFC, and I know members of my team have used it with great personal effect over the years.

The other sites; Mike Riddell: if you have never read any of his stuff then you really have an unfulfilled life, so go check him out.

The ReJesus site is just excellent as well with loads of little ‘nooks and crannies’ to lose yourself with God!

Well I am off now to get ready to watch England cruise through to the quarter finals … mmmm…..err hopefully!

I had the pleasure of spending time at Elevate tonight, Weald YFC’s youth worship event which I mentioned earlier in the week.

It was really refreshing being part of a youth worship experience that was not full of froth, noise and bubble. Instead it was kept simple and basic and God was clearly working in peoples lives in a real and tangible way.

Dennis has set up the room with 4 coloured rolls of carpet with bean bags placed around the edge in a circle. In the centre was a sign got from a local garden centre with the word ‘Revolution’.

The meeting started with a time of quiet to still ourselves before God, we then listened to a track, I spoke on being real and alive for Christ in such a way that we have an impact on people just be being there (pregnant with Jesus!), we then prayed, shared and went home.

What I found so refreshing was that the young people were there simply because they wanted to hear from God, not because of the style of worship,or some ‘fluffy’ experience. These young people had a passion to hear what God wants from them and were willing to hear it without the thrills and stuff that we might usually associate with youth worship. (I want to say though, in case anyone reads more into this comment, that I am not dissing anyone else’s youth events which I also enjoy!)

Thank you Dennis and Sharon for inviting me to speak, and please thank your young people for being so honest, open and encouraging. Blessings to you all!

I woke up this morning to 3 excited and lovely children all keen to give me their cards and pressies for fathers day. As always I was very blessed with the gifts and happy to see that my children know me so well with gifts of DVD, real ales and candles!

Fathers day, however, is one of those interesting days for me and I guess for many others, who may find the day difficult. For me it’s one of those mixture days where I am glad to be a dad, but also wish I had one to wish happy fathers day to. It is amazing on my travels how many people I come across who have a poor relationship with their dad. Some, like myself, live life knowing that their dad does not want to know them, while others struggle with the way their dad treats or has treated them. I guess you can read the same for parents generally.

Now here, as a good evangelical, I am supposed to say that it is alright, though, because my true father, God, makes up for it all. I’d like to say that’s true, and it really is to an extent. It doesn’t, however, take the pain away and I guess we are back at Psalm 23 again with God just being there in the pain.

It makes me think today, though, what a great responsibility it is to be a father, or a mother. We have the ability to shape a life for good or bad – and I am going to leave you with that incredibly scary thought!

Had a great night last night when some good friends came round for a BBQ. Again, I always feel afterwards, ‘Why don’t we do this more often?’ We ended the night by putting incense on the barbie and offering a prayer.

Some of us got a little carried away, though, and at one stage the incense smoke was so thick that I thought I’d lost my friends as all I could see around me was a thick sweet smelling fog. (I wish I had a digital camera so that I could have taken a pic to post here).I wonder if that was what Israelite sacrifices were like? I wonder if that will be what heaven is like? I wonder if I should shut up!

I went into my local newsagents today to buy the local paper. Gillingham is such a centre of the universe type place that we only get a paper twice a week! Anyway while I was there I noticed the following headline on the front of the Guardian,Williams twice agreed to appoint gay bishop, and so bought a copy to read.

I was both shocked and saddened by what I read. So sad with rage and exasperation, in fact, that I was close to tears after reading the story on the front page of the paper and Canon Fodder which is written in G2 (the inside bit of the Guardian for those that don’t know) by Stephen Bates, the paper’s religious correspondant. It is actually a piece from his book which is soon to be published called ‘The Church at War’.

I think that book title probably sums up why I felt so sad and exasperated by the way the church is at each others throats and, particularly, how Canon Jeffrey John and Bishop Harries has been treated by some of our own church leaders.

Some quotes from the two to give you an idea:

“Hate mail addressed to the bishop, including dog excrement, was now arriving. Eventually, Harries’ office would receive more than 3,000 communications about the appointment – two-thirds of them, in fact, supportive. Among the correspondence was a letter from the wife of John Staples, the vicar of Pangbourne, near the bishop of Reading’s residence. She wrote to John saying that, unlike his predecessors, he would not be welcome to park his car in the vicarage drive when catching the train to London from the village station.

“Yes, well,” she said indignantly, when I rang her up to ask about this, “That’s not the sort of person one wants to meet in one’s drive in the morning, is it? It was nothing personal – after he stood down, I wrote again and invited him to dinner. And, do you know, he’s never replied.”

I wonder if that lady has any idea why he may not have replied?

Even as I type I feel myself getting emotional over how we, as Christians, are able to treat other people. Surely, whether we agree with others or not, we still maintain dignity and love in the way that Jesus does with us.

I can only wonder what those outside the church think about followers of Christ when they see and hear this sort of stuff going on. In the UK there has been uproar at how people have treated each other in Big Brother – is there any difference here?

As God says (in my opinion) through The Black Eyed Peas – ‘Where is the love?’

Managed to catch up with Dennis yesterday from Weald YFC who has been a friend now for around 8 years when we kind of started together in YFC at around the same time.

Dennis is an excellent guy who is fantastically creative with a real passion to see young people reached with the love of God. Not only is he talented, but he is such a cool and gracious guy too. I guess that’s why I like him so much.

This guy is just so talented – as well as being a cool youth worker, he writes music, sings, can design web pages and publicity and even puts on survival weekends which, if I’m honest, I’m far too much of a wimp to try out; just the advertising comments below from his website terrify me!

So you think you know how to survive? Imagine having to build your own shelter to keep you dry! Having to win points for your team so you can eat! And when you find your food having to cook it! Its time to learn some new skills! And step out of your comfort zone. 2 nights out in the woods with your friends doing your best to survive.

I’m actually getting a chance to meet up with him again on Sunday as I pop in to look at Elevate.

Thanks Dennis for coming to Gillingham – it was a great excuse to get out in to Gillingham High Street and enjoy the new noodle bar!

Strikes me we do not catch up with friends enough. Why is that? We love spending time with friends and we dislike the grind of work (usually). But … we spend loads of time in the office and nearly no time with friends. mmmmm I must change that!

We watched the match tonight in a local sports centre with loads of young people that we normally work with – an excellent a atmosphere, so big thanks to the staff of the Black Lion Leisure Centre in Gillingham for helping us out.

It was not a great performance by any means, but surely a mark of a good team is to pull out a win even when you play like a flat pancake! Scoring 3 goals when you are not playing well is not that bad is it!

Could this year be the dream; will we see Beckham lift a cup in July?