I’m taking 2 days holiday that I need to use before the end of March – talk about last minute!

First time I’ve ever taken a holiday without the family; first time I’ve ever taken a holiday to write an essay! But … it is a good use of tme and will get it out of the way, I hope!

Ancient Near Eastern traditions, and how ythey influenced the Old Testament … here I come!

Today, myself and all other national YFC staff are working on their personal support. As a missionary movement, we depend on friends supporting us financially. The figure that national staff, like myself, have to raise is 50% of our salary.

This may seem odd, but actually it is quite biblical and gives exciting opportunities too. It gives exciting opportunities to people who God has given different ministries to, to be able to partner with me in what I do. It gives exciting opportunities to people to be able to see how God can bless an teach them spiritual truths through their giving to his work. It gives exciting opportunities for prayer with a variety of people. It gives an exciting opportunity for friendship and community, in a world which is desperately in need of friendship and community.

Henri Nouwen says a lot of things about fundraising and giving. One that strikes me, that I had never thought of before ‘fundraising is good for our spiritual life’. I always thought giving was good for us, but actually asking a well?! But, as is quite usual, Nouwen is correct in his thoughts. As I gain the freedom to ask people for money to support me without a fear of them saying no, or worse still being offended, then I learn deep truths about dependence on God.

Nouwen also says: ‘asking people for money is giving them the opportunity to put their resources at the disposal of the kingdom.’

Of course that is true – but I am still working on asking people without fear – so please pray for me today, and over the next few days, as I get to grips with this.

If anyone here who reads this regularly, or knows me as a friend, would like that opportunity to put stuff at God’s disposal by supporting me I would love to come and meet you, grab a coffee/beer/whatever and have a chat and a pray and see what happens.

Peace!

Now there’s a sentence, as an ex teacher and current governor, that I thought I would never write!

Joe and Sarah’s school has just had an OFSTED inspection. This used to mean loads of stress with the weeks to prepare beforehand. It’s very different now with schools only getting a few days notice – something that I always thought made more sense giving both less stress and a more accurate picture of the school.

Today Joe brought a letter home from the Inspectors telling them how nice the school was, how they were learning well, and thanking them for being such polite and co-operative children. I thought that was really cool!

OFSTED are showing respect to young people in schools!
Excellent!
Maybe the government can learn something from them in how it treats the young people of today!

Waltham Forest YFC is always a great place to visit.

I led the team prayer meeting this morning by taking them through the journey. It always amazes me how this simple activity can be so powerful and revealing to each member of the team.

I think we had a great time sharing and praying with each other. Yet again, it was a real privilege to be able to do so.

This morning it struck me too how the activity can surprise you personally as I has a sudden realisation that I am in a desert yet again. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do wish to progress from this as it is quite a painful and monotonous place to be. I received a mega encouragement though from Sam, one of the volunteers at WFYFC. He saw a picture of me, walking in the desert, leaving wet footprints with my feet never drying out. That’s such a cool image and fits with where I think my future lies after training with SEITE.

After The Journey, I joined the WFYFC team meeting before going off for lunch and a chat with Ruth, the director. It’s great to be able to hear of the creative and innovative plans of others, and be able to just share and stand wth them in their frustrations.

After leaving the YFC office I was able to catch up with my old friend the Rev Simon Heathfield who has just been appointed Team rector at Walthamstow. It was great to catch up and hear of his plans for mission in the area. Hopefully, I’ll be able to see both the Anglican parish under Simon and YFC doing stuff in partnership in the borough.

What a great and exciting day!

I have found and been enjoying emerging city for the last couple of weeks.

There is a great article here on being aware during the week.

This week – will you be paying attention?

It’s my birthday soon – if you want to treat me I’ve added a link to my Amazon wishlist on the sidebar – cheeky I know!

This morning it was great to be at Sawyers Church in Brentwood, for the induction of my good friend Johnny Douglas as lead pastor.

Johnny spoke well this morning and challenged us to ask ourselves when was the last time we asked to see God’s glory as Moses did in Exodus 33. That’s a great question, and a question that made me realise that I have started to box God, to expect God to work in definable ways in my life, to expect God to be gentle with me.

While some of that may be right in certain circumstances, or maybe not, this morning I made a commitment to search more. To seek the glory of God in my life, to take the weight of his glory with me in my everyday living and loving. To spend that time experiencing rather than wondering how to explain. To be in his prescence before starting the tasks.

Cheers Johnny – its great having you, Hannah, Ester and Noah only 40 minutes away so we will be able to catch up more regularly. I’m really looking forward to that!

An added bonus too was to have an all too brief chat with blogger extraordinaire Libby – a great and talented person who writes of exciting things happening on her journey.

Another great win today against all the odds!
Darren Byfield on 3 goals in 2 games!
I really think this means we can avoid the drop again.
Here’s hoping!

17 years ago today, as I write, I was sat in a bar with Mark, my best man, thinking about leaving for the church!

17 years ago today, a nervous young 24 year old man from Weymouth watched as a beautiful bride walked down the aisle towards him.

17 years ago today 2 nervous young people both said ‘I do’

17 years has flown by.

Thank you Sarah.

Sorry – I’m going to name drop and all the rest of it – but I had such a cool day today.

Today was a day I have been quite excited about, and looking forward to for a little while. Today I was at the National consultation on the London Olympics, held at Methodist Central Hall.

At the picture shows, David Lammy, Brian Mawhinney and Simon Hughes were there to speak, along with others.

The purpose of the day was to ask two questions:
To see how the Christian church can work together for the Olympics in 2012.
To decide what legacy we wish to pass on beyond that.

I have been excited about this for two main reasons:
I love sport and think this is such a great God given opportunity to show the love of God to thousands of people while the Olympics run.
We are 6 years away, and already the church is getting its act together now and starting to plan and think – I think that is amazing, maybe even a little miracle in itself.

Some words from the ‘3 in the picture’ surprised me, Mawhinney in particular: ‘We should be there because we have a gospel message that can transform the world’ First time in my whole life that I’ve ever agreed with anything a Tory said! I even clapped him, although that bit felt strange!

There are loads of things church can do, from hosting families, to running festivals, to volunteering (apparently at previous Olympics, people from churches have been 3 times more likely to volunteer)to chaplaincy …. the list could be endless.

There was one good strong message that came out, though – we need to present a united front, one church in London, in the UK – if we do that we could see real transformation that will last beyond 2012.

This was a good, as well as exciting, meeting. The organisers were wanting to genuinely hear opinions and gain a mandate, but came with a ‘prayed and thought out’ proposal so that we were not starting from cold.

Matt Bird delivered a possible 5 fold strategy:
to CONSULT the full breadth of the church
to COMMUNICATE with one voice for the church
to COORDINATE the church and its response
to COLLABORATE by helping us to work together
to act as a CLEARING house to the London Olympic Committee for churches

This made loads of sense with the following 4 tiered structure presented by John Baxter Brown:
Council of Reference
Trustees
Executive group
Task groups

There were a lot of people there today – but the organisers, mainly Transform Newham, EA, CTIE and Christian in Sport, are very aware that they will not have invited everyone. Today they asked us all to be ambassadors, to let others know and to show them how to get involved with comments or offering skills, I’m doing that now – you can email them at:
olympics@transformnewham.com

Today was exciting, I spoke and met some new friends, as well as met a few others that I had not seen for a while. Today my faith in church has been restored a little.

6 years and counting!