I find it interesting to see how my children are developing. It’s amazing how they grow, but even more so how they develop intellectually, what they over-hear in conversations and how they interpret things.

Joe in particular is at that interesting but amusing time as the pic shows. This pic shows Joe lying in the awning and every few seconds raising a hand and singing ‘Jesus, Jesus, friend of sinners… and other such stuff’. This was not a Soul Survivor experience, it was just my son having a laugh and trying his hardest to get a laugh – with a fair bit of success. Hey maybe I’m wrong to think so – but it was VERY funny to see!

The question … where did Joe pick this up. Our church is not the sort of church where he would have experienced this. Certainly we are not known in the Ryan household for lying on the floor and worshipping together. Where has Joe seen this to mimic it for a laugh – or did it just come to him as a way of being the comedian yet again?

It’s confusing as we have not been anywhere where Joe would experience anything like this! There may be 2 possibilities – he was in the spirit and worshipping his creator, or he has crept downstairs and has secretly been watching the God Channel while the rest of us are asleep! I am sure there is a more reasonable explanation.

Whichever it made us laugh and it won’t be forgotten for quite a while! It’s great having kids!

The weekend has been great and I am sitting here thinking on how great it would be to have a 3 day weekend every week. It would result in less stress and far more refreshed people going into work! We would all be more efficient, there would be less fumes from cars in the air, we would spend more time with our families, our kids would have great role models for life work balances …..

Highlights of the weekend
Having Sarah back
Meeting up with family and friends
Re-starting the pre-match drink with my good friend Sheena
The cricket …. all my Australian friends … THE CRICKET!!!! woohoo!
The cricket was so exciting and deserved – we should be 3-1 up, but no matter, the Ashes are coming home!

The downside was seeing a dire performance of the Gills on Saturday. They were dismal and it was depressing to see. I am still confident of a return to the Championship – so lets wait and see.

It looks like life will soon return to normal, the country will slowly wake up again and we will all wonder where August disappeared to. The month of festivals and holidays has gone!!!

I’m looking forward to some real work, rather than just reading documents and catching up on legislation etc. – I can go meet some people soon, starting with the new Director of Bath YFC on Thursday.

Here’s hoping for a good week for all.

… hurrah!!

Sarah has had a great time and has some fantastic stories of how God has impacted the lives of young people and how people have returned to Gillingham totally different characters from when they left just about 5/6 days ago.

The house now kind of feels complete again in an indescribable way.

This evening it was great to be able to spend time with Darren and Katherine to laugh and chat over some food and wine – a prefect end to a great day!

I received this in an email today from Abbot Francis from Prinknash Abbey. This makes a lot of sense to me and I think it could work if enough people get involved.

Reduce UK Petrol Prices – a rip-off at over 90p a litre

See what you think and pass it on if you agree with it We are hitting 95p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1 alitrer.

Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the “don’t buy petrol on a certain day”
campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.

BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read it and join in! Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.

The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here’s the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON’T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP. If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices.
If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It’s really simple to do!! Now, don’t whimp out on me at this point… Keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to a lot of people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)… and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) … and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to 10 friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it… .. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all.(and not buy at ESSO/BP) How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out toten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8days!!! I’ll bet you didn’t think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE

It’s easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons Jet etc. i.e.
boycott BP and Esso.

I would add a boycot of Total to this as well due to the fact that they heavily invest in and so support the military and tortuous regime in Burma.

In a few hours Sarah will be home and the house will return to normal. It will be like a whole new beginning!

Beth has really not coped at night without her mummy; tonight was the worst night and I foolishly thought it would be the easiest for her. Tomorrow night I am hoping she will be ok.

Tonight though I did manage to eat a curry and drink some beer with Chris before he goes and joins the team of Nottingham YFC. It was great to catch up and a privileged o see his enthusiasm and excitement as he moves into this new exciting stage in his life. A new beginning for him and his family.

Welcome home Sarah …. 12 hours and counting!

Today I went with the children and my wonderful nephew and nieces, plus Aunty Sarah, to see Herbie.

I always loved Herbie as a kid and was glad to see that the old magic was still there in the film; either that or I am still refusing to grow up.

During the movie, one part struck me and worried me. The story is an age old favourite: protective dad refusing to see the gifting in one of his children. Maggie Peyton is obviously a car racer. Everyone in the film knows this apart from Ray Peyton, her dad. In fact, for 75% of the film, Maggie refuses to accept it as she is a product of her fathers blindness.

This worried me. In real life as parents and adults I admit we have an incredibly important task. It’s worrying to think that our fears and lack of faith can actually cause our children to not accept their natural calling, destiny or gifting.

It strikes me that here more than other that a parents fear can be a childs opportunity. Love, in extreme over-protectiveness ceasing to be love but starts to become self-centred control. In one part of the film Ray actually gives his reason for not allowing Maggie to race:

‘…it’s because you are the spitting image of your mother. I can’t afford to lose another’.

Ray’s love had turned into selfish over-protectiveness to relieve his pain, to prevent him from being hurt, to keep him in his comfort zone.

Today, through a children’s movie, I have reminded that love is about letting go and trusting, not about holding tight and ‘protecting’.

Of course in a Walt Disney film, Ray remembers this is good time and is at the track side to support and cheer on Maggie; in real life, with my children, I pray I remember in time too.

I spoke to Sarah today – in fact I have spoken to Sarah every day, but today she mentioned that she is worshipping with 11 000 young people at Soul Survivor!

11000!!! Anyone that knows me well is aware that lively whoopy worship is just not my thing, but even an old cynic like me can be amazed at what the experience of worshipping with 11000 enthusiastic Christian young people must be like.

Rant Start (23:15)
This is not a dig, but I do have a real question – what happens to these 11000 when they get home? How can we support them, their youth leaders and their church leaders, in their mission to transform their communities?

If there are 11000 fired up Christian young people about to leave a showground in Shepton Mallet in a little over 24 hours time from now … how much longer do we have to wait for the transformation of this country?

Why don’t things and events like this have a bigger impact on our country? My fear is the enthusiasm and dreams of the young get zapped up in parental pressures for exams, adults voicing concern over plans, and simple bloody mindedness of the older generation who want to keep the church as it is because it is comfortable for them and ‘we have always done it this way and it works’.

To the church, to us, it is time to say …WAKE UP! The church is, we as Christians,are dying on its/our feet. I heard in church on Sunday that we should not worry about the press reports of a declining church because of things like Soul Survivor and strong youth groups. I think that misses the point. It is because of things like Soul Survivor that we should be very worried. There are 11000 young people with desires, dreams, visions, time and energy – and yet we are still in decline!!!

We are shrinking and the answer is here right in front of us:
Invest in these 11000.
Listen to these 11000.
Let these 11000 experiment.
Let these 11000 never hear ‘It won’t work because we tried that in 1965/75/85/95.’
Give authority to these 11000.
Take a risk with these 11000.
Give ‘church’ to these 11000.

Let us and our styles become less, and they and their styles become greater.
Rant over 23:30

Night!

Another bizarre experience last night – and something else I can blame Sarah in her absence for!

The theory of pets is that children gain responsibility and experience death and so on and so on. Tom has a hamster. That’s cool, although before he bought it in January I did question his commitment to looking after such a small pet and had considerable doubt that he would even remember to feed the above mentioned pet.

Last night at 1.00 am I was chasing a hamster around the house. I have 2 bites on my hands after fighting with the cousin of Monty Python’s killer rabbit. I swear that at times the hamster was launching himself at my throat in a desperate attempt to maintain his freedom.

The worry we have now is that we are concerned how long Freddie has been free. Tom’s so laid back in his care technique that he could have been out of the cage for days. Certainly he had been free long enough to eat one of Beth’s dolls slippers (which when questioned a couple of days ago I palmed off with a ‘mum probably got that in the hoover’ while making a mental note to get a mouse trap!). Freddie also had time to courageously lower himself down 14 very steep stairs. Maybe he was Edmund Hilary in a former life!!!

I am now going on a house inspection to what other damage has been caused, or what deposits may have been left!!

48 hours until Sarah returns – will I last the distance?

It was a wet day today. It must be something to do with the Ryan family visiting National Trust properties.

Today the children and I experienced life in Bodiam Castle with rain. Large puddles, slippery steps but lots of fun. Dad trying to out-do the absent soul survivor mummy with a packed lunch of tortilla wraps with various fillings to choose from and make your own (rolls are so boring!) would have worked well – but cutting and making them in a cramped Citroen Xsara when you are all wet and its pouring down outside proved to be a challenge. Rolls would have been so much easier! The challenge happened and we all ate, eventually.

Tonight though produced massive feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness. Beth is not coping at night without her mum and I had to sit by as she cried herself to sleep. What can you do!? The children are used to me being away, but its quite unusual for Sarah to be the missing one and although the boys are baring up, Beth needs a lot of encouragement.

I guess I am sinking into that ‘is ministry worth it’ attitude which can be dangerous and certainly unproductive. Personal hardship or missing out for ‘the greater goal’ is not really too difficult for an adult; it’s a pain but it goes with the territory and the excitement and blessings more than compensate. It really does hurt, however, when I see our children being affected in this way as a result of what we do. They don’t see the exciting things we see – they just see mum and dad going off somewhere. I guess Sarah sees it when I am away, but it’s hit me quite hard this evening.

I wonder how others work with this?