Last night I had the privilege of talking to the mens group of St Michael and All Angels as a speaker to chat about what I do. Hugh, a great friend from Greenwich YFC, also asked me to lead an ‘alt worship’ type activity to conclude our time together reflecting something of what we may do in the gathering.

As it is the start of a new year I thought ‘the journey’ was a good thing to do again and the men seemed to interact and engage with God in a meaningful way.

I enjoyed this evening as the people were genuinely interested in what I was doing and what I was trying to achieve. They seemed to all ‘get it’ as a group and understand, and for me to find so many people who just seem to ‘get’ what I am about is quite a unique experience. In 1:1 conversations after it was exciting to hear the passion of these men for the gospel. The care, concern and commitment of these men is, I think, a great example of what is good and should be cherished with inherited church. As I said it was a real privilege to spend time with this group of people – thanks for the invite!

I have been subscribed to the Nomad podcasts for quite a while now. I love the way they get a great variety of people involved in a massive spectrum of mission to share their thoughts and ideas.

I have just caught up with the Christmas special (podcast 23) and found myself getting quite annoyed with the words of the guy being interviewed, Billy Wordsworth. He was talking about the importance of words and suggested that words are more important than actions, which I find quite ‘interesting’ in the light of the words of James.

The podcast takes a bizarre turn, in my opinion, however, when Billy starts to talk about new words that he is using. Rather than talking about ‘being church’ he suggests that we should talking about ‘churching’. Instead of ‘being real’ or ‘being ourselves’ he talks about ‘realing’ and outlines a time when we was talking with a shopkeeper about normal everyday stuff and so he was ‘realing with the girl behind the counter’. Is it just me that sees a problem with that vocabulary!?

Finally, (and again only in my opinion) most worringly, Billy talks about evangelisticristy (I’m not sure how you spell such a word!). He defines this as being secret about our evangelism. He suggests we keep quiet about our faith, even going as far to say that if people ask if we are Christians to stay quiet and not tell them! Tim, the interviewer, challenges this but I think he asks the wrong question. Tim raises concern that if we adopted this then the gospel message would not be spread. There is a much much larger issue of integrity here. Secret mission, secret evangelism, lying about our faith – all things that I would want to stay completely away from! Integrity and honesty are surely fundamental gospel values.

As you can guess, I did not agree much with the content of this podcast … but go listen and maybe tell me what I am missing here!

When I do the 8am service on a Sunday, rather than rush home I wander to Wetherspoons and have breakfast before then wandering back for Matins or the Eucharist service. Yesterday morning, there was a group of people in fancy dress at 9am who had started their halloween celebrations quite early. They were quite possibly half cut by the time I got there which means they were drinking before they arrived. As I sat I reflected on how far removed we can be as church from the reality of the lives of those I am seeking to connect with.

What relevance do we have as a faith to connect with those that enjoy partying at 9am in the morning with alcohol? How do we even start to get alongside people in these situations to simply start to understand where they are coming from. I love drinking – but I could not start partying that early. I don’t criticise those that do, I simply want to try and understand how they can manage it and why they do. I guess that a challenge of the whole church as we slowly but surely drift away from the everyday reality of the cultures around us.

In the evening another extremity yet again as I welcomed Churches Together in Medway to the cathedral for the saints Alive service which is essentially a praise party alternative to Halloween and this year we commissioned 13 Street Pastors who will be working in the Rochester High Street areas on a Friday and Saturday night. These are amazing people who deserve your prayers – and they always need more people to get involved  so why not get in touch about the next training course! (that’s my recruitment bit as a’member of t’committee!’)

The evening was a good evening. The worship was lively and the songs were well known to the evangelical world. Peter Marchand gave a great talk on unity and challenged the local churches on the reality of having a genuine ‘one church’ outlook which meant not only working together but trusting each other and still working together when we don’t agree on stuff. I could hear some fidgeting as his words were hitting raw nerves of some of those present. I think Peter is a brave man and what he said last night was excellent!

I guess our prayer now is that this sure word from God will filter into the hearts fo the local churches so that we see something happen …. I hope this becomes so!

It was great as well to catch up with some old friends at the end of the service which brought my day of extremities to a good close.

I have been catching up on some podcast listening which is made easier now that I have started to return to the gym as I like to challenge my thinking as I challenge my body physically.  I particularly like listening to Rob Bell sermons from Mars Hill Michigan. Two other podcasts I listen to regularly are the Moot podcast and, more recently I have discovered, the Nomad podcast.

It just so happens that both the moot and the nomad podcasts have an interview with Kester Brewin. Complex Christ, one of Kester’s book, was pretty formational for me and so I was intrigued to hear what he was speaking on in these podcasts and I was not surprised to hear him covering a lot – both are worth listening to, and you don’t need to go to the gym to do that!

One of the things that Kester speaks on is ‘the temporary’ which is worth giving some thought to. I think Kester was saying that church and communities like that only ever are temporary as they serve a purpose. If they become permanent then they risk become idolatrous such that people end up serving the church rather than the church serving the people. When organisations become idolatrous in this way then often we see violence occur as people as people feel the need to protect their structures.

This, claims Kester, is one of the things that Jesus demolished when he came through his words in Mark 2:27. WE need structures, says Kester, that we inhabit rather than structures that control us and therefore we need to regularly look at them to ensure that the structure/organisation/church is being helpful. When it no longer is then it needs to be brought to an end or changed.

I think I partly agree and I think I partly disagree. Part of me wants to stand up and shout ‘yes’ because it actually makes a lot of sense. The other part of me is concerned, however, for the many people who need some stability and who would be quite unsettled to think that everything around them is temporary. But then, one of the things that so frustrates me about established church is the ‘we’ve always done it like this’ attitude which destroys any attempt to engage with real life.

I guess, on balance, if we have an attitude of temporariness acknowledging that we need to keep asking the question ‘is this helping’ and being ready to chance to enable us to hold on to the permanence of our need to engage with God, people and culture relevantly then that coud work. Or is that just a little too confusing?