Category Archives: mission

privilege of mission

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It been a great few days catching up with my YFC friends in the south west of the country.

Every year the Leadership Team of YFC meet up with the centre teams to listen to what is happening and share ideas that they are having. This is always a great time. I left the house at 5.30 am on Thursday morning to get to Weston Super Mare for the LT Tour so that I could combine the time with having brief conversations with these great people who are all over the south west.

It’s just such a privilege to meet with these people who are incredibly humble, often in very challenging circumstances, who do outstanding work in such a graceful way while counting it a privilege to be involved with God in his mission. It’s really cool to spend a day in a room with a lot of other people sold out on reaching young people with the gospel.

I left Weston to drive to Weymouth and send the evening with my mum and brother. On my journey I prayed and asked God that I will never lose the grace that I saw my friends displaying today; that I will always remember the privilege it is to work with a missional God.

Mission and Unity

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Somehow I have become involved in the Advisory Council for Mission & Unity for Rochester Diocese. I assume I was invited to this group in my capacity as a ‘missioner’ for YFC but also as an ordinand for Ordained Puoneer Ministry.

It’s an interesting group and tonight we heard from Steve Croft from Fresh Expressions. It was an evening where we saw some key issues start to be batted around – so I am looking forward to what could be some both fruitful and lively meetings.

I’d write more about this … but it gone 11, I’ve been up since 5 and I’m off early on the train to London in the morning for the church planting conference … so chow!

are you going?

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Looking through my diary for next week, as I normally do on a Friday, I see that I am booked to be at the National Church Planting Conference next Thursday in London.I have been to a couple of these over the last few years and met up with friends.

I’m wondering if anyone I know is going to be there this year? If you are going let me know, be good to catch up!

new dreams new beginnings

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Yesterday I met up with two people who have left friends and a known way of working to take up a new challenge.

In the morning it was great to catch up with Luella whom YFC and the Warham Trust have appointed to develop a Basingstoke YFC. (If you live in the area and want to help – why not get in touch with Luella). Luella has a dream for the centre and I believe this will develop pretty quickly.

In the evening I attended the induction of Jim Findlay as priest in charge of St. Mark’s Salisbury. This was a great occasion and a case of another, very different person, who has a dream and another person who will see his dream fulfilled.

While driving home from Salisbury last night I reflected upon my day and realised that Luella and Jim are very different – a young female YFC worker and an ageing married Anglican priest. And yet … they are united in that they realise the call to mission and minsisty involves sacrifice.

Yes, mission is exciting, a privilege, a great buzz – but there is a cost, there is a burden to bear which we do not talk about enough. In our society where people are out to get what they can as quickly as they can, the language of sacrifice is unpopular. The pain of leaving friends, of isolation, of being misunderstood, of responding to peoples hidden and sometimes subconscious agendas all take their toll and cause anguish, heartache and questioning.

Two people, leaving loved ones, places they have called home, to walk into the unknown, where they have to start again, prove themselves and cry out to God for guidance. They are not alone, as there are many others in Christian ministry both past and present who have or are walking the road they are walking.

Is this what Jesus meant when he spoke of taking up our cross to follow him? I think it may be part of the answer!

The Last time …

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The Tuesday just gone saw the start of my last year of SEITE.

I re-read that line with part relief mixed with a mass of disbelief. I need to ask where the last 2 years have gone, and can’t quite believe that the group of us that were questioning what on earth we had let ourselves in for 2 years ago in a dingy Medway hotel are now only 30 lectures away from ordination. Actually I am supposed to be sorting a placement for next term so I am only 20 lectures away!

Actually it was with some sadness on Sunday sitting in St Mark’s when a realisation came to me that I could be in a series of ‘last of’s’ now, which contrasts with my firsts of yesterday.

I sat and wondered ‘will this be my last September in St Marks?’. Then I started to think of it being my last Christmas there, my last Lent, Easter, summer, last this and last that. Even if I become part time OPM, or NSM OPM (?)it still marks a change and the end of one phase and the start of another.

Of course being the last of something also has the consequence of myself being involved in the first of something in a different capacity!

I love change. I have always loved changed. I can lose interest quickly. I have often wondered if I was a child now whether I would have been labelled ADHD. Sometimes I think I thrive on the challenge of change. But … it also scares me to think of starting again, of building new relationships, developing new ways of working, reaching new people, learning new things. It scares me thinking of handing total control back to God because I don’t know what I am doing.

It scares me, but today I have remembered a commitment I made soon after my 18th birthday – commitment to be follower of Jesus wherever that may take me; and today I acknowledge that I don’t know where that may be but I’m praying for the strength to be able to have the courage to grasp it!

last LG3 day … what next

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Yesterday was an amazing day – the last day of Love Gilingham 3.
All the churches of Gillingham cancelled their morning service to attend a united worship service at the sports centre. There were around 500 people there which was quite mind blowing. Jim and I had the pleasure of continuing our ‘double act’ of leading the LG mornings into Sunday and I ended the service by getting people to look around and realise that this was the church of Gillingham.

I don’t like big. I think small is better and small Christian communities of around the 30 size are, in my mind, the ideal. Sunday, however, was special as it can remind us of our place in the wider church.

In our own churches it is easy to think that this is how it is, that we re the only ones who care. This can breed a kind if isolation mentality. With an isolation mentality vision becomes scarce s we fer trying anything. Getting together, seeing others from different traditions and different opinions uniting for one event can serve to enable vision. It was certainly encouraging to remind myself that I am part of something that is not only ancient in origin, but is far bigger than I realise most of the time. From the front it was great to see peoples faces as they looked around and realised the size of God’s church in Gillingham.

After the service we were joined by those we had met in the week and invited to a BBQ and fun day at the sports centre. It was a privilege again to witness the engagement between different people groups and the growth of new friendships across the community. This is true mission – people being loved and accepted with no expectations placed upon them.

The challenge for us is how to we move on. For three years we have staged various events and there is now a feeling that we need to show this acceptance and love (i.e. bring in the Kingdom)in regular realistic and achievable, but ordinary and simple, ways in Gillingham.

I have loved LG3 as I have loved previous years. I am sad at the end and have a desire to see an expression of this develop as part of the DNA of the Christian community in Gillingham.

For those of you coing here for pics – the last days photos may be found here.

Love Gillingham 3 Day 1

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Love Gillingham 3 started today.
Love Gillingham has the strap line of ‘showing the love of Jesus with no strings attached’. It’s a great mission statement, and it’s a mission statement that we should have 24/7 as Christians. This week is about being good news for people and not expecting or wanting anything in return.

It was great today to see from Christians from a number of local churches working together. People from different traditions forgetting the non-essential aspects of faith and uniting around the essentials that unite us.

After a morning of worship, teaching and prayer the teams had lunch before getting involved in various projects. The projects all seemed to go really well. Tom was involved in the retirement home again where he did some gardening and chatted to the people. Tom is developing a real love for OAP work and has done this for the last 3 years. Sarah, Beth and Joe were involved in a drop in at church for people to drop in for a drink and chat while there were activities such as face painting for their children. I was involved with many other great people in clearing rubbish from peoples homes in 3 different locations around the town. Today we have filled 4 massive 12 yard skips (or the equivalent).

The rubbish teams today have cleared greenhouses, rubble, trampolines, baths, toilets, wood, tables, chairs and much more. While all the ‘stuff’ has been happening in the teams, something very special has been happening. We have been chatting with people and in those conversations I believe we have seen God at works in the lives of people outside the church.

Today I have seen in the hospitality and love of God in various ways in peoples actions:
through the lady and her 3 children who invited us all in for a cup of tea
through the old gentlemen who brought out a carefully wrapped sheet of glass for the skip as he did not want us to be cut
through the lady who wanted to buy my t-shirt
the person who wanted to reward us with a donation

It was great to be reminded today that God is loving Gillingham and very much at work here.

The photo shows a local councillor opening the event and you can see the photos of today by clicking on y Flickr album or by clicking here.

haircut therapy

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I had my hair cut today.
It’s not an event that usually takes a long time – 5/10 minutes is usually all that is needed!
Today it took over half an hour.
It took so long because the girl cutting my hair wanted to talk about her dad.
The situation reminded me of the Giles Fraser article I read in Friday’s Church Times.

In true Fraser style he was re-living the depressing experience of General Synod who he states are more interested in ‘satisfying their own activists rather than reaching out to the country as a whole … The reality is that millions of people couldn’t care less what we say or think. They don’t care about covenants or gay vicars: they want the church to speak about life and death, about love and grace, about justice and hope. And because we are not speaking about it, they will go elsewhere.’

This girl, I thought as I walked home, had gone elsewhere. She chose to speak to a complete stranger about the issues of alcohol with her dad and was asking for advice on what she should do.

Now I could spiritualise this by saying that she must have been able to sense I was a Christian, or she felt the glow of the Holy Spirit from me and so was able to share. But I don’t think so! In reality this girl was so desperate to talk to someone, and not knowing where to go to do so, that a balding older guy fitted the bill. As I paid she thanked me for ‘listening to my troubles’. I thanked her for sharing them with me.

If the church was speaking about the things people are really asking the questions about then this young woman would have known where to go. As the church during the weekmaybe we need to look for these questionners and just listen?

my Taunton Trip

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I had a great two journeys today to Taunton and back. I arrived in Taunton at about 8.45 am which gave me time for a leisurely walk to wake up before attacking a Wetherspoons breakfast. Great breakfast – although I had a bit of a shock – there were around 20 people in at 9.00am and I was the only one not drinking alcohol!!!! I was also the only one eating! I’ve had breakfast a few times in Wetherspoons and the odd person is drinking – obviously Taunton is a place for hardened morning drinkers! In a way I found it quite sad … but then realised I was falling into the judgement trap as who am I to judge a certain set of behaviours?

The meetings in Taunton were good. It was good to spend some time with Lucy from Taunton YFC, James from Bath YFC and meet Paul from SWYM. It was a good time of sharing and hearing what each other is up to and wondering about how we can work together for the Kingdom. No easy answers – but good to get together to think about it.

Afterwards I had a good management meeting with Richard as we looked to the future before travelling home – all in all a great day. I feel energised today because i have been with people, thinking on my feet, asking questions, sharing, challenging, encouraging …. so much better than paper work!

Messy Mission

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Love Gillingham is getting closer.
We had our final planning meeting today and I think it’s fair to say that, once again, there is a healthy mix of fear and excitement as still too much is ‘up in the air’ for people like myself who like to have a better idea of what is going on. At the moment things do not feel that ordered.

This has worried me today as God is a God of order so there is some part of me that thinks we should have more of an idea 2 weeks out. I took some time to reflect on this and felt God’s quiet voice remind me: but … I am also a God of paradox, and a God of mystery, and a God of story. I am the God who created out of chaotic nothingness. I could go on. If God is all these things, then God is quite messy as well as being ordered. If there can be an ordered messiness then I guess that can exist within the Godhead.

Actually, I quite like the idea of messy God and messy mission. When I say messy, I use it in the sense of things being quite unpredictable but beautiful at the same time. Canoeists and surfers may well have a sense of what I am trying to say. The first day we were in Cornwall a few weeks ago we went to Constantine bay with surf boards and canoes. The surf was messy. It was all over the place, waves were crashing on waves, there was no predictable pattern, but it looked pretty amazing and beautiful.

In a sense all those on the water could do was ride the wave and see where it took them. Others could watch the waves in amazement and try to fathom out what was happening. It was clear, however, where the action was – out in the messiness, in the salty, biting spray. Out there, rather than on the ordered beach, is where all the action was happening.

So,upon reflection I am no longer concerned about how messy things still are. I am, however, still scared that things may come crashing down around our eyes, but I am willing to trust in the messiness of my maker!