I made a couple of great journey’s yesterday and I guess you can say that although the visits I made were to 2 of our centres they are at very different stages of their journeys.

First I met up with Dave who has been director of Solent YFC since January. He is right at the start of his journey as is the centre as it looks to relaunch on June 6th. As I sat and chatted with Dave we considered ways of increasing capacity and it was exciting to see what Dave has already done and the plans he has for the next few months. He has a massive task i needing to get more people on board and more finance coming in to enable the centre to fulfill its mission. If you are in the area and can support Solent YFC please get in touch.

I then took a trip up the A3 to visit Oxygen in Kingston and join them for the launch event of their 2008-12 strategic plan. Again, it was a privilege to spend time with Richard, Debbie, Kate, Carol and the rest of the team. Richard spoke of the journey Oxygen had been on and it really is stunning to see how diverse and excellent this centre has become in the last 6 years. Rich spoke of the need to go deeper, better and wider which was quite powerful and seemed to resonate with the 120 or so people that were there on the night. (Impressive in itself but even more so when you realise they had around 50 church leader type people for a similar meeting at breakfast and another 70 or so at lunchtime from the police, local authority, MP’s etc).

As I journeyed home I could not help but reflect on how great and wonderfully diverse God is!

The last few days I have been feeling more my normal self and getting into the swing of things again. This Easter has been weird and so stretched out that it has been difficult to visit or contact people – hope schools can manage to get this together for next year.

Last night I had a great time with the trustees from Aylesbury Vale YFC – a group of people with clear maturity and strategic vision who are enabling Dave, their director, to get involved with some pretty exciting stuff. They are now running 6 youth cafe’s which is pretty amazing. Trustee meeting are not the most exciting of events, but I came away from this group excited and inspired, remembering again how exciting and what a privilege this role can be.

This morning I was able to cacth up with Lyndsay from Chislehurst YFC – another great person to be with. Lyndsay is looking for a youth worker to join her and the closing date is Tuesday – if you know anyone give them a shout as this will be a great opportunity. You can see the advert here.

I’m looking forward to the weekend now – the weather looks bad, and we have still not fully recovered health wise as a family, so it looks like London is on hold – but i’m sure we’ll find stuff to do .. maybe some visiting!

I’ve just returned home from a very long day in Basingstoke.
Despite the long day and tiredness, I’m buzzing so I can’t sleep quite yet.
This morning 25 church leaders turned out to hear about how they could support Basingstoke YFC, and this evening around 19 youth leaders came to a similar meeting. It was exciting to see so may people turn out because they care about the young people in their area.

I can’t help but feel privileged to have been part of today as we have heard of great dreams and a desire to work together to reach young people. It’s exciting, too, to see Luella the director being used powerfully by God to get things moving – and today she made some amazingly valuable contacts.

Exciting things are happening and are going to continue to happen in this town.

another good job worth looking at – this time with Swindon YFC:

SENIOR SCHOOLS WORKER
We are looking to appoint a Senior Schools Worker to join our innovative team of workers. Applicants will help de-velop our exciting and growing work in local secondary schools and colleges and support various initiatives to involve, encourage and reach out to the young people in our town.
The successful candidate will be somebody who has: A lively Christian faith and calling to youth ministry An ability to relate to and communicate the gospel effectively to young people The skills to plan & deliver assemblies, lessons, & lunch clubs and develop pre-exclusion work, mentoring, chaplaincy and
an extended schools programme Skills to lead, inspire and develop our volunteers and year out team
Pay will be in the range of £18.5-£20.2k according to experience. An application form & job description can be obtained from:
Swindon Youth for Christ, P.O. Box 2352, Swindon, Wiltshire, SN2 1WE
Tel: 01793 829795 Email: office@syfc.org.uk
Closing date: 25th April 2008

This will be a cool job with a great line manager!

It’s been a busy few days with training stuff to write for trustees and reports to write for various things. There have also been various visits to groups of churches or centre directors to talk mission.

Amongst the writing, the talking, the thinking and mulling things over there have been some special highlights which I’m told are work:

meeting with Richard in the Scooter Cafe which is home of the best ‘ambient coffee’ in the city. I love this place and reviewing the last month with my boss there did not really see like work – bit it was.

Afterwards we caught up with Richard from Oxygen (no wonder I’m getting confused … i met with Richard and then I met with Richard and Richard!) to chat over some stuff. Again this was another great time and hearing feedback on various projects was a great use of time.

Another highlight was being told I’m healthy by a doctor – always good to know. I had an hours medical with Interhealth which is a requirement of Rochester Diocese and the doctor seemed quite impressed and happy with my mental and physical state!

Today I met up with some key people in Littlehampton which in the sun looked like a great seaside town. These people have just started the process of thinking about a YFC centre. I’m not sure where this will go, as I never am after an initial meeting like this, but it was still a great pleasure to hear what is happening and sense the desire to do more together. Getting there early was a bonus as the sun was shining and I was able to walk from the harbour to the coast and quench my almost constant longing for the sea (you can take the boy out of Weymouth but …)

On my journey home I was able to reflect on the specialness of this role and the real privilege it has been for me to be involved as I am. It hit be again … I’m loving supporting people through their mission thinking, I get to meet some very keen exciting people, I am fortunate to be able to taste some great coffee in fantastic places …. and the real bonus on top is that THIS IS MY JOB! (well … for the next few months!)

God’s cool!

On a reflection note for Lent … I did wonder on the fact that I seem to be involved more and more in talking about new centres as well as seeing more and more centres planted,while the church seems to be in decline.

Is this a normal correlation? As the church shrinks, should we expect to see more mission occurring? Maybe the urgency is more obvious when we are in a time of shrinkage, although to me that sees to make little sense. Surely the best time for growth of mission is with a healthy church – or am I equating ‘health’ there with ‘numbers’?

Or, is it that as the church shrinks those people that are burning with desire for mission are released to answer their calling, beforehand being held back by people that have since left? That’s an interesting ponder point!

It’s good to reflect!

I have just got in from my trip to Basingstoke and I should feel tired but I’m quite buzzing which could be something to do with the Red Bull which my body decided it needed as I drove past Fleet Services.

Today I have heard more dreams. It was great to spend some time with Luella, who is the Director of Basingstoke YFC, this afternoon and see how much progress she has made with her young people in such a short space of time and to hear some of her ideas. It was even more exciting to hear that she has not got a blueprint of a vision – by that I mean she wants to hear from others what they think, and hear the dreams of others already doing work, observe what God is doing and from that, with others, try to form some vision for a way ahead. A dream of seeing more and more people working together to reach the young people of Basingstoke.

This was excellent to hear and I look forward to seeing what happens.

In the evening I met with some other people to talk more about YFC in Basingstoke and about the role of trustees. This was a great meeting too with other people with dreams and a desire to work together.

Seems like Basingstoke has all the right ingredients for something exciting to happen.

I had a great day today visiting Dave and Sarah Aarons in Portsmouth.
Dave will be starting as director of Solent YFC in January.
Such wonderful people and the sort of people that I know are going to make a lasting impression on the lives of those that they come into contact with.
Please pray for them as they settle in over Christmas.

On my way back I had a bit of freaky experience when the BMW if front of me suddenly disappeared in a cloud of thick dense white smoke. It was amazing, traffic nearly came to a standstill as this was worse than fog – I could not even see the front of my cars bonnet.

The thickness of white was amazing, it was incredibly bright, incredibly thick, wonderfully clean and, I guess, quite beautiful; but it was also terrifying! I fully expecting to either hit another car or for another car to hit me, and at 70 mph I was quite literally fearing for my life. All cars saw what was happening and at that time of day the motorway was quite empty.

Only now as I reflect on that scary incident has it come to me that may well have been a similar experience to the High Priest of the Old Testament when he went into the holy of holies. Intense white, beautiful … but terrifying and fearing for his life.

I wonder ….