God is deep!

Posted on by
Reply

For the last couple of days I have been involved in a pretty mundane task. I have been going through all my files on the YFC server and deciding whether it is useful to keep or needs deleting. I’ve been instructed to only keep stuff that will be useful for the next person.

I am amazed and how many files I have accumulated over 4 years. I am doubly amazed by how important those files felt at the time and now they are clearly irrelevant and do not need to be kept. I am going through 4 years of work, reading and saving or deleting as appropriate. A lot more is being deleted than saved.

Makes me think a bit about baggage we carry in our lives – but that is not what has struck me through the 4 (so far!) days of this task. What has struck me is how incredibly close to God I feel throughout the mundaneness of this task.

It has reminded me a lot of the week I spent a few years back with the Northumbria Community on retreat. My guide for the week gave me the task of planting potatoes and a psalm to think about. This was my first real experience of mulling over one or two thoughts over and over again as I did a pretty mundane task.

As I embarked on this I thought I was going to get bored in a couple of hours – but as I went through the routine so that things became automatic, I found God that God revealed deeper things and took my mind on little journey’s which I would not have considered from the psalm originally.

The last few days have been a bit like that. As I have been working on automatic I have been unconsciously sucked into the presence of God which has been pretty amazing.

In particular God seems to have been gently poking fun at my current secret fear. The fear that says, come September when I leave the busy-ness of YFC to find time for the community by just being myself in dog-collar in places that says ‘you are going to be soooo bored come the end of the day!’

The fear has not gone – but God is laughing, I can almost hear it, as I hear the Spirit saying ‘you really have no idea how deep I go, or how much you still need to learn. You are playing in the shallows, venturing as far as knee depth now and again … but you need to walk further out, to experience my depth, the real coolness, to be submersed in me and understand that I am deep … very deep … real deep!’

10 Reasons to cheer our teenagers

Posted on by
1

Great for a change to see some positive about our young people posted here and well done ti Ian for drawing attention to it.

Did you know young people are 10 times more likely to be volunteering in our communities than regularly being antisocial in them.

Read more good stuff on Ian’s post.

GAFCON primate never saw Covenant response

Posted on by
Reply

I find this intersting … and also feel that we have been here before not so long ago with people believing they have excluisve rights to the truth …

Pat Ashworth interviewed Bishop Greg Venables.

Her report at the Church Times blog is headlined Greg Venables had not seen or agreed the GAFCON Covenant response:

HE WAS diplomatic about it, but it was clearly vexing to the Archbishop of the Southern Cone, Greg Venables, that he had neither seen nor agreed the published response to the St Andrew’s draft Covenant , issued by GAFCON on Friday in his name and those of the Primates of Nigeria, West Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. None of the other six is present at the conference…

you can read more at Thinking Anglicans.

Cove worship

Posted on by
Reply

For those of you visiting here from The Cove the links to the activities you are looking for are at the end of this post.

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of spending some time with The Cove, which is one of the clusters from St Mary Bredin in Canterbury. I was invited to lead some creative worship by one of the cluster leaders who just happens to be the Principal of SEITE.

We tried a few things that I had used before, such as the journey, and things I have wanted to try such as the Bittersweet Ritual from Jonny Baker’s Alternative Worship and Psalm Consequences which I picked up from somewhere but can’t remember where.

The Bittersweet Ritual was a response to reflecting on our life journey. As we considered that life is made up of bitter and sweet experiences I invited people to either dip bread sticks in honey and eat as a symbolic action of thanking God for the good things in life, or eat a slice of lemon to acknowledge before God that actually life is pretty tough at the moment. This was quite a powerful experience as people did this with the Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony playing as a background track.

The most powerful part of the morning was when we ‘played’ Psalm Consequences. I think it is pretty self explanatory what this is, if you know the consequences game, and at the clusters request I have posted the instructions here. In quite a jovial atmosphere people added their lines to the psalms. When we read them the creativity and sheer beauty of what we were hearing was amazing. It moved some of us to tears and amazement as we focused in on the evidence that God was creating with us. The Psalms were stunning and moving and my only regret is that I did not take photos of them before I left.

I enjoyed lunch with the group afterwards which was a good chance to get to chat with some people and learn more about them. This is a great group of creative people who it was a real pleasure to spend some time with – thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Links to stuff I used
The running order – you will see the stuff I never used
The PowerPoint
The Psalm Consequences instructions
The Journey

Useful sites I use
Jonny Baker worship tricks – an excellent resource for tried ideas
Proost – you should definitely subscribe to this
The Work of the People – great for video loops and stuff
Blessed – a sacramental alt worship group in Gosport
Hold this space – some amazing wonderful inspiring liturgy

Remove the dictator

Posted on by
Reply

Clancy Chassay from The Guardian has been inside Burma to interview monks who are getting ready along with many others for another uprising in Burma.

The sad thing from this interview if you listen to it is that they feel they must do it but are under no illusions that this will change the government, nor that they can defeat a malicious and fully armed army.

The people of Burma need help from the rest of the world and yet governments just sit by and watch. Edmund Burke was correct: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’.

who’s in Basildon?

Posted on by
1

I’ve just had a weird experience.

I don’t often look at the page counter but just did out of interest to see if people do still come here, it’s surprising to see that I am not speaking to myself.

The weird thing is, though, that for the last 2 months between 20 and 30% of all my hits have come from Basildon. I don’t think I know anyone in Basildon … so share who you are please as I don’t have enough friends and am always looking for more!

God’s Pub!

Posted on by
Reply

I went up to this great pub last night in Farnborough to see my friend Jen who now has shares in the place and as well as being part tenant is the pub padre with t-shirt n all!

It was brilliant to be able to catch up there with Jen, Mouldy and Jezza and have a little laugh.

This is such a great place to be a pioneer minister and from talking to Jen conversations are already happening because the village is small and people know who she is and what she is about. It’s amazing the things that happen when you decide to put yourself in the real world instead of hiding in a church building.

Jen – I love the pub, I’m jealous you have one and I don’t (!) but I will be visiting again and look forward to hearing exciting stories of the Kingdom of God growing in The Woodman.

Oh the pic … that’s evidence of a genuine ontological change in The Greenwich Pilgrim who is in a pub supping on a cup of tea!

collabarative worship

Posted on by
Reply

In a weaker moment towards the end of my training I said yes to Jeremy, the Principal of SEITE, to a request to lead some creative worship with a cluster that he attends at St Mary Bredin in Canterbury.

I liked the idea of experimenting with the aim, alongside of worshipping God, of just sparking some of the creative energy in this group by helping them to experience different ways of worship other than singing. As a person who has a particular dislike of most of the worship songs we sing today I jumped at the chance! (there are a variety of reasons for my dislike of singing ranging from songs being too feminine in language to songs lyrics advocating a hope for stuff that I just think is not backed up in scripture such as ‘being taken home to heaven’ – but that’s all the subject of another post at another time).

Despite jumping at the chance of leading worship I have found this quite a difficult challenge and it is still not entirely sorted and so I have wondered why this has taken me so long – is it the fear of doing something with the ex-principal in the congregation, or my problem with wanting to be a perfectionist, or a foolish desire to be as trendy and creative as possible?

Actually, I have decided it is none of these. The reason for the hassles and confusions I am having at the moment is simply because I am working on this alone!

When I lead worship normally, the worship comes out of a group collaborative working together or journey. Ideas are shared and mulled around. Things are bounced around between different minds. Other peoples reactions cause thought processes to develop in different areas. Talking and sharing breeds creativity. When all that has nearly run its course different people then become responsible for different elements and as that happens God moves through different individuals and things are enhanced further.

Collaborative work may take longer, and it may be frustrating sometimes, but I have really missed it on this occasion. The process of leading worship to a God who exists in community, clearly needs community to consider how to worship. On Sunday morning something will be missing, it will feel incomplete as this has been put together with one mind trying to hear God but I really hope all of us, and I include me in that, take away something new of our relationship with God.

achievement

Posted on by
Reply

Last night was an incredibly exciting time for me as the new Chair of Governors for New Brompton College. I had the privilege of attending the Achievement evening and seeing the enthusiasm and the joy of the students was just wonderful.

I’ve been involved with this school for years and it is really obvious to everyone that over the last 5 years in particular standards have been improving year on year. The credit for this rightly goes to the head teacher, the staff and the students as this was stated clearly last night – as was the fact that for the first time ever we an over-subscribed school with a waiting list. It’s good to see that the community is realising how good the school is as well.

For me – it was great to see young lives full of potential starting to realise that they can achieve that potential.

Although much of my stuff that I have done for years will need to stop when I am ordained, I am looking forward to how I can continue to support the school as chair as governors as they move into exciting times.

Privilege of Time

Posted on by
Reply

Although not being able to drive a massive distance, or sit at the computer screen for any length of time, at the moment is quite a frustration there are advantages as it ‘frees’ me to do other things.

Yesterday I was able to drop in on a good friend who is currently off work for not dis-similar reasons and being able to chat and discuss stuff that matters to us was a joy. It was also quite unique to be able to catch up a friend in a relaxed setting during the day as both of us rarely have the time to do that in the reality of our normal situations.

It was great to drink coffee and just talk – a privileged time for me. I came away incredibly energised and fulfilled as I think God was bouncing around in our conversation.

It strikes me that as I think about the future I need to consider how to preserve this attitude to time. If I allow it to be squeezed with too much in my program then surely that will cramp any pioneering spirit that I may be able to follow? Time to allow people space and to allow the unexpected is surely something I need to be dwelling on at the moment.