What if …

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I managed to catch up with Hugh today from Greenwich YFC.
We had a good time chatting over stuff and dreaming other stuff.

On my drive back I started to ask ‘what if …’
What if …
… money was no object
… volunteers were there in abundance
… people just ‘got’ the priority of mission
… the church really invested in young people
… we really thought Kingdom
… we really put aside our agenda
… we really put Jesus first

I’m not sure what the answers would be.
It’s easy to think stuff would be a lot easier, but I wonder if it would?

Do you ever dream ‘what if?’
Is this futile avoidance and space filling?
Or is this a creative and engaging thinking?

I wonder if Jesus ever thought ‘what if …?’

The Dance of Guidance

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This was sent to me in an email recently – not sure what the source is, but it intrigued me:

When I meditated on the word Guidance,
I kept seeing “dance” at the end of the word.
I remember reading that doing God’s will is a lot like dancing.
When two people try to lead, nothing feels right.
The movement doesn’t flow with the music,
and everything is quite uncomfortable and jerky.
When one person realizes that, and lets the other lead,
both bodies begin to flow with the music.
One gives gentle cues, perhaps with a nudge to the back
or by pressing Lightly in one direction or another.
It’s as if two become one body, moving beautifully.
The dance takes surrender, willingness,
and attentiveness from one person
and gentle guidance and skill from the other.
My eyes drew back to the word Guidance.
When I saw “G: I thought of God, followed by “u” and “i”.
“God, “u” and “i” dance.”
God, you, and I dance.
As I lowered my head, I became willing to trust
that I would get guidance about my life.
Once again, I became willing to let God lead.
My prayer for you today is that God’s blessings
and mercies be upon you on this day and everyday.
May you abide in God as God
abides in you.
Dance together with God, trusting God to lead
and to guide you through each season of your life.

curry, sports and moot!

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An incredibly exciting and busy weekend.

Friday night was a great night out with some friends to the ocal curry house. We must repeat that again sometime!

Saturday St Mark’s again hired out the sports centre for the community. Around 250 people came and had fun. I love these nights as I think we are being church by serving and blessing the community.

Sunday I spent the day at St Matthews Westminster and Moot. As part of my training I will be on placement with Moot for 30 – 40 hours. This was a great day chatting to people involved in Moot and seeing how some things happen. Being involved in Godly play, which the Moot community run every month, was a great experience. One wonderful thing that struck me was the inclusivity of Moot. People spoke of a true belonging beofre believing. Bythis,I mean people do not have to all subscribe to a statement before they belong – they belong because they chose to be on the journey. I find that quite exciting.

Throughout my placement I will write a bit more about my experiences.I couldn’t chat with Ian as he has broken hs arm and is in hospital awaiting an operation tomorrow – please remember him in your prayers.

Casino Royale

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Watched the film of the moment with Sheena last night at the new Odeon Cinema in Chatham. The place itself is cleaner but not sure it is worth the extra expense of the 2 other multi-screens near-by but hey…

Casino Royale is a good movie. The film has made a brave attempt – and I’m not going to give any of the plot away – to give definition to the character of Bond. Bond is given his ’00’ status at the start of this film which then goes on to give background to the future life and practice of Bond. It’s using that theory (correct in my view) that our behaviour is determined by our experiences, actions and corresponding consequences of our past. Debbie spoke about this in the cross cultural training at CMS and used this PS2 advert as an illustration.

The film is strangely minimilist in approach – no continual background music that we have become used too in Bond movies, no mass of gadgets although this is contrasted by the use of 2 Aston Martins – I wonder if this is a sub-conscious attempt by the producers to apologise for using the BMW in previous films when we all know only the Aston Martin will do! The ad says: ‘An Aston Martin combines three important elements: power, beauty and soul. Aston Martins are truly special – they always have been and always will be’. 007 just has the power and beauty.

Great film – go watch!

long day in London

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I had a longish day in London yesterday, where things kind of blur and if I am honest, it has hard to get my head around work things today due to that.

I started with a meeting at Monmouth Coffee Company then moved along the river to the Tate Modern to meet up with some SITC people along with Ian from Hope 2008. I managed a quick look in on the Fischli and Weiss exhibition beofre moving off to meet Richard from my management meeting.

I had arraned to meet Richard at the Scooter cafe but it was closed for decorating so we carried along the road to Church.co.uk for coffee where we bumped into lots of other people.

Following that I headed off to CMS to meet with the London YFC directors (good to be able to say a quick hello to Jonny)before Debbie James then ran an excellent session on cross cultural awareness in mission. The Mil-ers seemed engaged all the time as this was very relevant to them – as it is to all of us, all the time.

We decided to phone in pizza half way through the session – but finding a pizza delivery to deliver to Waterloo after 6 pm proved to be my hardest mission ever. In the end, Richard had more success than me!

The good thing about leaving London later is that you know there will be space on the train and I was able to catch up on some Euthansia reading for some assignment that I am supposed to be doing sometime!

Highlights of the day:
people
laughter
visions
dreaming
food

lowlights:
none

Tonight, though … 007 – hope it’s good.

wow …

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… I’ve got a nosebleed!
I’ve reached dizzy heights.
seems like the references to Rob Bell have sent the hits on here to the dizzy heights with SHP achieveing 100 hits in one day. That’s 80 more than my normal according to the counter which I have just checked out.
Interesting!

Sacred Cafe

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After the NCVYS meeting I was able to catch up with Rachael at the Sacred Cafe.

I really quite like this place.

The coffee is good and strong.
Fairtrade.
The atmosphere is great.
The staff friendly and helpful.
5 mins walk from the tube.
Free wireless.
I’m wondering if i can make this my London office!
… I’m claiming my free shares soon!

Forgotten treasure

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I was at the NCVYS chief executives meetings today – one of my responsibilities to represent YFC at.

There were a variety of exciting and important things on the agenda but one in particular, the Commission on Unclaimed Assets really amazed me. Unclaimed assets are those pockets of money that people have in bank accounts but have not been touched for a very long time – something like 15 years!

Apparantly, this is the amazing bit, 1 in 3 of us have dormant bank accounts which we have forgotton about and not touched. A conservative estimate is that these amounts could add up to something like £400 million!

£400 000 000 just sitting there, untouched, forgotten, accruing interest slowly.

The proposal is that this money be used to fund the gaps in the (what is becoming called the) 3rd sector. There will be good safeguards and if anyone comes back to claim their money they will have it – so this seems a no-risk, win-win scheme which an independant body is currently looking at. On the website there is an online consultation form to let the commission know your views – if inclined go there.

It’s amazing to think that there is £400m of forgotten treasure in the banks of the UK.

What other treasures have we forgotten about?
Family treausures – like time with loved ones?
Natures treasures – experienced when we step out of the cars, tubes, trains …
Spiritual treasures – like love of God and God’s love of us?
Ministry treasures – like our first love of being called?

Seems like whichever way we turn, whatever treasure it may be, humanity is good at forgetting.

Can conflicting ideas lead to truth?

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Last week I managed to hold my first meeting of the day at the Tate Britain and so we took the opportunity to walk around the Turner Prize exhibition while we talked. The Prize, established in 1984, is awarded to a British artist under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding 9 May 2006. The four nominated artists are innovative, although I did not really ‘get’ the Phil Collins stuff. I loved Mark Titchner’s ‘How to Change Behaviour’which is mind captivating and displayed a strange mix of new technologies and old techniques. He likes to place conflicting ideas next to each other and leave us to make up our own mind.

I kind of wonder, upon reflection, if that is a task that we, as the church of God, should be doing? New technologies and old techniques are easy to see and are used a lot where projectors are used to display images while Psalms are chanted.. Presenting conflicting ideas and leaving people to make up their own minds seems a little riskier – but if we believe it is God, through the Holy Spirit, who convicts where is the real risk?

I wonder – do we need to trust God more?
Do we need to fully take on board the reality that the Holy Spirit convicts people?
Is it time to put less effort into convincing people to accept our brand of truth and allow God to do his stuff?
Time to present the simple God story and leave people to work out what that means for them?

A Rob Bell discussion

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may be starting here following my posts of last week.

Feel free to drop in and share your views.