We had a great cluster yesterday with Geoff sharing his vision on prisons and Rich has written more about it here.I just wanted to get a bit of my own back on the picture front and draw attention to the fact that while we went to the Chandos to chat and eat lunch while Rich retreated like a hobbit to a stained glass window somewhere!
I travelled around only a little bit today.
After meeting up with Michael, the chair of trustees of Chilsehurst YFC I popped over to East Ham to meet with Liz from Transform Newham.
Early December we are working together to run an Art of Connecting conference with young people from Newham. I love Newham! I don’t know whay, or what it is about this place but I really enjoy being in ths borough and working with some of the people there. Not everyone agrees – Liz mentioned that in a certain newspaper’s national survey that Newham came out as the 4th worst place to live in the country. I don’t know why – well I guess I do with levels of violence and so on – but I, for one, simply love this area. I wonder what criteria has been used to decide which places are worse or better to live in? Doesn’t that kind of assume we all like the same sorts of places? If so, surely there is a social bias and judgement being displayed here?
Whatever – I’m quite excited about this conference and looking forward to spending the day there on December 2nd.
It was a real pleasure and excitement to be in Tunbridge Wells this evening. I was at St Philips Church for the Tunbridge Wells Churches Together joint service to share a little about YFC with Pauline, one of our board members.
This was a good evening. Quite often ‘churches together’ services just don’t work, but this was different. The worship was vibrant, the atmopshere expectant, and people seemed to genuinely want to work together, and be together. This was quite an exciting evening.
It was great to be able to meet up with people too. It was good to see Den there with James and Keri, the 2 latest members of the Weald YFC team.
It was also excellent to be able to see good friends Brian and Karen again. Brian and Karen lead St Philips and are friends that go way back to St Mark’s youth work days – some 15 years ago! All of us still look young though!
Tom also came aong and worked excellently on the IT stuff for us – a new found gifting maybe! Cheers Tom!
On Friday a couple of long awaited packages arrived from Amazon and CD-wow and so I have been enjoyng the contents this weekend.
A number of books and cd’s were in the package. In particular I have been waiting for Postsecret which I pre-ordered a few weeks back and was published on November 2nd. (Amazon are still selling it at 50% discount!)Postsecret is a collection of postcards from the postsecret blog which I visit every Sunday when Frank Warren posts a new page.
A few years ago, Warren developed Postsecret as a community arts project. Basically, people send in, or confess, secrets on a postcard which are then posted on a blog. ‘Extraordinary confessions from ordinary lives’ says Warren on the back cover of this outstanding book.
Looking through the book makes me want to laugh and cry. The shared emotions here are both deep and raw. What started as a commuity art project has become something massive and amazing. People send in secrets on postcards. People go to great efforts to be creative with their cards as they reveal their deepest fears, desires, regrets and obsessions. I find these cards powerfully emtional as the book says I will!
The book is beautiful.
It’s beautiful due to the unique creativity displayed within each card.
It’s beautiful due the blend of unique and universal emotions being shared.
It’s beautiful due to the honest reality being exposed.
Within that beauty, I am wondering ‘why?’
Why do people send in their confessions?
Why are they so (sometimes painstakingly) creative?
What is happening here?
What do these people think they are doing?
Is this a postmodern progression from the catholic confessional or just some fun?
Is this evidence of a need to have an opportunity to confess in an anonymous way?
Does this project help people speak out, and get over, their guilt?
It’s great art, but I wonder if there is a lot more to think on here …
Well it was a great conference and a truly superb location. I’m certainly no Arsenal fan, but the stadium is superb, although you did have to look hard for ‘Arsenal’ which was not always obvious amongst the mass of Emirates advertising! Interestingly I met a Gills fan who was one of the security guys there who let me in – seems the Gills can infiltrate everywhere!
I’ll blog more about the conference later as I need to check and print off 2 essays as it’s the dreaded deadline day tomorrow! Always amazes me – they have been written for over a week and yet I still leave them to the last minute to check and print off! What’s the betting that the ink cartridge runs out half way through!
Work of the People have another free video download based on the Armour of God from Ephesians 6.
I love these visual liturgies and think they are quite versatile in their usage.
You can download it by going here.
You will have to become a member first, but its free, quick and easy to do so.
Today I am attending the NCVYS Annual Conference which is being held in the new Arsenal ground, the Emirates Stadium.
Apparantly there is a chance for a tour of the stadium during the afternoon for a cost. I don’t know if I’ll take up that offer, but whatever … it is going to be so so hard not to ask ‘so … where are the goals in this stadium then?‘, if I was feeling really mean I could then suggest they should show Henri, Fabregas and co … If you have no clue what I’m on about then read of the mass of misses last night here.
I am also looking forward to the conference!
I’ve just got back from visiting the trustees of Solent YFC for the evening.
They have a new vision and are going to be advertising for a new director soon, so watch this space!
It was good to meet up to and catch up. If you are in the Solent area go check them out!
I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the new Hirsch book, The Forgotten Ways.
There are tastes at his new blog here and today speaks of churches seeking equilibrium and so kicking Jesus out.
We want equilibrium:
But Jesus disturbs our equilbrium. He won’t be controlled. He won’t be handled only by priests and professional religionists. He won’t be domesticated. He is Lord! Yes, Jesus is our disequalibrium. And the way back to an authentic Christianity is simply to put Jesus back into the equation. Christianity plus Jesus equals World Transformation. (Hirsch)
I think this kind of sums up how I feel about church and stuff at the moment. Church seems to have forgotten Jesus. The emphasis seems to be on service delivery, rotas, finance, where people are, what we believe, who has upset who, building programmes and so on.
Now I KNOW this is me generalising and I will get it in the neck for doing so, but I am sking ‘where has our focus on Jesus gone?’ Hirsch suggests we need to reboot back to Jesus.
Rebooting is an idea I like, it suggests turning everything off, holding down ‘ctrl alt del’ and starting afresh. It’s something I do now again when the laptop stops working properly, or slows to an unbelievable snail pace due to too many programs open and leaving their residue bits in the temp files folder.
Remnants of past programs, bits of old software. Remains of ideas and visions. Used plans, unused thoughts. Could all these be clogging the church and forcing Jesus to stand outside the door and knock, and wait to come into his church?
Maybe we need a reboot. A pause. A moment to realign ourselves back to Jesus, to remind ourelves of the founders characteristics, before we step out again.
The Shiny Headed Prophet 
