17 years ago today, as I write, I was sat in a bar with Mark, my best man, thinking about leaving for the church!

17 years ago today, a nervous young 24 year old man from Weymouth watched as a beautiful bride walked down the aisle towards him.

17 years ago today 2 nervous young people both said ‘I do’

17 years has flown by.

Thank you Sarah.

Sorry – I’m going to name drop and all the rest of it – but I had such a cool day today.

Today was a day I have been quite excited about, and looking forward to for a little while. Today I was at the National consultation on the London Olympics, held at Methodist Central Hall.

At the picture shows, David Lammy, Brian Mawhinney and Simon Hughes were there to speak, along with others.

The purpose of the day was to ask two questions:
To see how the Christian church can work together for the Olympics in 2012.
To decide what legacy we wish to pass on beyond that.

I have been excited about this for two main reasons:
I love sport and think this is such a great God given opportunity to show the love of God to thousands of people while the Olympics run.
We are 6 years away, and already the church is getting its act together now and starting to plan and think – I think that is amazing, maybe even a little miracle in itself.

Some words from the ‘3 in the picture’ surprised me, Mawhinney in particular: ‘We should be there because we have a gospel message that can transform the world’ First time in my whole life that I’ve ever agreed with anything a Tory said! I even clapped him, although that bit felt strange!

There are loads of things church can do, from hosting families, to running festivals, to volunteering (apparently at previous Olympics, people from churches have been 3 times more likely to volunteer)to chaplaincy …. the list could be endless.

There was one good strong message that came out, though – we need to present a united front, one church in London, in the UK – if we do that we could see real transformation that will last beyond 2012.

This was a good, as well as exciting, meeting. The organisers were wanting to genuinely hear opinions and gain a mandate, but came with a ‘prayed and thought out’ proposal so that we were not starting from cold.

Matt Bird delivered a possible 5 fold strategy:
to CONSULT the full breadth of the church
to COMMUNICATE with one voice for the church
to COORDINATE the church and its response
to COLLABORATE by helping us to work together
to act as a CLEARING house to the London Olympic Committee for churches

This made loads of sense with the following 4 tiered structure presented by John Baxter Brown:
Council of Reference
Trustees
Executive group
Task groups

There were a lot of people there today – but the organisers, mainly Transform Newham, EA, CTIE and Christian in Sport, are very aware that they will not have invited everyone. Today they asked us all to be ambassadors, to let others know and to show them how to get involved with comments or offering skills, I’m doing that now – you can email them at:
olympics@transformnewham.com

Today was exciting, I spoke and met some new friends, as well as met a few others that I had not seen for a while. Today my faith in church has been restored a little.

6 years and counting!

Tonight I caught part of the news for the South east on the TV.

First people were being interviewed about san ‘organisation’. They were saying things like:
‘if only we could get people to come in they would see that we were not boring, stuffy old people’
‘we are quite normal really and like to have a laugh’
‘we don”t ask the children to be quiet anymore’
‘we want everyone to feel they can visit here for as long as they like’
‘we are here for the whole community’

People were then interviewed about this ‘organisation’:
‘It’s not for me’
‘I don’t know where my nearest one is’
‘It’s full of old people’
‘I want something a lot more exciting than that’
‘They watch you whenever you go in there – like you are going to nick something’.

Next I was interested by the response of the people from the organisation again:
‘we want to make the gardens look nice so we are more attractive’
‘we are thinking about more relevant stuff to attract young people’
‘we are building a cafe to attract people in’

All of this made me think … you’ve guessed it … church!

But no! How wrong you can be when you miss the start of a news report.
the organisation in question …. libraries.

It’s interesting to see that with falling figures, like the church has done in the past, they are turning to gimmicks to attract people to them.

A case for emerging libraries maybe?

I must just end the day with a song:

we only need 9 men,
we only need 9 men,
we only need 9 men!

9 men!

we only need 9 men…..

great game

Gillingham 3 Brentford 2

(did I mention we only needed 9 men to win?)

Please don’t ring me tomorrow – I can’t talk as I vented my voice on the referee!

I got to go and see Chris and Tina at Kenilworth YFC today to draw up a mission proposal. It was an early start, leaving the hose at 520am to beat the traffic and do some work before starting the consultation.

There is something strangely weird but refreshing about traveling along the M25 alone. On a number of occasions there was not anther car in front or behind me. It is definitely the way to travel! Instead of arriving stressed and wondering why I had sat hours in the car, I arrived after stopping for a great breakfast and getting some work done.

This is a time of the morning that few of us normally see. Somehow the time seems cleaner and fresher, different things are noticeable, such as birds starting to sing, the silence before the world starts to wake up. In fact, Gillingham looks like beautiful, as does the M25 when seen in this different light.

Seeing familiar things in a different light opens us up to the possibility of seeing new things where once only familiarity bred an unconscious contentedness due to lack of observation and awareness.

Approaching and looking at God in fresh ways can, too, open us to the possibility of a new discovery.

The mission presentation seemed to go well this morning.

Missio Dei and the 5 marks of a mission shaped church from the report of the same name are the backbone of our presentation.

Not long now until we have this assessed at our Easter school, and this morning showed that all the groups hard work has come together with a fairly good presentation.

Today St Mark’s had a vision morning.

It was quite a privilege and exciting to be chatting with around 40 other people, praying, and thinking through where we want to be in 5/10 years time as a church.

Some exciting stuff came out of some unexpected mouths – a possible sign that God is leading clearly and with purpose. I must admit I went under protest, and have returned quite excited.

This is being partly followed up tomorrow in church and I’m really quite sad that I can’t be there as I will be with my mission group from SEITE at St Peters in Aylesham presenting ‘What is a missionary church in the 21st Century’at the 9.00am service. The sacrifice for SEITE cuts again!

I look forward, though, to hear what is said and what happens tomorrow morning – in fact, if I finish in Aylesham in time, I’m going to see if I can get back for at lest the end of the service.

This week I have achieved a personal, if little and insignificant, milestone.

I always said SEITE would not stop me reading fiction as I think reading stuff from the paperback top 10 helps me to stay in touch with what some are reading.

SEITE has stopped me reading fiction – the amount of work has taken some getting used to. But this week – success! I have started a great book ‘The traveler’ which is matrix-y/davinci code-y/ type stuff. Anything written by a guy with a name like John Twelve Hawks has got to be worth a read!

Irony always make me laugh.
I hope I’m not too insensitive because of it!
On Fridays I always collect Beth and Joe from school.
Today it took me a little longer than usual.
The ‘Lollipop man’ was run over on the crossing!
It makes me smile but I hope he’s ok!

Every now and then I look at the Thought for the Day site of Radio 4. Often there are some good gems of just under 3 minutes in length.

I love Giles Fraser who writes a ‘must read’ article each week in the Church Times.

His Thought for Thursday on the ‘radicalness of the Christian message’, and Christians being offended is excellent.

You can read it here, but why bother … listen to the 2 min 58 seconds here instead.