Yesterday was a great day until the children came home from school.

I went up to London yesterday to meet up with Richard – it’s great having a boss who encourages you and lets you know when you are doing well!

Walking through Covent Garden at just before 10 was eerie. When I meet Richard there I usually tube to the Embankment then wander up through The Strand to Covent Garden. I enjoy the walk. Today it was eeire as I left the business of The Strand to enter the complete calm of silence of a Covent Garden only just starting to wake up. I stood in the Piazza at for a good couple of minutes the only person there was me and all I could hear was my own breathing! It was strange but also quite refreshing to find unexpected calm in the centre of London.

The advantage of arriving early is that you can grab a table in Starbucks which is near to a powerpoint which means I can then work as long as I like. In the hour I waited for Richard (I was deliberately early and he was on time) I got a fair bit done.

As I was there I was very conscious of other people also conducting business in Starbucks. Two tables away was a young woman who was conducting very efficient 20 minute interviews on her own. Some people left happy, others didn’t.

Next to me were two guys getting fairly heated in agreeing the allocation of budgets between their various departments.

It seems no one goes to Starbucks to drink coffee socially anymore. I can’t talk – I was there to meet Richard and briefly catch up with Sharron.

I think I noticed it’s quite an energising way to work. At home, working on my own as I do a lot of the time, can be a drag. It takes masses of discipline, after all who would know if I did no work and watched DVDs all day! I miss that interaction from people, and I miss that work atmosphere from an office that seems to spur you on, a bit like a pacer I suppose in a race. You just have to be careful that you don’t try to keep up with the pacemakers who are just there to set a speed, look impressive briefly, and move on.

I wonder if this is why Jesus is so hot on community. I wonder why this is why the early church was so hot on the togetherness of believers. I wonder why this is why ‘church’ is so important.

I think there are times when we all need pacemakers. We all need to be able to run off from an atmosphere that is generated, and can only be generated, by people together in community. Yesterday morning in Starbucks in Covent Garden there was a little work community with a common aim – to get as much done in as little time as possible. Seeing the 20 minute disciplined interviews of the young lady across from me, acted as an inspiration to be disciplined in my tasks. To work at her speed though for the whole day (she was only there for 5 interviews) would have resulted in tense nervous headaches!

But it did inspire.
It did encourage.
It set a pace.

Is that why church is so important?
To be inspired, encouraged and paced by others?

I received this today via the LCF:

BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY CHRISTIAN UNION BANNED,

AND ACCOUNTS FROZEN

BIRMINGHAM University’s Christian Union has been banned from using Student Union Guild rooms and facilities, and has had its bank accounts frozen by Guild authorities after refusing to make politically-correct changes to their charitable constitution on religious grounds.

The Students Union at Birmingham University wanted to impose one of their own leaders onto the CU executive, open membership to people of all faiths and beliefs and instructed the Christian fellowship to change its constitution from “men and women” to “people” to make it more inclusive for transsexual/transgender persons to become members.

When members of the CU tried to book rooms with the Guild after the summer break for normal CU activities, they were told the Guild couldn’t accommodate them [because the CU was involved in too many evangelistic activities.]

Then, when Christians in Sport (whose high profile supporters include Olympic Gold Medallists Jonathan Edwards) attempted to book a room in the CU’s name, the Guild insisted on checking the CUs constitution. The Guild objected to many clauses, even though the constitution has been consistent for many years, and its polices are not a new issue for the Guild. The CU has been operating at Birmingham University for the past 76 years, and currently has well over a hundred people attending the CU’s meetings.

Andy Weatherley, CU staff worker in Birmingham, said: “The Guild insists our constitution must be amended to include ‘mandatory clauses’, insisting more control and more intrusion by the Guild and open membership to those who would not call themselves Christians.

“As a Christian Union, we restrict membership to only those people who profess faith in Jesus Christ, [and that leadership positions are also restricted to the same criteria and the beliefs outlined in the University and College’s Christian Fellowship Doctrinal Basis]. It is a fundamental right of any organisation to be able to include in its membership only those who abide by the ethos and focus of the organisation. We believe this to be true for all organisations within the Student Union, not just religious or ethnic ones. We are not a special interest group there to attract people with similar interest but a Union of Christians. Whilst our meetings are open to all people, believers and unbelievers when it come to being a voting member or leader of the Christian Union we feel it is perfectly respectable to restrict access to people who call themselves Christians.

The Vice Chancellors report “Extremism and intolerance on Campus”, advises Universities “some clubs of societies to have restricted eligibility, say on religious or nationality grounds. Otherwise, it could be open to a group hostile to the club or society to join and take it over in a way that would be quite wrong. But we urge care in this area.”

Despite the CU agreeing to consider some re-drafting of their constitution and to offer a re-draft to the Guild at their mid-January meeting, the CU were suspended from booking rooms for a week-long Christian Awareness event at the end of January named “Truth”. The Guild has de-recognised the Christian Union and frozen its bank account, including money donated by the public and churches to be used for Christian work in the university. The “Truth” week will only now go ahead because of the good grace offered by the university allowing the CU to place a marquee on a central location on campus.

Birmingham Christian Union has instructed solicitors, who have advised the Guild that unless funds are returned, and a democratic way forward can be found, they have been instructed to issue court proceeds against them.

Birmingham University Christian Union is affiliated to UCCF, which has over 77 years experience of working with Christians at universities and colleges of higher and further education throughout the UK.

Pod Bhogal, its communications director said: “In all our years of working with hundreds of HE establishments, this action by Birmingham’s Guild is unique. We support the Birmingham CU 100 per cent and will back them in standing up for their rights, and the democratic rights of every student grouping in the university to be able to constitute themselves and to peruse any lawful aims and objectives in a free society. We would not dream of telling a Muslim student group how to elect their leaders or who could or could not become a member, that’s entirely a matter to them, based on their own faith principles, the same applies to a CU.”

Today I was the YFC representative at The Forum for Change.

This is a network of people, under the banner of EA and Joel Edwards, that is seeking to work together to bring transformation in the country through the arts, politics, business, education and media. A tall and ambitious order, but one that intrigues me which is why I have attended the annual meetings for the last 3 years.

Today our key note speaker was Lord Michael Hastings. He challenged people there and it was good to hear his words spoken in the environment it was spoken in this morning.

He challenged us to think about what is vital to our faith. What is vital to us? What is vital for people today? His answer was happiness. He quoted that happy people live 16 years longer than those who are miserable. He reminded us that we, as a nation, are prospering economically, but that we suffer from unhappiness.

He challenged an end to ambition, both personal and organisational.

He then challenged us to look at the Bible and find out how we could bring happiness, and that was by getting our hands dirty. People are attracted by rumours of angels, evidence of God working, not new projects or personal ambition of evangelicals, he said.

None of this is new, but in the setting with the people there who love projects, their organisations, and maybe even their popularity (not necessarily a bad thing) I think it was fresh new words.

He ended with an encouragement:

‘Aslan’s coming – it won’t always be winter!’

We were left with 5 questions which I leave you with:

1. Are you disappointed and frustrated?
2. If you could do it all again, personally and organisationally with the collective resources; would you do the same again?
3. If you had to step outside your comfort zone of work and church and work without the backing and recognition of others … would you be able to stand?
4. How competitive, ambitious and craving are you; and how much does this hinder you?
5. Have you been touched by the fantastic ever?

Comments?

I’ve not written very much about staff conference.

One particular talk challenged me. Actually it was more of a stand up and shout ‘that’s right’ moment, rather than challenge. Being British (well 50% of me)that all happened in my head of course!

On the first night Daryl Gardiner, the national director of New Zealand YFC spoke. As an aside do you have to be loud and bald to be a national director of YFC?

Daryl suggested that much of what we do in the name of discipleship in the western world with young people who become Christians, is actually nothing of the sort, but that it is socialisation. By this, he meant, we try to get them to act like us, to dress like us, to behave like us. Immediately I thought no, this is not the case.

Then I had various images.

I remembered a church I had sat in recently. The vicar came out of his room, walked down the church before the service started and removed a hat of a teenagers head. Obviously, the vicar felt that to be a male Christian in church meant you had to remove your hat. Discipleship or socialisation?

I remembered the church where people complained that all the young people sat together and wore hoodies and trainers. Clearly, now they were Christian they needed to dress more appropriately and talk a little more quietly. Discipleship or socialisation?

I remembered the church where there was confusion. Of course they should like Matt Redmond songs – that is what Christian young people sing and do. Clearly, now they were Christian, they would want to leave their rap music for something more suitable. Discipleship or socialisation?

I think of all the churches, with different young people, from different backgrounds, with different needs, different fears, different aspirations … all using the same centrally produced material to nurture them. Discipleship or socialisation?

Is it true?
Are we trying to clone our Christian young people?
Are we attempting to mould them into the types of people we want them to be?
Are we ignoring their cultural distinctive that can enrich our worship and learning?

I think Daryl is right.
We expect language, attitude and actions to change.
Sadly, I think we are quite successful.
I can think of many Christian young people who have cut themselves off from old ways, old friends, old customs and are now truly assimilated into middle class Christendom.

The church can be like the Borg.
we say unity but mean ‘Assimilate’.
we say ‘Raise the quality of life’ but mean be like us.
we desire ‘Collective identity’but mean we’re scared of creativity
we say we can adapt, but mean we’Synthesise’

The New Testament idea of one creative body has become an odd looking ear, eye, nose or mouth! Without knowing it, we have become assimilated.

It’s not just young people, is it!
Many churches seem to be saying, if you are to come here you need to believe the same, think the same, look the same.

The Borg are out there … we must resist, we must reclaim our creativity, we must stand up and fight. Picard escaped … and so can we.

The result if we allow people to travel the journey in their own way will be a colourful, diverse, relevant expression of church that reaches significantly into comunities, with creative thinking, authentic worship and genuine mission. A mission to see others develop their expression rather than merely a plant of what there already is.

The image excites me; but I feel it is an unattainable target. The Borg always seem to win … don’t they?

During morning office I noticed this reflection in the window – so I took the picture as I kind of liked the effect of a candle sitting on top of the bench with a tree growing out of its flame.

It speaks to me of the light of God encouraging growth while giving space for us to sit and chill with Him.

This morning I spoke on ‘Your Kingdom Come’ at St Mark’s church. They are running through the Lord’s Prayer over a few weeks, and I got this fantastic, and, I think, pivotal line of the prayer.

I have uploaded my notes, which is in the form of a mind map, here as some requested.

As I have pondered on this, I have come to think that we understand so little and that for me, as a Christian, there has to be more to life than this! In fact, at Staff Conference I stood behind someone during one of the worship sessions who had that logo on the back of his t-shirt. It got me thinking.

Jesus said ‘Your Kingdom Come’. That’s quite interesting terminology. There is nothing there about ‘take us to your kingdom’or ‘keep a space for us when the time is right’. As I thought on this it kind of led me to think to a reversal of things.

I have been fortunate recently to be able to read a lot of good stuff that fuelled my thinking, one in particular being Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. Here, Rob talks about the kingdom being the here and now, and how the kingdom, in the end times, comes here. That is, God comes to live on earth with humankind, not that we go to heaven!

But that still causes me to say

there must be more to life than this!

If the faith is only about being with God, whether that is on earth or in heaven, after we are dead what does it offer to people like Tom who are not even contemplating death for another 60 or so years! I’ve spoken to Tom loads, and I am not an expert on young people, but it seems to me that very few 12 year olds have their mortality on their minds!

I was exploring this morning the belief as I see it, that the Kingdom of God has started. All through history we see that God has chosen to try to live with us. In Eden he walks in the garden, in the desert he travels ahead of the Israelites, he was on earth in the form of Jesus for roughly 33 years, and now he is here in the form of the Holy Spirit.

For some reason God loves to just hang out with us – that’s quite an amazing thought! And if God is hanging out with us, isn’t that a great reason to be partying and having a great life?

In John 10:10, Jesus tells us he came so that we could have a good life. The word for life here is ‘zoe’; the literal translation being ‘life as God has it’. Jesus came so that we can experience life, have life, in the same way that God experiences it!

wow!

What a reason to party.

Why then are there so many miserable faces in church!!!

It’s a mystery! But it has something, I believe, to do with the fact that we are scared. Scared to believe that we are made in the image of God, scared to believe that God fully accepts us as we are, scared to believe that it is as easy as Jesus says it is, scared to believe that it really can be true.

God paid the bill, there is nothing else for us to do but to enjoy the party!

Followers of Jesus, enjoying life, accepting they are created as they are meant to be, not trying to be anything they are not, fully trusting God, not looking for the next clever trick, sold out on love for God and allowing him to transform them and so their communities through them …

If that were a reality what sort of world would we be living in?

Thursday night we had masses of fun sno-tubing and tobogganing at the Chatham Ski Slope – you couldn’t do things like this when I was 12 which makes it even more fun to do now.

There is something quite special about zooming around the toboggan with Joseph shouting ‘break break!’ as you fly round the bends!

When’s the next birthday party …?

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I found this new site, Pandora, via Jonny’s blog.
It’s one of the best and most useful music websites I’ve found in ages. You tell iot what music you like, and it suggests other music that you might like to.
I’ listening to some new cool stuff now – After Traffic by Highend Sound.

The Fresh Expressions site has updated quite a bit since I last had a look.

As an Anglican at heart this gives encouragement for the future!