It was the first day back at work today. Since waking up, I have felt quite empty today and that did concern me. It’s a difficult feeling to explain. It’s not that I do not feel that God is there, I feel he is! But … I feel empty inside and in relation to him and what is going on around me.

That concerned me!

So … I made use of the quiet house and spent some time reflecting and ‘chilling’ with God. As I was chilling I had a bizarre idea (maybe I should be bold enough to say God spoke?!) The idea was to dig out my notebook and go through notes from conferences of the past few years.

I don’t know if you relate to this. I go to conferences – I have to go to YFC staff conference every year. The speakers are excellent. I make notes. I mean to re-read them, but I never seem to have a chance to. (I even but the speaker cd’s that I then do not listen to!!!) Well tonight I took that opportunity and started to read through notes of old YFC conferences that I had been to.

A comment from staff conference in January 2002 which Janet Whitehead made as she preached one evening hit me. They must have hit me then, or I would not have written them down, but I forgot about them. ‘Sometimes emptiness is the greatest sign of hope’

Janet went on to back up this statement by using the image of the empty tomb. The tomb of Jesus, being empty, was and still is the greatest sign of hope for you and me, and everyone we know.

Isn’t that amazing – not just the comment, but the fact that on the day I feel empty I get an idea to read through old notes and I find thatone sentence from Janet. I actually found the comment within 2 minutes and knew I did not need to read any further. God had got his message across.

I find this really encouraging to think my emptiness could be a sign of hope for me. As you know, I start a new role with YFC on September 1st and there a a few things I need to sort such as hand over to Malcolm properly and buy a car that will travel around the country without breaking down. I can now go to sleep thinking my emptiness is not as bad as I feared. In fact, it could well be positive.

‘Sometimes emptiness is the greates sign of hope’.

Well we are all back from a fantastic holiday. Amazingly a few days away in the caravan witht he family and I have returned very relaxed. It is as if God turned 5 days into 10 … a miracle!

It’s also very quiet at home. We retuned on Friday and Sarah and the children went off to Revival Fire Conference at Detling. Sarah is there in her capacity as St Marks Church youth worker. I chose to stay at tome because, if I am honest, that big group loud worship, full on energy thing is not where I am at the moment and so would hate it.

There is no judgement in that statement. It’s great for people that can connect with God that way – and in family thats everyone apart from me – so I guess I’m the weirdo! Sometimes I do relate to God in that way, but at the moment I know I am in my quiet and reflective stage; and what better way to explore that than stay home alone and make good use of the quiet.

I do miss them though … its a weird kind of quiet in the house!

I have been catching up a little blog reading while I got a chance and Jonny writes that on the ACPI website you can now read the Archbishops address which I tried to outline from the mission shaped church conference. You can also read the stories of the emerging church examples too.

They make exciting reading.

I have been quiet for the last few days. This is not because I have had nothing to talk about, as I can normally ramble about anything. I have been quiet because Sarah has been at Soul in the City and I have been looking after the children.

I missed Sarah loads while shge was away, but also really had my eyes opened to how hard looking after the children on your own is. The reason I have not been blogging is simply because I have not been organised enough to get everything done on time and still have the energy or desire to come here and type for 20 minutes or so. Before you laugh and say it … I know! Sarah does this normally and still is organised to teach half a week and be youth worker the other half. I want to go public and say ‘I don’t know how she does it!’

Sarah came home last night and the sheer look of joy on her face was fantastic to see. It was clear that she has had a great time working in Peckham (which is VERY different to Gillingham)working in the community there. She had loads of stories and I must admit I was quite envious of the experience that she has had of seeing God work in real peoples lives.

And, it has had an effect. It will be a while to see what long term effect it has had on the young people she took but at the moment they are saying they want to do something similar along the community project in Gillingham. I really hope they continue and look into this. The thought of a small group of young people mobilising the church to do something in Gillingham to support and help people with no strings or expectations to attend Christian meetings really feels me with great excitement. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of alternative agendas and doing things to get people to come in to the church.

I don’t care of people come to church! (well … that probably is not strictly true!). I care that people out there know that God loves them and that God has time for them and that God is there for them if they ask. In Peckham that is what they did. Sarah thinks the t-shirts they wore provoked a question or comment. They said ‘I love Peckham’ on the front and ‘God loves Peckham’ on the back. Apparantly comments like ‘no he doesn’t’ were the start of opportunities to open dialogue. They chatted to people and offered to pray for them on the streets. It was quite amazing the overwhelming number of people that grabbed at the invitation. There is a spiritual longing out there; but we need to get out there to realise that, rather than waiting for it to come to us.

Today Sarah has said that it feels wrong to be back in Gillingham. She wants to be out there in the community still. She is asking the question ‘Why?’ Why can’t all of us act like they have been for the past week in Soul in the City. Why when we walk around our own towns can’t we offer to pray for people? Why don’t we just pick up litter or run clubs for school holidays to help? It’s a good question and a challenge. Why do we need a special festival, event or whatever to do stuff like this? Surely a provocatice church does it just because Jesus cared and loved and we know he wants us to show others that he loves them to.

Sometimes I wonder what holds me back? Maybe the strength in the event is that lots of people are doing it and suporting each other. A whole church living a God centred life and all going into the community … now that would be an exciting thing to see.

Now that Sarah is back we are off tomorrow for a few days with the children to have a break and some fun. We are taking the caravan to Battle, near Hastings. Apparantly battle is where the 1066 thing and all that happened – time for the Ryan family to become all cultural and historical methinks! Maybe some time too to reflect and chat more about ‘what next’.

Well … I’m back and I hoped I might have heart changing stories to tell about what happened in Weymouth. It would have made exciting reading but alas, no can do!

It was strange being back in Weymouth and kinda weird hearing Mum and Steve talk about old friends (which are current to them) some of which I have totally forgotton and can’t remember. It has been 20 years since I left Weymouth really, and that is the excuse I am going to hold onto.

The most frustrsting thing about being back in Weymouth is that God is so obviously there. You only need to look around at the beauty of what is there to see that. I really find it amazing that you can be surrounded by so much natural beauty and (i) not recognise it and (ii) not acknowledge that God the Creator must be real.

We visited some of my favourite places with the children while we were there: Weymouth Sands, Portland Bill, Chesil Beach. Three contrasting scenaries which, I believe, show how creative and fantastic our God is.

It just amazes me that that the rest of my family live here, in the centre of loads of what is good about God’s creation, yet they just do not see it. If anything, they tend to be quite negative of their surroundings (my brother being an exception), at best being quite complacent about what is around them and at worse complaining about it.

I guess that is not really any different to the rest of us. I believe that even in a grotty place like Gillingham (sorry – but I live here and it is!) God is clear and evident. W can become complacent to his prescence but if we remnind ourselves to look we see him in loads of places. Just in my little back garden today, being able to watch flowers open as the sun appeared, birds sing, children scream, clouds forming shapes, … it is all there if we ever have the time to look for it and notice it.

A challenge: lets look today for something scred in the ordinary of our everyday lives. It would be great if some of those were shared here. Have a great day!

I read Genesis 28 this morning before getting ready to leave. In verse 16 Jacob says: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place and I wasn’t even aware of it.’

It just strikes me from this that our daily life can be so, well, errr ‘normal’ that we fail to notice that God is there. Our ideas of heaven can be so mystical that we fail to realise that if God is with us, then we can reach out and touch heaven in the situation that we are in. The Kingdom of God is near!

For me, going to Weymouth is never easy. The relationship between myself and my mum is not great and really never has been. The fault lies more with me than it does with my mum, but I quite often need to use the inhaler a lot more just due to the stress of approaching my mums house. Going today with just the children and no sarah to bail me out will be interesting.

Can it be true, though, that God is there? Can he have been in that house all along and I have just failed to recognise him? It’s not so much as a fail to recognise, more of not even thinking to look for him there.

Today I am going to go with an attitude of ‘looking for the sacred in the everyday’. I heard a speaker say last year that if you do not look or expect God’s blessing than you do not notice and receive it. Well, I’m going to try and keep looking!

While Sarah is involved with Soul in the City, I am going to visit my mum and brother with the children in sunny Weymouth, the beautiful town in which I grew up. 

I probably won’t be able to blog while I am there, so I will go quiet for a few days. I’m looking forward just to get away actually, although it will be rather strange not being with Sarah. She’s only been gone 6 hours but I miss her already!

It’s now public knowledge which allows me to share that Malcolm has been appointed as the next Director of Gillingham YFC. I have known Malcolm for nearly 10 years and he has been Senior Youth Worker for the last 2 years at GYFC.  He has a great passion for the young people of Gillingham – so this is a good appoinment for continuation and development. I look forward to seeing how God will use Malcolm in this new role.

I know a lot of you have been praying that God would guide the interview panel – so thankyou for your prayers.

It was a real pleasure to meet up with new friends Jim and Mags last night. They have just moved from Oxford to be with the church in Gillingham. Must be God that causes a move like that as you wouldn’t dream that up yourself!

Jim cooked a great curry butMags weas much better at the conversation! Ok … a poor difg at Jim but I can’t have people thinking he’s brilliant already (and he has started to read SHP so may get big-headed)

Its good to meet with people and just chill – I’ve said loads, and say it again, it’s what Christianity, no normal living, should be all about!

Its been a great relaxed day today. Sarah has been getting ready to take her youth group to Soul in the City and I have just been pottering! I like days like today when I have nothing in particular to do; especially when I have not had a proper ‘day off’ from work for over 2 weeks.

We have spent a lot of time together as a family today and this afternoon we went to The Strand and played Crazy Golf. I won … not that I am competitive of course! Its great to be together – it reminds me that too often in mission it it so so easy to neglect the more  important things like family.

I really do not want to be one of those ‘good’ Christians who has a ministry where they see lots of other people become Christians but their own children don’t because mum or dad are strangers due to ‘church’ and ‘mission’.  Is it selfish of me to think actually I will be happy only if all 3 of my children remain with God?