Last night was D2’s last gig for Gillingham YFC this year. They are our performing arts team, who share their faith through the media of dance, drama and music. As ever they were excellent in their performance.

They did a 2 hour show at Upbury Arts College where we have based them for the year. They have simply become members of the community of the school and ‘being Jesus’ to both students and staff in the way they related to them. Rachel, Emily, Jooles and Dave have been cool throughout the year and built excellent realtionships.

I really hope that Gillingham YFC can have D2 next year – please join us in praying for the money and housing to allow that to happen.

Today is a proud day in the life of a blogger who is a dad too.

Tom, my eldest son of 10, has decided he want to keep a blog. Tom’s Blog will be up and running fully soon. I will speak my thoughts and no doubt he will comment on the truth. Actually, I am interested to see what he wants to blog about. Go for it Tom!

Quite an exciting day today. I won a didgeridoo on ebay! I have wanted one for ages … which is concerning those close to me. First came the Celtic liturgy, then the candles, then the incense, now the didg!

Soon I will be out with the stars, communing with God, just me, my didg, candles and incense. But first I need to master the circular breathing. Is that really possible? WEll its a challenge that I am just gonna have to rise to!

The Holy Observer is a fuuny site I like to read now an again. I just found it has a ‘Church sign of the month’ section. Is this a new church strategy to be copied by others?

That’s a very good question and I thank Lucy for asking it. The quick answer is that I am not sure! There again, maybe that is a cop out!

I have a long held compassion to see young people reached for Christ. Until probably the last 2 years that was exclusively young people but now I don’t care who comes to Christ … just everyone! I am interested in all the people around me.

As a young Christian stuff seemed very black and white. This was right, that was wrong. I now see that actually I was simply taking on board what other more experienced Christians were telling me. Now when I go back to them I am shocked to see that they can not say why they believe what they do … they just do!

I guess I have been looking hard at the last few years of what I believe and why. This has resulted at looking at the person of Jesus and the thing that hits me more than anything is how he dealt, and deals now, with people. His method is of unconditional acceptance whereas I see a lot of the church’s method as follow this rule! This view will accept some people as I feel unconditional acceptance is just too wild to get your head around cos we want to lay conditions on so we earn it. I wonder if the women who was going to be stoned felt like that? Jesus accepted her as she was BEFORE he told her to go and ‘sin no more’. I think the order here is missed significantly. (but, again, this is only my opinion!) I must admit my relationship with Jesus over the past 2 years in particular has been a liberating experience! Maybe it has been a wrong experience! But all I can say is I am closer to him now than I ever have been.

As well as looking at Jesus I have been asking all the what is church, how do we do church kinda stuff. I don’t know any answers, but some experimental ideas that I would like to ponder on and investigate at some time in my journey.

In light of this, I feel community is the heart of all we do. We are in community whether we want to be or not. I want to be. I want to be so much that actually, I feel being part of community is more important than sharing the gospel. By that I mean that when people reject Jesus I am still going to be around for them. That’s what a true friend and member of the community would do.

I used to think I needed to take Jesus in to my community. Lucy rightly points out he is already there! I think, on reflection, my task is to point him out to people that are not recognising him where he is.

I am going to stop there as I think this could become a very long post – and no-one will want to read it! Anyway … comments?

Please feel free to make comments on my posts.

I have been running this blog for nearly 2 months and according to the counter around 20 people look at it during the day. A couple of those people make a comment now and again.

I started this blog for 2 reasons:

1. It struck me suddenly that my theological stance on things had changed quite dramatically over the past 5 or 10 years and I had no idea, when I thought back, of how that had occurred. It was interesting to see, in particular, that although I have been a Christian for around 20 years that I now have more ‘grey issues and views’ when I thought I might have some quite strong convictions on stuff. The keeping of this blog, as an online diary, is an attempt by me to track where I am going and give me something to look back on. So I guess it is tracking where I have come from!

2. I wanted an opportunity to hear and learn from others from a wider field than my normal everyday contacts. I have a desire to widen my network and learn from what is happening out there away from Gillingham!

I do not presume to know anything about which I post. I certainly am no expert in any area. I have no right to write and some may consider it quite pretenscious of me to feel I can (sometimes I think that myself). I do not think what I write is ‘the truth’; I write my opinion or viewpoint and that is all. In light of this, please feel free to publish comments here – the way for our faith to develop is to enter into dialogue. If you can help me think differently and I can help you too, that’s quite cool I think.

I have been dwelling on heaven in my study again. Its quite interesting that in Revelation John’s vision of Heaven is a ‘new Jerusalem’. Not any old city then, but his home city.

I started to wonder if, through the centuries, that ‘Jerusalem’ in this context has been romanticised. Has New Jerusalem has been poeticised (is that a word)to become something that it is not?

I have started to wonder whether Paul was seeing this more has a re-creation of his home town rather than some special city. If that is the case, does it mean that my heaven will be a new Gillingham? There is quite a natural force to that statement .. Heaven the new Gillingham, a new London, a new Birmingham … and so on.

The picture of Heaven as my home, but re-created so that it is perfect, is quite an excellent thought. Could heaven really be the place we have chosen to spend our lives, the place we most feel at home and happiest, in a new and perfect form? I don’t know, but it has got me thinking.

The next Blah is tomorrow night and you will remember I raved about the last one. This one is with Kester Brewin who is about to release the book, The Complex Christ. I’m gutted that I can’t get there as I need to do some youth work but that does not stop me pushing the thing to you. It will be an excellent night and a chance to hear a preview of what sounds like a challenging and though provoking book to encourage us to make the move from ‘machine of Christ’ to ‘body of Christ’.

I am involved in a discussion on the emerging church info discussion boards on ‘what is church’. Quite a contenscious subject always guaranteed to get people talking.

Yesterday, being Sunday, ‘church’ was excellent. As a group of people we had lunch together in the church to welcome our new curate, Jim, and his wife, Mags, to the leadership team of St Marks.

This is the first time in ages that we have done something like this and the atmosphere was excellent, warm, welcoming and loving with people who normally rush off quickly home, stayed, ate and chatted. I spoke with loads of people that I had never met before and we were able to share bits of each others stories.

We went home and for the first time in ages I feel that I had really experienced a full expression of church, rather than just a partial expression.

Somehow, in our churches, we need to give space for community to develop. I don’t know how we do that but feel it is important that, somehow we look into that and try stuff out.

Yesterday was rounded off excellently by spending some time with Andrew and Sarah, my brother and sister-in-law. With them we were able to discuss the community side of church to greater depths. Funny how conversations like that are always aided by glasses of wine and decent beer. Thanks guys … lets not leave it too long before we do that again.

I couldn’t do my normal Saturday morning practice today so I feel all skewiff! After taking Tom to football training I like to sit for a while with Jonathan Ross, a strong black coffee and the Guardian. But, today, it seems that Gillingham has been left off the Guardian delivery route as there were none to be found and I cannot bring myself to choose the Mail, Telegraph or Sun.

I have, however, been able to look at bits of today’s Guardian online (at one point seriously considering taking out a £10/month subscription to the digital copy – but holding the newspaper and having to wash the print off afterwards is part of the ritual!)and one piece drew my eye.

Stuart Jeffries has written this Hell is 57 varieties piece which tells us that a lot of our stress is caused by the variety we have which causes choice. Choice was the capitalist way to show progress whereas, in fact, it induces stress and makes us miserable. He is able to give accounts of societies with less choice having lower stress levels and greater happiness.

I have encountered this as I need to buy a different car for a new job starting in September. I only want something little yet the choice is endless and so I have given up for a while.

In the Christian world we have a lot of choice of style of worship, where to worship, who to worship with …. the choice is seemingly endless. In Medway alone I could attend one of 98 churches.

At the mission shaped church conference I was at the other week we are looking at new expressions of church and I agree that we need new ways of doing church and fresh expressions to meet the needs of different cultures, types and networks. I do wonder as well though if the greater choice that will give is going to lead to mass stress in the church. I hope not!