redesigning the garden

Well, I really wanted to get out and into the garden today .. but the weather being what it was, I didn't manage more than half an hour or so before being soaked right through!

Frustrating! Like so much in life, I guess!

I've started - after months of trying to figure out just what is needing done - I've started on a fairly large re-shaping of the front bit of the garden at the entrance to the house. I get these notions from time to time; large-scale garden projects which I work at in my head for long enough and then pluck up the courage to translate into the landscape round the house.

The bit at the front has been niggling away at the back of my mind for long enough. The way it's laid out, it just doesn't work. It's laid in grass (well, it used to be grass and now it's just green and the green is just moss and the moss only shares it with weeds): but since it's on the north side of the house and doesn't get much sun, it's more forlorn than lawn.

A mess as much as moss.

It's laid out wrong. It's not that the lay-out's intrinsically wrong: it's just that it doesn't work there. 'Garden' must be done another way if things are going to grow there and look good. And can be done another way, with just a bit of boldness and a lot of careful thinking and no small amount of work.

So that's what I've started. And because it's very much a thing I'm undertaking bit-by-bit, it's going to take a while! And that's why I'm keen to be out at the work as much as I possibly can.

And all of that's a picture of the other sort of 'gardening' that I do. Called 'church'. The spiritual state of Scotland is no longer what it was: conditions here have now changed. The 'prevailing winds' that blow through our society have altered over time. The plot on which we're now 'doing church' is facing north.

What maybe worked before, what maybe was appropriate in sunnier times - well, the way that we've been 'doing church' for long enough, it's laid out wrong for now. It just won't work.

And so, I'm bit-by-bit in process of transforming how the 'garden' of our Christian lives are lived. It needs the same imagination and the same persistent boldness and the same sustained commitment to keep working at it day by day and week by week - and trusting that the Lord will make it grow and be the lovely, lively, life-imparting thing it's meant to be.

Tonight, at a 60th birthday do, I got speaking to a guy who's involved in a church in Dundee. (He's actually from New Zealand and he's working out in France, but he's part of the church in Dundee!).

They're trying to 'do the garden' in a different sort of way up there. Three nights a week, a team of them go out around the pubs and bars and clubs, to meet with folk and chat with them and share with them the Jesus whom they love.

Mainly it's the staff they get to know, and over time there's scope for them to talk about the sort of things that most folk are quite keen to find in life. Meaning and purpose and hope and fulfilment and love and peace and joy and ... well, the lot!

They want to know about these things. It's just that the way that we've been 'doing church' for long enough, it doesn't work for them. In a north-facing world, a different sort of lay-out is required. And that's what these guys in Dundee are seeking to do. Laying the good news out in a different sort of way.

And that's what I am trying to do as well. And sometimes it's frustrating!