braving the waves

Nigel Pollock was in today and it was great to have the chance to see and chat with him.

He and his family moved across to the other side of the world to New Zealand about three years ago. In response to a clear insistent call from the Lord.

'Following Jesus' is no mere tag line which we sometimes use.

Following means going where he leads. Which can be wherever.

Across a lot of choppy waters.

In the course of chat he asked how things were here. I likened things here at the moment to the scene in the film 'Castaway' where Chuck, a bit of a whizz-kid guy who got stranded on a desert island, having lashed together a raft, at last sets off towards the open seas.

He has to get across the reef where the incoming waves are a massive sort of barrier designed to send all 'escapees' like him scuttling pretty quickly back to the island.

He's aware that the wind has changed. That if ever there's the moment to be making the attempt, then now's the time.

So he launches the raft and starts rowing for all he's worth.

And, sure enough, before too long, he's in amongst the waves. Wave after wave comes crashing down. And it's a question whether his make-shift raft will actually hold together.

Or whether he'll end up ship-wrecked once again.

I said to Nigel that that's where it feels like we are at just now.

We've been lashing together a (maybe rather make-shift) sort of raft as best we can for quite a while. The wind of the Spirit has changed. And now is clearly the time.

So we've launched off out towards the wide open spaces of the ocean of God's great purposes in these days.

And the waves come crashing down. Wave after wave, which threaten, each one, to break up the raft that we've built.

It's not an easy time. And every fresh wave that comes, you kind of hold your breath and hope and pray that this is not the one which finally sinks you.

Nigel sat and listened. He understood what I was talking about.

"I'm not an islander myself," he said. Neither by personality nor by calling.

He's not made for living on an island. Metaphorically (because, living in New Zeland, he does of course live on an island).

He's made for the wide open oceans which lap on the shores of the world.

He's made for that engagement with the world in which we live. That's what his work is all about.

And really what ours is, too.

I miss the guy, I have to say. And I miss his family, too. He's a leader. The same sort of blood flows through his veins as flows through mine. His pulse matches mine.

So it's great when he's here and there's even the briefest of chances to talk.

It fires me afresh for the challenges lieing ahead. For the next lot of waves that are breaking right onto our raft.

We had a leaders' meeting at night. A long one again. And not exactly easy in all sorts of ways.

It seemed to me that genuine progress was made. But then, maybe I'm an optimist.

I guess you'd have to be, if you took to the seas in a little raft and braved the force of the waves and the wide open spaces of water beyond that reef.

You'd have to be an optimist. I mean, leaving behind that life on the island where for years you've survived OK.

For what? The chance that you might die in either the waves of the reef or the vastness of an inhospitable ocean.

You'd need to be either a fool, a masochist, or an optimist.

Or be driven by a deep conviction that the island's not your destiny. The call of God to leave.

And trust him to sustain you through the crashing waves and lead you through the vast, uncharted waters to engagement with the world.

That's what Nigel and Ailsa are doing.

And even when they're miles away, the knowledge that they've put their lives on the line like that in response to the call of God, inspires me, too, to press on here in a similar sort of way.

The island isn't where he wants his church to be.