butterfly church

Thursdays are days I'm in at the school a lot.

But in between my trips back and forth to the school I met with a man whose work, in a way, is not all that dissimilar from what I'm doing at the school.

Athole Rennie was recently ordained as a church planter in the new, and farily sizeable harbour development along at Leith.

Although he's Scottish through and through, he serves now as a minister of the Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church in Americawho are promoting this work, and under the auspices of Reformission Scotland who are described as "a group of ministers and elders from the Church of Scotland, Free Church, and APC who are working to promote the planting of culturally relevant gospel churches with a reformed outlook."

It's a bold and expansive vision, and it's one that I certainly share.

One of those who's been closely involved in the project wrote this -

"Scotland is a mission field. Millions of people need the gospel. Many of them have rejected Church as they have previously encountered it. ... Church planting is an urgent necessity for Scotland in the 21st Century. We need this church plant and we need many more like it. It is wonderful to have the support of American Presbyterians with a Scottish heritage supporting this kind of work. Thank God that they care enough about Scotland to get involved. I hope their commitment to mission in Scotland will fire the rest of us with an even greater passion to see Scotland re-evangelised."

I was glad to meet the man. This is where the future lies.

We spoke about the work he's just begun and what it now involves. It's early days, of course. There's him and his wife, and now their little baby son as well. And already he's started to gather around himself the start of a core of people to share this work.

Much of his time is spent in the local community. Getting to meet and to know the different people.

Knocking the doors of the folk in the block of flats where they stay and spending some time with these folk. Neighbours.

I offered him coffee. But he spends so much of his time, I think, in the cafes of Leith, that the guy is simply full to the brim with caffeine. And so he declined.

It was a bit more than coffee that Athole is keen to secure from the likes of myself. He's seeking our help.

Prayer, for a start. Earnest, committed, 'give-me-Scotland-or-I-die' sort of prayer, to see once more the church of Jesus Christ being planted in the cities of our land, to see his truth being sounded out once more transforming countless lives.

Finance as well, I suppose, though he didn't make reference to that himself. But the work will require that financial support - and it's something that we could be giving: an investment we could be making - and investment in the future of God's work.

And people. He's looking for people who'll be hearing God's call to engage in this church-planting work down at Leith. He's already learned of two young, soon-to-be-married couples who have heard that call and have chosen to move into Leith, to share in the work with him.

They have the vision to see what it is that God's doing. And they have the heart to be giving themselves to the challenges this work involves.

This is where the futurue lies. At least in part.

We live in days when the slow and cumbersome caterpillar shell of denominational church is slowly giving way, I sense, to a much more lovely, much more mobile, 'butterfly' sort of church.

The fabric of the 'caterpillar' church may well be showing signs, these days, of slowly falling apart. But underneath - and maybe it's still largely out of sight - underneath, behind the scenes, the foretaste of the future for our land, underneath another church, the 'butterfly', is growing.

And this new work that Athole and his merry men (and women) are now growing down in Leith is one more little evidence of that.

This is a part of the future that God has for years now been growing. And it's this that I want to invest in. God's future, and not our own past.

Church-planting like this has a long and a notable pedigree. Here is a quote that you'll find on their website (from Sinclair Ferguson) -

“From the days when the apostles ventured forth to the massive scale church-planting movement envisaged by Calvin for France and by Knox in Scotland... church planting has been essential to the spread of the gospel.”

It's not something all that very much different that I'm doing here. Not least in the school.

By and large I don't get so much of the coffee that Athole gets. But I'm there in the school a lot. I 'hang out' there, and get to know the people. Pupils, teachers, secretaries. Kitchen staff, lollipop ladies, cleaners, assistants. All of them. People.

'Safety' has been the theme for the month. And at the assemblies today the Head asked them all a question - 'Who keeps you safe?'

I smiled when I saw the question going up on the screen. It's a question which lies at the heart of the gospel, of course.

"I to the hills will lift mine eyes.

From whence doth come mine aid?

My safety cometh from the Lord,

Who heaven and earth hath made."

My safety cometh from the Lord. There's the bottom-line answer to our fundamental question.

"Keep me safe, O God," as the psalmist pleads.

Not that that was the answer the Head Teacher gave, of course.

He got all sorts of responses from all of the children there when he asked who keeps you safe? Parents, teachers, brothers, sisters, family, friends, police ... the lot.

Including, and much to the Head's delight, yourself! Yes, he declared, you're the one who most of all is going to keep yourself safe.

He was kind enough, too, to mention me. Mr Middleton will keep you safe.

But he missed out the heart of it all. Salvation belongs to the Lord. He's the one in whom alone our truest safety's found. It's a truth that our nation has to learn once again.

So I'm in among the children, the growing generation of our land today, to teach this truth again.

That's why I see the SU group at lunch-time as being such a crucial time. It's the chance to be sharing the gospel, a chance to be shaping these children, and rooting their lives in the Lord.

There were well over 20 again today. Eager and noisy and full of their youthful excitement.

We don't get long. By the time that they've finished their lunches there's maybe merely 15 minutes max. We take the time to teach them who this Jesus is and what he does and why he's so important.

It's the future I'm investing in. I'm fired with a passion to see our land being once again evangelised.

The butterfly is forming!

prayer

Let me say a bit about prayer. I'll not say it all - the rest will perhaps have to wait 'til another day. But we were thinking a bit about prayer last night at our fortnightly leadership meeting. And few things are more important.

Prayer is perhaps the most open acknowledgement we make that the work is the Lord's.

"Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord," the people of God were sometimes told (see, for instance, Exodus 14.13).

Prayer is our standing still. Prayer is our affirming that 'salvation' is of the Lord. Prayer declares that unless the Lord does the thing (whatever that thing may be), it won't get done at all.

Prayer is our standing back and putting the spotlight on God. Prayer is our learning to see for ourselves just what the Lord can do.

Prayer hands the lead role to God.

It isn't a ritual by which we earn some brownie points. It isn't some magic formula by which we get things done.

It's a simple, humbling exercise in hands-off ministry.

We don't take all that easily to such prayer. We're hands-on people in a hands-on sort of world. We like to be involved. We usually are involved. Very involved. Way too involved.

And as a result we're busy. Often too busy by far to give much more than a pious passing nod to this exercise of prayer.

We often don't dare to stand off and stand back. We fear that just maybe the whole thing will somehow collapse. We like to feel important, needed. We like to think the whole thing might just fall apart if we dared to take a hands-off sort of line and took the time to pray.

Whatever the 'thing' might be. Raising a family (a round-the-clock and non-stop, noble enterprise): or running a church (a hugely multi-faceted sort of ministry, and surely, yes, another noble enterprise): or whatever the 'thing' might be.

Prayer is a conscious, counter-cultural step we take, whereby we choose, in the face of the rushing demands of the river of modern life, to stand entirely still, remove our hands, and acknowledge that it is by the Lord in his grace that the 'thing' will alone be done.

I choose to start and end my day in prayer. A deliberate, defiant act.

It's tempting to get stuck in, there is always so much to do. The energy involved in refusing all those instincts of my ego which insist I do the work - the energy involved is often almost physical.

It's a conscious, deliberate statement and step of faith when I start the day in prayer.

It is the counter-intuitive step of a 'hands-on' man in adopting a 'hands-off' pose. A man who loves to be busy choosing instead to be still.

It's neither natural nor easy. It's a bold and audacious line to take in a busy and often fairly unforgiving world.

It runs the risk of real humiliation. It requires of us a radical humility.

But it's where things always start. Always.

church

The images used to help us in our thinking about the church are interesting.

They're 'organic' more than organisational.

The 'bride' of Christ, for instance: that's relational, intimate, warm. Relationship bathed in love, shot through with a wonderful oneness. A part of himself, so much so that to hassle the church (as Saul once did) is to persecute Jesus himself.

The 'bride' is far from perfect, of course. She's a poor, dishevelled urchin whom he's picked up from the backstreets of a fallen world, and who still has a lot both to un-learn, first, and then as well to learn.

She's nothing short of an embarassment sometimes, such is the extent to which the habits of a former life are still so very much ingrained. But she's still his bride. He knew what he was taking on when he picked her off the street. He can live with the shame and the pain and the regular disappointment.

Sometimes the image that's used is that of the 'body' of Christ.

Our bodies are really remarkable things! A single sperm and an egg start it off and set in train the extraordinary reproductive powers of a tiny cell until a whole big human body is first formed and finally grown. An astonishing demonstration of the patient, potent, creative genius of God.

And every part linked by the bonds of a life that derives from that single source. Linked. Bound to each other for good or for ill. Every part feeling the pain. Every part sharing the pleasures.

No part ever simply on its own, getting on with its own little thing.

I am part of the body of Christ. Some days more than others bring that home to me. Some days more than others I am able to acknowledge that in how my life is lived.

Today was that sort of day.

Out at Kirkliston this morning. Taking time with the minister there. Listening, learning, sharing, praying. Supportive, I hope. Offering hope and encouragement. Affording the sense that we're, none of us, ever alone.

Time well spent - for all that it took me away from the things that are going on here. We're not an island here, remote from all that others in our nation and our neighbourhood may presently be facing. We're in it together. The body.

Lunch with my friend who's been pastoring here in the village, just down the road at the local episcopal church. Sharing the burden. Addressing the needs. Praying for one another, and for the welfare of Christ's whole church.

It's one lung alongside another, learning to breathe in tandem. Learning to work together. Buttressed and helped by knowing the other is there. The body.

There's been much in the way of an ongoing e-mail correspondence with a number of other folk, much further afield. Brothers in Christ. Members of the body. Struggling with burdens we carry. Wrestling with issues we're all of us having to face.

We belong to one another. We cannot live in quiet isolation. We're in it together. The body of Christ.

And so it went on through the day. I was still on the phone to a man elsewhere as the clock ticked on to 11pm. The body of Christ. We belong. We need each other. We draw on the gifts and the input each other can bring under God.

That's what the man was needing. Some insight I could bring. For the welfare of the body as a whole. For the glory and the honour of our Lord. For the sake of his gospel throughout our land.

I'm immersed in the work of the Lord right here, for sure. And there's been much of that as well today.

But we're not some castaway island here, simply doing our own thing, remote and cut off from the rest, and amusing ourselves with our own nice selection of desert island discs.

We're part of the 'body' of Christ. A miracle of reproductive grace.

falling apart

St Kilda cottages

I'm falling apart!

Now before you rush to your phone, your lap-top, or your writing pad - or whatever your chosen mode of communication may be - to convey your concern and support, let me say that these were not my words.

They're the words of a man I met in the shop this afternoon. It's a while since I've seen the man who must be up in his eighties now, and I asked him how he was.

"I'm falling apart!" was the response that he gave. He's feeling his age (as we say). It's not easy.

There's a sense in which it's true of us all, to some extent or another. We're all slowly falling apart.

"Outwardly we are wasting away," wrote one of the early disciples. He meant physically. Lines across your forehead, wrinkled skin, stiff joints, growing breathlessness, failing organs. That sort of thing.

When the psalmist says that by God's grace "your youth is renewed like the eagle's" he doesn't mean that the physical stuff which goes with our growing old somehow magically doesn't happen. We're never to think we all end up as permanent Peter Pans.

We do grow old. And it's hard. Because more and more we're conscious of ... well, falling apart, as that gracious and godly man put it to me today.

I see that every day. Not just in myself, but in the people that I'm with. Often they're more and more struggling with failing health and aches and pains. One thing after another.

An elderly man, a widower now for some years, who used to be a fine, athletic gentleman, but is now reduced to a chair in his home for most of the time, unable to walk more than just a few paces, and losing his balance and falling and ending up now in the hospital.

Falling apart. It's hard. For him and for his family.

A younger woman, also in a hospital, her body the field where a harvest of ailments have slowly been growing these past many years, and just now recovering from some surgery.

It's hard. We are wasting away. Outwardly at least. There's no getting away from that.

The good news of Jesus doesn't hold out the offer of any quick fix: some abracadabra healing that makes it all right in an instant, and takes all the hardship away.

That would be magic. Not gospel.

The gospel has a longer fuse. A slow-burning fuse, painfully slow, which far down the line explodes with the glory of a great and final resurrection day.

It's that for which we're waiting.

"Inwardly," wrote the apostle - "inwardly, we are being renewed day by day." The fuse has been lit in the depths of our souls and is burning its way to a glorious explosion of grace.

"Our light and momentary troubles," the guy continued - and you can see that this is all very relative: they certainly don't seem either light or momentary at all to us, they seem the very opposite, sometimes unbearably heavy and interminably long: "our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory which far outweighs them all."

Fix your eyes on that. Remember that. That's what lies ahead.

The lady in the hospital today was speaking of the comfort which she found in words she had remembered from a song - "What a faithful God we have."

That's the bottom line, of course. God is faithful. We can bank on that. We can invest in the future he's promised, way beyond the varying, trying troubles of this time.

I'm falling apart. That's true. But the fuse has been lit and far down the line the grace of my great and resurrecting God will explode and at last we shall all be raised, restored, perfected.

We're all of us falling apart. In all sorts of ways.

I was seeing later on a woman whose mind is now falling apart. That's hard as well. For her and for her family. The fabric of her erstwhile mental faculties simply coming apart with the illness we calll dementia.

Outwardly, yes, again, a woman who's falling apart. The gospel doesn't stop that painful slide. It simply lights a long-term fuse, deep down within our crumbling frames, a fuse within our spirits which will issue in a final resurrection at the last.

The Spirit of God is given to us. Deep down within. "A deposit, guaranteeing what is to come."

That's all we have to fall back on as we're slowly falling apart.

Of course, there are other ways that we fall apart as well. Not just in terms of our bodies and minds. But the whole broad moral fabric of our lives - that, too, can fall apart. When we get things wrong and make a mess and when everything seems against us.

At night I was learning of such a situation. More common by far than we choose to presume.

Falling apart when there's nothing at all to fall back on. Perhaps that's the hardest thing of all.

Staring into the void. A bottomless pit. Dark and full of despair.

Is there really a God at all? And if there is, how come he's ever let me get into the mess I'm in?

We were studying at night a parable Jesus told. The father and his two lost sons. Young men whose lives had one way and another (and they were very different ways) simply fallen quite apart. And how the younger son at last began the long way back. And how before he was even near his home ("a long way off"), before he'd barely begun to speak the lines he'd long rehearsed - how he found himself enveloped in his father's outspread arms.

A man who was falling apart discovering there was still a future. That's the gospel.

I'm falling apart. I can't get away from that.

But I have got a future now.

learning the Word

We have a number of folk who presently stay at The Tor, a local Christian nursing home. Four, at least, at the last count.

From time to time (as in every few months), I get to take a service there. They hold a service twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays. So they're always keen to have help from the likes of myself. And I'm glad to oblige.

I enjoy being there, and I always count it a privilege to take a service there. But it's a challenge, as well. Their memories often are not what once they were. And their concentration span is often also much reduced. Some of them, too, are fast asleep from before I've even got going.

I choose some three or four hymns which we sing through the course of the time that I have - not much more than half an hour.

I choose them fairly carefully. For one thing, I need to be sure that I know, and can carry, the tune myself - because I may be singing solo, I can never be sure in advance. One of the staff gets the right CD to be played for each of the hymns that we sing. And before we sing I have to go right round the room to ensure that they've all looked up the right hymn in the booklets of words that they have.

Most of the hymns, of course, are hymns which most of them know. That's part of the key to the thing being a meaningful time. The words and music jog the long-term memory. Somehow there's a clarity for folk whose minds have grown to be confused.

The way the music on the CD works, there's an instrumental verse tucked in before the final verse of 'What a friend we have in Jesus'. But one of the residents bashes on regardless, oblivious to the fact that she's singing the last verse entirely on her own.

She's in another world, a world in which she's comfortable and safe: she savours every word of these rich truths she knows so well and now is belting out -

Are we weak and heavy laden,

Cumbered with a load of care?

Precious Saviour still our refuge,

Take it to the Lord in prayer!

Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?

Take it to the Lord in prayer!

In his arms he'll take and shield thee,

Thou wilt find a solace there.

It's moving to stand and listen to the lady as she sings. These are priceless truths, a bedrock of peace and stability in all the disturbing confusion which her latter years have brought. These are enduring realities which have stood the test of time.

These hymns reach far into places which few other things ever touch.

I'm reminded again of the power of praise, and the richness of so much hymnology.

The words and the music together have woven the truths of the gospel right into the innermost parts of these elderly, faltering folk. The words all expressing the wonderful grace of our God. The music enduring and memorable.

I wonder as I witness it if much of what does service as the praise we use today will ever do the same for me in later life when my mind maybe starts to go. The music (which is very easily singable, of course) is often (for that reason) very bland: and the words themselves inept, lacking that profundity of truth which these old songs express.

We read a Scripture passage maybe half way through the service. And later on I speak a bit about it. I choose a familiar passage, triggering recollection in the deepest vaults of memory from the past.

I notice, even when I'm praying, that it's when I'm quoting Scripture that there's obvious recognition of the words. I thank the Lord that he watches over our going out and our coming in - and before I'm even half way through that phrase there are echoes of my own words in the voices of some residents. They know the psalm. They recognise the words. They're keen to make them their own.

I'm impressed once again by the way that these folk have been able in their younger days, when their minds were so sharp and alert, to ingrain on their minds so much of the Scriptural text.

It troubles me to think that this is not a reservoir of truth the present generations are that careful to be building while they can. Such wells of truth in our hearts are stored away only by regular, disciplined reading, by thoughtful, repeated reflection and conscious, far-sighted remembrance.

Such habits are hardly encouraged today by so many different facets of modern life.

The shift from being a reading to a viewing generation hardly helps.

Resorting to technology, whereby the Scripture texts are all so readily available 'on-line', is maybe very useful in the present - but far down the line will prove to be of absolutely zero use when all the outer fabric of our minds begin to go.

Recourse to such a range of good translations also proves to be a blessing that is really rather mixed. Short-term they may help us in our quest to understand just what the Scriptures mean. But longer-term, the fact of this variety is always quite inimical to easy recollection of the Scripture text.

There is much to be said for our settling on one good translation and sticking with that. Flitting around the translations may well keep it fresh, but it's not that conducive to weaving God's truth through our souls.

Most of these folk here today learned the Scriptures by rote and were tied to a single translation. It shows.

I'm not so much teaching them Scripture. For many of them the days for that are now past. I'm triggering the Scriptures they've long since learned already. I'm releasing the grace of the Word of God that's been stored in their hearts for years.

It's a rather different sort of gospel ministry, this, from what I'm doing normally. And it couldn't be done if there hadn't been others before me, before I was ever born, who were careful to teach them the Scriptures and careful to see that those truths of the Scriptures were written right into their souls.

I'm inspired and encouraged again to be pouring myself day by day into teaching God's Word just like that.

self-examination

More and more people express an interest in (and sometimes their confusion about) the way we do things here. Let me try and explain it a bit.

About a year or so ago we re-structured the way that we organise our life as a congregation here.

I needn't bore you with the details of how things used to be and why and how we changed. Suffice it to say we now have a single, small 'leadership team' (called, within our denomination, the Kirk Session).

It's a small team, as I say (comprised of some 16 people) where the weight of the responsibility of leadership falls on relatively few shoulders. Their task is essentially strategic, discerning direction as God moves his purposes forward among us here.

Alongside this leadership team, and as the valleys down which the streams of God's purposes flow, we have a spectrum of what we call Ministry Areas. Six in all.

The names by which we call them are deliberately mnemonic: and the acronym is deliberately suggestive of the essence of our life. NEW DAY.

Nurture (the way we look after each other and help each other grow):

Evangelism (the way we become a people who bring, are, and declare good news):

Worship (the way we direct our living in praise to God our Creator and Saviour):

Discipleship (the way we ensure we are, all of us, learning to live the new life):

Administration (the way we organise all aspects of our life to God's glory):

Youth (the way we help the next generations grow to know this life in Jesus).

It's not perfect. Nor is it fool-proof. And it's certainly not a blue-print for anywhere else.

But it works OK in the main, and it helps keep our eyes on the ball.

These Ministry Areas are, in some respects, largely autonomous. The Kirk Session sets out parameters, certainly, in terms of the vision God gives: but after that, each Ministry Area is pretty much left to itself. We trust each other to get on with it all and follow the vision through.

Each Ministry Area has a leader, ideally with some sort of supportive leadership team around them: and within each Ministry Area there are a range of different 'teams' all working away, each one of them with a designated leader.

It's a pattern intended to bring some sort of cohesion to what we do, and at the same time to encourage a high degree of involvement and ownership on the part of the whole congregation. Some of the Ministry Areas have up to a hundred and more folk involved (and there's always room for more!)

Which is great. Because we're keen to see the God-given gifts that people have being exercised in ways that are appropriate. And we're keen to see God stretching us as well, by taking us out of our so-called 'comfort zones' and using us all as 'ministers' of his grace.

And although, as I say, it's far from perfect, it works not too badly.

But the trust which we seek to have in one another requires, for all of our sakes, to be balanced by an element of accountability.

The Ministry Areas are not free-agents. They don't ever have a completely blank canvas.

The last thing we need is a set of loose canons rolling randomly over the deck.

There are checks, in other words. And one of the checks which we've set in place sees the Kirk Session taking a look on a regular basis at the whole of a Ministry Area.

Worship is the first one up: the first of the Ministry Areas we'll be looking at. Next week.

So today I've been trying to complete my report on that (I head up this particular Ministry Area).

It's a sort of appraisal the Kirk Session will be engaging in, a careful and honest review conducted against the backdrop of the vision that we have.

Is the vision God gives us being furthered by how things in Worship are presently done?

Is the way that our worship has grown and developed still true to the vision God gives?

And if we're to grow it still further, what are the issues we'll have to address and how is that best to be done?

That sort of thing. Not a mere formality, by any means. But a fairly rigorous exercise in self-examination. Warm, generous and constructive (I hope), but anything but a simple 'rubber-stamping' kind of thing.

This is the first time we've done this, of course. It's still all new. And we're still very much just finding our feet. The 'new day' hasn't long dawned, as it were.

So in some ways my preparing this paper is very much blazing a trail. There isn't a well-worn path for me to follow. I'm feeling my way.

It feels like we've headed right out to the wilds, exploring terrain that, for us, is entirely new. It's not always all that comfortable. It's not always all that easy.

But we're seeking to follow the Lord, we're seeking to exercise faith, we're seeking to be the people God calls us to be, wherever that's going to lead.

And, on good days at least, we know we wouldn't be giving ourselves to anything else at all!

pastoral ministry

Funerals foster friendships.

Bereavement opens doors into a person's heart and home that otherwise maybe are never that open at all. I'm privileged to get quite close to folk whom I'd otherwise maybe never really get close to at all.

And it is a very real privilege. I share with ordinary people the extra-ordinary moments in their lives. Those times which are in many ways among the most sacred times in their lives. Times when they sense, even through all of their sorrow and pain, that they're standing on holy ground. That God himself has drawn near.

I've had time today with three different folk whose grief and loss I have shared these past few weeks. Calling back to see these people again, and building on the friendship that bereavement has entailed.

Visits like this take time.

It's not a fleeting half-hour call, a token of my post-bereavement care. It's friendship being fostered, time being shared, memories being once more rehearsed. It's time being invested. It's love being extended. It's Christ being brought to a home.

Jesus was often in all sorts of homes. Sometimes eating meals with folk. Sometimes simply listening, chatting, laughing round the table or the fire.

But always spending time with folk. Investing time. Investing all the energy his holy heart could give.

And, of course, you simply cannot do that with a multitude of folk. There aren't enough hours in the day.

I could drive myself crazy, on the back of a day such as this, by reminding myself of all of the people I might have been with, maybe should have been with, and, if I'd somehow spread my time more sparingly, could perhaps have been with.

But that's the problem. If I spread myself that 'thinly' I could visit much more widely. But then it would only be tokens I was giving, not my time.

Tokens of God's care and understanding. Tokens of a genuine concern. Tokens of respect and recognition. A pastoral version of doffing my cap (if I wore one) as I walked down the street and passed by a whole host of folk.

But friendship takes time. Pastoral ministry always involves loads of time.

It can sometimes take hours to tease out the issues that need to eased to the surface before they can ever be dealt with. Doffing the cap will not do.

I choose depth, that is, not width in the pastoral work I do. And if I haven't somewhere missed the point, Jesus chose that too.

He didn't tour the world: he confined himself to a narrow tract of land. The bulk of his time was spent with a small group of twelve.

He only had those 24 hours every day, same as we do.

To give folk time, and therefore to give them the depth that their genuine growth in the knowledge of God would require - to give folk time meant there simply wasn't time like that for a lot of other things he might have done, nor, indeed, for a lot of other people whom he might have got to know.

His was anything but the doffing-the-cap-as-he-walked-down-the-street sort of ministry some maybe want from their pastor. His was the taking-my-coat-off-to-wash-all-your-feet sort of ministry which some still find too personal and probing for their liking.

He wanted to help folk know God, not just to help them feel good.

Jesus didn't wear a cap. And he certainly didn't spend his time in doffing it.

the impossible hamster

Seventy seconds of easy to follow graphics asking the simple question - "why do most economists and politicians think the economy can grow for ever and ever and ever?"

"There is a reason why in nature things grow in size only to a certain point..."

trypraying

The day has been filled with people.

A range of different people I've been seeing. Mainly by arrangement. And mostly for longer than I'd anticipated. Which meant that everything else I'd tentatively planned to be doing .. well, it never got done at all.

Which only serves to underline that people are a 'right-up-there' priority. Relationships matter. And relationships always take time.

None matters more - and none really merits more time - than relationship with the Lord.

And it's that which the booklet called trypraying. is intended to encourage. (Click here for the booklet as a pdf)

One of the people I was seeing today has been using this booklet through the course of the past seven days: it was great to get the feedback from this week of prayer.

trypraying. is a kind of duffer's guide to prayer, a down-to-earth and unsophisticated manual to help a person pray. For seven days.

Pray for seven days and discover the adventure of a lifetime: getting to know God.

That's what the blurb at the start of the booklet declares.

trypraying. is not magic. As if you somehow unearthed the secret whereby you could get God to do whatever you want. You ask (in just the right way, of course) and abracadabra what you asked for is wonderfully there. Prayer is not magic.

Prayer is relationship.

Prayer is conversation with God. .. You can talk to him about anything.

trypraying. simply seeks to help a person enter that relationship. They give it a go for a week. They open the door of their heart and call out into the gloom - "Is anybody there?"

Will their words just echo round the universe? Or is there someone listening?

And if there's someone listening .. how will you know?

trypraying. starts from the simple premise that there is someone there. The Lord.

It starts from the premise that not only is the Lord close at hand, but he's eager himself for relationship with us all. And that within seven days of our opening the door and starting to speak, that will have become very clear.

There isn't a uniform pattern. It isn't magic. And the Lord is not a machine.

But it happens, all right. And the person who has been using trypraying. throughout these last seven days had an interesting story to tell in this regard.

On the seventh and final day something happened. Something in some ways quite ordinary, in some ways extraordinary too.

Without going into the details it went like this.

A very real, and quite pronounced, temptation to engage in a little theft by not disclosing for payment an article in the basket (the serve-yourself facility at places like Tesco has its attractions this way). This in itself was a most unusual phenomenon, the strength of this temptation for a person who has always shown integrity.

An equally strong conviction, impressed upon the person's heart, that the temptation must be resisted. Must be. More than just the sense that it would be wrong. More compelling than that. An urgency. A necessity. A warning.

The temptation was resisted (the item which was the subject of the temptation was quite a costly thing).

And just as well! Because on leaving the shop the alarm went off, and the person was stopped at the door. The basket was searched. The receipt was required. And the items were all checked off. And, of course, everything there had been paid for.

It was a sobering experience. But a very striking experience, too.

As if at the end of a week of trypraying. the Lord was in a rather tangible way simply saying -

I'm here all right. Listen out for my voice and my promptings. Learn to trust me always. I'll keep you safe. I'll guard you from all harm.

The adventure of a lifetime: getting to know God.

The adventure has well and truly begun now for yet another person.

mosaic

Most days are mosaics.

They're comprised of different tasks and different people, little moments of encounter and engagement, some large, some small, which somehow slot alongside one another to create a certain pattern to the day.

Yesterday was just such a mixture of cameo workings of God. Here's a sample selection of what I mean.

The primary school: the police were along at the school today, at both of the assemblies, to give all the pupils some much needed road safety guidance. The value for the month is 'safety' and this was a practical instance of just such a thing.

Correspondence: there have been a number of letters to which I've had to reply. They all take time. They're more than a hard-copy version of e-mail correspondence.

Such letters as these are works of art - and recepticles of grace: they need time and care in the crafting. Grace is never cheap.

And, yes, there's been e-mail corespondence needed too. Some of it equally time-consuming too. But all of it needed, all of it picking up strands of concern and involvement, and helping to tie up loose ends.

It all takes time, as I say. But time is a gift whereby we give ourselves. Part of our daily worship of God. Even in the little things, the routine things which seem so insignificant.

Emerging ministry: I had a long conversation over the phone with a man I've yet to meet. He's a minister working up north and we chatted a while about all that the Lord is doing there. The chance to engage with students at the campus where he is is wonderful: and the hunger they have (the students, I mean) for the word of God is huge.

Even an atheist college employee up there is urging this work to continue, the value's so clear and the need is so obvious and great. I'm keen to explore any ways there may be in which we can somehow stand with him in this work and see this work progress.

We chatted about all of that. And talked of much else as well. And as we spoke, this man declared that he thought this was one of those 'Holy Spirit moments'. I'd been suggesting to him just exactly what he had been hearing in recent days from two other sources.

God on the move, creative in all of his work: and involving us all in the wonderful things that he does.

The primary school SU group: today we got the SU group up and running again. There were 21 children along today, with two or three off ill who would otherwise definitely have been there.

What a great encouragement it was to have so many along! And they seemed to enjoy all we did with them.

They'd had Gill Proudfoot along at the school last week, explaining about the SU camps: so we said that these SU groups were just a rather smaller version of the camps. Fun and friends, activities, talks, and learning together all about the Lord.

Will there be horse-riding, then? one of the children asked, taking the comparison with SU camps just a shade too literally. We could have them in the playground! she volunteered.

Well, nice idea, but not really all that feasible, I'm afraid. We had some parachute games, though, as we sat round in the classroom on the floor.

And then an introduction to the theme we'll be pursuing in the coming weeks - the life of Jesus, by place names (following his ministry by seeing what happened in some of the different places where he went).

The time flew by, but I think the children enjoyed it all. They're a keen and lively group and they get on well with each other. The Lord is at work in their lives!

Shelter for a student: we'd had a request from the chaplain out at Heriot Watt University, who's part of our fellowship here. A Nigerian student needed somewhere to stay quite urgently. We've a cottage here which is presently not being used. So we made the match and there's been some work to do in setting that up.

I had an e-mail from the chaplain later on in which he said -

"When I told the student, she almost broke down with gratitude, which I had to remind her should not be directed at me."

Nor us, of course. The Lord is the one who provides: in every dimension of life. It's a privilege simply to share in the work that he does.

Encouraging one another: a fellow minister from further west was coming through to Edinburgh today: we'd arranged to meet on his way into town, take the chance to touch base and to work through a whole range of issues we've both been addressing.

I guess we do this too little. We're often immersed, way up beyond our eyeballs, in the daily tasks our ongoing work involves. It's good to be able to pause and stand back, to reflect with a brother in Christ, and to find that 'iron sharpens iron' as we talk.

God gives us one another in the fellowship of the gospel. We serve together in the sovereign work of God. It's good to meet and good to be able to talk things through with a brother.

Resignation: the manager of Falkirk Football Club resigned today. He and his family worship here and I've got to know him a bit, so I'd been in touch when I heard the news and we chatted on the phone later on.

He's a good guy and I like him a lot. Not least because he's a man of rugged principle, and wants to stand by what is right. I wanted simply to encourage him: it's not an easy step he's taken today. And it's always good at times like that to know you're not alone.

Which is the gospel all over again, in its way. God with us. Always.

Funeral: quite apart from all the other preparation work that I'd been trying to do (mainly in vain, I have to say, with all else that's been going on), there's a service of thanksgiving I'd been wanting to prepare. So I managed a good few hours on that later on, and eventually got the bulk of it all written up.

The Word of God. Released yet again, and I trust it will be with much power. Ministering grace. Bringing a sense of the presence of God into the darkness of grief.

Another day over. And like the Lord our Creator, I can stop at its close and see that it's been good. God's been there in all of the bits.

Every day brings a brand new mosaic. What a remarkable God he is!

change

Mark's account of Jesus' ministry is pretty action packed.

The sort of running narrative where you start to hold your breath a bit and wonder where the whole thing's going to lead you.

It's powerful stuff. And it's meant, I suppose, to wake us all up and to start taking notice of Jesus. Not that he's someone you'd really presume to ignore.

In these weeks leading on up to Easter, in our Wednesday lunch-time services, we're taking the chance to read through the long final portion of Mark's very graphic account. The part where he focusses down on the last, crucial week of Jesus' ministry. Like all the gospel writers, Mark gives over a third of his book to these last few days of Jesus' earthly living.

It's sobering stuff, for sure. We started last week with the bit where we're told "they were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way...".

A gentle introduction with the reassuring message that he hasn't come to be served but to serve. "What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asks. Not once, but twice - in two successive incidents.

This is the way we like our God. At our service. Ready to do our bidding. Helping us out. Meeting our needs. Prospering our agenda.

Isn't this Jesus just great! How gladly we sing of the servant king!

But then we turn the page and we're given the stark reminder .. er, he is the king. The servant king, for sure: but still the king.

King is the noun in the sentence, servant is the adjective. He's not a regal servant: he's the servant king.

It was that we were seeing today at the lunch-time service. Not just the fact of his kingship. But what that kingship means.

Which is where it all gets rather disturbing. A fig tree is cursed and then withers. The tables get turned in the temple (in more than one way), and all the busy bustle of religion is being suddenly, and none too ceremoniously, knocked for six.

Excuse me, Jesus. What do you think you are doing?

Silly question. The King has come. And he's starting to sort things out and put things right and ... well, it's not exactly pretty.

Privilege counts for nothing if there isn't any fruit to show from it. Fig trees are a waste of space if all there is to show from them is leaves and no real fruit.

Be warned. The King, when he comes, means business.

But not business as usual. As the folk in the temple discovered.

Reformation kicked in. Quite literally.

Jesus brings change. Radical, root-and-branch change.

It's exciting to watch from the touchlines of time as we do: it's great spectator sport!

Except it's not a spectator sport at all. It's not just Jerusalem's temple he comes to reform. It's the temple as well of our lives. Each and every one of us.

And all of a sudden the smiles disappear from our faces. The King has the nerve to jump out from the pages of Scripture and arrive on our doorsteps today.

He's intent on change. Renewing, reforming our lives. And our life, the life that we share as his people.

Change. It isn't ever easy.

And there's a lot of such change going on. When the King comes along it's disturbing.

There's a good deal of change going on in the life the fellowship here these days. Which is highly unsettling, often disturbing, and sometimes quite upsetting.

The temple's not a comfortable place to be when Jesus pitches up. Like school without the children, Christianity without Jesus would be a dawdle!

There's change that's needed as well, though, in people's personal lives. And since that's really all of us, I'm involved with such change really all of the time as I meet with and work with a whole range of people from all walks of life in all sorts of situations.

Sometimes the change that's required is a moral change. A change in basic attitudes, the habits of a lifetime in the case of some.

Can a leopard change its spots?

It's a question which pretty much answers itself, of course. Er, no.

We tend to shrug our shoulders and adopt the lazy, rather pessimistic que sera sera approach. Some things will simply never change.

But the King who can turn over tables and spring-clean the temple of God is the King who can also turn all of our lives upside down. And put them right way up.

Attitudes as well. Habits of a lifetime as well.

Prayer is basic. He is the one who does it. We ask him, beg him, plead with him to do it.

The Word is important. God's Word is commanding and through its commands is always creative as well.

Light appears in the darkness when the word of God is spoken. A child is formed in the womb of a virgin woman when the word of God is spoken. Those who are dead and buried walk out of the tomb when the word of God is spoken.

Change happens. Light, life, resurrection.

The Word of God effects such change. We learn to release that Word.

Moral reformation and renewal is the business of the King.

But what about physical change? The re-formation of a person's dis-eased body?

I get to see folk like that as well each day. And today was just the same. A person who's struggled with a highly debilitating physical ailment for months on end.

When the King comes along to the temple of this person's life, may I dare to look for re-formation in the make-up of her body?

Can the King put things right in this 'temple' as well? Of course he can.

One day he will for us all. The day of resurrection. When all things are renewed.

But there are pointers to that future day in the present here and now. Reformation, renewal, rebirth.

So I pray with such people. And I pray to that end.

And I pray with an earnest expectancy. I pray for the King to come in. I pray for his cleansing of grace. I pray for some more of his table-turning boldness and his life-transforming power. I pray for change. I pray for light at the end of the tunnel. I pray for hope in the midst of the darkness. I pray for the door of the tomb to be opened. I pray that a person laid low may rise up once again and step out of the tomb of their pain.

I pray, I plead, I speak the Word of God.

And I look for the King, who is always so ready to serve - I look for the King to come.

Maranatha!