the promised land

There was a meeting of the leaders here tonight. That pretty much dominated all of the day.

I'm not a 'meeting' person really. Which I've sometimes thought is odd. Since meeting people and being with people and caring for people is what life's all about and what I really enjoy!

But 'meetings'? Well, that's a different matter.

I think it's because the numbers can be so large it's hard to get that 'close' to folk.

I think it's because the 'content' of such gatherings is often of a 'business' sort, which makes it hard to get to know the person more than just that person's views on certain things.

I think it's because the 'ethos' of such meetings is often of a rather formal sort, which makes it hard to feel there is a sharing of our hearts.

Silly really, I suppose, when I stop and think about it! I mean, I like meeting people but I dislike meetings!

So a meeting like this tonight, with maybe forty or more of the leaders here - I need to prepare pretty hard for a time like that.

Preparing myself, so that I'm viewing the time in a positive light and able to see just how good it is to be able to meet with my friends, to be able to think and to talk and to dream with them all and to find that it's Christ who is leading us forward and on.

Preparing the way that I'll chair the whole thing. Trying to think through how best we break through the wall of 'formality' and are able to share from the heart. Trying to work out the 'rhythms' the meeting will have and where there's a need for a pause and a rest and where we'll be wise to be pausing to pray.

And preparing proposals I'm wanting to put to them all. To make such proposals intelligible, clear, and attractive for all.

We've been thinking for months about changing the leadership structure here. In some ways, it's not by any means that massive a change. But it is a change. And it needs to be taken slowly as we feel our forward and figure out just how the Lord is meaning it all to be.

We've managed through the course of the past few months to hammer out certain criteria. And that's been a help.

But tonight came the crunch! A draft proposal of a new approach. New to us, that is.

A new approach which enables us better to reflect the concerns we have for our leadership here. So that the way our leadership is exercised doesn't get in the way of ministry.

Anyway, it took me the bulk of the day to figure out how best I could present the thing in a way that would make sense and not seem threatening.

And that meant preparing the whole thing visually as well. Powerpoint. Which took a good few hours itself.

What would we do without the use of powerpoint?! Well, I guess we managed for donkeys' years.

But in trying to help folk 'see' a way of working which at present doesn't exist, the visual is important. I'm trying to help folk 'imagine' a future which isn't presently there.

It takes time. It means painting pictures. It means putting things in a visual form.

And I don't think it was all in vain! I think at least some began to 'get the picture'. I think at least some could begin to see that this was a workable way.

There was general agreement, anyway, to take the next step and use such a framework of leadership now as the basis for pressing on.

Another small step on the path of this great adventure! Another small step on the journey to a different land.

The 'promised' land of what Christ's church is meant to be. I think that's where we're headed! And the thought of that excites me day by day.

So today's been another small step along the way. The 'promised' land is one step nearer now - what a thrilling thought to end the day!

Moses, the guy who led God's people with such stamina and courage through the long years of their journey through the wilderness - he only got to see the 'promised land'. Not enter it himself.

Maybe it will be like that for me as well. There's a future here God's been dreaming of and promising for long enough. The promised land of church as Jesus meant it all to be.

The vision has quite captivated me for many years.

But will I only see it from a distance? Or will I one day get there with this people for myself?

All I know is we're one step nearer today. The 'sweat' of my daily labours is never in vain!

words

In the beginning was the Word...

A good job.

I love words! The written word, the spoken word, the fleshed out word. I love reading, listening, speaking, writing. Words.

As a sort of private discipline, I try and make sure I'm regularly reading something other than 'work-related' books. Reading not because I have to, but because I want to. Reading not just for profit, as it were, but for pleasure.

What I'm not so good at doing, however, is maintaining that same sort of discipline when it comes to creative writing. That is, writing that's not related to anything in particular. As in, writing that's not 'work-related'.

So at the start of the year I made a resolution that I'd do some more of that. Writing for pleasure and not because there's the pressure to write at all.

It's a good and useful discipline. And I set aside the morning today for simply that. It felt really quite exciting! Though it's hard to say just why!

It's a bit like the training a footballer does. He works with the ball. And the skills that are honed on the training ground like that will serve him well in the pressures and heat of the match.

My writing today was training ground stuff. Except it's words I'm caressing and not some bit of light, inflated leather.

I could happily have done that all day, of course! But tempting as it was, there were other things to do.

That included a call to one of the local hospitals. And a lady there who shares that same delight in words.

I sometimes wonder at the power of words.

The great, creative power of words. As in God's simple words at the very start, 'Let there be light' - and then there was light.

And the healing power of words as well. I remember how Edward Irving (I mean this was way, way before I was born, so when I say 'I remember', I'm meaning I remember reading about the guy!) went into a home where a young, little girl lay desperately ill: none of the doctors had managed to help her at all. And in went Edward Irving and all he did was take her hand and say three words and then go out.

'Jesus loves you.'

That's all he said. But healing power was in those words. And hardly was he out the door than she was right behind him. On her feet and right as rain. Healed.

Words. In the beginning was the Word. And in him, the Word, was life.

Like a footballer out on the training ground, perfecting his skills in such a way that, come the match, the guy can make that ball do simply stunning things - like him, I'm likewise working with words, learning just how I can somehow fill these words with him who is himself the Word.

And thereby, too, release that healing power.

(The picture at the top, by the way, forms the front of the Gospel of St John in the Book of Kells)

on the way

Things very rarely seem to work out quite as planned!

So life is full of adjustments. Adapting all the time to changing needs and circumstances.

I had a call this afternoon from the father of the boys who're being baptised tomorrow morning. To say that's not the case any more. Not tomorrow, at any rate.

He was ringing from the hospital where both of his boys were ill. So they've had to pull the plug, as it were, and the waters of baptism will simply have to wait until a later date.

It's meant I had to change my plans. Adjust the way the service here tomorrow will be led. And what I'll say. Not quite back to the drawing board. But it felt a bit like that.

I feel for them, I'm bound to say. They'd both looked forward ever so much to the baptism of their sons. Family, friends and who knows how many other folk descending on us here to share with them this moment of real joy.

And they were both so thrilled to start the year like this. And so was I! It seemed like a sign. The waters of God's Spirit being outpoured upon us all, right from the start of this new year.

So a big disappointment, for them and for me and for all of us here.

But it got me thinking again about the ups and downs of life. Especially as I'd met a man while shopping in the middle of the day.

The weekly food sort of shop. I've sometimes met him there before. I mean, I know him well, and his family, too, in all sorts of different ways. So it's good to have the chance to stop and chat.

He was saying that he and I should maybe do some 'dialogue' sort of blogging. Me, he said I'm the religious one (a pretty dubious appellation, but I think I know what he means): and he, in his own words, he's the doubting Thomas.

I'm not sure that the contrast's all that fair. I have all sorts of questions, too.

But his words at the shop today, combining with the call-off later on - they kind of underlined for me the major role that doubt and disappointment play in all our lives.

Following Jesus Christ is far from being a constant, soaring 'high'. A lot of the time it's hard and sore. And often there are questions, too, which leave me quite perplexed.

It's called 'The Way'. And the only thing that matters in the end is simply that we're on the way.

Not the finished article. And not with all the answers. But simply on the way. Committed to follow wherever he leads. Even though, most of the time, we don't know where we're going and are struggling to figure it out.

fresh water

The fish were the first to benefit from my labours here today.

I have these two little goldfish swimming around in their tank. A sort of therapy for anyone who calls. And for me as well.

But they require, like anyone else, a bit of care and attention. And today it was time to change the water in their tank again.

It's a lengthy operation, since there's quite a lot of water in their tank of course. I have to pump the old water out, a manual (and if I'm not very careful, quite a messy) operation: then clean the filters and all their smallest parts: have the fresh, clean water ready to hand, prepared in advance until the temperature's right and the chlorine's been removed: then refill the tank.

Like I say, a lengthy operation. But it needs to be done. And because I have to leave a modicum of water from the past still in the tank (for the sake of 'continuity'), there's still some particles of old, residual 'dirt' which float around the tank.

So to start with the water's still as murky as before. Or so it seems. Strange how much the dirty contaminates the clean. Rather than the other way around.

I may have to change it again pretty soon. And make a better job of it this time!

But then I thought that living out our daily lives as followers of Christ is pretty much like that.

We swim in a tank called the world which is murky to say the least. We need God's great renewing grace again and again and again. Like the fish need the new, clean water pouring in.

So I started the day with a task which directed my thoughts to the need for the Spirit's renewal. And I wondered perhaps if this was a sign of the way things will be here this year. A fresh and full outpouring of the Spirit of almighty God. I pray it may be so.

There's a leaders' meeting coming up next week. And there's quite a lot of reading that they'll need to do before the meeting comes. So a fair amount of the morning was preparing material for them.

As in writing the stuff. Collating the stuff. Printing the stuff. Folding the stuff. Then finally doing the pigeon-holing job, a bit like the postie doing his daily rounds.

It promises to be an important year. So this meeting's an important one. I want it to be right. The time spent in preparing is a part of that. But there's a lot to do.

People think the time around New Year is pretty slack. Not that much on. Not much to do.

How wrong they are! There's absolutely masses - and I'm basically chasing the clock towards the end of this week. (Nothing new, you say!)

But once the afternoon set in, I got a fair amount of preparation done for Sunday evening's service. I got the drift of what it is the Lord intends to say.

And I managed some more work on setting up the visuals for the morning service too.

There's a baptism at the Sunday morning service (well, two, as I said a day or so ago). And that always takes a good deal more time.

It struck me it's the visuals which take up the most time. Preparing the word is lengthy enough. But putting it all into visual form ... that's a very lengthy process.

I sometimes think of the time I'd save if I simply dispensed with the visual side of things! But then I think that it is indeed the visual which is so very much the heart of God's good news.

The word became flesh after all. The verbal became visual. Maybe we only really 'see it' when it can be seen. Which sounds rather deeper than it's meant to be!

But the thought spurred me on to go and see a lady who has not been well. To 'flesh out' the presence of Christ as it were. Make his presence a sort of 'visual' thing.

She lives a fair old bit away, so I took the car. But she wasn't in! I left my card. A token, I hope, of the care and the prayer that's surrounding her life at this time.

I wonder how often I'm 'out' when the Lord draws near. And he simply leaves his card, as it were. I've been busy at other things and missed the time I might have had with him. Face to face with him. In the flesh sort of thing.

Which reminds me - there's a book with that title that I'm meaning to buy and to read. Maybe this is just a further prod to do just that.

And maybe that's bound up, in some strange way, with knowing that renewal by the Spirit of the Lord: that great, outpoured renewing of the waters in our little tank!

gob-smacking stuff

Some days I don't make half as much progress as I'd hoped I might on the things I'd planned to do.

This was one of them!

But, over against that, there are days when it seems the Lord just moves things forward in a very sovereign, quite amazing way.

And, yes, this was one of them again!

So I'm really not that bothered that the things I'd hoped to do remain undone. There's a fairly pressing deadline for them all, but I figure the Lord knows that and I figure he'll help me find the space to get them all completed by the time they're due. Like tomorrow!

The day's been pretty full. Mainly of people. Most of whom I'd diarised to see. So it wasn't as though my meeting with them all at different points was any big surprise. It's just they all took rather longer than I'd thought they might.

Not that I minded the time involved. Because, as I say, the time was nothing if not well spent. And there's been throughout the day that sense of real significance in all that's been discussed.

The future, mainly. Like the Lord simply opened up the doorway to his future in a striking, sovereign way. In a couple of different ways.

I couldn't even begin to describe the details of it all. But it was exciting and thrilling and just another instance of the hand of God at work! Brilliant. Gob-smacking stuff.

The bulk of the morning was spent with a couple of folk, exploring under God just what my own involvement with their work might be.

I think they've sensed, as I have too, that somehow there would be some real involvement on my part. But what and when and how exactly all of this will be has been at best a blur.

Until now, at any rate. Today it became a whole lot clearer to us all I think.

Anyway, we prayed at the end. And we prayed about a certain pressing matter and we asked the Lord, as a token of his hand upon the work, himself to make provision for the major and immediate need there was.

Before they were home, one of the two had called his wife who told him, really quite amazed herself, that while he'd been away that pressing need had been most wonderfully met!

It was just as if the Lord had said -

You want a token, you want to be convinced? OK. Well here you are.

As I say - pretty gob-smacking stuff! This sort of thing happens quite often. The Lord is for real and it's sometimes scary stuff.

Which was pretty much what the person I saw the bulk of the afternoon was saying as well. Excited and scared was how she summed it up at the end of the time we'd spent.

I'd asked her if she'd countenance assuming quite a major sort of ministry among our people here. Partly because the way it works at present, with it focussed round myself - that's almost becoming an impediment now, I think: an impediment to progress and development.

Partly, too, because it seems to me this person has the necessary gifts: and in her changing set of circumstances at this time it seemed to me she hasn't really found quite yet the 'role' she's sort of looking for in life.

(I mean, she has, of course, in her work and in her family - but it's always seemed to me that there's been something more she's waiting for)

So anyway, I ran the whole thing past her and was thrilled to bits she didn't just dismiss the thing right out of hand. Indeed, she said that she'd been praying this whole last year that God would open up the next step for her in her life.

It felt like prayer being answered in a very striking way! Right there on the spot.

Gob-smacking stuff again.

So that was pretty much the afternoon. And the evening soon got spoken for as well.

The undertaker rang mid-afternoon. A lady here in the village had died today. So I called by on the family in the evening. Her husband and their daughters all were there and gave me such a warm and lovely welcome.

She was, I think, in many ways, the quintessential epitome of an older village life. It was good to have the time with all her family tonight.

They were surprised (and pleased, I think!) to find there was no fee at all required. But I told them that it's very much my privilege to be involved with folk at times like this. And I think they sort of understood at least a bit when I put it all like that.

From there it was on to another friend, who's very much involved in different aspects of God's work. I'd arranged in advance to see him, too. And the time was profitably spent.

But it meant that most of the things I'd hoped I might get done .. well, they're mostly still waiting!

Am I really bothered? Silly question!

On a day like this, when the Lord is so plainly at work and blows my pretty modest plans right out of the water by his presence in our midst - I'd take his glorious presence in preference to my plans any day!

new beginnings

The new year always puts me in the mood for new beginnings.

Like the start of another new day, or the start of another new week. Except on a slightly larger scale.

So today, I suppose, has been, one way or another, about those new beginnings.

I did some tidying up around the office here, for one thing. In the run-up to Christmas a whole load of things start piling up.

Quite literally. With the end result there are piles of books and piles of paper and piles of files and .. well, piles of just about anything that can in any way conceivably be stacked!

So I made a start on sorting through these piles and getting rid of stuff that's just a clutter and is past its sell-by date and putting things away where they belong (which includes the default filing cabinet - the waste-paper basket) and dealing with the pile of correspondence that builds up.

Some people call it 'blitzing' the place. But I think it's maybe better to see it more as giving a new beginning to the room. Clearing it out and cleaning it up and starting all over again.

A three-dimensional, spacial sort of sacrament affirming the reality of God's complete forgiveness in Jesus Christ his son.

I like to start the year with that most visible proclamation of the grace there is in Christ. A proclamation I can see and feel and even walk around in and enjoy.

In him there is forgiveness! It's a wonderful reminder of that lovely new beginning that there is at the heart of the message of Jesus.

It's also a time to plan ahead in terms of all the different services of worship that the coming weeks will bring. Sunday mornings and Sunday nights and Wednesdays through the day.

With each of them the start of the year is a time of new beginnings.

It all takes time. Listening for the voice of God himself. Figuring out the drift of where he's taking us and what that's going to mean in terms of all these different contexts where we'll gather over coming weeks for worship.

But I felt that I was getting there. Starting to see the picture. Beginning to get a feel for what the Lord intends to say. As I say, it all takes time.

And space. Which by and large there's been. There aren't that many folk around the halls this week. So there's quietness and space.

And yes, a sense of new beginnings in his dealings with us here. Another chapter slowly opening up. God's future now emerging as we turn another corner in the spiralling march of time.

I was doing some work on the website, too. I thought it was time for a bit of that as well. Updating the thing in the aftermath of all the festive emphasis there's been. Moving on.

Affirming in the world of cyberspace as well that this is indeed a time for new beginnings.

We've a baptism this Sunday coming. The first in the year. The first Sunday, that is. Well, the first baptism as well, of course!

In fact it's two baptisms, celebrating together, with a couple who joined us here a month or so ago, the birth back in April of their two little boys. Right charmers they are as well!

I'm thrilled to bits we can start the year like this. Celebrating life. New beginnings. A whole new life before these little boys. A whole new life as well, in every sense, for their Mum and Dad.

It's almost like the Lord's intent on saying to us here that this is where we're at. A time of new beginnings.

Not just in the 'formal' sense of this being the first Sunday in January. But in a wonderfully real, dynamic sort of way. God himself beginning some new thing right here among and through us all.

So this afternoon I had time with the father. Going over the way things are likely to be. Chatting through the whole thing and praying for them all. Even changing one of the songs.

They're a great young couple. Enthusiastic, warm and eager for God's best.

And yet, I'm also so aware that this is not the only sort of new beginning that there is. I called by on a lady later on, whose husband died a few weeks back. And now she's on her own.

For her this, too, is very much a time of new beginnings. But for her it's hard and sore and not what she would wish at all.

Strangely appropriate, then, that I should have found through the letterbox this morning a card which included some words from a prayer of guy called Thomas Merton.

(He's quite well-known in certain circles. In fact, most folk in the know would say he was the one of the foremost Roman Catholic authors of last century. A pious sort of guy, who lived pretty close to the Lord and yet, thankfully, spoke in a fairly down-to-earth sort of way).

He's honest enough to admit a fair degree of ignorance - in terms of where it is the Lord is leading him. This is how he ends his prayer -

"... Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

Which seems a pretty good note on which to start the year. And just the spirit we need to embrace God's new beginnings for us all.

New Year's Day

New Year's Day. It's often a strange sort of day.

Not quite the 'morning after the night before' sort of thing, but a bit like that. Especially when the weather's as dreich and as damp as it's been today.

I don't do much on New Year's Day! I guess that's the bottom line.

I sleep a good bit longer (it was almost 2 in the morning before I got to bed, so I don't have pangs of conscience about a longer lie!).

I read again (it's a good, long book that I'm reading now and I'm happy to have the time to do the reading).

And I spent some time with family in the wider sense. My brother and his daughter will be heading off tomorrow back to Zambia, and it's hard on the heart to see them go. A brief two weeks back here (well, a few days more than that, I guess) is what they've had. And I get so used to having them around again - and then they're gone again.

The roller-coaster ride our hearts are often being subjected to is never all that easy! But it's been great to have had them back and seen them face to face and had the chance to catch up with their lives a bit again.

So it was good to have the time with them (and my sister and her husband, too, up from Wales again) - though hard, as I say, to say goodbye at the end.

Strange how strong these ties become. And lovely, too. I guess it's all the more the case since now both Dad and Mum are gone. But this is how it's meant to be and I thank God daily for it. These bonds between my siblings and myself.

How do I feel as I start a new year? A bit like the day itself, I suppose. A certain sort of heaviness upon my heart.

The damp, dreich, misty drizzle of the sorrow in my Mum being no more there as this new year begins. The memories of what those childhood New Year's Days were like. The sense of time going on. For the first time in my life I start a year an orphan. Which sounds kind of melodramatic!

But New Year's Day is a marker of sorts. Another sort of milestone on the road. Another harsh reminder that the days are marching on, the staging posts of life are slipping by. It brings some pretty basic truths right home to me.

And so, as well, it serves to give an urgency to all the days ahead. There's often that sense about New Year's Day. The tidying up that's done. The sorting things out.

The psychology's strange! But very real.

I mean, it's just another day at one level. And yet it's very much a milestone of a day as well. Hence this strange, instinctive sort of need to put affairs in order. A chance to start again. A chance to get things back in focus once again.

New Year's Day becomes for me a sort of deep, deep breath I take. Filling my lungs with the air of the Spirit of God. Taking the time to get my bearings right again.

And ready for all of the challenges coming months will bring.