help I work with children

Something's stirring

2012-01-30T20:44:00.007Z

Imagine what it would look like if children, teenagers and their parents with no faith background at all, who know nothing of the stories of Jesus, start to come along to your gatherings in significant numbers – as little as three or four families could change the dynamic of some smaller churches and some fifty families will have a considerable impact.

It was with a mixture of excitement and incredulity that I read the following question from a working mother in a column in one of the UK’s quality newspapers. She was seeking advice from the well known TV presenter Mariella Frostrup :

I feel angry a lot at the moment – I'm taking it out on my husband, and because my two-year-old is inseparable from him I'm worried I'm also hurting him when I head for the front door. I'm so frustrated. I'm the main breadwinner and I work 60 hours a week while my husband and mother-in-law look after our children. It's the best-case scenario, but it drives me mad. My husband constantly whines about how tired he is from his 27-hour working week. When I'm at home I'm in primary care of the children. I would find the sick feminist joke that is my life funny and enjoyable if I was appreciated, but I'm not remotely. I have my character assassinated on a daily basis. Do you think church is the answer? I don't believe in God, but all that singing and being grateful has to help, surely?
I read this woman’s desperate question just days before I finished an edit of my book on getting ready for children and families to seek out solace and meaning in the church - community - and I felt a deep urge to include a reference to this story in the book, so I hope I have snuck it in despite the deadline.

This precious family is who we are to be ready for – will you love them with me?

There were a variety of comments in the online section of the newspaper following Ms Frostrup’s reply, with one person suggesting that the advice given back (“why not check out church?”) was written sarcastically. I know that the actual scenario was true, as I personally have met women who have expressed the identical sentiment to this. Something is drawing them. Let’s be ready to welcome whole families coming to or churches to check us out, to come to a church gathering so that they do something together and experience something different from consumer-led weekends - there is a growing desire for community and I'm up for whatever this entails!

Full source reference:Life & Style column, Observer magazine, p54, Sunday 15 January 2012, online link in second paragraph

Book Update

2012-01-11T22:23:00.003Z

Quick update on where the book writing project is. It's finished!

It's now in the internal editing process which is me and my three senior pastor friends who have agreed to have a read and suggest changes, but at the same time the manuscript is now with my publisher and next week the external, professional edit begins.

The publisher has also asked me to obtain some 250 word summaries for the first page or back cover of book. The person who knows me best, my senior pastor of 27 years, said it contains "dynamite". That's a bit scarey (it could go down like a lead balloon?) and also very honouring of him to say that as he is man with a deep knowledge of Scripture with impeccably high standards (there is no truth at all in the rumours that he used to re-align all the chairs early on a Sunday morning if they were millimetres out from their set pattern.....!!!?)

Next comes the cover design, title etc.... - very, very exciting. It's been a long haul but I have read a lot, prayed more and really "enquired of the Lord" to process my ideas and thoughts. It has also been an act of worship and a time to recall all the great things the Lord has done amongst the congregation in the two churches I have worked in.

If you are interested in getting a copy, I hope it will be out by June this year

God loves children

2012-01-04T22:31:00.008Z

I've written this post for anyone who pops by here because of what I posted on a public forum offering to pray for anyone who wanted someone to do that for them following the "One Born Every Minute" programme on TV tonight.

God loves children, very much. He cares about their entrance into this world, that moment of birth, the first breath they take and the path they follow in life.

He didn't intend that it should be a difficult time, a lonely time or a tragic time. This world has got pretty messed up through the actions of humans and not because God wanted it to happen or meant it to happen.

But he knows when we need him, and the great news is that when we look for him or call out to him, he's there.

I'm a minister, a pastor, who specialises in working with and supporting parents, children and families. Although I'm on a break from my job just now because I am finishing a writing project, I love what I do. It's not about forcing what I believe on anyone, I always, always respect other people's beliefs - my job has always been more about standing alongside you when things are tough or celebrating with you when your family brings you joy and happiness. Being a parent and working together as a family is genuinely hard work at times!

Christians believe that prayer works. God always listens when we pray, so post in the comments below if you would like me, and some of my friends who I trust hugely, to pray for your family and your children. You can keep it anonymous and not even give much details except please pray for XX and XX.

I used to work alongside a carers and toddler group that met twice a week and the carers got a break while their children were looked after by "aunties", older people from our church who were fully trained and Disclosure-checked. We had a prayer tin where people could write out things they or the family were worried about and some of us met to pray for these little requests. Every week there was things in that tin and it was a great privilege to be trusted with them so that we could pray.

If I can answer any questions you have about Christianity and what Christians believe and especially how this fits in with children, do post here too or perhaps you might think about attending an Alpha course, again all of the details on these (you put your postcode in and you can find out where one is near you) by clicking here

Alpha is great, it's a no-pressure course introducing Christianity, often over a meal if its an evening course, or at the very least (if its during the day) with coffee and cake! You can ask anything at all, be totally honest about what you think and no-one will try to make you change your mind. The course just puts some information before you (usually by watching a short DVD) and then has a discussion time. What I have always found to be great about alpha is that people make really good friends and the group forms a strong bond - which is an added bonus!

Finally, here's an ancient prayer of blessing that any of us can pray over our babies and children, friends or older relatives. I often pray it while the other person sleeps. You're praying it to the God who suggested it
to us as a way of blessing each other and it is now used by many churches as a prayer said over babies and children. A blessing is simply praying the best from God for someone.

Its from the book of Numbers, chapter 6, in the Bible. An online bible is available here.

The LORD bless you
and keep you;
the LORD make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”’

Dummies Guide to Creating a Vision Statement

2012-01-03T01:08:00.005Z

In this period of sabbaticalling I have met with a number of lead pastors who are working out their church's view on children and children's ministry. They have all asked me how I got my vision going.

Prior to April, I was emailed by LOADS of children's/youth workers all over the country to ask, amongst other things, how I knew what I was to do first, what were my priorities. I always asked them what their vision for their role was - which was often met with....pauses/blank looks/uncertainty. So I'm pretty pleased that now their team leaders want to support them in this.

Last year I ran an equipping track at my annual vision day to help pastors and leaders get a vision for children's and youth ministry but, errrrr, I encouraged them gently not to just copy my vision statement. That's a cop out - what might the Spirit of God want to say to you which will be much more exciting than my vision statement would say?! I know whose I would rather have any day :-)

Here's my Dummies Guide to Creating a Vision Statement
(not that I am saying pastors are dummies. Far from it. I'm one!! (one what?)

Implementing a Vision for Children and Young People

The first THREE steps to implementing a vision for children and young people in YOUR church are to:

1.Get armed with information from culture and Christian research

2.Get familiar with passages in the Bible pertaining to children and young people

3.Have an open heart and mind, to be challenged and changed, stirred and broken.

The next step, if it is needed…..(and it might not be, you alone know this about your church). Vision for the future is built from the ashes of repentance.

4.Repent for any wrong attitudes personally or corporately held towards children and young people.
See this post for help with this.

5. Consider the following definitions. Make sure you understand them:
Values – principles held that informed the vision process
Vision – the place children’s, family and all age ministry should go.
Process – how is this vision to become reality?

6. The next step is to write out your theological non-negotiables about children and young people. These are your values.

"My last church" example:
•Children start with God. However, their “default” is to veer away from him without a twin strategy of evangelism and nurture. Every young person needs to hear the Good News and be nurtured in their faith journey.

•Children and teenagers need to be given regular opportunities to personally respond to what God has done through Jesus’ death and resurrection and to keep on saying “yes” to Jesus through thick and thin, throughout their stages of cognitive and spiritual development.

•Children and young people are capable of understanding their position in Christ, precious, chosen, people whose prayers are heard and who are worthy of the Father’s love, “welcome at the table”.

•Children and young people are part of the Joel 2:28 promise (“I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh”). We are not to construct a theology of “what is not for them”. We uphold that there is no “junior” Holy Spirit.

7. Then write out what, in your wildest dreams, you would like to see in the future. This is your vision.

Mine is tightly worded into three bullet points. If your church has a vision statement, look at your thoughts to see if it marries with it. Hopefully it’s not going in the opposite direction!

Obviously I am not going to reproduce this here now as that was for then. I will be asking God what it should be for next place I am and those who follow me in my previous church should be asking God what it is they are uniquely to bring as they're not me and they will have different "wildest dreams". I know mine were very big but I had a history of seeing big things happen with God so I was never going to have a vision statement that said "I hope the children all behave and have good fun in Sunday School."

8. Think: how are you going to get there? What needs to change? This is the process.

Again, I had a tightly worded pathway to make these things happen and before the church's structure changed I was a significant way along seeing these being carried out.

9. Finally, writing a vision requires the heart to follow it through to implementation.
It needs to be presented to vestry/diaconates/board/elders. It needs to be taught from the front. It needs to underpin every leadership decision your church makes. It needs to have someone/people behind it who can make it happen. Who are passionate about prayer and passionate about the vision; which is why the initial four steps are more important than anything else.

Taking it up a gear: children and prayer

2011-12-22T18:10:00.008Z

Taking it up a gear....children and prayer
This is one of my passions. And it's not hard at all to see this change for the better. Read on....

Sadly, I’ve watched adults have extremely low expectations of children in this area. I know God is gracious to us and often moves situations and circumstances despite us but I feel compelled to encourage the youngest ones under my care to think big and talk to God about anything or anyone, anytime and anywhere. He’s the one who can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine (Eph 3:20), so I read from these verses that we can come to God expectantly as he is longing to hear our requests. I recently asked several church leaders how children knew that God answered prayer. “Because he does”, they replied. I asked them how children would know that he does, as I wanted to drive the point home that unless children are hearing the stories of answered prayer, then they are perhaps justified by thinking of Christianity as dull and irrelevant to their fast-moving, social-media dominated world. Children need to see concrete answers to their questions. “Just because he does” holds no power for them. “Prove to me that he does” would be their response.

The research for the “You Lost Me” project provides the evidence: one fifth (20%) of the young adults who attended church as a teenager said: “God seems missing from my experience of church” . Oh dear Lord, how have we come so far from what you intended the community of faith to be?

This is where parents can exercise tremendous influence. I've written before about one of the significant findings from Barna's 2002 research. Less than one in ten US Christian families prayed or read the Bible together in a typical week.

When I first read these statistics (in 2007) my response was to find out if it was representative of the children and families I worked with and for. So I began to ask. I’d say that for around two hundred children aged between 5 and 11, in the two large churches I have worked in, I witnessed a similar trend. Grace might be said at meals, Bible stories were occasionally or regularly read, but talking of the things God had done in individual lives, praying together and giving thanks for answered prayer was definitely not the norm. I began to think: “why is this?”

Because of the busy-ness of daily lives, including children’s extra-curricular activities, whole families sitting down to a meal together is less common, although it is still highly valued in the families I worked with. This is the time where my own family do a lot of our talking together, about God and the things he has been doing in our lives and the answers to prayer that we have seen. When are the times that this can happen otherwise? Bedtime is another good time for this. But I’ve observed that children are going to bed much later than even twelve years ago when my daughter was a baby. Some children get themselves off to bed with no adult intervention and some go with a harassed parent who doesn’t have time for extended Bible or prayer time. The ever-present gadgets and visual stimuli in our homes are undoubtedly stealing away time from families to talk and pray together. Long working hours for one or other parent and the pressure to maintain an active, balanced life means less time is given over to simply “being” as a family, at home together. Over-busy parents tend to box their time into neat segments, which can remove spontaneous opportunities for worshipful chat (as we call it!)

This picture of increasingly separate, partitioned off blocks of time is alien to families in many cultures who live, work and play together in challenging circumstances in less developed parts of our world. We need to be intentional about carving out precious family time if we are to ground our children in whole-life discipleship that helps us to identify and pray for the ones God is leading us to; the persons of peace introduced at the start of this chapter. I am convinced the pressures and busy-ness of life is one of the enemy’s chief strategies to prevent a movement again towards household re-orientation in significant numbers. I’ve witnessed children (not teenagers!) with five or six extra-curricular commitments after school and on weekends and working parents and lots of homework. Ring-fencing time for family prayer and individual devotions is not impossible, but is certainly under pressure.

Many parents have confessed to me that they struggle with praying with their children. They have got stuck in a pattern, which quite frankly is boring them (and their child?) Their child doesn’t seem to want to pray with them and both parties just want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

I've briefly outlined some ways to re-awaken your church’s/family’s or children’s prayer life. I hope you can see too that what I write below is for the whole family who may come brand new to the Christian faith. This is not all about children……..many adults get stuck in their own prayer life. This is a brief excerpt from the book I am writing.

Reawakening and Refreshing Prayer in Children and Families

(a) Moving children on in prayer. Steps 1 to 5 are suggestions by John and Chris Leach . Step 6 is my own suggestion.

Step 1 – leader/parent does everything – chooses a prayer subject, prays about it and says “amen” at the end. Subjects need to be simple and relevant, linked to the every day life or the Bible story you may have just read. The leader/parent models short jargon-free prayers. Eventually the children join in with “amen”.

Step 2 – the children repeat prayers phrase by phrase with their leader/parent.

Step 3 – the children are asked to suggest items for prayer, then back to step 2.

Step 4 – children suggest items for prayer and the leader/parent suggests how they might pray. This could be a set formula like “dear Lord, please look after ________ this week. Amen.”

Step 5 – Children think of an issue and pray out loud.

Step 6 – (my suggestion/practice) – children lay hands on one another and pray simple prayers for you or one another, are able to deliver words and pictures, and ask God to intervene in situations. Their boldness grows the more they practise this. This step requires you to have taught your children how to tune in to listen to God.

Step 6 is ideally practised in a variety of settings such as in Sunday gatherings, in midweek intergenerational house groups, in Missional Communities or in public place on outreach.
Use descriptive praise towards the children to mark the movement from one stage to another. Consider using a prayer journal to record answers to prayer. Faith is built when we see the answers come and we celebrate each little success, which builds more faith and higher levels of expectation and so on it goes.

(b) 24/7 Prayer Rooms
When my (former) church entered wholeheartedly into regular 24-hour seasons of prayer, seven days a week, (in a specially set apart room in the church building), I wanted to encourage whole families to come and visit it. I wrote to parents before the prayer room week began, enclosing an information leaflet on ways to engage children in the 24/7 prayer room.

The prayer room had a chalkboard wall where people could leave verses and drawings, and pegs and hanging space, post-it notes, paper and pens. It was warmly furnished with cushions and chairs, rugs and blankets. I left a specially marked “children’s resource box” with sponges, paints, rollers, sugar paper and crayons as well as a selection of age-appropriate Bibles. This was a great success and used by many families who might not have gone all together to pray. Children, some very young, listened to God, prayed for the church and the nation and received prophetic words and pictures which were displayed on the “community wall”. Immediately they felt part and played an enormous part in the church’s prayer life. I fed back these examples (taking digital photographs, for example) in whole church services and some of the children themselves shared their own story of how they found the prayer room to be a place where they met with God.

I have to say that the family stories have been one of the things that has touched me the most and that I have been genuinely privileged to watch unfold. And this is not a difficult one, for readers to imagine happening in your place! Inspiring stories and lots of help on how to start a prayer room is available online (link at the end of this post).

This played a part, I believe, in catapulting our church children forward in their expectation of and journey with prayer.

(c) Church prayer meetings
It was a short step for me to arrange for some time in our regular church prayer meetings to be given over to all ages coming together to worship and pray, to tune in to God and to pray for the church, the city and the nation. We also enjoyed gentle but powerful times of children praying for – really ministering the power of the Holy Spirit – to adults and adults praying for children. On one occasion I had put together a “tabernacling space” and a young boy who very rarely came to church was lying down in God’s presence. Watching my senior pastor gently pray for him, and minister something from God himself to this young boy’s hurting spirit was like watching a little bit of heaven unfold before me. I’ll never forget what I aw happening in the spirit. Imagine making time for such encounters in God’s presence between adults and children in your faith community.

Why not make your church prayer meetings accessible to all ages for the first hour? Make sure it’s not dry and boring. Try to use a gifted worship leader/prayer leader who can engage all ages together. It’s not an easy thing to do, and we have to start our prayer meetings earlier and be there longer ourselves after the children and families have gone home, but it is a cost I gladly pay. Imagine the new families who are to come into the kingdom joining in with these kinds of activities! They will grow in faith and in experiences. Don’t worry if you are not sure how the event will turn out. The one thing I have learned most over the years through making mistakes is that God honours the heart behind what we do and it feels to me as if he is particularly inclined towards our attempts to see children grow in experience of him and in prayer.

(d) Children praying for others
I want to stress that the journey I have outlined above from traditional Sunday school -> 24/7 prayer room -> church prayer meetings -> ministering to one another and praying for schools and families, for the sick and the hurting, happened very quickly (in 12 to 18 months) and therefore I believe is eminently possible for any church that takes seriously the call to nurture and disciple the young to take great strides forward. I simply facilitated and then stepped back.

I began to see a change by disseminating everything I knew and practiced about children’s innate spirituality to parents and the wider church by any means possible (annual Vision days, one to one meetings, all age services, “family slots”, emails, pastoral home visits, written reports). I wanted to raise the expectation levels by explaining and demonstrating that children connect with God easily and believe for big things. I then planned to take children on from wherever they were in prayer using the 6 steps. All along, I encouraged children to believe God for big things but to listen carefully as to how they should pray because we have an ALMIGHTY powerful God who is longing to move in response to our prayers. Therefore in the first year I spent quite a lot of time teaching my volunteer team and the children themselves to listen out for God and not to plough in praying their best intentions.

I also took a group of children who were hungry, very hungry to know God more and worked through the Power of the Praying Kid book. This was no ordinary discipleship group, in that every third week we met and in-between times I wrote a parent history-maker sheet summarizing what we had done and setting some homework (!) for the parent and child to do together, for example: “tell your child about a time you had to forgive someone. Was this easy or hard? What happened once you had done that? What did it feel like?”

So children practiced the laying on of hands, waiting on God to listen first for Bible verses or pictures before praying for adults who were ill or facing difficulties (visas, accommodation, final exams). This was a weekly occurrence. I didn’t lead this from the front, I introduced the activity and let the children gather round individuals and pray. Sometimes my team and I wanted to finish off the praying time (!) so we could move on to other programmed activity but there would be very few children sitting on the floor waiting, they had all crowded round the person or persons being prayed for, to lay hands on and to watch, listen and join in. I learned to just go with this. There is a rising hunger amongst children in the UK to pray.

I would reiterate that it’s very important to share the answers to prayer so that children match up the beginning with the end and know that God always answers prayer. This also allows them to see that sometimes the answer is “no” or “wait”. It also allows them to grow in bold faith. One week a nurse who was signed off work with a slipped disc came in to the children’s venue to seek prayer specifically because she had heard that the children offered to pray for people. A big crowd of about thirty children dutifully laid hands on her and prayed with faith for her back – very simply, but boldly. She had an appointment that week with the occupational health specialist who had signed her off work. She was healed of all pain and he substantiated that the disc was back in place and that she could return to work. I asked her to come back to tell the children exactly what had happened in the previous seven days. Naturally their faith was strengthened and they had experienced God’s power working through them, which I reckon they will never forget.

The journey from a traditional classroom based Sunday School to what I have described above (in two years) continues as children have now prayed in school for their friends to be healed of headaches and stomach upsets. Friends, this journey is not an impossibly hard one. God is committed to this where you feel weak because (I am convinced) he loves to hear children praying.

The journey in and with prayer for children is an essential one, I believe, for us to be ready for what is to come. People who come new to the Christian faith, with no relatives who have gone before them to help show them the way, will need to be in direct and continual dialogue with their Father in heaven. They’ll need – and I believe will receive - bold and radical answers to prayer that will see a reorientation throughout their extended family towards God and lifelong commitments to the Christian faith. Let’s do all we can to prepare ourselves for a move of prayer that renews and refreshes the whole church that no one age or stage of life is isolated from.

Notes:
You Lost Me - by David Kinnaman: a must-read
And For Your Children - by John and Chris Leach
The Power of the Praying Kid - by Stormie Omartian
24/7 prayer rooms - see http://uk.24-7prayer.com/prayer-rooms/
You will be inspired and moved – read about all ages taking part in! Prayer rooms are held in schools, churches, homes, community centres - you can set up a prayer room anywhere.

Whole Family Outreach and Discipleship

2011-12-13T18:03:00.008Z

Why is whole family outreach and discipleship important? Out of many possible reasons, let me suggest five.

1. For too long we have seen children in isolation.
We have recognised the fact that children are the most unreached people group in the world , but they are incredibly easy to spot because they are found everywhere. Most of our Evangelical churches usually engage in strategies to reach children with sincere and pure motives to tell them the good news of Jesus. Christians are involved in outreaches to children on the streets, in schools, using a huge variety of methods. Yet what about the parents and grandparents….? What about reaching the whole family, the extended household? The wonderful news is that great strides are being made in this area. Something is changing. For many years Bill Wilson’s Sidewalk Sunday School pioneered in this area by visiting each child and their familiy at home every week, providing practical support wherever possible to the whole family. In the UK, the Kidz Klubs around the country follow the same groundbreaking model.

Opportunities to engage with parents outside or church doors are increasing. There is a fresh awakening of a desire in parents to understand more about how their children are wired. And to be the best parent they can. I have also observed (and this has to be a purely anecdotal comment) a rising desire in churches to reach out to and support families. More and more children’s pastors or children and family workers are being appointed to work alongside the army of youth workers and youth pastors. This can be a double-edged sword. Having a paid worker can allow for fresh initiatives to happen in abundance, but I would caution that we need less of a “programme” approach and more of an Old and New Testament approach to families. The church leadership team, and particularly those who teach and preach, still need to direct and guide the congregation on how to include, nurture and disciple the young.

2. In the UK/Europe/USA we face a desperate state of affairs.
God is stirring something up – are we standing at the cusp of another great reformation?

We cannot remain complacent by simply assuming that the children we have already will remain in the church. In both the USA and the UK all the evidence is that this isn’t happening. In the year 2000 the church-going population of Great Britain was 4.4 million and 19% of this figure were children aged 15 or under, i.e. 836,000 children. By 2025 the churchgoing population is estimated to be 2.3 million with 5% aged 15 or under i.e. 115,000 . That’s a huge decrease in 15 years or so, if current projections continue. We will have lost 721,000 children in a 25 year period that we are almost halfway through.
If we were to go back to 1990’s figures and compare this with the 2025 estimate, we will have lost contact with 1.1 million children.
“we (the UK) are one generation away from extinction” - has been said by many voices. We need to let these words sink in without frightening each other into a picture of gloom. There IS hope – and to quote the UK researcher Peter Brierley :

“Strategic action needs to be taken in the next ten years if this position is not to occur. It is no good waking up in 2030 and not liking what one sees; the opportunity to change that future picture has to be taken by 2015”.

I said there was hope. Something is stirring and a reformation is happening that you as readers have the opportunity to be part of. Professor Rebecca Nye has said :-

“Since the reformation, many emergent movements come from lone, marginal voices. Are we in the middle of a new movement or voice?”

There has been a child theology movement for a number of decades now but I believe I have seen a rise in its influence over more recent years. I have watched the advent of movements like “Will You Make a Difference?” producing thought-provoking resources for people to use in their local congregations. The 4-14 window organisation is another movement started in 2009. The Barna Organisation has been researching the religious influences upon children, youth and families for many years now.

Negativity and decline is NOT the picture across the whole world. There are lessons to learn from churches in nations who are experiencing tremendous growth due to what I would summarise as this: children contribute to and partake in kingdom practices – they are being discipled as naturally as drawing breath through the input of the whole church which means they learn to pray with expectant faith, worship chasing the presence of God and engage naturally in mission which is marked by signs and wonders.

3. Discipling children and families is biblical. I finished a few months of research on this in September. Get the book when its finished ;-)

4. Discipling children and their families is one of the areas we need to pour our time and attention into because it’s been ignored.

When I studied for my theology degree, I had to audit the theological content of a range of resources in a category of my choosing. I chose to focus on published material that discipled children. Here’s what I found:
Most devotional/educational resources in the UK/USA concentrated on:
- telling children about the gospel (VBS, holiday clubs, midweek clubs, Scripture Union group material)
- getting them into the Bible (Bible reading notes, Bibles in age-specific formats, Bible quiz books)
- telling children narrative stories about past of present-day heroes of the faith in paperback form or fictional stories about children and their families
- there are some specific Christian resources written for children dealing with specific pastoral situations such as divorce, bereavement and loss.

You will quickly see that this list focuses on the impartation of information – head knowledge. Thankfully this is beginning to change but I would argue not fast enough and, actually, a curriculum or book of itself is not going to bring about a sea-change.

There are relatively few resources possibly because Christians aren’t always in agreement with the status of children before God. And because it’s not seen as an important area to write about. (Consider how many books on church leadership there are!)

5. Discipling children and their families results in natural mission - you'll need to ask me about my experiences in this in person or buy the book in 6 months time!

It looks pretty certain that we are going to move city to step into the next phase of this in our own lives and I just can't wait. The time of preparation has felt quite long but it feels like its been a car revving up and I am so grateful to those leaders around me who have cheered me on and held my arms up when I've got tired.

You've let me - and wanted me - to be around you, but most of all you really have loved me and guided me these past 8 months and you have believed in what I'm doing. You don't think I was crazy to leave my last post as you recognised a "God At Work" roadsign. At the start of this "sabbatical time" I needed folks to get where I was coming from and what the motivation of my heart was. I'm a broken vessel, I am so aware of that, and I won't ever forget what it has felt like to be a recipient of such honour, love and acceptance.

The ditches are being dug and all, ALL, glory to God for whatever fruit comes out of this time.

Top of the Pops

2011-12-07T00:40:00.003Z

Now then, now then!

Who'da thought it!?!?

I'm rising up the charts with no advertising agent, no press releases, no book on the Wesley Owen shelves yet....nothing I do has changed and yet I seem to have hit the heady heights of no 69 on the Wikio female blogger chart, even getting my own wee coloured line on Revd Lesley's graph.

Stand by for another post tomorrow, Thursday.

:-)

Thoughts?

2011-11-22T22:44:00.004Z

8 Reasons Why Single Men Should Work in the Church Nursery
by: Pastor Mark Driscoll on Nov 22, 2011 in Discipleship, Marriage, Parenting

I think my love for kids started with my grandpa George. He died in 1980 when I was ten years old. I still think of him often. He loved me, and I loved him. He was a retired diesel mechanic and a big guy who wore overalls and taught me how to handle power tools as I worked with him in his garage.

Riding in his car was always great because he kept in his glove box a bag of Tootsie Roll Pops with their fudgetastic center. When we went out to breakfast, the waitresses always dropped by our table to hear him tell a story—and he was hilarious. And when I stayed the night at his house, we’d sneak up while Grandma was asleep to eat caramel apples and watch wrestling on TV—“Rowdy” Roddy Piper, The Sheik, Andre the Giant, and my favorite, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka.

The kids in my grandpa’s neighborhood loved him too. They often dropped by to see what he was working on in his shop. And when the ice cream truck drove by, they would stop, get whatever they wanted, and he would always come out and pay for it all.

I loved my grandpa. And I miss him.

One thing he left with me was a deep love for children. I just picked it up from him, as did his daughter, my mom. Growing up at the oldest of five children, I looked forward to one day being a dad.

As a new Christian and college freshman, my first ministry was taking care of a bunch of young kids during a daytime women’s Bible study. It was the best. The kids were super fun, and on any given week I had anywhere from maybe 10 to 20 kids under the age of five for a few hours without any help. Those hours included crackers, juice, Bible stories, wrestling for the boys, and tea parties for the girls. The moms were surprised that a 19-year-old single guy would volunteer for the nursery, but I’m glad I did. And I’d encourage the same for other single men. In fact, I have nine reasons why single men should work in the church nursery:

It helps you learn what Jesus meant by child-like faith
When you tell a kid that Jesus walked on water, they don’t defer to Hume and enlightenment presuppositions about the miraculous. They say, “Yeah!” and their eyes get big because they believe what the Bible says.

It helps you learn about God as Father
When you interact with kids, you are reminded that to God you are just a kid and that you really need your Father. Every guy, including the one in a suit making more money than he can ever spend, is just a Fudgsicle-faced kid to the Father.

It opens up your heart to children
This causes you to view such things as sex and women differently, less selfishly, and more biblically.

It helps you pick a wife who will be a good mom
When you hang out with kids, you realize you need to marry a woman who is more interested in building a good legacy than just having a good time.

It helps you learn how to be a good father
Some guys are afraid, repelled, or ignorant of kids. Get over your fears and prejudices by hanging out with someone else’s kids a few hours a week, and learn how to interact with kids well.

It’s important for kids without a dad to have godly, male investment in their life
Young boys without a dad need the godly investment of a man. Young girls without a dad need a godly man’s loving encouragement. And the single moms really appreciate godly men investing in their kids.

It’s a good place to meet a nice gal
Single guys may not know this, but nice, single gals who love Jesus and want to marry and become a mom someday are working in the nursery. That’s like fishing in a trout pond if you’re a single guy. And the single moms dropping off their kids should be considered for marriage too. After all, Jesus’ mother was a single mom until Joseph married her and adopted Jesus.

Jesus did
Our God came to earth as a single guy and hung out with kids. They loved him. They didn’t crucify him like the religious folks. If you want to learn about Jesus and become more like him, spend more time with kids like he did.

What do you think of this, dear readers? Will post some thoughts in a day or two.....

Children - the Natural Missional Conduit

2011-11-15T11:14:00.006Z

How does your church see children and mission? I don't mean, what mission do you do for children, although that's a really important question.....

I mean:
- what is their involvement in your church's missional activity?
- how do you encourage their involvement? I reckon you have no problem with wanting teenagers to be missional, what about those younger than 13? And actually, wouldn't missional teenagers have even more practice if they were discipled into missional ways of thinking before they were 13?
- if you are a parent, how are you instilling in your own child(ren) the need not just to TELL others, but to live your life in such a way that it can't fail to point people to Jesus To simply love and serve!
- if you are a church leader - in the pressure on you to be missional/have strategies/run evangelistic activities, I've said it before and I'll say it again - don't miss the ones in front of you, lower down, maybe even at your knee level!
- and where you have children who are stepping out into deeper levels of prayer and ministry, with a heart for those outside of the church, are you putting your best around them in terms of community, involvement and belonging? Are they being pastored and cared for? Just marvelling at their giftedness/openness/spirituality and giving them opportunities to exercise that is not going to be enough. I don't want to descend into dualistic-type talk but be aware that they need you - the church - to love them, pray for them and cover their backs.

Children: a natural missional conduit

Children talk about God very naturally. Because they trust, they easily talk about what they know and have seen and heard. This is not just simple mimicry, it is a God-ordained way of transmitting truth. I have no scientific proof for this – this is only a throwaway personal proposition - but I wonder if this ability is linked to the hardwiring in the brain to connect with God identified by neuroscientists, which I've written about elsewhere? To connect with God, to experience him and to simply tell others the truth about him? Let me give you an example: a three year old child is brought to church by a carer. Her grandmother, who is the child’s full time guardian, is at home. The fact that her grandchild attends Sunday School gives her a break, some respite for a few hours. As the weeks and months pass, her little grandchild tells her repeatedly that Jesus loves her, that Jesus forgives us for the things she's done wrong, that she can tell Jesus the things that are worrying her and he will listen. I believe this child was speaking right into the things her grandmother most needed to hear at those moments.

Some months later, I have the awesome privilege of sitting with this grandmother in her home as she shares some of the stresses in her life. She tells me what her grandchild has said and asks if this could be true, does Jesus really feel this way about her? She confesses how deeply impacted she was by this little child’s words to her. I am able to tell her that it is true and to pray with her. To help her let go of some of the guilt she is carrying and to receive God’s love for herself – all because of the insistent words of her three year old grandaughter.

A similar story but not so positive in its outcome. At our annual summer holiday club for children, a brother and sister returned home singing the songs they had learned about Jesus love, care and protection for some months after the club has finished. They explained to their parents what the songs meant to them. The children were not allowed back to the holiday club the following summer as their parents did not want the same thing to happen again as they were not comfortable with their children having this experience. Dear readers – all over our world children are speaking and singing the most incredible truth about the nature of God himself! They do it innocently, naturally, sometimes like lambs to the slaughter. They need our love and support – and care and protection. Being such natural conduits means children are also susceptible to attack.

In 2005 I had a vivid dream. I watched as hundreds of terracotta warriors were unearthed, just like those uncovered in 1974 in China. But these weren’t adults, they were individual children, each armed with weaponry and precisely positioned in battle formation for the task that was ahead. I didn’t know this at the time of the dream, but each terracotta soldier that was uncovered from the Emperor’s Palace in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, was absolutely unique. No two soldiers of the eight thousand discovered are the same.

At the time of this dream I felt the call of God to love, support and equip children to stand strong in their faith. As a response to this picture in 2005 I wrote a vision statement which said to the church that we would disciple children to be victors, not victims. I knew from God that I could have high expectations, not for the children in my church to perform, but high expectations as to their capabilities to be disciples. I knew that I would not be alone in wanting to disciple children, that there would be many people in churches in the comfortable West feeling the same thing. And so my “career” in children and family ministry has tried to be very practical in carrying out that vision.

So firstly, I was to help children grow up knowing who they were in Christ, but secondly as a result of this dream, I knew I was to help prepare the church to be the safe place, the covering for these little warriors. I'm writing the book asking all who read it to partner in this. These children aren’t disciples-in-training, they are by definition disciples who are experiencing the battle now.

When she was six years old my daughter came home from school in tears because a boy in her class had laughed at her because she believed in Jesus. “He’s not real, he’s dead!” she was told. This was devastating for my daughter so what followed in our household was a crash course in apologetics suitable for six-year-olds to use in the classroom and playground.

Let every member of the church of Jesus aid in this task of teaching, instructing, welcoming and loving children who carry a huge ability to impart to the church but also a keen eye to watch and protect them, intercede for them by name and cover them at all times. They are not designed to operate as lone rangers but alongside others in their family, part of the clan and tribe of the people of God.

I love this.

Update

2011-10-22T23:31:00.009+01:00

As is our habit, we are just back from an autumnal week in the Highlands....special time in the shadow of Cairngorm, watching the snow tipping the mountain-tops, falling on our faces as we cycled down from Glenmore Lodge to Aviemore on Tuesday. Lovely family time.

It's been a month since I blogged. There are lots of reasons for this. The first rule of blogging is to be careful what you share and your reasons for doing so! I'm not ready to share yet some of the amazing things that have been happening that UTTERLY demonstrate the incredible hand of God as shown to me here

Also I have been working quite hard on the book, on a chapter on societal transformation through households in the first century. I had to submit a huge chunk of writing which has now allowed for the release of a contract.

The evening I held on transforming society on 26 Sept went really well. About 60 people came (including 3 from Aberdeen!) from about 12 churches and six denominations (yaaass! I love this) and we took some time to worship and pray for one another.

I've enjoyed some special weekends speaking at some other churches, all through the friendships and networks that I already have and that have existed for many years. These myriad of people really know me and I know such support for my time out to read, write and reflect. I spend a lot of time these days feeling so grateful to God. He's my deepest, closest friend. He has blessed us with not one, not two, but three free holidays. He's supplied every penny I earned from m last post for five months now. Even though we tried to do something in our own wisdom (ha!), going to an estate agent to begin the process, he said "don't sell your house yet" in July. WHEN WE LISTEN, he's speaking tender words of love, affirmation, direction, restoration and promise. I'm walking into LIFE instead of labouring under expectation and stress and struggle, some of my own making.

Oh my, I have been sandpapered all over and confessed sin I didn't know I had or think I had. I bless, bless, bless all that God is doing in my past church.

I am seeing some things with fresh eyes and I am so excited for what is ahead for the UK. People, get ready!

In my local area I have an opportunity to do something I love on Monday - a missional party! Yay, parties can be missional and they are meant to be missional! What do I mean by this? Take the wedding where Jesus turned water into wine - this miracle pointed to the Father and to the kingdom of heaven invading our time and space - that's what I plan to make space for on Monday!

Party food - healthy options too! - games and music, dooking for apples, fancy dress then exalting Jesus in a very simple way accessible to Christian and not-yet Christian, to explain his role in taking away fear this Hallowe'en night. Dovetailing this with explaining how he can be called on when we're home alone or nowhere near a church (building). Take home reminders of this. Making opportunities available to do a parenting course.

You found me Jesus. With all that I am, I want people to find you in the same way.
And do you know what, I want to be able to take whatever risk is needed to make it happen.

Reaching Families

2011-09-27T22:57:00.009+01:00

I have been carrying a growing inquisitiveness to find out about the conditions that led to the phenomenal growth of the church in the First Century.
I love this quote from Rodney Stark, a secular historian who has tried to answer this very same question:
How did a tiny and obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of Western civilisation?

Reading a theology book (Family in the Bible) for the second time in preparation for remitting an academic review of it, I kept coming across footnotes about this Stark book. I hadn't come across it before so last month I read it from cover to cover. Its compulsive reading for anyone interested in the growth of the church and/or with a social science background, as I do (Geography). Stark outlines a conservative estimate of 40 per cent growth per decade in the numbers of Christians and admits that he comes to this figure without any space for signs, wonders and the miraculous. There seems to have been a remarkable increase in figures between 250 and 300 and this is borne out in archaeological evidence of houses being remodelled to fit more worshippers in. It’s interesting to note at this period that persecution had increased under several Roman Emperors most notably Valerian in 253 but by 311 this lessened, culminating in Constantine’s edict of toleration in 313. So from this there may be a lesson for us today: as persecution increased the church grew rapidly, then the governmental leaders realised that they needed the Christians onside (in 311, Galerius realised he needed the Christians to pray for the security of the state).

Most interestingly of all is the evidence for growth well in excess of 40pc per decade that has come to light in Egypt – extraordinary and miraculous growth is shown in the numbers of Christian converts in Egypt (from 0pc Christian in Egypt to 18 pc, in 65 years) – people changed their names to Christian names and this was tracked on papyri.

So 40 pc per decade in the growth of Christianity is called a conservative, given that very few actual records exist. The reality was that vast numbers must have been added at some stages AND the reality was that this thing spread geographically. Imagine what that would look like for your church. But more than that, for your region/area. These numbers were for society as a whole. Sure we have growing churches today, but for every growing one, how many are declining or shutting? This was true societal transformation.

What factors contributed to this?Sociological study on the growth of the Moonies (stay with me!!) – a cult – all of the converts in the study were united by close ties of friendship or kinship e.g. next door neighbours, mothers of similar ages, friends from work.

And so here lies a key principle in reaching families: for conversion to happen, people have or develop stronger attachments to Christians than they have to non-members of Christianity. There is a very interesting sociological principle here on conformity, which is outlined in the book. Suffice to say: strong friendships with Christian group members results in conversions. Simple.

And here we get to the crux of it for us – households. Each member of a household unit has unparalleled opportunities to attract other people into the faith that they hold dear through each of their networks. Note I said networks, not just one's own family. There is no single term for family in the NT.

Oikos, meaning house or household, included the householders family, slaves, and through their network of relationships, friends and neighbours. This was the major network in Rome and when Christianity grew using the same pattern of relating oikos – the exponential growth happened. Those looking in saw tremendous change and reorientation.

So what about talking about ministry to households if the word "family" has negative or painful connotations for people? We have more one or two person households in this country than at any point in history. We have broken ourselves down into smaller and smaller units, therefore I wonder if there is a rise in people looking for "oikos" - community through their networks. And you know what, churches don't just need the keen beans in their 20s pre-children with more time on their hands, churches need business people, teenagers, retired people, parents of young children, empty-nesters, kids.... - for this to really be all it could be means it needs every one. As Banning Liebscher said: don't think revival if going to come through the young. If you have breath in your body, God wants to use you.

Household transformation in the first few centuries - I wonder if I can describe how radical the shift was.

In first century Graeco-Roman times, the man held power over everyone’s possessions in the whole household – he was the paterfamilias. You may not be surprised to know that the Roman Empire had demographic challenges. There was a low birthrate due to abortion and infanticide which was readily practised. Fathers had the right to speak life or death over every newborn child and male children were favoured. There were far more men than women due to the practice of killing newborn females. Children had no status, childhood was seen as something to be grown out of, to just get through into adulthood and full legal status (under Roman law).

Christianity directly impacted the quality of life for wives and mothers. Is it any wonder that women turned to Christianity in vast numbers? Christian teaching directly confronted :
Infidelity
Incest
Polygamy
Infanticide
Divorce
Abortion

We cannot underestimate the sociological change this brought about. There was an increase in women’s status, standing and security. In the first few centuries there are numerous examples of noble Roman women bringing their husbands to faith. Christian women enjoyed far greater marital security and equality than pagan women – this was attractive to others to see. This drew people to the church.

People often say to me: there was so much about children in the Gospels, what happened in Acts? Acts sees the power of the Holy Spirit poured out which propels the church forward; Jesus words elevating children were the necessary platform for the move of God throughout households in Acts. I wrote a little more about this here, please do read in conjunction with this post if you have time.

So to see a return to household transformation requires:

1.a return to releasing each other to be “fully present” in our networks of friends, families and neighbours instead of always out at meetings. Or maybe even (shock horror) cutting our work hours.... Stop being so bloomin' busy!

2.A deliberate strategy to build attractive models of oikos in our local churches – and may I suggest that at least some of these ways encompass all of the generations........I had an amazing journey with this between 2006 and 2008.

More in the next post.

Acknowledgement: Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the nt Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (Princeton University Press/Harper Collins, 1996/1997).

Upcoming Event

2011-09-12T23:52:00.006+01:00

If you are in the Central Belt, (or even further north!), maybe you might like to gather with me and others across denominations as we seek God for his empowering, his strategy and his presence as we prepare our churches for welcoming more and more children and their whole families into the Christian faith.

If you know me or have been following this blog for some time, you will know that I cannot separate children and teenagers from their families. I have been reading and researching the first four centuries of church growth as preparation for the chapter on children and families in the New Testament in the book I am writing.

I have re-discovered much that is making my heart beat faster, my faith levels increase and an increasing, "awakes me at night" deep hunger for the good news to spill out into the community. Like an infectious disease, (!) my plan was simply to facilitate a time for others to catch it too by drawing folks together to worship and pray. I'll teach a little bit on what I see in the Bible that underpins and highlights the rapid transferral of a life-changing belief in the person of Jesus from one person to another through the extended family and social networks of the day - sociologists like Rodney Stark have concrete evidence for a 40% growth rate every decade from the time of Jesus resurrection to the end of the fourth century. Close study of actual death records in Egypt over one time period showed this growth rate to be modest - it was in fact far higher than this for the one specific area records existed for.

The reasons for this rapid spread of Christianity are varied and complex but there is consensus that the different way of life (witness) of the changing family had such an impact that people WANTED to re-orientate their lives towards Jesus - babies were born without the fear of exposure/infanticide, women were treated well and grew in their own giftings and leadership; marriage was honoured, slaves were treated well, families grew and thrived. In short - people were attracted to what they saw in the lives of Christians. Wow.Wow. Wow.....oh Father, how we want to see more of that in our time!

So this evening of prayer, worship, teaching and preparation to go and love and serve is on Monday 26 September at 7.30pm. Email me on children.pastor@gmail.com if you would like more information.

At the moment I am serving on the ministry team of an ILSOM (International Leaders School of Ministry) and have been reminded by the internationally-travelled speakers of the incredible growth of the church in South America, Africa, China, Indonesia, Korea....in short - in every continent bar ours and North America......

But something is stirring. Hunger is rising. A month ago, 15,000 young adults gathered for a conference in Chicago - Jesus Culture Awakening. I was privileged to watch a lot of the talks live and I urge you to listen to them - they blew me away.. You can find out about them here

I do believe that hunger is stirring in our nation too - to get "out there", to love and serve local communities, to love our cities, towns and villages. There is a rising dissatisfaction I have observed with just "doing church". Yet we mustn't rush ahead without spending time with the Father to just rest and listen; to hear his strategies and plans, just receiving from him because we're simply his beloved! Its hard enough to get out there without crashing and burning(interestingly I read this today and I wholeheartedly agree with Mike Breen's (initially tough-sounding) post.

And so the plan for Monday 26 Sept is that we too will gather to ask the Lord to enlarge our hearts to love the ones who are in front of us, maybe even related to us (!) and to believe that once more God can change a nation by impacting one who impacts another who then impacts another. We need the fuel and fire that comes from sitting at the Father's feet and drinking in the Holy Spirit's power and plans rather than relying on our own strategies and thoughts.

Dealing with challenging behaviour

2011-09-06T23:36:00.005+01:00

I'm often asked how to handle difficult behaviour.
I think everything in the notes below sums it up!

Some causes of challenging behaviour

(for the first part of this posting, I'd like to reference SU's Top Tips series on handling difficult behaviour, although I have added some other factors in due to my own knowledge, practice and experience)

• general learning difficulties

• specific learning difficulties (do you have completed registration and consent forms? Do volunteers know about the relevant information?)

• developmental disorders – ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia

• low self-image (vicious circle)

• fragmented home situations and unsettled relationships with parents

• lack of boundaries in the home

• physical demands – what I call the Saturday night sleepover sydrome...!

• group dynamics - who's the strong leader amongst the children, for example

• the organisation of your session - it might be our fault!

• (teenagers?) alcohol/drug use

Types of behaviour

• childish irresponsibility

• behaviour linked to age and stage of development

• challenge to authority

Hebrews 12:6
"My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”

Don't be afraid of discipline!!

Some thoughts:
Children and teenagers, like adults, are made in the image of God, imageo dei, so like us they matter to him. Have a God-focused approach towards them.

• Children are so valuable to God that He commands us to protect them (1Sam 20:42, Ezra 8:21)

• God wants to have a genuine relationship with His children – He describes how children may enter His presence and enjoy His company (Ps 8:2, 34:11, 103:13, Mal 2:15, Matt 21:15, Mark 10:13-16)

• God loves young people enough to ensure they receive discipline. It is a reflection of His passion for a child’s well being.

• God enjoys the nature and personality of children – attributes such as sincerity, humility, naïveté, vulnerability and simplicity. He treasures these characteristics.

Towards Change…….

1.Working within the church community and communicate clearly
Be aware of Child Protection policy and any written guidelines your church has and use a large dollop of common sense. I had written a discipline policy that was disseminated once a year to volunteers so that they knew what was minor behavioural issues and what was major (everyone has different standards and expectations therefore a team of volunteers need help to establish the base level - is interrupting a leader who is talking ok? Some leaders say it's fine, others cannot tolerate it. If this example is a major issue for your team, decide what you will accept, and disseminate this information amongst the team, preferably in writing and LET CHILDREN KNOW! Setting boundaries publicly to the children and showing that you work as a team yields such fruit. Appy your decisions simply and consistently and soon it won't be an issue any more. I can testify over and over again how well this works).

2.Working with parents/guardians
Parents/guardians are our first port of call. How can you consult with them? You may need to invest a little time in speaking with them. Always speak with the relevant leader as s/he may have relevant information to give you. Find out about parents’ expectations of their child’s/teenager’s behaviour as you may find the root of the problem right there!

3.Working with other children/youth team members
Everything written so far needs to be applied to a team context – we need to work together. Children and teenagers spot tensions and differences between adults and will play us off one another. This underlines the need for written policies/clear communication. It's the one strong similarity between church and school. I was gathering up to 175 and 160 children together in two churches; the size of a small primary school! If your church has 10-30 children, the scale may be different but the need is still there.

4. Prepare thoroughly and vary the style
I've spent many years working with and watching children, and now I observe a growing tendency in some (many?) leaders to just turn up to help at a kids club or Sunday school, assuming that all the preparation has been done by the main leader of that day. That may be very well if they are pouring juice or doing toilet runs but if they are answering questions about God and teaching something from the Bible it's just not enough. The best way to address this is to raise it as a training issue - and then monitor.

I instigated a "send-out-by-Friday" email and planning grid of who was doing what, with the Bible passage, relevant small group questions and heart prep to be done in advance of the Sunday session in both of the churches I have worked in. A good rule of thumb is that we should personally spend at least twice the amount of time on the passage that the children will spend thinking about and interacting with the Bible. This word is living and active - therefore we who teach it (whether it be to adults OR children) must spend time on and with it. Don't give out stale bread! Tastes awful....

Vary the style - this is worth a whole other posting....

Suffice to say we often teach people in the style that WE prefer, so if we like reading and thinking, we take children into a lot of reading the Bible out loud and group discussion. But leading group discussions with children requires highly skilled individuals, so the best way round this is to watch the time allocation for this part of the programme and make sure there are opportunities for the kinaesthetic (doing) - making something, acting something out, trying out a new skill.

Children engage in low level misbehaviour most often when they are bored and unstimulated. Allow them to EXPERIENCE God's presence, his working and moving amongst the group, the answered prayers, his holiness when a song finishes and you stand in silence, his tender care in moments of quiet soaking in his presence.

Just some thoughts from the past decades!

a reply

2011-08-22T02:03:00.008+01:00

Please note: this is in reply to a comment made after (but not directly related to) the previous post. It wouldn't fit in the comments box, even when eighth-ed in size! - and it feels like an important one to me.
Mercy, grace and peace - L.

Dear anon
thanks for your comment. I hope it's OK that I attempt a reply, based on my experiences over the last few months.

The original post was a forward-looking post about a new and better job for me somewhere in the future. I believe with my whole heart in the promises of Joel 2:25 -God WILL repay the years the locusts have stolen i.e. this is not to be literally applied (I don't feel things were stolen from me!) to my last 2.5 years as I have had a lot of fun, grown a lot, seen amazing and unexpected things happen in children and family ministry in the church. I think this verse means that nothing is ever wasted, God ALWAYS brings good out of difficult circumstances, if we are willing to submit to his greater purposes. I have written before about the things that have hurt me and most days I'm sore. But not as much as before. I have a daily choice to make, and I'm not typing this in a preach-y way, I hope - but from a very real "I'm walking this" perspective: my choice is to forgive and bless. I manage this about 90% of the time but not till I've asked God for help. I'm a rubbish solo artist!

Someone said in a sermon I heard recently - if we saw ourselves as God saw us, if the innermost parts of our hearts were on display, then we would see what we really deserve. We're pretty selfish and rotten inside, every one of us. As I meditated on this quite seriously tonight, I heard again the Father say: the price has been paid for your sin. Freely forgive as you have been forgiven. Let go of your desire for x, y or z (sorry, I'm not going to say what these letters stand for!!)

I did what I had to do by leaving my post - I listened hard for God, I tested it out with my support group (which each member of staff in my organisation is supposed to have); I was honest and I was true to myself. I communicated as clearly as I could, I tried as hard as I could to find another way, but it was clear that for whatever reason, I wasn't being heard; what I had to offer I could not make fit into the structure and therefore just wasn't the right person to continue. I was "let go" as well as I "let go". I believe God said. "come away with me. And trust me for what happens next".

BUT, BUT, BUT....I trust the sovereign purposes of God in all of this. I have been really disappointed, angry and I have been hurt by things said or left unsaid but I have heard this clearly from the Scriptures - we *all* have to account for the way we treat other people; leaders are not immune from this and they (I) have a special responsibility to listen. We leaders are to play our part in practising communal discernment - what is the Spirit saying to the church? How can we listen to each other and the Spirit well? (I love this bit of Baptist ecclesiology!) Are we representing "the mood of the meeting/the mood of the church family"? Therefore what is submitted in writing before the church meeting to the elders/deacons or what is spoken out loud physically *in* the church meeting is very important as leaders can't mind-read! (Sometimes we might think that they can read minds, but it's a hard thing to do and this is where churches benefit from godly, mature, discerning members of the congregation from all kinds of ages and stages of life.)

I hope I will become a better listener myself, God knows I need to, as well. I read this just tonight:

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." - Winston Churchill

If people are feeling hurt in a church, speak to someone you trust pastorally. If there is a repeating pattern of hurt or misunderstanding or of staff and members leaving, church leaders would be wise to ask God if there are any personal, corporate or historical causes. There may not be. But if there are, leaders might then deal with any resulting spiritual issues, perhaps using Neil Anderson's material on "Setting Your Church Free" or perhaps by inviting someone in from outside to support and guide. Many, many churches have done these kinds of things as part of their journey.

If individuals hide hurt away secretly, it can lead to festering bitterness and anger, maybe even leading to speaking unhealthily to others, and gives the enemy ground. But to speak truth out of *love* for the church and love for the leaders - The enemy cannot stand TRUTH nor can he stand LOVE. And utter HUMILITY confounds him, for it is the way of Jesus, the servant.

Even this last fortnight I have felt disappointed as I waited yet again for something, but you know what, that's what I must do to God, my Father and creator. I disappoint him, probably daily. But he loves me and keeps on loving me when I disappoint. The test is this: can I look at people who may have hurt me and see the gifts in them, the good in them, the things that have been achieved, and more importantly, can I see the marks of God in their lives? I know I'd love them to do the same for me?! Do they love the word of God? Do they pray often? Do they encourage me when I see them? Do they have a concern for the poor? Do they do things that serve others? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh Lord, we need your grace to mark your church and change the way we see one another. As I said earlier, I'm probably OK on that 90% of the time. I too have met people who have left or are leaving. It's tempting to feel justified. Literally bumping into someone else in the street who is hurting makes the 10% kicks in - hurt feeds hurt.I need the cleansing, releasing, refreshing grace of God. I CANNOT and MUST NOT remain in the justice place, but be in the grace place, as that's what allows my healing to come and blesses all those involved.

And I want to testify that it works. By and large, the pain is healing and the memories become sweeter. Now in August I am not where I was in May.

I can't comment on the things you say about exclusivity as my experience has been the opposite. I do believe the heart of so many in the church is genuinely, truly for sharing the love of God throughout the city. However, managing growth and change is difficult. We need a Pentecost, where the falling from heaven of the Holy Spirit of God results in the total and utter surrender of our hearts and our pride and our knowledge and our assumptions. That's all God wants. He can do anything with us when we come in weakness and humility! That's where we can know his power "resting on us", as Paul says.

2 Cor 12:9
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

I found myself singing this old hymn today (alone! at home) and I guess, for me, it sums up what the imperfect church of Jesus Christ in our country needs. That......and abounding grace shown to one another.

Thou Christ of burning, cleansing flame,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
Thy blood bought gift today we claim,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
Look down and see this waiting host,
Give us the promised Holy Ghost;
We want another Pentecost,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!

God of Elijah, hear our cry:
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
To make us fit to live or die,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
To burn up every trace of sin,
To bring the light and glory in,
The revolution now begin,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!

’Tis fire we want, for fire we plead,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
The fire will meet our every need,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
For strength to ever do the right,
For grace to conquer in the fight,
For power to walk the world in white,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!

To make our weak hearts strong and brave,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
To live a dying world to save,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
O see us on Thy altar lay
Our lives, our all, this very day;
To crown the offering now we pray,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!

William Booth (1829 - 1912)

Ideal Job

2011-08-17T22:33:00.006+01:00

Wow, 2 posts in 2 days. This pace won't keep up! (and I didn't do any for 2 weeks..)

I've reproduced the job advert below exactly as I saw it. Its in a smaller church than I am used to, but its really saying very simply what I would love to do. Problem is: it's in Englandshire. You know what Phil and Kirstie say on Location, Location, Location when they find the ideal house for their clients but its in the wrong location...........??

ASSOCIATE PASTOR

This advert is for a generalist full time Associate Pastor to work with the Lead Pastor in developing the church fellowship and its mission in the wider community as a whole and also taking particular responsibility for developing the youth and children’s ministry.

Job description
• practical management and strategic development of our youth and children’s work
• oversight and encouragement of volunteer youth/children’s workers
• pastoral oversight of young people and church families with young children
• raising awareness and seeking integration of youth and children’s work within the church
• taking an agreed share in the Sunday preaching programme
• sharing in other areas of general ministry where appropriate in agreement with Lead Pastor and deacons

Person specification
• heart for the discipleship and nurture of children & young people
• good leader able to support and stimulate volunteer workers
• ability to relate to all ages as well as children and young people
• evidence of good theological training and awareness
• a good team player

I loved the discipleship and nurture bit!

Maybe the job description, plainly but carefully crafted, might help others about to advertise and I'm told there are a few up here that are about to go live. There's most definitely a shortage nationally of experienced people in community/family and children's outreachy/pastoraly posts of any kind. The church I saw this advert in has been trying to fill the post for over a year. Hmmmmmm. I know I thought long and hard before moving from church one to church two, there was much agonising as to whether it was right to leave a fruitful place of ministry to step out of the boat into something new and I can only testify that church two to church three is/will be even harder because of the situation I was in. Pain is never far away at this moment in time. And I've still got about 6-8 weeks of writing still to do.

I received two pieces of wise advice recently, all related to the fact that I'm being stretched and who knows what I'll end up doing? Not exactly the same as I have done before, that's for sure.

They both seem to be diametrically opposed to each other but in way they're not - know what you think you might be good at doing but then drop it, and be open for the new.

So... 1. A vicar Down South encouraged me that it's OK to speak out or write down what I would like to do, in the belief that by walking closely in submission to him, the things bubbling away that I would love to do are actually in line with God's best rather than against it.

This takes me back to what Mike Seth said at this conference, about being in partnership with God: as a father walks and talks with his older children: being in partnership together: "what would you like to do?" rather than shepherding them and telling them what to do as a parent does with a young child.

2...A minister Up North encouraged me to have the actual piece of paper/job description and lay it down, surrendering it totally to God. I had been saying to him that I was struggling with what seemed to be diametrically opposed - to have an ideal of a slightly wider role that would excite me and stretch me BUT to be a servant, to do and be whatever he says, to do the lowliest job. I walked by the local cafe today wondering if I should apply to work there. All I could think of was the opportunity to live my life out as a Christian in that environment. I remember pulling pints in a bar and cleaning ashtrays out when I was 18 and just getting on with it. I hated it but I did it.

This minister didn't know that I have never been able to get out of my mind the revelation at the HTB Leadership conference that the Senior Pastor of Hillsongs London is at the London theatre from 6am every Sunday helping set up the church staging and is often the last to leave at night as they pack down. Not on show, not up front, not talking, just doing. Talk about challenging...

So yesterday I laid all the various options before me down - for there are a few and September is shaping up to be quite busy with speaking engagements - so that I may walk towards the right one for me that brings me into accountable relationships and allows me to oversee the stuff I absolutely thrive on with children and with adults, plus the ability to work on all the missional ideas to reach whle generations that's been bubbling away for a couple of months.

Sovereign Lord, I will go anywhere you lead. You constantly make things better than they were before in our lives. You're into restoration. I'm holding out my hand expectantly.

Related to all that is above, here are the verses that I couldn't take my eyes off in my readings today:-

Romans 4:20-21
Yet he (Abraham) did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

Restoration

2011-08-16T22:07:00.008+01:00

Restored - a brief word study

- the cupbearer to his position
- Moses' hand
- various cities and towns
- a king's hand
- Naaman's flesh
- a son restored to life
- the boundaries of Israel
- the altar of the Lord
- Jerusalem
- human beings, if we return to the Lord.
- everything Job lost
- God's kingdom
- Nebuchadnezzar's sanity
- the temple
- the priesthood
- people's sight
- strength restored to those who feel weak
- individuals restored, brought back safely, to the family of believers
- Eden

I love the word restoration. When I looked at google images to help me see some tangible examples of restoration, in nearly every case, restoration resulted in something better than it was before. I'm excited about that.

"sabbaticalling", writing, has given me time away, time out, time with no pressure, time to come under the maker's care and attention. I think this has resulted in a time of refining, loving more, loving better at home (and I hope out of the home!), receiving love and feeling love, time to listen, time to watch carefully, time to reflect and time to redefine what's important.

Time too for us as a family to continue to feel that we will give ourselves utterly to loving the next generation well, to teaching, training and modelling missional living to children - little children, older children, teenagers and, in particular with Mr HIWWC, troubled teenagers. We love the generations, what was invested in us from those older than us in the past will bever be forgotten and we honour those who made themselves vulnerable, let us in, let us learn, let us fail, picked us up...with my whole heart I pray that we will be able to do the same, that those younger than us will go deeper, farther and higher than we ever did or could.

Restored. An amazing word!

Disappointed

2011-08-03T20:42:00.005+01:00

"Discipline:

We try to make our programs fun, fresh and powerful so that a child will not become disruptive. We also use positive reinforcement and team competitions where points are awarded for good behaviour and deducted for innapropriate behaviour. In extreme circumstances a child may be placed back into the adult service with their parent. Parents will be notified of innapropriate behaviour (sic)."

Grrrrrrrrrrr. The above is an excerpt from a very large church website. One of the key members of this church, who founded the children's ministry programme in that place is speaking at an event in the UK. I'm afraid reading words like those above really put me off going. In fact, I don't really want to go (unless you, dear reader, talk me round!) because entirely separate churching of age groups to me isn't just a matter of taste, its about losing something of the discipleship culture we are meant to build and celebrate and show the world.

And you might think it doesn't matter, surely the person teaching will transcend such differences but please believe me, there is a huge difference in the issues each style of children's ministry faces.

I'm disappointed and I'm tired of reading words like those above: "a child may be placed back in the ADULT service with their parent. Parents will be notified of inappropriate behaviour" (I've corrected the spelling).

Why am I so disappointed?

1. "adult service" - like the cinema classification system, are we soon to have:
"U cert" - everyone can attend this event, such as a church beach trip
"PG" - you can bring your offspring to this meeting, but if they barf or get freaked out by anything that happens, it's your responsibility.
"12" - your older primary children can probably handle this event, but you'd better be on hand, parents (e.g. Good Friday reflective service)
"15" - only for those in the yoof programme e.g. average length evening service
"18" - you'd better be grown up to have some longevity about you e.g. very long evening service, church business meetings, many church prayer meetings

2. I'm disappointed that the most extreme method of discipline is to put a child BACK in the adult service with the adults. Note the words: BACK IN.

So the message given out by this website is that the adults meeting with God equals a place of punishment for a child who is missing the excitement of the kids programme.

What does this say about the experience of being in the presence of God? I actually feel very strongly about this point in case you hadn't guessed. I have devised in the past a whole load of ways of working with children who are having behaviour issues at church; it nearly always comes out of one of two things: (a) we need to look at what we are teaching, how we are teaching it and who is teaching it and maybe make some changes or (b)things are not great at home in some way; a lack of boundaries, or there are worries, tensions, bullying, threats or abuse. I've been used to sitting with my colleagues and sharing pastorally so that I might be the lead person but we pray and support the family (and me) together, for we cared about each family represented in the church.

3. I'm also (as the regulars amongst you will know) disappointed with the term "adult service". I don't believe there is biblical precedent for it.

I favour the "part and part" approach with occasional but regular all-age incursions that we may all learn from each other and in one or other, or both the churches I have worked in, I have been liberated to do my thing, e.g. to model good pastoral care for families, kids and volunteers, to pioneer prayer meetings for all ages, large celebration meetings with everyone represented and intergenerational cell groups AS AN OPTION for those who wish to use them. Neither church has held adult-only everything (except of course the certificate 18 church business meetings!)

4. And finally, as if there wasn't enough here for you all to leave this blog and never return, I'm disappointed that this website makes no mention of the need to WORK WITH and SUPPORT parents. If a child isn't behaving, something is going on, as I said in point 2 above, I believe pastoral care and support is so important. They may just be tired or family circumstances might be causing a wobble (a parent out of work, for example) but it can be something more serious. Many years ago I worked with a boy who the team had to refer on to me for continual misbehaviour - it transpired that there was major stuff going on. As a church we offered support in a number of ways to the family and it was with great delight some years later I saw him be baptised. On a return visit to the church he hugged me and Mr HIWWC. Imagine if we had just sent him back into the "adult service"....(for his behaviour was extreme).

To be clear, I can and have sent for parents to come out of the service to support the team in serious cases but at the end I talk with the parent(s) and the child, pray with them, visit them at home if necessary and follow up. I always talk about how we have a God of second chances and how my love and care for them does not depend on their behaviour.

Rant over.......anyone with me at all?

Waiting

2011-07-22T20:15:00.007+01:00

If you are a praying person, please could you pray for us this coming week?

The end of July heralds the end of three months of waiting and of pressing in to God like anything and trying to walk right and love well. It's been really hard but we have discovered a heck of a lot about ourselves which hasn't always been pleasant and have also received much greater clarity about future ministry. We are aching for the revelation and the miracle of how this actually pans out, as - to be honest - this week it seems more complicated than it ever was before. Nothing that has appeared before us is straightforward. It all feels like it is waiting on one more jigsaw piece. But time is running out for us to play around in our own strength with endless possibilities - we have children, schools, houses and jobs to think about.

We checked out estate agents today to find out about the process in this city to put our house up for sale. That's kinda sore because we dont really want to but dont have a lot of choice. But we don't know as yet where we will go so how can we move forward? I know we will have clarity, I totally trust him, everything else has been spot on but I really do feel the pressure of time now.

The temptation is to feel more alone than ever. There are so many things I don't understand. Today we meditated as a couple on what it meant when Jesus prayed in Gethsemane (Matthew 26)

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.

dear, dear Father: please bring this time to closure, yet not as we will, but as you will. We remember it cost you far much more than anything ever costs us. No-one can ever outrun you on pain, hurt or cost.

Encouraging comments or Scriptures are welcome in the littl'bitty box below, or feel free to email children.pastor@gmail.com with any Bible verses or pictures.

Blessings!

PS thanks for the enquiries about the book writing, it's going really well but much slower. I probably need more time but will just have to squeeze the last third in alongside other duties in August/Sept. I am really enjoying it although I wish I had taken Hebrew when I did my theology degree....will need to find a friendly Pentateuch expert - see the stuff in there on family cf NT and what it has to say to us today - mindblowin' stuff!

Philippians 1:3-6
I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

What I'm Missing........

2011-07-20T22:21:00.008+01:00

I'm really missing some things in this period of writing, resting, and am incredibly excited about leading some family ministry next Thursday. If you are going to be there, please come along with and say "hi!" here.

I'm actually champing at the bit now to get back into spearheading some things in the local church and to teach and to look after the younger ones within the context of the whole church family. I was talking with my denominational ministry advisor about this; I don't think it's been because I feel I am missing out, like I'm on the shelf; it's because the call to do so has been reinforced and strengthened in a way I didn't expect.

Here are some of the things I am missing - they are not in any particular order of importance - I'm missing them all!

- facilitating worship with kids and with the kids' leaders week by week; watching them go from kicking and annoying each other, to dance, to kneel on the floor; to pray freely out loud, to respond in so many ways. I love teaching them about worship; I think because it is an important value to me and Mr HIWWC, it rubs off on those younger than us. All credit to God for that - he has saved me, cleansed me from the past and filled me with joy that almost any time I feel miserable find it difficult to ignore the deep down bubbly joy and gratitude that wants to make its way out to the surface.

- planning and leading all age services where we unpack something MEATY from God's word; over the past few years we looked at "chesed" (his lovingkindness), the gifts of the Spirit, healing, the centrality of the Word, the Micah challenge, the father heart of God....I am missing seeing children and teenagers take part in the service - a memorable Bible Quiz with two teenagers against the seemingly unbeatable Senior Pastor. and I am missing God Rods moving the congregation to tears (you'd need to ask me if you see me, if you dont know what these are!).

- I'm missing being able to facilitate the children moving on in prayer - praying with adults, praying for their friends at school, shouting out prayers of victory loudly in the hall time! I have to underline something I said before - I might start it off but then I stand back - God has totally exceeded anything I saw before or expected - I'm sitting in a congregation and not having any part over what I see could so easily just be launched. Set some boundaries (this can take a while if behaviour has been challenging), teach "how to", walk in expectation and then let them go.

- I'm REALLY missing my teams. I had some great, great, great people who were loyal, loving, committed, open to change (which I undoubtedly brought) and open to challenges. Glad to see such a calibre of people showing same in the church we are visiting. Pastors and leaders - your youth and childrens leaders are most often of the highest quality and mainly unseen, because they are not at the front playing an instrument or at the door welcoming. Please, please value them and listen to them - to listen to them you have to first ask them what's on their mind. A common mistake is to chase more after the people who are leaving your church than those who are its future. Jesus let the rich young ruler walk away....different context I know....but he let someone walk away from him who he no doubt cared for hugely ** CONTROVERSIAL BIT OVER

- I'm missing the children. I haven't been able to type this before now but in as many weeks five boys who I have seen in non-church contexts have told me how much they miss me, and have been quite emphatic in stating it, which as you know isn't typical "boy" behaviour. Three of them were senior primary! I can only put this down to the fact that I love them and was so so committed to their well-being and they knew it. I'm missing especially the dozen or so teenagers who supplemented the teams, because I loved seeing them and talking to them, as this wasn't something I usually did - we had a youth pastor who worked with the teens.

Teenagers have been my area of "expertise" professionally as well as as a volunteer in church life for a couple of decades now. One thing I really liked about the church I left was that quite a lot of the teenagers helped at the holiday club or on Sundays. This year had been a year of so much change in the church's life; I would really liked to have built on last year's holiday club which had a FAB team of leaders and esp teenagers - nothing like a bit of service within a well-structured team to build faith and confidence.

- I'm missing parents hugely. In education you learn (the hard way sometimes) to work in partnership with parents. I'll go so far as to say that its one of the keys to successful youth or children's ministry. That's one of the buzzword phrases for both primary and secondary (I was in secondary ed) and I know it was one of my most effective areas in the two churches I have ministered in. I did bring challenges to parents, I know that, and I had to live them out myself before I issued these challenges to others, but I genuinely cared for the parents and even as I type this, 3 months on, person after person is coming to mind that I can't quite forget yet. There were so many children there that I so desperately needed assistance and I struggle with thinking that I didn't do as much as I could, but I know I loved and prayed and saw quite a number of new committments. These parents occupy a special place for me, I am missing them a lot and do think most weeks: "I wonder how they're doing".....

- I'm missing praying with people - this is fellow staff, children, kids team, parents - anyone in the congregation following the preaching of God's word or in coffee meet-ups or home visits. I love getting alongside someone, listening as best I can and then tuning in to what God is saying. Fortunately we have been surrounded with good friends who we have prayed with and vice versa over these last 3 months and have done some good praying with people times in cafes etc! But I'm missing offering pastoral support and weeping alongside people. Does that make me needy? I hope not.

- I'm missing the kids discipleship group - the people in it, my assistant leader Ruth, and the actual physical time we had all together. Over the last three years this has been one of my hugely enjoyable highlights of the week, as it was in my last church. God really met with these 10, 11 and 12 year olds. We'd been moving into a more missional model of a group with Pray for Scotland's "Pray For Five". The last time we met on 6 April there was such an outpouring of power. Mr HIWWC was playing guitar quietly, singing nothing, I was standing with my back to the wall, having come to the end of six months of teaching and discussing stuff - we just watched in amazement as the girls prayed and prophesied over one another and the BOYS DID THE SAME amongst each other. By now we'd have had a residential weekend away, which was probably always my highlight of the year......

- I'm missing preaching/teaching. The church I was part of had given me some opportunities to do this a little more and I really loved it. I also did some hands-on teaching to children - as Martin Luther said in a post a few days ago, it's pretty good to be able to keep your skills up there! - and to teach team and in larger gatherings, like my annual vision day. These things to wider groups have continued - I have quite a few things on in the autumn - but there is nothing like the local church, where you are known and you know and care for the flock in front of you.

- I'm missing visiting people at home or over a coffee to chat and spend time I'm not a huge fan of emails for pastoral care or communication. To be frank, they don't really do it. People don't remember emails, but they do remember when you sat with them in Starbucks to run through a plan or a vision, or sat with them and let tears fill your eyes alongside them. They remember you popping into see their child in hospital or you coming round when they hadn't been at church for a few weeks. I saw a lot of people behind the scenes and I am really missing that. I'm just a peopley person and generally find it hard to sit at a computer for long times. I've been able to see more of the schools mums I am pally with, so that's a bonus of this time.

- I'm missing being part of a team massively. I dont work well on my own. I need to have people to bounce things off, who will listen to me as I listen to them. However sad I was at times over the last year, there were a lot of laughs. Porridge. Chocolate. Plastic fish. Hot and cold radiators. Onesies. Laminators. Same things in my pstoral employment before that (particularly about Jack Bauer) and in the staffroom of secondary school - the sand garden after stressful lessons is a particularly warm memory.

There are many things I'm not missing of course and there are many things I am still experiencing and enjoying no matter where I am, because of my relationship with God - I love worship services, I love hearing what God wants to say to me week by week, I love hearing the testimonies of lives changed, I love being loved and we have felt such love and acceptance from the churches we've been in during ths period (4 altogether - one was in Cornwall and one was my first place of employment - they cheered for us this week during the service, embarrassing - but so lovely and very moving - we left three years ago).

We have so much to be grateful for. My testimony of these three months is of the incredible tenderness of God in his dealings with me and through very painful emotions.

I want to be back in local church ministry so I am calling out to God along the lines of the things I wrote in previous entries***. It's OK to do that, to talk detail with him and to express honest emotions, dreams and desires, all within the context of his love for me and his promise to work all things together for the good of those who love him. And I do love him.

***previous posts referred to
perseverance
dreams
God's promises are true

Winter is past, the springtime has come.....

2011-07-12T00:50:00.007+01:00

The picture above is the view from our decking/breakfast table. This holiday is a gift from God! He's so good to us. Two things I love: cliffs and waves. And I can see them every day.

I thought I would write about a little highlight of our holiday so far:we have just had the privilege of spending the last two Sundays at the tubestation - which is both gathered church and a missional community, engaged in midweek activity within their base building and much, much wider in that in the way the folks there share their lives.

We've been coming here for 3 years now on our Cornwall summer holidays and it's inspiring to see a two-pronged missional focus:
(1) to the surfing community and
(2) to the local community - the village of Polzeath (and now to other local villages with the plant out to St Merryn)

A few years ago I had the privilege of offering a detailed prophecy to the leaders there, when I knew very little about their history, background, hopes or desires and just chewing that over together has given us one of those precious heart-to-heart connections with the tube station project directors. I love that about the kingdom of God - when you don't see people very often, so you don't know the minutiae of each other's lives, and yet you support one another fiercely - the picture that comes to mind is of people in the crowd who are cheering you - they are all for you. Well, that's how we feel about tubestation.

The need to give people from all ages and stages of life a broad welcome was the theme of this Sunday's sermon with Ian Bell of the Methodist Church's Venture FX scheme speaking. I have heard Ian speak before and I love his simplicity, humility, warmth and evident excitement about the fresh expressions of church he encourages and develops.

The word I would use to sum up tubestation is "inclusive". They love to have visitors. Their attendance can go from 40 or 50 in the winter to over 250 some Sundays in the summer - we wondered if that gets annoying for the regulars but they genuinely love it when the place is packed out and visitors come from all over the country/world. I'll say this with a bias, for which I can't apologise, given what I am writing about in the book project just now - they have a very high regard for young people. We visited the building after school time today and there were a lot of kids and teenagers around - surfing the internet, skateboarding, playing around on the grass. Please do check out the website to see what other things they do - what has impressed me over the last few years is the inclusiveness of the activities that go on; yes, there is a focus on one of the two things mentioned earlier (surf community/local community) but within that children and teenagers have a place that's all for them. I get the feeling that the heart of tubestation is to love well and to love all, hence the relevance of Sunday's sermon.

The worship leading is just immense - we have probably been around 6 or 7 times now and there is always a reverence for the old hymns of the past with one of the Wesleys usually featuring (Methodist chapel remember!) and lots of songs that mention "seas", "oceans", "waves" and the beauty of God's creation. And there is such a sense of the presence of God - the band is tight, musically, but Kris, the lead worshipper most times I have been there, leads what must be an incredibly diverse crowd (denominationally speaking!) so sensitively. You can tell he just loves to worship God any way he can. That desire is always visible when someone is really living it.

And so this Sunday we sang one of our favourite songs, but not always a common choice, you can click on it at the end of the post if you wish.

Winter is past, the springtime has come....

As we approach the end of the month, and the end of the three months of waiting and walking out the period of leaving well and loving well we anxiously wait for springtime. When we were praying last night here in our wee holiday home I felt I could see wee buds that had formed but we are not there yet. And I can't make them unfold. I've got to wait, but when you see the buds, you know it won't be long. I've not been perfect, I've felt so much pain lift, but some is still there and it can be reawakened. I have struggled with bits and pieces, but I have unfalteringly in the private place submitted to the fact that God is sovereign; he has guided me with unfailing detail for decades now and he knows what he's doing. He clearly spoke to us to lay it all aside and leave and write and trust him for finances. He's provided so tenderly for the three month period. But it's time to walk into spring. He loves my last leadership team so much and he loves me so much. And as I have said before: if my transgressions were marked, would I be able to stand? Who am I to judge? That holds me captive. We all face judgment for our actions when we stand before God. No-one is exempt from that, so what good can I achieve by refusing to release mercy? Besides, its much more exciting to advance the kingdom and experience healing from life's hurts. Time is short and I feel like exploding with how much God loves this world. It's time to walk into spring. You've got to winter, but you can't stay there for too long or it will kill life off.

So I now stand with bated breath, petitioning the Lord for the one thing I am now waiting for.

How to Survive the Waiting Game

2011-06-29T10:16:00.003+01:00

I have reproduced this article from here (I want to acknowledge the link and the source) - I have had the privilege of hearing John Paul Jackson speak a number of times, the last being a couple of weeks ago, and he always offer such wise counsel with a prophetic edge - how we need that!

How to Survive The Waiting Game

Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord (Ps. 27:14, NASB).

No matter what God has called us to do, one of the most difficult things we will face is the in-between time. In the beginning, He prepares our hearts for the calling. He gives us a glimpse of His plans for us, and it births great hope within us.

The difficulty is that there is always a time lag between the initial preparation and the outcome. The beginning often carries a great emotional surge. We know what God said, and we know we will see it happen, no matter what the enemy may throw at us in the process. Our faith is as tall as the mountains. We feel invincible in God’s promise. We take the initial steps and are excited to see the fruit of our labors.

But then comes the waiting.

The days become weeks and months, and we have to wait for what God has promised us. Many of us don’t handle the waiting very well. Our hope begins to waver. We begin to forget the glorious promises God gave us and how it felt when we heard His voice. So many of us lose heart during the time lag.

What can we do to instead gain heart during this waiting period?

1. Be willing to rest.

Hearing God’s voice is like finding a well in the desert. We do not survive on our own thoughts or strength or goodness, and as we discover this we discover reality and true freedom in Christ. His presence is our lifeblood, and He is our peace, which is the foundation for hearing His voice. It will be very difficult for us to stir up our hearts and keep them passionate and alive without being willing to rest in His presence.

So in the midst of waiting for change, we need to be willing to rest. In the New American Standard translation of Psalm 24:17, it reads, “Let your heart take courage” (emphasis added). If we are worrying and striving and trying to make things happen, it will be very difficult for us to find our peace in God. It will be difficult for us to remember Him.

Today, if you find yourself brought low by anxiety, despair or the apparent lack of movement in your life, let your heart take courage by being quiet in His presence. This is the starting point for everything we do. There, God will prepare us for the change He is bringing and for the next step in the promise He has given us.

2. Be captivated.

Paul wrote in Romans 10 that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. The level of “hearing” that Paul talked about means to be enraptured, to be captivated, to be totally consumed, to be focused on the Word—that is what increases our faith.

What has God told you? Be like the persistent widow in Luke 18 who would not allow the judge to forget her case.

If it has been awhile since you have actively remembered the promise God gave you, change that. Think about it. Remember it. Write it on a note card and tape it to your bathroom mirror.

Be captivated by God. Open your heart to hearing His quiet voice in the area of His promise.

3. Be willing to take risks.

Finally, we need to consider taking steps we have never taken before. Perhaps God has already set up everything we need, and the only thing left for us to do now is take the risk that He’s calling us to take at the time he’s calling us to take it.

Peter took a lot of risks. The New Testament is filled with wild stories about him. Something daring and unorthodox was in him from the beginning. He didn’t always take the right risks, yet God never chastised him for being zealous.

If you do these three things—rest in God, be captivated by Him, and be willing to take the risks He sets before you to take—then you are guaranteed to see change because you are seeking God. You are holding on to His promises, and you are remembering His voice. You are honoring Him, and that is no small thing.

Today, be strong and let your heart take courage.

Martin Luther WTG!

2011-06-27T23:50:00.003+01:00

Martin Luther - way to go!!!:

When I preach I regard neither doctors nor magistrates, of whom I have above forty in the congregation, I have all my eyes on the maidservants and on the children. If the learned men are not well pleased with what they hear, well, the door is open".

Here's a wee excerpt....

2011-06-24T00:31:00.007+01:00

Here's a wee excerpt from the book. I am sharing it because this week I have become more convinced than ever about the final point (3) at the foot of the post - love sullen teens in you church as much as the cutest baby and you will play such a key part in loving them through their periods of doubt, questioning and stubborn-ness.

John Westerhoff’s Theory of Faith Development

The four types of faith outlined below are helpful when thinking not just about children, but about people of all ages who make up our congregations. Westerhoff describes faith as a verb i.e. a way of behaving. He points out that these are generalizations and not meant to box children or adults into distinct categories.

Stage (1) begins with an “experienced faith” – children first learn about Christ not by what we say or teach theologically but by the experiences they have connected with those around them. They sense, explore, observe and copy the stimuli around them, and experience through interaction.

This stage is where children form their impressions of God from their experiences of Christians and church. This means that I would like to do all I can to ensure that the child’s experience of church is marked by love, trust and care. The volunteers who look after him/her need to be taught about the importance of these early days. The church crèche/nursery therefore becomes a hothouse environment for demonstrating the love and faithfulness of God. The physical space becomes very important – clean, warm, well resourced. The very best volunteers who want to be in crèche (not hard pressed parents!) serve the youngest members of the congregation. Loving grandparents, aunties and uncles become the voice and touch of Jesus to the babes they cradle. The community can help faith to grow - belief that children possess spirituality which we expect will grow to personal faith in a loving God.

Stage (2) “affiliative faith”.
This follows naturally on from Stage 1, assuming the needs of experienced faith have been met during childhood/early adolescence. Belonging is key - membership of an accepting community of faith is important. A clear sense of identity is formed – for example, this is my church, we sing these songs as we gather together. The children join in with the activities of the community, such as story-telling or singing, and share something of the awe and mystery that holds the community together. The child needs to be accepted and to feel a sense of togetherness and will take on board much that a significant and trusted leader gives to them.

So I would, as a pastor/team leader, make sure that I was visible and consistent in my love for and time with the children and young people. I ask my volunteers to give a regular and sustained commitment to the children so that relationship was built up and a group identity was formed. Again, physical space is important – for young people to have a place that is “theirs”. Story cushions, rhythm and routine are all things that help – although with teenagers a degree of flexibility (exhibited by skilled leaders) within a routine is preferable.

Westerhoff points out that the church must be constantly aware of its story and tell it often . Therefore Christmas and Easter all age services and celebrations are of immense significance to growing faith not just in the young but to adults as well. The church celebrates her shared story.

Stage (3) Providing the needs of affiliative faith have been met, the child/young person/adult then enters a “searching faith” phase, where s/he will question, experiment, look at other points of view and finally arrive at a faith that works because it makes sense to them, rather than because someone else has taught them to believe it. This is a necessary part of gaining identity and a strengthened ability to trust in God.

This is a time where young people’s leaders need to tolerate – and dare I say, welcome, questions and comments that express doubt or fear. Here, in my personal view, is one of the most important quotes from Westerhoff’s seminal book, written in 1976 but with deep prophetic significance for church leaders today:

“It appears, regretfully, that many adults in the church have never had the benefit of an environment that encouraged searching faith. And so they are often frightened or disturbed by adolescents who are struggling to enlarge their affiliative faith to include searching faith. Some persons are forced out of the church during this state and, sadly, some never return; others remain in searching faith for the rest of their lives….we must remember that persons with searching faith still need to have all the needs of experienced and dependent faith met, even though they may appear to have cast them aside. And surely they need to be encouraged to remain within the faith community during their intellectual struggle, experimentation and first endeavours at commitment ”.

Key here is the word “community”. The community must be awash with the love of God that accepts the fragile newborn as much as the cute toddler as much as the difficult, moody teenager. And also important is consistency. People who will stick around young people and exhibit love. Who have some flexibility in the way they teach and model Christian living and who are experienced too in the supernatural; to be a gateway into the experiential side of faith so that it does not become a dry set of rules, an inappropriately cerebral bible study or a collection of oft-told stories (did you know that can happen in your teenage groups too?)

Stage (4) Once the needs of searching faith has been met, “owned faith” should follow. This is a mature holding together of things that have been taught so far along and alongside a demonstrated change in behaviour and attitudes. The person with owned faith tries to show it by both word and deed. At this stage the Christian is prepared to make a stand for their faith in the face of opposition.

What can we learn from Westerhoff?

1.Faith is growing and dynamic.It is tempting to put an age of each of these stages but that isn’t always possible. I know young people who demonstrate all of the hallmarks of owned faith and live for Jesus with a passion that is firey and infectious. Many adults have not progressed in their faith past the first couple of stages, preferring the “warm fuzzy” stage of belonging and not yet appreciating the lifelong cost of following Jesus.

Note that in Westerhoff’s categories, the conditions for one stage have to be met before advancement to the next. These conditions are vitally important for lifelong discipleship to occur: everything from the warmth and furnishing of the rooms to the love and care shown by the adults to the very young plays a part. The “whole package” is needed – lovely rooms on their own won’t do it if the faith community just manages to tolerate children (knowing that a “good” church should have children in it) but neither will lots of loving adults working alongside children in cold and bare rooms give a consistent message. Think of the gardening metaphor – we want the optimum growing conditions for the seedlings to flourish.

And is it possible that the simple love and trust exhibited by a child who loves Jesus because they have been taught that he loves them, is – in God’s eyes – faith in him? Trust has been exhibited at the cognitive level of development appropriate to that young child.

Westerhoff uses the analogy of a tree to describe the growth of faith in developing human persons. He says “a tree with one ring is as much a tree as a tree with four rings” , in other words experienced faith is as valuable for a person to possess as owned faith.

However he makes it clear that faith is a journey and the goal should be to move towards owned faith; which is the point at which one would lay their life down for their faith. I want to make it clear that repentance – saying sorry – for the things the child does wrong is a vital part of this journey, which leads neatly into further points to pick up from Westerhoff.

2. Children and young people need to make the faith and belief their own – just the same as adults!
The searching faith phase indicates that a period of questioning is natural and normal and may in fact be necessary for young people to fully commit to the Christian faith. It is therefore helpful for a child/teenager to have experiences of God as well as lots of information – head knowledge - about him. This helps him weigh up whether he wants to know more about him!

It is possibly at this stage that a lot of youngsters give up on the church, as they weigh up and test what they have been told. We as leaders must not be afraid of letting young people try things out, ask (what seems to be) antagonistic questions and disagree with our theology. Patiently loving them through this time is not an option if we are to retain our children.

I think it’s really important not to walk in expectation of rebellion. There is a difference between asking questions because the young person sees a disconnect between what they are being told and what they see, and outright rejection and rebellion.

Because we suspect that the end result might be rebellion, we (parents/leaders) may tend to “crack down” on questions or attitudes on display that we feel we have already answered or should not see, and become impatient, intolerant and perhaps even angry with the young person. Consider the following, which seems entirely logical to me:
How do I know he is with me if I don’t feel he is near?
Am I just to believe without substance?
How do I know God still does things today like the amazing things in the Bible?

Is this rebellious talk? Or are these not genuine questions from a child or adolescent at the “searching phase” of faith development?

The role of the pastor/parents/adults involved with young people at this point of their faith development is one of loving acceptance, not rebuking. Instruction IS needed, but only after we have exhibited:
(a) patient listening to the things that young person have to say as this allows them to draw their own conclusions
(b) good modelling of the truth of Jesus’ words as lived out by us as adults and
(c) opportunities to experience (practice) the things read about in the pages of the New Testament

I am absolutely convinced that if these three things are determined and sustained practices by the church community, the haemorrhage of children, teenagers and young adults from the church will be arrested and we will end up with confident, secure adults who have “owed faith”. The church community I grew up in exhibited those three things in abundance.

Here is a concrete example. At the time of writing, I have a pre-teen daughter exhibiting sophistication and maturity (in some ways) far beyond her genetic age. She has loved Jesus for as long as she can remember. She has been taught about repentance, about how sin separates us from God and how confessing the things we do wrong and our own selfish attitudes regularly keep the relationship between us and God close. Yet, she has times where she doubts her beliefs. She has moments, regularly at the moment, where she will sit with me and say: “what if I’m wrong, you’re wrong? What is heaven doesn’t exist? What if it is all a fairytale?”

My reaction could be one of deep disappointment, or even anger. Does she not know after all these years of being taught, that God is faithful and true? Is she rejecting the faith of our family outright? What if she says these things in her young people’s group? Woe is me, I am a pastor after all!

But we listen patiently. As parents we reassure her of our love for her and tell her that it is entirely natural to have these thoughts. We let her express them in whatever way she wants to – sometimes this is with tears. We share with her that we have doubts sometimes and when she is ready to listen, we tell her stories of the perseverance of saints who have gone before us. We chew over some Bible passages with her, such as 1 Peter 1:6-9 and talk together (not lecture or teach) about what it means to have testing times, and what reward there is ahead for those who love Jesus even though they haven’t seen him. We tell her how Jesus poured out his heart for us in John 17:20ff and how he lives now to intercede for us.

In short, we offer instruction without loving her any less, nor worrying unduly, nor being disappointed nor angry and we share honestly about our walk with Jesus and testify as often as we can in daily conversation about God’s interaction in our lives. We love her through each and every episode of negative outpourings and deep questioning. I am confident she will continue to walk through this stage into owned faith – the mature holding together of all things. This demonstrates just how necessary it is throughout the teenage years that people love youngsters deeply and listen wisely.

I have become even more convinced than ever before that a much more joined up approach to children and young people is required, because we manage the demonstrated love and affection thing much more with the youngest.

3. An accepting and nurturing community is needed. Love like we might have never shown before.
I've said already that the church community must exhibit deep love towards children and young people. They are to be places where children AND teenagers are valued, can make mistakes, can try things out and most of all can be loved and accepted as individuals who are very special to God.

My observation is that young children, babies and toddlers are easy to love. They are smiled at, passed around and cooed at. We want to have them in our church as “signs of life”. Children who tear around, fidget and make noise during quiet moments of our church services are not quite so easy for some of us to love, particularly if they pick their noses or emit smells. Pre-teens who question everything and might have rather a lot to say can be quite annoying. And insolent, sullen, undemonstrative teenagers are best left to their own devices at the back of the church!

My point from this unflattering and hopefully (!) in accurate pen portrait is that we can tend not to be consistent in our love towards the younger generations. Maybe we are only getting what we deserve when suddenly the younger generations appear to have left the church? Are they a chief consideration in the plans of your church? Is every decision we make loving the young people well? Ignore the need to love on your under-18s and you risk losing a chunk of your church’s future.

Look for staff and volunteers with a heart to love on your children and young people and encourage parents and the whole congregation to love well.

Paul writes:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
[I Corinthians 1:1-7]

Westerhoff source: Will Our Children Have Faith? (Revised Edition)

Is it possible???

2011-06-20T10:47:00.010+01:00

I've been having deep, deep thoughts whilst hanging the washing out.
This is just a series of questions for reflection.

Is it possible to love the institution of the church too much?
Is it possible to be so caught up with what we do to make our church, church, that we actually engage in an act of idolatry by exalting the church to a place above that which it was intended to have?

"I love my church" something I know I have said in the past - a statement that can be difficult to interpret - "I love my fellow called out, chosen ones" - "I love the ones who stand alongside me, marked as different in the community they find themselves" would be more theologically accurate but do we sometimes mean: "I love the experience I have being part of my church"?

There is no doubt that belonging, making "church happen" is incredibly fulfiling - I know this for myself! - but is there not even the tiny potential that worshipping this fact can creep in?

And it is also incredibly possible that we fall in love more with the feeling that comes with being part of the church more than passionately loving the one who is the Head of the church; who loved not his own life but gave it away for those who had no hope of fullness of life.

And for me that is the difficult walk. To know that when guitars cease playing, when shouts of joy tail off, when the last person has been prayed for, outside the doors of our experience of church there are broken, broken people who are loved by no-one. People so low in depression they don't know whether to keep on breathing tonight. Children who are routinely abused. Business people with loads of money but an empty ache.

In the potential that there undoubtedly is for "glam and show" at conferences and churches today, are we growing disciples who have at the absolute front of their thoughts every night and day, burning love for the Father and a heart for the lost? Every extra day before the point that Jesus returns is an opportunity for more and more people to hear about him. He's longing for people to come to love him (1 Tim 2:4). Maybe some people might not have thought of that.

As a wise man once said: the flow of the river of God is out - to love your experience of church but be unanchored in the community outside the church is not the Jesus way.

The most worrying trend that I have ever observed is Christians caught in the ghetto of lunch/coffee/nights out with Christians/meetings all the time/Christian-church stuff all the time (even if its under the guise of "we're doing it for the people not in our church") - well, get living life with the people not in the church! Join a club, volunteer at the local hospice, be a Brownie leader, start a book group with people from work, get a part-time job pulling pints - oh, and read David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyon's book: UNchristian........

I can write about this because I have recognised the pull of loving the experience of church too much in my own life. Back in University days one of our wise friends decreed that the 30 or so of us who were studying there should all only get together on Wednesdays for lunch instead of being in and out of each other's flats/social calendars all the time - he said: hang out with your class ALL THE TIME apart from Wednesday lunchtime. We met to eat and spent 2 to 3 hours worshippng and praying for our classmates each and every Wednesday. We didn't see each other again apart from on a Sunday. That was a 1980s missional community (except we didn't call it as such). I remember it was really hard because I loved the warmth and ease of being part of such a vibrant, worshipful, on fire church. But we grew deeper and faster and saw huge inroads in our influence in our classes and faculties.

Hey, heavy thoughts but on a sabbaticalling time you get to see a few churches and these have been my thoughts from some travelling about just now. Hope they are helpful questions, not meant to be condemning ones, just my honest reflections.

Dreams

2011-06-17T19:53:00.009+01:00

My days just now are spent either writing or dreaming at the moment, which seem to be in direct opposition to one another, except that in a way they aren't, as one is feeding into another.

In my last job I sometimes felt guilty about dreaming; things I believed I might see or do, help shape or make happen. I think the guilt came in mainly because I was drowning under the pressure of current things needing my time and attention; i.e. how could I dare to think of taking or something more or something bigger? Surely that was me just grabbing opportunities for more responsibility? ....or....was it possibly me beginning to feel that what I was doing in some ways didn't fit "me"? That I needed some kind of a slight shift? I still love the church's vision, the passion of many of those around me and the young people and the parents I served. I still feel deeply that my time was cut short; that I hadn't finished what I was to do but I really had no alternative to go as I had to obey what God was saying to me to do.(chronicled elsewhere on this blog). I miss people terribly and that hasn't lessened at all, because I see folks round and about in the school/local community, it seems like moving away may be the only option. But at the same time we feel a strong pull to remain here. How can thatwork out in practice? Is that us just being lazy about the whole house pack up/move again?But we have a few more weeks to wait before making any decision.

Careful counsel in this interim period has helped me to see that it is permissable to have dreams of what you might see happening in the kingdom of God and even to call them out - "say what you see". Amongst other things, it gives hope and excitement for the future.

I wrote before about some of the dreams I have been having, a lot to do with bringing older generations together with the young, seniors and parents, and to see intentional discipleship get to another level; discipleship that releases us into the community under authority and with real power.

I read a journal entry last week from 2009 that I had completely forgotten about - the retreat leader asked us to ask the Holy Spirit to show us what we were created to do and I wrote the following: (short excerpt!)

I've created you to break down partitions - they are not barriers because barriers are more sold, more permanent. Partitions are moveable, temporary and often left in place because of convenience; they have always been there so why bother moving them? Yet there is one who can show a different way; that it is possible and will indeed be necessary as we approach the final days. "All hands on deck" will be the phrase of the day; advance the kingdom in signs and wonders using children, teenagers, families, singles, adults of more mature years, EVERYONE!.........The army of God rising up like the terracotta soldiers [in China], each one different, unique. Long buried underground, not known about till that discovery. Each soldier has a set of weapons and is in battle formation.

You will (and have already) encounter great opposition, even from those who carry a revivalist anointing because partitions equal comfort. Partitions mean each need can be catered for comfortably. There has been a time and a place for this but in these days dismantling is necessary as I want to teach the revivalists that great power is exhibited by the weak; the small; the inexperienced; the young. Adults will walk in even greater power when they partner with the young.

I am reading the most remarkable book called: Launching Missional Communities - A Field Guide. So well laid out, (its won an award for it layout), addictive to read (bring on the case studies), theologically sound, all age inclusive and utterly committed to Holy Spirit ministry. I just feel that my experiences thus far, the things in this book, and the call I feel on my life, are all connected. But I'm waiting for God's help to see how these connections are to spark into life together. I think now I have had to come out, come away to allow that to happen. It's so hard though! I've found some studies on Sunday mornings from the book of Samuel to be really helpful, more about that another time perhaps.

Regarding changing the way we do church - it's OK to ask questions. It's OK to have concerns. It's good to experiment, try things out - and even fail! I have ideas that are probably rubbish ones but it could be so much fun working this out together,if we are in a loving community; if we are secure in who we are and in how great God is! One thing I am sure of is this: God places a very high priority on the place of young people and their families in his kingdom purposes. They are natural missionaries, even as preschoolers, or those in school/college, on the threshold of so much, so open to discipleship, so easy to love. I love them.

Perseverance

2011-06-09T14:38:00.005+01:00

I've been away from this blog as I have had loads on my mind that I haven't wanted to blog about.

I am deep in writing the book, awaiting the publisher's feedback to the first section, and have been digging in with the family to be close with God, So many rough corners are being worked on; we feel like we are being sandpapered all over but at the same time are being released from some nasty memories. Am very grateful for the significant conversations and prayers with loving friends from past years and with some pastors looking out for us because they see God all over this period of time, both for us personally and for the book project and whatever comes next. That's reassuring as we feel a bit like nomads.

This week we absolutely cried out for this period to move to a close; so that we can settle children in new schools if necessary after the summer and sort out financial stuff. I love that the people of God can cry out to God. I mean, REALLY cry out to God - it's such a releasing thing to do; if you find it hard, try praying in the dark - a darkened room, when we lose our inhibitions more, wowee, it's quite powerful. We have his ear.

Remembering a prophetic word from March (when no-one knew what was swirling around our heads) - there will be contraction of relationships for a short time. The word went on to say: this is because of the rightness of the decision you are making. So we must persevere in holding firm to promises in Scripture and promises whispered to us by Father God by the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives every single day.

So my passage from today to meditate on is encouraging me to keep my heart submitted to God and to dig in and persevere with what He said; to come away with him and rest, to write, to wait and to keep loving and blessing the things I was once part of. It's from Hebrews 10.
So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.

36 You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. 37 For,

“In just a little while,
he who is coming will come
and will not delay."

38 And,

“But my righteous one will live by faith.
And I take no pleasure
in the one who shrinks back.”

39 But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.

God's Promises Are True

2011-05-29T23:51:00.006+01:00

I felt quite low as I drove along a major motorway on Tuesday night with my children in the back of the car. Feeling the weight of the book-writing as I had a deadline for Thursday. Aware that I was quite alone "between churches" in this interim period of waiting to see what happens next in work/ministry. For forty-five miles a perfect WHOLE arch rainbow was in front of me. I used to teach Geography so I have always been fascinated by rainbows and their relationship to weather; I love watching the refraction of the light through the water droplets against dark clouds. I have rarely seen a full arch rainbow and never for more than a few minutes. But we felt that seeing this one was not a coincidence (I had been having a secret sniffle in the first 10 minutes of the hour and a half drive home).

The three of us were open-mouthed as we travelled with this beautiful rainbow in front of us for forty five miles, right till we reached our own front door.

God's promises can be trusted. He has said he knows what is ahead for me and can be trusted, I've got to wait and trust and work hard to finish the book. The children and I talked this through - what does it look like to trust God through whatever life has for you? - as we continued to watch - after 20 miles or so without the rainbow disappearing, we had the sense that we would continue to see it right till we got home, another 25 miles later!

Thank you God. I'l keep on saying thanks no matter what for ALL the signs of your goodness to us.

The Non-Negotiables

2011-05-23T14:28:00.009+01:00

Following up slightly from the last post (in a Tommy Tangent way, but all will become clear), I thought I'd write a quick post about my ministry non-negotiables.
Have a think about what yours are. Doesn't mean you have to be ordained/staff - in whatever you serve in, what are your non-negotiables?

The background to the post was that I was helping someone prepare for an interview and I asked: what are your non-negotiables? What do you hold dear? This is a very insightful question as the the things the person answers for their own ministry/service will probably be the things they consider high value for themselves i.e. they will look for a church/leaders that demonstrate the same things.

So here's my top 3:

1. LOVE:
I want to overflow with love for kids and families. If you know me then you might know that I truly love the local church; it's an amazing place, I just love it; what it is capable of. It breaks my heart then when it isn't like that. I grieve deeply for my imperfections as a member of the body. I frequently teach on how there is nowhere else quite like the local church; where all generations come together. I was deeply loved and mentored as a teenager by the older generations and this has had a lasting impact on my worldview.

I have found the capacity to love and love well increase over the past years, I can only assume that's because the closer we get to God, the more he wants to overflow our hearts with love.
Whatever else I don't manage to do; wherever I have let people down, I am confident that they would say "she loved". I am less concerned with activity and programme and events (the rush to gain approval and make folks think we are effective by the amount of programmed events happening) and more concerned that I love well. With youngsters it is ALL about relationship - they (and their parents!) can "sniff out" an absence of genuine love and care towards them. Conversely, they show great love and loyalty when they feel loved, listened to and thought of. Young people and their families must be represented at the highest level of church decision-making. I'm not stepping into the firing line any further than this - see the short section on "Advice to Senior Pastors" in George Barna's book "Transforming Your Children Into Spiritual Champions"! But pray for senior leaders - so much is pressing upon them for their time and attention. It ain't easy.....

Quite embarrassingly, one of the children's ministry team in the church we are visiting just now apologised on my first day for her (perceived) lack of preparation as my children joined the group for their morning activities. I reassured her by saying that all I was concerned about was that she loved on the children. Love covers a multitude of wrongs! It never gives up. It looks for the good instead of failure.

In my earlier years, Mr HIWWC and I were leaders then a discipling couple involved to the youth group in church. At the same time I was a teacher in secondary school. One of the things I tried to practice in both roles was to add value to every young person when I interacted with them. I tried to notice the good, praise sincerely and love unconditionally, not taking their strops personally (!)

When such a desire prevails, even the angriest youngster can be transformed by a kind word that builds up his/her self-esteem. Love brings trust. In 2002, I remember taking my newborn son into see a class of Third years where the girls had been difficult to teach and dislayed pretty nasty attitudes to me and to each other. I remember giving my tiny baby to a girl I shall call N to hold. She cradled him, I think she felt so honoured that I trusted her to hold him. But I did. I wanted her to know I trusted her. When I returned to work after maternity leave, her attitude to me had completely changed. She listened attentively, worked hard and was a pleaure to teach. All because I honoured her and trusted her. As a teacher, I really loved my pupils with the love God had placed in my hearts.

I've lost the rag with my own kids of course, really badly. I'm not perfect. But I'm work-in-progress under grace when I confessed that I have blown it.

2. THE MANIFEST PRESENCE OF GOD
What does this mean? Why is this a non-negotiable to mE? Put simply - I need it. I covet it, I want it, I don't want God's presence to leave me. I want to experience it, i.e. feel it in my emotions as well as by faith in my head! Three years ago I posted about this passage in Exodus , so apologies to blog followers with good memories for bringing it up again, but now this OT foreshadow of God's self-revealing is complete - the presence of God brought home to our hearts by Jesus, our great high priest. And because I love him and because he wants to pour out his love into our hearts, I expect that to happen when I take time out to worship or gather corporately to worship. And it's NOT JUST ABOUT SINGING SONGS!! - although bring me the prophetic minstrels who so often precede God speaking - check out 2 Kings 3:15.

This desire for God's presence is the link to yesterday's post, sometimes it's as simple as in the intake of a breath that you are deeply aware of God's presence. SO this is also a THEOLOGICAL non-negotiable to me for I teach children and young people (and when I gather teams together) about the whole dynamic of praise, worship, adoration, reverence and intimacy because if folks don't get this when they're young then they're going to struggle later on. Frightening Barna findings on this - found in the book "Real Teens" - 69% of 13 year olds who profess to be Christians have never experienced a sense of God's presence.

3. HUMILITY
Finally, I am attracted to the school of "I can't, but he can". I suppose this is particularly acute in my life because God drew someone (me) who worked with teenagers and adults within church and outside church and asked them to work with children, teenagers and adults. Over the past eight years he has refined my skills there, taken me down the road of theological qualification and placed me in two great churches that taught me loads. He did a Jehovah Sneaky on me mid-2003 and popped in the heart for children. Why? Because many folks do adult ministry and lots do youth ministry, but who has a heart for them all together? i.e. stops seeing partitions? I freely admit I wouldn't have chosen the path I've been on if I wasn't woo-ed, drawn and desperate to be obedient.

There are many, many things that this role could entail that I simply can't do - so that's where I believe in building team. And I am very drawn to facedown encounters with God when new strategies are in the off-ing, not relying just on discussions based on strength and competency. This is the way Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians:

Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.

So this is a non-negotiable for me that I imprint on the mind of the teams that I supervised - yes, prepare teaching inputs well, yes, pre-plan and organise your ministry yes, have the highest standards of safeguarding - but come in humility, asking him to work through you.

This (short) post needs to stop here: so have a go in the comments - what are YOUR non negotiables for your church/your job/your family?

Song of the week

2011-05-20T00:16:00.004+01:00

This song is related to the post that follows (maybe tomorrow!)

Father, I am waiting.
I'm not very good at it.

At home on Monday and Thursday I could have literally breathed you in, your presence was so close. And on Tuesday and Wednesday at the conference, in the morning worship, I felt myself take that tentative intake of breath where I just knew I was experiencing your manifest presence - I found myself taking a tiny inhale and exhale - as if I could chase you away by a hearty breath - how silly!

It's at times like this that I want to give my life to make sure that the next generation of Jesus followers know what it is welcome your presence.

More tomorrow.

Missional Communities and Children

2011-05-08T01:15:00.008+01:00

If you have been following my story a little you will know why the excerpt from the interview below is ver-r-r-r-r-y interesting. You might also know I am on a three month break to attempt to write a book on all things to do with children's spiritual development, outreach and mission to the young and their families and how to do this in the context of the wider church.

I'm not wanting to go back the way to recount again the past few weeks as I am feeling a fresh wave of thankfulness, gratefulness and hope for the future (after a very low low on Wednesday). I've now resolved in my mind that part of what I have been going through, in the past few posts, has been for the following reason:-

This writing project and time out to reflect and to talk to others means that IN PARTICULAR I can hone in on how younger ones, lone parents and families who I love with all of my heart might fit into and GROW into the missional church model that my church bravely entered into. What is God's Spirit saying about missional communities and families and kids/teens?

Already I have had some vivid new dreams about what this might look like. Like, what shape it would actually take to make it begin to happen, but in the dream it isn't me that's giving it shape, I'm simply facilitating, it's the people gathered together under a waterfall, a pouring out of God's Spirit who receive the details he breathed into them. It feels as if I am seeing a fresh and new perspective because I am away from it all. Is it possible that precisely when you're not IN something you can see something new?

It's important to note that the things I've experienced with missional expressions were not because they were wrong - I don't think that nor have ever thought that. Missional expressions/communities turn inward-focussed Bible study groups into groups of people who look at local needs and ask the Spirit of God to lead them deeper in what it means to do the kinds of things that Jesus would do. Therefore, once they are ablaze with the Spirit's power and living out of a deep, personal revelation of the Father's love and a solid foundation on his word, there is literally nothing they can't tackle head on!

So half-hearted meeting together for Bible study out of routine, struggling every step of the way is not what I envisage. Nor is a tight community of people of similar socio-economic backgrounds what I envisage.

Radical, Holy Spirit empowered encounters deeply engrained in simply loving the community around and watching and listening for the people God is bringing across one's path is what I really want to be part of.

I personally love looking out for the Person of Peace God puts across my path(the terminology used) as I know in my noah what that means; that one who you pray for and love to bits and look for ways to love and serve. Someone who, for that period of time, is receptive to you and the good news about Jesus. For reasons of confidentiality its best to share an example from many years ago. Someone I knew vaguely was very ill a few years ago and it became clear that she was my Person of Peace. For a long time I thought of her, prayed for her and tried to do practical things to help her as often as I could. I still miss her and think of her often.

The greatest privilege was asking if I could pray for her in hospital and seeing her full recovery some time later. The whole point of the person of peace is that we love them and serve them.

Back to the last week's research on missional communities and children, teenagers and families. This forms part of what I'm writing and follows on from my first chapter, an examination of how children and new Christians learn and grow in their faith and the second chapter, the place of nurture, which missional communities are so well placed to offer, if they are growing well.

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Mike Breen, who is widely credited as one of the first people to practise missional communities in his church in Sheffield (Mike now lives in the States). You can read the whole interview here, on Fuller Theological Seminary's blog.

The parts in bold are the interviewer's questions:

I don’t think I’ve read any book on the missional church that spends as much time discussing how to create space for families and children. What are the primary difficulties you’ve seen incorporating children and families into these types of communities? Why is it worth the effort to do this?

Well like I said above, I think there are different ways of incorporating kids into Missional Community life. There isn’t one way we’ve found best to do it; it generally depends on the mission context, age of the kids, temperament and work situation of the parents, size of the meeting spot, etc. But at a bare minimum, we would say that kids need to be seeing their parents involved in mission and discipleship and participating with them. We’ve done a fair amount of research on this and what came to light is that kids who have atheist or agnostic parents have a better chance of having a strong faith than kids who have parents that go to church, but don’t ever disciple their kids themselves. There’s simply too much dissonance there. Parents must be the primary disciplers of their kids and Missional Communities let this happen.

The reason it’s worth it is because this allows our kids to journey into a story bigger and far more important than the consumeristic narcissism they are sold everywhere else. And parents and spiritual aunts and uncles have to show them how to live this kind of life if it’s going to stick.

And so, for me in the quote above Mike Breen highlights this kind of thing that I've banged on about before and I personally can't wait to hear what else he says when he speaks in Scotland next week.

Come as a child.....

2011-05-05T21:41:00.009+01:00

Watch this - hilarious and also serious:-

Goes to show how much children are natural copy-ers of what we do and say - our mannerisms and and intonation.

This small clip resounds with depth for anyone with a heart for discipling (people of any ages!)

- is our chat something we want copied by those "learning"? Is our chat engaging and even delightful to listen to?

- Even more importantly, what does our chat sounds like not just when we are "on show", but when we are in more private places; in the kitchen, in the car with our partner/kids, frustrated with a slow download (!)

- do our hands follow through with what we are saying? Are we combining talk with a life lived differently?. God's Way is not a matter of mere talk; it's an empowered life. (1 Cor 4:20 from The Message)

- do we talk with one another in a state of utter vulnerability (as represented by the babies' half-nakedness?)or do we dress it all up with fancy clothes and fancy words?

In this clip which I have watched several times today while meditating on some scriptures, I wonder if many of us are not entering a stage where what we know is being stripped back. Stripped back to the bare essentials!!

It's a time for simplicity, not for fancy stuff. Time to love, time to pray, time to aligned hearts, time to practice selfless actions, admitting mistakes, time to love beyond anything else, move on and grow, honour one another, persue passion and holiness and the kingdom above anything else. Anything else. Ambition, empire, fame or fortune.

Who are your runners? Who runs with you? Forget the strategies or politics or plans for a moment, these are the ones you can have heart to heart exchanges with, talking about dreams and visions and stuff that's exciting you. And this, I believe is key: you will not always understand everything the other is saying, you will not always be able to talk back in a way that they firmly understand, but you are united in your love for one another and for the Father. This is kingdom.

"da da da da-da-da da da-da da" to you:-)

I've probably gone far too deep with this innocent wee youtube clip, but its impacted me quite a lot today!

Some of my favourite things this week

2011-04-29T15:13:00.008+01:00

1. The Song below: - which has long been a favourite and reminds me of the power of music. Tracks like this can catapault us from a list of "to do's" and pressure to perform/be seen to be doing ...into the presence of God. The best place to be when seeking future direction. Check out 2 Kings 3:15 - now bring me a harpist. While the harpist was playing, the hand of the Lord came upon Elisha and he said....(prophetic direction was received in the next verses in the passage)

So this acoustic Brian Johnson song has been on repeat play this week for me. I love it.

2. The Sun (not the paper, the big light in the sky)
I've been able to sit outside reading. Marvellous. Day after day, in a wee sheltered spot in my garden.

3. Coffee with a pal
who I have known for a long time - since the early 90s! - but not that well. Ironically since we moved away from our previous place of abode we have met in more and more circles and this week we had lots of time to talk of dreams and visions and ways we might believe God is leading us to see the fulfillment of promises of a fresh awakening in our land! Please Lord, in our lifetime - we both knew of such longing and yearning all over the place in the Body of Christ for revival. How wonderful it is to talk of the things of the Lord that you long to see with a passion in this nation! That conversation turned the whole week round for me as it was utterly life-giving.

4. A very special card from the most unexpected folks in the church I have just left, one I'll treasure.

5. My beautiful family - it's been a hard, hard week with lots of tears but we have seen incredible breakthrough in our children's lives. My 8 year old son saw an angel who spoke to him on Good Friday as he broke down in tears as he saw afresh how much Jesus had sacrificed for him , and my daughter has shown incredible maturity as we have thrown ourselves onto God.

6. A blog post - this is simply phenomenal - (dated Wed April 27th if the blog has been updated since I first posted the link). I have been thinking a lot about preaching and teaching as I "sabbatical" it for now (for ever??). I sense God's saying: reflect, listen and learn - so I just "happened" to read this yesterday. Like me, Alyn was a secondary teacher and I love visual stimuli because I struggle with solely relying on the auditory mode of learning. (and I couldn't have got away with it for the past eight years. I'd have been beaten to a pulp by over 300 kids!!)

Awesome stuff and they are an awesome couple, used by God. Just because someone is a teacher, must they always teach?...

May this week mark the start of something new....

Next...?

2011-04-25T00:33:00.007+01:00

So what am I going to be doing next?

This makes quite a story, and if you want to know more about the overt supernatural confirmation following extreme instances of God speaking, then email me (address elsewhere on this blog). I can't promise any quick fix for stressful situations you as hundreds of page viewers might be going through. It's borne out of laying everything down - hopes, dreams, disappointments, successes, fruitfulness - pure letting go. Everything we as a family know is shaking just now....our new(ish) life in this city, our house, our friends, our church and our job titles and roles. For Mr HIWWC might have to leave his job too if we move house/city. Over the next three months we are holding it all so lightly. The following verses from John 12 are in my head constantly:

Jesus replied: Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me.

I'm thinking about the kinds of things I have been doing in my current church/role which I have SO loved doing; some of it was new for me and lots of it was building on things from the past. I've got lots to take with me, and as I said to my ex-SP last week, I have learned so much from him and from being part of a senior staff team. But I can't look back and hang onto that as a stationary (safe) place in the past. There is always more for those who let go.

But because I am OUT of the situation (for that read: unemployed!!) - I'm thinking about the challenges and solutions to the missional community dilemma (see previous posts). I had several ideas in my head around Chistmas to February but they weren't received for many reasons....that's made me more determined to think about the building blocks that need to be in place for someone else to move it all on or for me to take on to somewhere else. But MORE THAN THAT, we, as a family have turned to prayer. Prayer for those we have left behind, prayer for the leaders who have decisions to make. Prayer for ourselves and especially for our own children.

In the last week I have done some further research that has led me to reflect on the intergenerational family cells I set up in my last church - you can read more in these posts here from 2008 . (labelled intergenerational). Skip past the "Pray Any Way" post to the older posts at the bottom.

We love the Word, the Spirit and the mission that was clearly evident in the church that we have just left. And yet....some stuff moved on and developed that meant I was on the outside looking in. That which I was called to do had changed. It's only now that a number of people (well-meaningly) have said they saw that happening to the area of work that I do. I feel a bit naive that I kind thought it would all work out OK, that the family/kids stuff in our missional communities would just naturally work, when the opposite was being experienced and fed back to me. I was, at that time, powerless to solve the situation I found myself in.

I have to lay it down for the love of the body of people I tried to serve. I tried my best but it was too hard and things were hurting me. I left with blessing on both sides and a continued love for those we have invested hugely in. Parting, as Romeo or Juliet said, is such sweet sorrow. But I pray blessing on the fellowship as we begin to seek out a new safe place to be.

I love the local church so much that I lie awake at night sometimes, dreaming of what is to come. I have even painted what I saw!! And I don't paint. (except for early morning on this one retreat). I know that children, wee ones and teenagers, and their parents (not just kids, not just parents) are part of an amazing harvest that is to come and that once again the church will be listened to in the realm of parenting, fathering especially, and in providing a stable and secure base for the young and their families to grow. And we will be poised to disciple the young who in turn will reach out to the adults who care for them, and vice versa. This will be part of missional discipleship. I found Mike Breen's latest thoughts on this very helpful.

I suppose in my heart I know have a much clearer idea of "my ideal job" in the future but because God has said "rest, read, write and don't plan, be obedient in these 3 months then I will reveal what comes next", I'm having to let that go too. I might never see that dream role. I've GOT to lay it down or the frustration of it will be counter-productive. I may never speak at a conference, preach, train teams, lead kids teams and inspire volunteers ever again. But I feel I need to be in that place for a season, without knowing what comes next. If you pray, please pray for me, I won't necessarily find that easy but I long to be obedient. That is the better place.......

The one thing God did engineer amazingly, is now coming to life out of thoughts and dreams from 2008, 2009 and Feb 2011. To write the book on the kinds of topics I've covered in little posts here and in talks/sermons delivered and training packs I have written.

In summary, I am going to take three months out to read, write and reflect. After that - unknown.

I have a interested publisher and a strong vision of what I want to write which I shan't go into in great detail here - no doubt some of this will come out in the blog posts ahead - but read through the labels on the right hand side of the blog (excluding the "personal" ones - and you'll get some of it there!) but the emphasis will be on how our churches can have a missional focus on kids, teens and their families. More to follow (but the intergenerational posts are a good start).

Leaving.......

2011-04-20T17:58:00.005+01:00

This is a quick post to update readers on something pretty major in my life, in our lives as a family.

I have resigned from my current employment.

The job I was called to do is no longer the same. By the leadership's own admission, the role has changed, the requirements of the job were not the same and while it was lovingly said to me that I was the one who could lead it forward, I personally came up against too many things that led me to believe otherwise.

Our church moved into a missional community model some 18 months ago and it has become clear to me and many families that deep thought is needed with regard to missional communities and children, teenagers and families. Coming "out" from the centre to meet as missional communities once a month, has not been adopted wholescale by families, far from it in fact. This meant that I have felt torn in two:-

1. I was envisioning and overseeing a vibrant, committed team and a bunch of 100 + children who were "getting it" big time - loving God passionately, stepping out boldly, praying for their friends intentionally and beginning to worship intently, and seeing midweek/community/pastoral stuff kick on too.

2. At the same time, I was to resource missional communities - but NOT to take control - they are to take ownership of their own Sunday meetings, be it teaching/worship or social/outreach. So some of the stuff at the end of point 1. above was to stop being done at the centre and be done by the missional communities.

Hmmm, so was I a control freak at the centre? I hope not. Anyone who knows me knows that I release and empower teams to do things, I am not a children's worker who runs around doing all the stuff. I set a clear vision and train into this, then I model how we'll get there, then I let folks get on with it, whilst loving my volunteers, praying with them and for them, training them and supporting them on specifics. I also spearhead missional initiatives (parenting courses, daytime/teatime alpha/holiday club) and provide pastoral care to individuals and families. I try to tune in and listen to the Father for what was to come next and in particular, who was I to watch out for next, encourage or pray for or meet with.

Over the coming months and in further writing I will hopefully be able to think of strategies to overcome some of these challenges. It is not appropriate for me to tease this out further out on a public blog but I did try my best and I did make a number of suggestions. But it clearly isn't to be to me who takes this forward so I have bowed out graciously and gracefully. I think I have managed to leave well, with blessing on both sides.

The last six months has been painful and heartbreaking at times as I tussled with the difficulties and also witnessed God's hand on the children and family ministry. We travelled far in quite a short time and I trust I have left something of a legacy for the future.

I am not going onto another job at this moment in time as I am to reflect and write some stuff for a period of 3 months, an informal sabbatical time and hugely welcomed after 8 years as a children and family pastor. I'll maybe write something more about that as time progresses. Suffice to say, I have been ASTOUNDED by my loving Father's provision - he knows my heart and he knows what I need.

My resignation has been met with sadness and dismay and I am at the moment processing that as I am grieving deeply. I really love those I pastored and led, very deeply. It hurts.

The illogical - the birthing place of faith

2011-03-28T15:02:00.001+01:00

The title of this post was spoken over me just over two weeks ago after a phone call from a friend we haven't seen for over 2 and a half years. This phone call followed a one line exchange on facebook. He is a wise, wise man with a prophetic ministry. He knows what he's talking about with regard to doing the unexpected and unusual! The illogical, not the logical, is the birthing place of faith. Stable and straw. Fishes and loaves. Water and wine. Cross and resurrection...

More remarkably, this guy did not know anything of my thoughts and dreams about the future. The things I would like to see happening. The things I have loved doing and want to do more of. I'm at a place this week of stepping back in wonder and amazement at watching what God is doing amongst people who don't know him yet, to woo them and draw them in.

Just this week in my second Alpha contribution of the day (Morning then Evening!) I had the absolute pleasure of dancing (yes, DANCING!) with grown women (in a hermetically sealed room, doors and window blinds)to a song by Nick and Becky Drake. To protect the innocent I can't say much except that this was a small alpha group and I was the only one who had been part of church for any length of time yet following a comment about how, six months earlier at the holiday club service, a guest had said that the song "That's How You Made Me" had stirred up so much emotion in her that she wanted to investigate more into this ONE who had made her. She said it was such a happy song, it made her want to dance and I just found myself saying: "well, shall we?" (N & B are always on my iPod and we have speakers in our meeting rooms!!)

We danced and danced and God's presence came in this room (blinds drawn!!), I was crying out for joy and we all danced. We danced for joy, we danced with joy, we danced and experienced joy in a deep place.

Later that day, I was the speaker at the evening alpha course on one of my favourite topics - healing. We looked at the character of God to heal in the OT, we examined the mandate given to us in the NT, we looked at healing in church history and finally we looked at the values behind praying for healing. I had received four words of knowledge. I always say that these *might* be right, or they might not be! There were five people there so I reckoned we might be able to pray for one or two of the conditions (and one of them was a word I didn't recognise!) All of them were claimed!

And once the first person had experienced some relief of pain I got them to pray for the next, and so on. I was so touched when one guest said: "But surely I'm not qualified to pray?" He said he received immediate relief from an aggravating symptom and when I suggested it, he was keen to give praying a go.....my heart melted when he asked if that was OK as surely he wasn't qualified? I explained God's grace and how we are qualified through Jesus. There was more than one of us in that room with tears in our eyes as we watched someone who might have never prayed before in the name of Jesus for another person's physical pain. His prayer was simple, heartfelt, and (to my mind) prayed with child-like faith.

And so it's been a week where things have happened that I neither planned nor expected. At the same time I have felt deep, deep child-like joy like I haven't experienced for quite a while. The two seem inextricably linked.......

Abandonment and Children

2011-03-22T22:51:00.009Z

Yesterday I listened to Mark Stibbe speak about healing abandonment and the orphan heart condition. It was a great day (apart from the pews/greyhound stalls. For 6 hours.)

The author Jacqueline Wilson came to mind so clearly. Not because I was thinking about anything in her past (honest! the leaders' day was about me examining myself!) but because I found my mind turning to the young who are hurting in THIS country, who feel grief stricken and abandoned. How could the church help? What might I be able to facilitate? I was thinking about a meeting I have set up between a secular charity that supports Young Carers and a couple of our missional expressions (MEs). The charity had asked me if they could refer young children and teenagers who are caring for a sick parent to us for love and support. We'd love to help.

This contact has made me very excited about the increasing role the church in Britain could have to drive forward a manifesto of love, without conditions (you need to do this for me, come to this church service for me etc), simply demonstrating the love the Father has shown to us. One of my most favourite topics of conversation with people who are not yet Christians is to honour them in their role of being mum or dad - to thank them for allowing us to look after their children at our clubs/parties/summer club, with genuine feeling I love saying that we just want to support them in the hard task of being a good mum or dad. And I know we hold key information to heal up hurting hearts to make parenting even easier and better. I'm longing for MORE opportunities to show Jesus. I walk through the playground less often now as my children are getting bigger, but enough times in a week to pray for mums and dads waiting on the most precious possession of theirs to hurtle out the doors....

In addition, for children and teenagers who are hurting, what could I write or do one day in future years that would be a resource or a help to them? How could I spread the message of what God thinks; how he longs to heal and help. I was thinking about my links with social workers and my many years in education, and I was letting my mind have blue sky dreams.

But then I thought of how I would love to talk to Jacqueline Wilson, interview her, in order that I could understand her writing better. My daughter devours every book that she writes and she is discussed and studied in class. She has tapped into something that children identify with and writes in a style that engages them.

A central theme in many of her books is that of abandonment. Her characters find themselves in dark circumstances, facing up to the fact that the grown-up world offers death, divorce, abandonment. They feel grief, rage and pain as a result. She is known for writing about the powerful emotions children feel with immense truthfulness rather than treating children as little creatures inhabiting their own sweet world.

There are some fascinating discussions on the Mumsnet forum regarding JW books...but that's an aside!

My daughter recently read the book "Hetty Feather" and was desperate for us to visit The Foundling Museum in London in our February break. We did and I found it such an emotional experience. I would urge any blog readers to go there if you can, its hidden away (use the website to help you get there) and quite small, but immensely moving.

More than 4,000 babies were left at the Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1760, and a small object or token, usually a piece of fabric, was kept as an identifying record. The fabric was either provided by the mother or cut from the child’s clothing by the hospital's nurses. Attached to registration forms and bound up into ledgers, these pieces of fabric form the largest collection of everyday textiles surviving in Britain from the 18th Century.

The process of giving over a baby to the hospital was anonymous. It was a form of adoption, whereby the hospital became the infant’s parent and its previous identity was effaced. The mother’s name was not recorded, but many left personal notes or letters exhorting the hospital to care for their child. Occasionally children were reclaimed. The pieces of fabric in the ledgers were kept, with the expectation that they could be used to identify the child if it was returned to its mother.

The textiles are both beautiful and poignant, embedded in a rich social history. Each swatch reflects the life of a single infant child.

I found it hard to hold back the tears as I walked round this exhibit and I felt the Father say: this abandonment has marked this city (London)

Yet allow me to honour the charity who started the Foundling Hospital. Coram. Founded by Captain Thomas Coram, a philanthropist who wanted to provide care for children left dying on London’s streets, Coram is believed to be the UK's first ever children’s charity. Their pioneering work attracted some historically significant patrons including the artist William Hogarth and composer George Frideric Handel.

Hetty Feather, in Jaqueline Wilson's book, was in the care of the Foundling Children's Hospital in the 1880s and it remained open till as late as 1954, when the Children Act changed what children needed from charities. A move to see children placed with families rather than in institutions re-orientated the work of the charity.

Coram's website says: Over 270 years later, what we do makes a real difference to children. Our adoption service has one of the highest success rates in the country. 98% of parents on our family support programmes say that our work brings positive change.

Father, thank you for the pioneering work done by people who loved children and who still continue this today. Please bless the charity in their task of helping human beings to flourish.

Everybody wants to change the world, but no-one wants to teach Sunday School

2011-03-13T22:41:00.003Z

This is a very stirring post.

Huge thanks to the person who sent it my way.

"Teaching Sunday School may never be sexy. But it is one of the most valuable, sacrificial, and yes, radical things you can do for a church. So when they ask for volunteers next session, you—yes, you—should consider it."

Children's Pastor v Family Pastor

2011-02-24T10:18:00.003Z

This is a very interesting read, although again please note the North American context which over and over again I find myself saying does not allow for complete transference across here. Britain is still, on the whole, a nation with one or a few employees per church, not a whole stack of specialisms.

I've been following a bit of a conversation on some US blogs - some churches have children's pastors and some churches have family pastors.

Over here churches tend to have youth workers, children's workers, community workers, children and family workers and (less often) Children's Pastors and (even more rare) what I am, a Children and Family Pastor. Youth and Children's Minister is quite common, with responsibility for those aged 0-18....

Rarer still, I play my part within the context of a team who share many tasks of pastoral care, service planning and vision casting to our volunteers following the elders' lead. I also teach and lead services.

How would you see this kind of role in your church? Does the job title really matter?

Holiday Clubs REALLY do work.....

2011-02-01T20:53:00.006Z

Fun activities that tell kids more about Jesus really do have an impact on children, the Barna group has found. Fun missions activities for children can have a significant spiritual impact on those who attend, a survey by the Barna group has shown. The US group surveyed thousands of children who attended 'SuperKids', one and two week outreach missions run by Scripture Union USA during the summer of 2010.

It found that as a result of the programme, 85% of the children who took part felt more loved by God and that over 80% said they learned new things about God and Jesus. More than 30,000 largely at-risk children took part each day in some 90 Superkids outreach missions held in major urban centres and beach resorts across the States.

Sources: children matter and the Barna Organisation (a.k.a. my very favourite researchers)

I think we can conclude that God loves holiday clubs Be blessed as you plan them, even now as you read this!

Can't sleep

2011-01-28T00:36:00.003Z

I was teaching a seminar this week on Holy Spirit gifts to men and women on our year-out programme and there were loads of questions related to past experiences and inaccurate teaching in other places and it so reminded me that the church is CRYING out for solid theological and practical teaching on the Holy Spirit and his work in the world today. One of the personal highlights for me was Professor David Ford teaching on the gift of tongues with such clarity and insight. And he's Prof at Cambridge. CAMBRIDGE!

All of this stuff came flooding back to me, partly related to a proposed second conference on the Holy Spirit in the World today, down in London town.

It's a long, long way away and not cheap to get there...some things are worth investing in though!

Pray Any Way

2011-01-23T23:54:00.005Z

Today Mr HIWWC and I were leading an event called Pray Any Way for Scripture Union Scotland. Do you like the name of the event? About 6 months ago, three children from my church (aged 10) came up with the name at a planning meeting I took them to with SU staff. Pray Any Way nails it exactly - we did lots of different types of praying and whatever kind it was, I'm sure it all pleased God!

How did we get here?

Three and a half years ago I was sitting in a board-type meeting with leaders from many organisations and churches discussing ways to increase prayer for the nation and amongst and with young people. The highly successful Strictly Come Praying was being discussed, which is for secondary aged pupils.

Yours Truly pipes up in the corner: why can't we run an event for younger children to come to alongside their families?

(at that time, in my previous church the children were praying for anything that moved whenever they got the chance and I was leading smaller events of intergenerational prayer and worship). Long story to where we get to today but after more practice in local church settings I've really just come up with a pretty simple formula:
worship with a clean heart + a desire to pray + listen = presence of God = increased prayer and more worship of God.

Sung worship is an important gateway to prayer with kids (errrr, and not just kids....) - there are other gateways but this one is a biggie. I think the church can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that if we do some all age songs (be honest: how often has your church half-heartedly sung "Our God is a great big God"?)we're there, all is cool in the world of the child.

Children need to be engaged - why am I at this event/service? what's it for? what are we doing? where are we going in it? Therefore couple your all age (NOT kid!!) songs with some clear direction from the Bible and from the event/worship leader as to where we're heading. We can't assume that children will know what to do as the adults waft along on a wave of LIWLP (Lost In Wonder, Love and Praise). Kids who don't understand what the worship's about end up pew-sitting, disengaged, DS-playing, hair-twirling or Match Attax-examinin' i.e. disengaged. We've got to bring them on the journey!

After some time to say sorry for stuff, we started with Psalm 95 today - so we were ready to understand that whatever tradition we came from, there were MANY different ways to worship God....but not (m)any of them involved sitting on your bum in a pew.....

An event like this isn't just about the ::::gasp:::: praying (I'll get into trouble for saying this). But it isn't. It's about real life intergenerational discipleship, and that's one of the main reasons I do it. Don't misunderstand me, the prayers are very important and in my pastoral and teaching role amongst the young I never understate the need to pray anywhere, anytime, about anything. But today was also about giving families the chance to BE together, to BE in the presence of the One who made them that family! So mums and dads and extended family and friends who are included as part of that family can share their faith together and hear of the amazing things that God has said and done in their lives.

The biggest encouragement in the email so far has been a mum who said their children didn't want to come and had a stinky attitude when they came in but ended up with their mood transformed and hearing God speak to them and going to write it down on the prayer wall! Isn't that so like Father God? He wants to transform us and children respond so quickly that you can see them opening up like flowers opening their petals up to the warm sunlight.

And so I honour the guys at SU who trusted "an outsider" and if we might work together. We presented today together - and we were a team together. We, the team, were from Salvation Army, Baptist, United Free church and Church of Scotland and God loved it. I know he did as we worked together with an ease and a flow.

One of my kids leaders from my home church observed a parent being prayed for by their child - she guessed by her reaction that it was perhaps for the very first time. The mum was moved to tears. We watched the adults pray some precious promises from the Bible over their child(ren). We brought intercession for local and global issues with some very large dice. We learned how to quieten down, fix our eyes on Jesus and listen to him to hear what he had to say to us; what he wanted us to pray for. And we saw children change, before our eyes.

Dear Lord, bless the families tonight who invested an afternoon to be together seeking after you. And thank you for Scripture Union, I constantly love what they do and their deep desire for young people and families to know more of you and about you.And thank you for my home church who love me enough to let me go, releasing me from my pastoral duties to have one of the best (but tiring) afternoons ever!!

Album Cover Game

2011-01-20T23:11:00.002Z

HT: That Hideous Man

Here's how the "Album Cover Game" works.
1 - Go to wikipedia and hit random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”. Third picture no matter what ...will be your album cover.
4 - Use photoshop or similar (picnik.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.

Note: picnik is great! I found it so easy to use!!

We need a champion

2011-01-08T01:21:00.008Z

Children's ministers need a champion.
I use the word children's minister in its widest sense - that's everyone who works with children. I like the use of this word and was corrected by my friends in Bethel Church who told me that this is the term they prefer as children's worker does not do justice to what they feel they are bringing into children's lives. It's not work, its ministry from the Father.

Most of you who read this know how important this is, as I doubt you'd be sticking around reading this blog if you felt differently! God wants our churches to reach out to, love on and minister to the young. They have an incredibly high priority to him.

But it feels like an uphill struggle sometimes - do you find you are fighting for space and time for children's and youth work?

When you reflect on your church's services, do you talk about the worship in the service, the response to the Word..................how about a thought being: what was God doing amongst the children/young people? How did the delivery of the Bible go? What was the response like?

I wouldn't ask this because the kids's leaders want a spotlight on them, but because they are seeing encouraging fruit - all over the country when I get the opportunity to speak to others, it's happening - God is moving amongst the young!

But sometimes - let's be honest - churches can have mediocre childrens' ministry, suffering from low expectations, fulfilling the base requirement of the church parents or senior minister or congregation who like it quiet and respectful - or it can be a POWERHOUSE for the kingdom of God to advance amongst the young who we so desperately want to stay in our churches and become fully led into all that God has for them.

Let's "up the ante" on our expectation of what God might do amongst our young. Do you know what? He wants them set free to live victoriously for him. He doesn't want simpering, frightened children who pray thinking that just maybe, someone Up There just might listen to them.

This morning I saw some major stuff kick off. We'd been looking at the call on David's life from a young age, where God saw what was within that others could not see as they were judging on surface appearances. The team were praying over 60 or so kids who had asked God what HE thought of them. They'd heard different words spoken to them by the Holy Spirit as they listened to the track "He says that you're amazing" on Great Big God 3. There were lies that needed broken off these young lives(in a quiet and appropriate manner)as some of the children revealed that they had begun to believe lies about themselves. Some fears and worries came out, and I arranged some liasion with parents after the service (very important, that).

But I and my teams *are* struggling this January. We meet in extraordinarily difficult circumstances (up to 100 children in 2 cold, fairly scabby rooms in a rented facility. No sound system so I was hoarse this morning, and I have a loud voice!). I have skills and knowledge about kids and theology and can think fast on my feet and have a great team, but *I* still need a champion for children. I want to scream from the rooftops that this isn't about personal affirmation, it's support for these precious, precious children, for everything that is attempted with them and for them in the name of Jesus.

At the end of the day, I will get my affirmation from the Father, from sitting/lying at his feet doing my thing, usually with a Bible, some music and hankies (and a cushion!) He's so, so good.

Every church needs a champion for the children/young people, people who are not directly involved who cheer the staff and volunteers on from the side. And sometimes it isn't just cheering from the side, it's a little card, or email, or a listening ear when its most needed. When all is going well, we are so often left to it and then the danger is that the only noise that is made is when there is something going wrong.

Folks get fed up of you if you only talk about the things that are difficult and hard and THAT'S when you really need a champion! They'll speak up for you, email your elders or bring you a cup of tea at the end when there is a queue of people waiting to speak to you, a team to debrief, things to be put away and (yet again) the young child who needs collected and hasn't been.....!

Ecclesiastes talks about how two (people) are better than one. When one is tired, the other lifts them up. I hope and pray that on each church staff and elders team there will be one who will ask regularly what's happening in the world of children and youth ministry, and ask what is needed (I'm hoping for that, as we move buildings. I'm after a luxurious creche, plenty of room and hunnerds of cushions....)

Any church leaders - pop in! Come and see the children. Pop into the youth programme. Speaking personally, you will be remembered for doing that and you might just get a surprise too! (thinking about the Executive Pastor in my place getting deluged by children laying hands on him and praying for him).

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T01:29:00.003Z

Merry Christmas blog readers!

I'm on holiday till 2 January - hooray! So, so pleased.

Today I led the Christingle service by candlelight in our church and I have to say I sensed something very different this year. It felt like something "opened up". I ran the same order of service (more or less) that I have always done EXCEPT for one thing.

I usually have an adult or a family give a testimony of how this Jesus who we are celebrating has changed their life in some way. I had been praying about who to ask to do this; had a great story from a couple last week at the all age nativity service but I didn't feel I should ask them to repeat that, though I did consider it. I felt it would be right to ask the children who I work with. It was unrehearsed and unscripted except that I talked with them about the purpose behind a "testimony slot" in a public service on Monday at our soft play centre party.

Just to elaborate, I work with and oversee a very large number of primary-aged children but as we get towards the older end of the spectrum (ages 8 to 11), there are children I personally see quite a lot of, as they step up to be junior leaders at our midweek club, or get involved in praying for people, or join the missional discipleship group that I run. They take roles in all age services and prayer events as a natural progression on from the things we do as part of our Sunday service.

Ten of the children had learned and presented a "god rods" drama **ask me about this!! under the tutelage of one of my faithful volunteers and at the end of it I gathered around and asked them what difference knowing Jesus made to their lives.

Well......I've got tears in my eyes as I recall what the children said, one after another...He's changing me inside, he's helping me stand up for him in school; I never used to come to church but since I have in this last year I have found someone who listens when I talk to him; he's beside me when times are tough, he's answered my prayers...(and more)

I truly believe I sensed the presence of God in a powerful way. Something was different this Christingle service. Our church building was packed out with visitors. I could count our regular families on two hands but I counted huge numbers of local school families. At the end, one mum came up to me and said her 4 year old wanted to know why Jesus had to die. She asked me right then and there if I could help with the question.

All of my bible college knowledge came to the front of my brain....all the reasons you read about and write about - ...I could almost SEE the weighty tome of Stott's The Cross of Christ in front of me as I talked to her, as well as Moltmann, Wright, Bruce, Borg, McGrath, Volf, Green, Hart, Chalke, Piper, Grenz, Grudem....and yet I could only say what I believe Karl Barth once said: God allowed Jesus to die because the bible tells us that he loved us. I gave mum a "Why Jesus" booklet to help her in her journey of explaining this to her wee one.

I'll be able to hook up again with this mum and child in the playground and give them a preschooler version of "why Jesus".

But doesn't this just illustrate once again, the WIDE open doorway before us in ministry to children and families? Never, ever give up prioritising this as highly as possible in the life of your church...pour yourselves out for the local community in any way that you can that reaches the young as it ALWAYS, always bears fruit.

I'm praying tonight for the outpouring of the Spirit of God over every and any seed that was planted this Christmas season as we love families and children and long for them to enter into a beautiful collision with the one who loves them so.

Nativity Time

2010-12-19T00:22:00.005Z

I haven't blogged for ages, mainly because I have been working flat out. And I would have been a boring blogger. Plus we have had huge snow....and the car wasn't even over the door for two weeks. It was quite pleasant for a while but towards the end of the fortnight,if I had to trudge up our long road one more time....(the buses were off for two weeks)..I guess I had forgotten how heavy four pints of milk are!

In the past week or so, I have finished the parenting course with a wee group of parents from the local school and had an alpha reunion from my last daytime course. Both of these things have reminded me how much I love people; even when I am feeling tired, just some time in their presence invigorates me. I love just chatting and being myself and when that is coupled with the opportunity to bring something of the Lord Jesus just by being me, I love it even more. A real highlight this week was the midweek kids club Christmas party - I have just the best team running it, and I had planned to hold one of my most favourite kind of events; a social event for the mums and dads to come along to. Two fantastic folks cooked dinner and we served it to the parents in a separate room while the kids had their party.

One of the dads said: "I didn't expect this evening to have been THIS good!" It was a funny moment as he confided that he had come along filled with trepidation, wondering what the evening would be like. I love talking about how our church loves to welcome children and families - which it does - and you know from the interested faces as you say it that that has not always been people's expectations nor experience of the church.

This Sunday is our Christmas family service which I have put together to try and weave together testimony, story and song. I'm particularly looking forward to the Nativity which I have had very little to do with, and is being run by the kids team, and in particular one of our medic students has worked her socks off - it's got a lot of speaking parts in it this year. Another of my kids leaders has choreographed this year's "god rods", which is a worship with sticks thing I brought over from Toronto.

I want to try and weave in quite a challenge to "investigate" Jesus and his claims in the New Year on one of our two alpha courses (daytime and evening) - I still remember so clearly the first Christmas that I knew of God's love for me in a deep and very personal way - it felt so "alive" - the presents didn't matter so much but everything else around Christmas took on a new sparkle.

I love this time, the story of the Nativity has incredible power - it's from the word of God; it speaks over time and space and into a myriad of peoples' circumstances, fears, disappointments and worries. It brings hope, beauty and light into darkness. If you haven't heard about the BBC Nativity drama showing Monday to Thursday this week at 7pm on BBC1, then please check this out. As well as being on prime time TV, it's been scripted by the writer of Eastenders, Tony Jordan - and how about this for his motivation:

Tony wanted to write a nativity that his mates in the pub would watch, and that addressed some of his big questions about the story..

Wow!

Will post how it goes.....!

Spiritual Hunger

2010-11-23T00:07:00.006Z

Below are some notes on spiritual hunger that I prepared for staff devotions. We all take turns in leading this time every Monday. Thought they might be helpful to share here.

Psalm 84
How lovely is your dwelling place, LORD Almighty!
My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
Even the sparrow has found a home and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may have her young— a place near your altar, LORD Almighty, my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.

I Cor 12:31
Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.

I showed rare video footage about the growth of the church in a different culture over the last 40 years.

It's best summarised by the phrase: “a desperate people plug into a powerful God” (quote from the documentary maker)
The growth of the church in this place was marked by:

•Gathering groups of people together in the community, in public places
•Attracting attention with creative expressions - music, drama, art
•Healing the sick
•Casting out demons
•Taking significant account of children and young people in activity and prayer
*Suffering personal discomfort
•Giving a vast time commitment
*Desperation and hunger for God

Checklist - Do any of the following apply to me?
•a desire to control what’s happening/what we do, even if we don’t want to or mean to?
•A fear of what might happen (a) to the church or (b) to us? Might I do funny things with my arms and legs? Will my mascara run? Will I look mental? I can do anything you say Lord except wail.
•Pride – I’m fine thanks and that’s for someone else, not me.
•Knowledge – well, I know a lot about how these things work. I know what revival looks like
•Insecurity – I can’t receive more from God until I see what’s happening over there with them
•“Cannae be telt” (self-reliance) - Leads to lack of hunger.

How do you get hungry?
- repent of anything blocking the way!
- get into the Word – oh, what marvels are within it!
- Read and study periods of revival and miracles recorded within church history
- Watch what you spend time on – garbage in, garbage out.
- Ask God to awaken hunger within you. Come in humility.
- Visit events and conferences outside of the local church sphere: outside input can be very, very significant and far from threatening local church leaders it can send staff/church members back full of fresh resolve and renewed vision and purpose.

Defender

2010-11-17T00:08:00.004Z

This song is amazing.

If you have never listened to Chris McClarney, from Grace Center, Nashville - find him on iTunes/Spotify.

There are times in our lives when we need to shout out about the faithfulness of God. That when tears flow there is one who really, really cares. He's the safe place. He's the rebuilder of broken hearts and shattered dreams. There's nothing he can't do!

Defender

Resting in Your promise
I will rest within the knowledge that You care
I put my trust in You
Deep within the darkness
Though my enemies surround I will not fear
I put my trust in You

And when I don't know what to do
I will fix my eyes on You

You’re my defender
I hide my hope in You
You are the loving arms my broken heart can run to
I will remember
That there is nothing You can't do
For You are God, You are good
And I surrender
You're my defender

You are strong when I am weakest
You're the peace that passes everything I see
I put my trust in You
I'm surrendering completely
Laying all my cares here at Your feet
I put my trust in You

A mighty fortress is our God
I will not fear, I will not fear
Safe and secure here in Your love
I will not fear, I will not fear

Retaining Volunteers part 2

2010-10-17T00:01:00.007+01:00

As promised (thanks to those who have nudged for this): part 2 of my thoughts on working with, and retaining, volunteers.

6. Be a team leader with humour and without intensity: Pressure and seriousness doesn't motivate many people whereas lots of laughter endues a sense of team. Pastors need to be able to laugh with their volunteer teams and have social times together.

7. Place a huge value on prayer:
(a)praying together: our teams now meet to pray together every sunday before we open up the Bible with children. We really want to invite God into our thoughts and plans for the morning.
(b) not holding children back in prayer: let them go! I've found that volunteers love this as its unpredictable, exciting and slightly dangerous (the Executive pastor almost lost his head today when some over-enthusiastic children laid hands on him a little too hard as he bent low in a kneeling posture - but hey - its fun! It's not boring!)
(c) praying with volunteers themselves - if prayer is a value of mine then I want to have my vols pray for me and with me and I for them. If we are sharing life together then we want to pray for one another in life's joys and stresses.

As I said earlier, I am not perfect and I feel I could spend a day and evening a week meeting up with each volunteer in turn to do so - but I can't - so I want to build a team who will each in turn do that for one another.

8.vulnerability - a leader who never shows a vulnerable side may not be able to sustain a sense of team. I'm not going to say any more about this as it will become too personal! Suffice to say I believe it strongly to be true. Be real and don't make out you're something you're not.

9. Give time off to your teams. Children's ministry is one of the most thankless tasks in church life. People rarely say thank you and, even within your staff team, people just assume it happens - until the day it doesn't and it all goes wrong. I noted with interest on a staff member's blog at Gateway Community Church (Austin, Texas) that a survey done amongst the staff team revealed that the ministry that would be most missed if it just didn't happen on a given Sunday was kids ministry (prolly 'cos of the noise that would ensue)

So I have a term-time team and a summer/Easter team and we have a lot of fun with some different activities happening in the holidays but we still a full kids programme. It gets to me when people say summer is the quiet time in church life. It's not for me as my regular team are away and our church gets loads of summer visitors, plus I run an outreach club!

I really love my teams. They contain some of the most committed, dedicated people in our church. They know what it is to work behind the scenes with no applause.

If you are willing to serve even two weeks (that's less than three hours in total), you really know how to serve! :-)

10. Next, training. To retain teams, we need to train, we need to envision. It needs to be practical but it also needs to be biblical/theological - not just training on how to handle hyperactivity/nosepicking/challenging behaviour - but how to teach the Trinity, how to bring children on in their faith, how to model ways of praying like Jesus did and for the things that Jesus did (illness. bondage. unity.)that bring children on in their experience of faith.

Train your team in new things and you will excite them. And they will want to stay around. Ignore this, leave them with the same old, same old in terms of teaching material and expectations from you and they will get bored.

11. Share testimony with your team. Tell them stories about how the things you (corporately) are doing which are bringing whole families into the Kingdom of God. Get children to speak out loud how Jesus has helped them/healed them/reached someone in their family. These things bring a sense of excitement into proceedings - "wow! God is moving in this ministry I am part of!"

12. Finally, bring a missional mandate to what you do. Nearly every Christian I know wants others to know Jesus. The pastor/ministry leader to the team of childrens' volunteers, should teach and train on our missional purpose and its proven effects. Read and digest Lausanne Occasional Paper 47 on reaching children in the world today - remind your team we work with THE most unreached people group in the world. They are found EVERYWHERE! What a privilege! I have found this to be absolutely in compelling a team to stay together and work together plus we partner with other arms of our church family to present a "joined up" approach to this.

So, CAP (Christians Against Poverty) notify me of any new families visiting to church. I talk to my age-specific leaders and CAP befrienders' the Centre Manager, myself and my volunteers work very hard at providing the warmest welcome to new families, gifts of Bibles and Bible reading notes to children, support at home etc.

We do this incredibly sensitively according to the advice and request given by the CAP Centre Manager - she is an incredible pastor to her clients and I work closely with her to extend the same warmth and welcome to the whole family. But I share the info that I am permitted to with the children's leaders as I NEVER see them as babysitters but as agents of the love of Jesus to children who in turn show that to their parents.

It's exciting, it IS awesome and it is invigorating to be around.

Volunteers and volunteers and...children

2010-10-16T22:29:00.009+01:00

At the start of the month I spent three days with three of my volunteers at a Children's Leaders conference. I have to be really honest and say that, by and large, specialised events are not my thing. I much prefer conferences that are holistic in their approach i.e. deal with issues that affect all leaders. So attending the Holy Spirit in the World today conference (please read here ) was much more my thing because it was the first overtly theological conference I had been at, so it covered a LOT of information, I processed information that I took home with me to pastoral AND teaching settings.

I find that stereotypes can abound at "womens' conferences" or "youthwork conferences" and in some ways the Children's Leaders event was no different
e.g.
"c'mon we can all woop and make some noise and get excited cos we're kids workers"

err. no. I won't. I can't make myself behave like a "typical" person who works with children because I'm not. I'm me, with a unique role and purpose and I suppose I get into bother sometimes because I am not exactly fitting into the expectation that occasionally get thrust upon me!

I didn't exactly choose to do what I do. I got chosen. Some blog readers will know the story; others won't. But I heard God speak to me. He said: "work with younger children" (I taught 11 to 18 year olds as a job). He said it was for what was to come and that I was to release others to do lead children, to disciple children and to show families new to faith how to go on in their faith. So I try to train and release others, take something new out there, then train and release others, whilst listening as closely as I can to God for what the next thing is that I have to do.

I can't get away from my desire to be OUT there with the families and the children who don't have Jesus in their lives, twinned with an appetite to see those who know him as a friend to know him as the source of life and power;as a freedom-giver. We have such an army of children in the UK who are just getting by and no more as Christians, and its time for them to rise up as victors, not victims.

Becky Fischer, in her book "Redefining Children's Ministry in the 21st Century" notes that many people who pastor children in these current days did not intend to go into this area of ministry but found themselves sensitive to God's call to do "for what is to come". HOW EXCITING!!!!!

There was one session at Children's Leaders conference in particular that really stood out for me and I will post on it in due course. If you are a leader in ANY CAPACITY, please come back and read it as I believe it was of national prophetic significance. As I am on holiday without my work notes, I need to write it up when I get back.

I went to this conference principally to hear Mike and Marilyn Seth, who are to be listened to and learnt from because of their great experience and huge humility. But more about that next week. Suffice to say, it is of immense importance to those who want to see the transformation of the nation through the rising generations.

The value of such a specialist conference was that I took some of my volunteers with me - and that kind of experience, being away together, is priceless...we talked, prayed, planned where we were going and I got the chance to see exactly what God was marking out for them to do and the direction I could really easily nudge them into and let them lead.

In September I changed the way we taught children utterly and completely (due to a lack of space; not enough rooms!) and modelled a different way of teaching for 4 weeks, so that others could then take over, with me helping each "Presenter" think about planning and teaching week by week. I have an outstanding team, very loyal to me personally and incredibly open to all that is ahead. The relief team (school holidays) are similarly qualified, as was my summer holiday club team. The volunteers are a real blessing - I have five teams for different areas of ministry/work and I haven't had to advertise for a single person this year, in fact one or two of the smaller teams within the main five teams are in abundance. What an absolute privilege and I *never* take this for granted. Volunteers are another group of people I am called to care for and love and encourage and impart into....more of the Holy Spirit and his gifts so that we never, ever rely on just good work and great skills. I want to teach and model that we need him so!

I have been asked twice this week: how do you keep volunteers? How do you motivate volunteers? Here are my personal tips for retaining people for more than a year.

1. Passion - yours (mine) - what do you REALLY believe in with children and families? Do your team know YOUR vision? Does it rub off on them after they have been with you? I don't mean you wag a finger and impose stuff but....try to allow the Holy Spirit to re-invigorate and refresh you regularly....some Sunday mornings I struggle to get up and out but once I have spent time in the bible and prayed (often puring out my heart!); even for a short time, and then I see some children I know, or some mums who are new to faith, or some faithful serving families.....it all floods back...the love and the care and the desire to serve.

2. Time - for your volunteers - are you there for them and do they know that? I know I can do better on that but I try my best, given the time I have. I constantly wish I could do more - I carry quite a large pastoral/service planning load. I lead evangelistic initiatives, see people for prayer ministry and do some whole family discipleship and support as well. More recently I have been working with some external agencies to provide support to some vulnerable people. This in itself takes up a bit of time but I am seeing the church receive real favour here and it feels as if it is the "shape of things to come" with budget cuts etc.

BUT in my weekly plan I always look to see: who can I take out for coffee this week? Not email. Not text. See in person. I always have a half/whole day that is unbooked to allow me to react to who God brings to mind; which volunteer might need a wee bit of encouragement this week? I try to be a pastor to my volunteers and again, I think they know this as I tell them of my love and appreciation for them as often as I can.In my low moments I feel utterly failing in this as my current church is very large and sometimes it seems that there are so many people I would love to spend time with but I am restrained by normal human limitations - never enough time....

3. Graft - real hard work. I need to be around the things my volunteers are; not at every meeting nor every event. I need to know every child by name and a little bit about their story..how did they come to be at our church? Who do they come with? Are there any pastoral issues that I need to know about? (therefore I get to know families and visit at home; pray with parents, offer support, both spiritual and practical)

4. Advocacy - I am able to represent the lives of young people and their families at the highest level of our church governance; in decisions, in planning - I always think: how will this affect children and my volunteers? Will it encourage and bless them? It means that the volunteers know I am there for their best.

5. Resourcing - I go out of my way to read, research, buy and disseminate music, creative resources, teaching material, collect testimonials and visual clips that advance news about the AMAZING things God is doing all over the world....I give my team access to this (again, I could do better at this, we have v little office space and meet in another building from where the offices are) and by and large, money is not an issue. What I mean by this is that my church blesses me and what I do hugely and I want to pass this on to my volunteers. They know I will budget in for whatever we need and it will be done. If they buy stuff, I arrange for their reimbursement promptly. If they need something, I'll either get it for them or work towards getting it for them when I set my next year's budget. So volunteers have a sense, again, that there is someone who is for them.

I know many reading this have to buy supplied out of their own pocket and couldn't even claim the price of a CD back from their church treasurer and with all my heart I pray for an abundance on what you do. I know having a full time worker is not possible for many churches but I really believe that the tips I h ave given above can be carried out by one person - a volunteer or a minister in sole charge - who gives themselves over to bless children's/youth volunteers.

I know with all my heart that God wants to pour out blessing on children. I can't give out loads of details here, but over the past 8 years I have seen God provide even seemingly impossible things for children and family ministry in the churches I have worked in. I have big faith for this...which is being tested at the moment in the building we meet in which is not big enough!

The one example I can give you is that I really, really wanted preschoolers furniture for 14-20 children. Have you seen the price of wee tables and chairs in educational catalogues? Not IKEA plastic tables and chairs, I wanted solid, good stuff. To cut a long story short, I almost accidentally spotted a commercial auction selling classroom supplies and I got a whole junior classroom, story stools, tables, chairs, wheeled storage...the whole lot for £150. Oh the goodness of God - we discovered that one of the six tray-ed storage units I got would have been £150 on its own!

As I publish my list I have thought of some more tips on how to retain volunteers that I would add; come back tomorrow (or in a day or two) for more......

All Age Service 10.10.10

2010-10-07T23:58:00.004+01:00

Martin Smith "You Have Shown Us" (Micah Challenge) from Small Seed Films on Vimeo.

Please watch the clip above.
Micah 6:8 and the amazing resources from the Micah Challenge website form the basis for our All Age service on Sunday. I have been moved and challenged by the simplicity of this idea; to make promises to do something that makes a difference to the lives of those who have so little and to challenge our politicians to do the same.

We will be making a declaration along with tens of thousands, maybe even millions of Christians all over the world on 10.10.10, using these words (note there is a children's version of this prayer available in the resource pack):

O Lord, our great and awesome God, loyal to your promise of love and faithful to all who honour and obey you, hear our prayer.
We pray for those who live in poverty,
we cry out for those who are denied justice and we weep for all who are suffering.
We confess that we have not always obeyed you.
We have neglected your commands and have ignored your call for justice.
We have been guided by self-interest and lived in spiritual poverty.
Forgive us.
We remember your promises to fill the hungry with good things, to redeem the land by your mighty hand and to restore peace.
Father God, help us always to proclaim your justice and mercy with humility, so that, by the power of your Spirit, we can rid the world of the sin of extreme
poverty.
As part of your global church, we stand with millions who praise and worship you.
May our words and deeds declare your perfect goodness, love and righteousness to both the powerful and the powerless so that your Kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven. Amen

Children and Family in the Book of Acts

2010-09-26T18:35:00.009+01:00

Time for some theological posting.

I am aware I haven't blogged for a bit, for a few reasons. Its been a hard month, I've been working away very hard on my own missing my compatriot who worked with me a few days a week (so I had someone to talk work stuff over with and giggle with) - therefore, head down and get on with it. Any spare minute I have had has been with family and not blog :-)

It also gets gets harder to be motivated to blog without comments (which is not a criticism, by the way, it's a reflection of the world-wide state of blogging just now - people are preferring the instant fb/twitter rapid response without waiting for comments to be moderated. I am going to take comment moderation off for this reason, so that if you comment it will be immediately visible)
More about the worldwide lack of comments on blogs here. Interesting read.

Here are some notes from my recent reading from The Child in the Bible edited by Marcia Bunge.

Important themes in the book of Acts:
1.the importance of narrative (story) in developing and forming the human person
2.Luke’s theology of the Holy Spirit
3.Luke’s interest in caring for the needy

Hope the following might be helpful. I'm finding it makes so much sense for my current and previous situation.

1. The Importance of Narrative (Story) in Developing and Forming the Human Person
Underpinning this is the belief that the shaping of our identity and practices are “storied”.
Consider your church community in this section.
•Most of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organised as stories – what demarcates the experiences of the child or teenager in your church?
•These stories shape character e.g. gang violence and abuse affects developing human persons.
•Human beings are always in the process of formation. Particularly formative periods, according to neuroscientists, are the first years of life and late adolescence.

Q: What does the Book of Acts narrate for us, the reader?
A: It prioritizes conversion as the (re)orientation of a person’s life towards God shown in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is confirmed in what the NT scholar Joel Green called “community-nested” practices that demonstrate this new allegiance and open the way to transformation for family life, community and society.

These thoughts made me think of some reading I did 2 years ago from a book called Nurture That is Christian, and I wrote a post on it here.

For the Vision and Training Day that I ran on Saturday, I wrote some reflective questions for teams to talk about together:

•What does your church community look like compared to the book of Acts?

•When are children and teenagers present i.e. what shape do their meetings take?

•Are there opportunities for children and young people to participate in story/testimony/prayer and ministry?

2. Luke’s Theology of the Holy Spirit
•There is no escaping the inclusion of children in the “all flesh” of Acts 2:17
•Acts 2:39; promise for you and your children (teknon)
•Acts 2:17; prophecy and visions for sons and daughters
•Acts 21:9; Philip’s four unmarried daughters prophesy (parthenos); a female of marriageable age: reckoned to be a young girl c 12 years old, just before or at puberty.

These texts show that children and young people are participants in God’s kingdom being built here on earth.
Luke 18:16: Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Here are the reflective questions I wrote for this section:

•Are we Trinitarian in what we teach our children and teenagers? i.e. are children and teenagers taught about the Holy Spirit in your programmes? (in my experience most churches are strong at teaching about God as Father and Jesus as friend)

•Are they given opportunities to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to use gifts?

•How do you work this out in practice?

3. Luke’s interest in family and caring for the needy
•In the Acts church no-one needed anything. From this we can assume very need of every member of the community was important and was met.
•This was so counter culture – see Acts 16:16 – a young slave girl was a commodity.
•The importance of family and home – Acts 10:33; in Cornelius’ home, all have gathered in the presence of God. This is a very significant verse “house” and “presence” always referred to the temple in Jerusalem up till this point.
•Implied all through Acts: the need for family transformation in order to impact the city.
Cicero: “the household is the seedbed for the state”.
•Rejection of a separatist model of children and adults. Joel B Green states that Acts forces us to reflect on the need to practise community as all ages together otherwise we are left with:

“Generations of children who are provided with less and less contact with faithful agents of Christian mission, fewer and fewer models of relationship-building, and so for whom faith becomes so personalized that it need not even find expression within one’s own family.”

As part of a church with Mission Shaped Communities (MSCs)/ Missional Expressions (MEs) - different churches use different terminology but basically these are outward-looking small grops - I found what I read next to be deeply stirring.

“The disciples have it as their mission to reach the city; but if the city is to believe, the home must be converted. But if this is so, then likewise, the unenviable place of children in household and community must undergo metamorphosis. Those transformative values that take root in the household will propagate transformation beyond its boundaries. More simply, to change the household is to change the world.”

If you ever feel that you've to do your thing with kids, teenagers and families away from other areas of church life, never overlapping and not communicating much with other areas of leadership/other ministries - is not just unhelpful (it breeds isolationism) but could possibly be one of the most insipid, evil techniques of the enemy to prevent missional growth and fruitfulness.
It's too big a risk to ignore the theological significance of households in Acts - the evidence of children and young people's life-saving and lifechanging appearances throughout the Book of Acts - and their full participation in Holy Spirit-empowered life - undoubtedly had a mighty part to play in societal transformation.

Reflective questions:
•Your church will have missional and outreach activities and strategies. In these, have you considered the need to see families within your faith community bring their children and teenagers on in their faith?
Or is all of your activity focussed on busy adults doing activity entirely separate from the rest of their household?

•How well do you support parents in the task of seeing their families transformed?

•How busy are church member’s lives? Could you encourage people to make room to be family together and in smaller groups with all ages present?

And yet in many parts of the world similar things are being said/taught and heard.

I've been hugely encouraged in three or four places/events where I have taught this over the last year, but I've been really disappointed with the response to the teaching pack I wrote on this for my own place. I have provided a whole bunch of material to be used, as I did in the last church I worked with and was used by four small intergenerational small groups - perhaps I need to just find a publisher and take it out wider than this side of the country?!

Or am I missing the point? More recently I have been questioning why things that are important to me seem not to be to others - holding all of this in tension is making me feel quite fragile. Got some great words of hope delivered by others at the Vision and Training Day - God always provides an uplook!!

September Update

2010-09-06T22:18:00.006+01:00

As ever, so much has happened since I last posted.

Last week my voluntary three days a week worker left to move city and I am really missing her - not for what she did (though that was AMAZING!), but I am missing her person. She's lovely. We got on very well. I had given some thought to a variety of things for her to do that gave her a broad experience of children and family work. Having someone who knows your innermost thoughts and feelings and passions and motivations for the role that you play is priceless; matchless. It really helps me to have someone else to share thoughts and ideas with. I think its a stress reliever in more ways that one; its not just about the actualy physical work and emails. Sadly many people in the paid church roles crash and burn - I hear of this quite regularly - we were warned on this and coached about this at Bible College and from one-to-ones with tutors as the staff there were well aware of "crash and burns" and worse. There were some real tragedies too. But that's not a strand of this post I want to dwell on! Pastoral workers and ministers can be notoriously left on their own to cope with things and those who work with youth and children suffer from this as they are out of the morning service for some or all of the time.

The most secure rock of a person feels it when they hear people talk about how awesome the service worship/teaching/ministry was and you were out in another building/room. Maybe one day children and youth team will regularly and spontaneously be asked the question:"what was God doing amongst the children/youth this week in the morning service?". Hee hee, feeling a bit mischevious..... imagine if the first part of every church meeting was spent discussing the complaints of the under-18s. Just imagine it....

"we insist on fair trade squash....in china mugs!"
"we wonder why the chocolate bourbons have been replaced by Rich Teas. That's an unacceptable budget cut".
"To be honest, the games time went on far too long, visitors would have felt quite uncomfortable"

With my children's worker leaving, but with the possibility of her carrying out a similar role in another place, I am reminded that I am also called to is prepare and train other people to do everything that I can do. I have not forgotten the wise words of one of the first pastors I worked alongside who said to me: "Lynn, your job is to do yourself out of a job". Extreme? Perhaps. But true. Challenging? Definitely.

What kinds of experiences did I give an assistant? This is a question I am asked by other church leaders who are thinking about how to broaden their staff team. She went each week to the parent/toddler group to chat to folks. She assisted me at a daytime Alpha course, caring for the participants and meeting up with some outside of the group. I gave her lots of opportunities to lead during the holiday club. Sunday by Sunday, she planned for and taught groups of children, moving onto have oversight of the week by week teams if I was preaching or away. She stepped into the leadership role of the midweek children's club (my role there has always to be to support and facilitate and not run the show; so I would chat with parents as they came to drop off children). Certain pastoral situations we talked and prayed through together. She saw the real behind the scenes of administration and planning for 170 children. She emailed teams on my behalf - in short - she was an amazing help and I hope I have helped her to have a good experience of children and family work.

So I'm a bit sad not to have her. I saw the goodness of God and his call all over her life and its always lifegiving to be part of that.

On the plus side, I have kicked off a new term with loads of new volunteers that I didn't have to try all that hard to get as I harnessed folks who had a great experience at our summer holiday club (it went sooooo well, all credit to the brilliant team). I've just organised the re-launch of the midweek kids club, written an article for these folk and a four-pager for these folks, had my annual review, accepted a request to write an academic book review and another article for the EA after saying I couldn't do it till October. If only the writing things paid me some money I'd be more inclined to write some more (in home time of course) as it's really hard to get time to do it as well as I would like!

Coming up, I have been asked to help a national organisation with prayer events for children and adults together (oooooh I sense the fulfillment of a prophecy coming on) and I hope to run a new event in my own church for parents of babies; introdcing some principles for refreshing and renewing faith in the hard, first year of being a parent. I'm also re-running the highly successful Triple P course in a local school and October should see the next block of kids discipleship.

Ongoing, is the usual Sunday/Thursday stuff but I have instigated a new method of "presenting" given our increased numbers in a smaller space (hall) so I have to do some modelling and training on that, and encourage all the new teams to regroup and hold individual team meetings. Got a stack of contacts/visits to do - a dozen new children in the last couple of weeks. Woooo-hoooo....bring it on...! ....honestly I have never experienced such rapid increase before in my past place or even till now. I do believe this is to come to churches more and more if they will only open their hearts to children and God's heart towards them. See this post for some key thoughts.

Regarding our pastoral care: we are opening the front door real wide but, as with many growing churches, closing the back door remains a challenge for us.

But before all of the October stuff..........on 25 September, I have my annual training and vision day for pastors and leaders and kids team and youth leaders and parents and....anyone with a heart for children!

This will be my seventh and new this year, is a twin track - with practical topics such as using the Bible creatively with children or dealing with challenging behaviour, along with seminars for pastors/parents on setting a vision for young people in your church, children's faith development. If you live in Scotland/N England and you are interested in coming, maybe bringing a kids ministry team or kidnapping your church leaders/pastors and bringing them, then email me on children.pastor@gmail.com

Lunch and materials are provided and it costs £5. In the last few years I have had 40 to 50 of my own team and the same again from other churches and denominations and I feel this is such a positive step forward; doing things across denominations is so important and a sign, I believe, of a coming move of God. Please, Lord!

The church and support for families

2010-08-22T16:22:00.007+01:00

Many readers will have heard about the tragic deaths of eight year old twins Austin and Luke Riggi and their little sister Cecilia (aged 6). They were found stabbed to death in a rented house in Edinburgh after disappearing from their home in Aberdeen with their mother Theresa - who is suspected of their murder and remains sedated in hospital. She was found on the ground below the second floor balcony of the rented house, with severe injuries.

The children's funeral happened on Friday in Aberdeen. More here

So much about this story distresses me. The thought of two of the three children seeing their sibling die in front of their eyes. The mental distress and torment of a soul who took life away so violently. This family - one presumes - were well off materially. Dad is an oil executive. The family worshipped in the cathedral where the funeral took place, together, with the twins making their first Holy Communion there just 3 months ago.

Part of my pastoral ministry role is to support families so I can never blog about details. Suffice to say I am kept busy. But I continue to be moved by the opportunities that the church has to rise up in this area.

I am having lengthy and helpful conversations with social workers. We have respected one another's viewpoints and I have seen an openness I haven't always seen to accept us as upholders of morals and values (whatever you may think of those terms): and as people who genuinely care for and support individuals through thick and thin. I have had opportunities to train many parents outwith the church in positive parenting skills through Triple P and have people clamouring to get on the next course. Thank you lovely Health Board, for spending thousands of pounds on me some years ago for me to be able to show that our church genuinely cares for families and wants to support family life in any way we possible can.

Might it just be possible that we could help avert tragedy? Might it be possible that you and I can be the face of acceptance towards noisy, rumbunctious children, some with behavioural issues that don't fit the "sit quiet" stereotype, some with additional support needs that require money to be spent on the resources in the Sunday School room (there's a joke going on just now about me needing a substantial budget for cushions. It's like the guitar-strings and photocopying budget of the musicians - just plain necessary!!)

Could it just be that Christians living their faith out in family life, demonstrating a difference in the way they spend time together and ENJOY their kids, in thousands of streets all over this country, might just influence people suffering from desperate unhappiness and indeterminable stress in their family life that causes them to do awful things?

I believe that we can effect a change and I'm asking for this all the more when I feel grief over such news stories. Time for those raising children to be prophetically different!

Must read: Foundations of the Christian Family: John and Paula Sandford

Consumer Church

2010-08-11T23:14:00.010+01:00

I know I've posted this cartoon before but I want to post it again. It's by the Naked Pastor, David Hayward. I purchased this so I can post it :-) (legal bit!)

Consumer Church.
I'm fed up with it.

I want encounter with the living God.
I want a community that loves and cherishes me like I do to it.
I want to reach my potential without the fear of unrealistic expectations.
I want to be vulnerable without being judged for it.
I want to love the lost like there was no tomorrow instead of field complaints about structures.
I want to look out and not in.
I want to soak, bask, revel in the deep, deep love of the Father with people who long to do the same.

Spiritual Hunger

2010-08-07T21:49:00.007+01:00

Wow, so much has happened since I last blogged.

I have spoken to a couple of hundred people at CLAN in seminars and family ministry sessions and been privileged to watch some very special times of prayer and interaction between mothers and fathers and sons and daughters. So the time was split into teaching sessions and "putting it into practice" sessions - I love this way of doing things!

Over the two days we covered some principles for raising children in the river of God, we looked at some practical ways to bring children into the heart of the church. I taught a little on how children can honour their parents vice versa. We did some prophetic activation amongst family members and in particular looked at the actual (not potential) skill with which children hear things from God. I saw some quite incredible pictures drawn by children in the family soaking time.

One 4 year old drew a tree with an acorn at the bottom. The acorn was clearly recognisable. He said "God showed me this tree when he was talking about me". I asked him if he knew what an acorn tree became. It becomes an oak and I read Isaiah 61. to him. What a special little boy! I love that he, a preschooler, didn't just draw any tree, he drew the one God showed him! His future is in the heart of that passage.

My only irritation post-an event like CLAN was that people said "oh yeah, your seminar was about kids". I feel something rising up in me (NOT anger, probably a little frustration) as the seminars were not just about kids. Its about preparing the church for the harvest to come. If we don't get this right - if we alienate the young and the generation of parents now who don't know how to teach and instill faith in their children - then we lose a generation. More than that, more than this being about numbers, we miss out on what children see with their spiritual eyes, their hunger for experience grounded in total practical reality; the way in which their prayers seem to touch heaven.

I showed a short clip from TACF's Fruits of Revival DVD, which records the ongoing testimonies and ministries arising out of the incredible 1994-to present day outpouring. The clip I showed had Trevor Baker, senior leader at the ARC church in Dudley, describing how he went out to get some prayer during the 1994 outpouring meetings. He describes (very honestly and with real humility) how his heart sank when a small boy came out to pray for him rather than one of the adults. He then describes the powerful encounter he had with God the moment the little boy prayed. Wow, wow, wow, wow.

The speaker on the final night of CLAN spoke about generations coming together and much of what he said, which I am not going to write in detail here (I need to buy the recording and listen to it again) really resonated with me - moreover, I felt affirmed.

CLAN was a really positive experience for us (Mr HIWWC did a little chunk of teaching on the heart of a dad) and I want to honour the leadership team for asking me and trusting me. I felt it was a real privilege to share what I have learned and tried out over the past seven years. We were welcomed warmly and encouraged hugely.

Today I ran team training for our week-long holiday club which starts on Monday. 80 children are coming from all kinds of backgrounds. I'm delighted to have a team of 30this year, with ten of them being really young teenagers. Four of them have just left the kids' programme and want to come back and serve - I'm really pleased about this.

But its a busy week. Pray for us and the other churches near me and you who are running holiday clubs. This is ours here

Last week it was my turn on staff devotions. I spoke about spiritual hunger. I have had a summer of contrasts - I've been in arid places and refreshing places. All part of the journey I think, like the people of Israel! But I know which one of these two places I'd rather be at.

The challenge I am facing - and we all thought about this as a team - is that we can't MAKE people spiritually hungry - its their choice - press in or stay distanced. None the less, I am re-reading the periods of "effusions of the Spirit" throughout church history and I am embedding myself in the stories of societal transformation that I was so into in the mid-90s when the Sentinel Group first released the documentaries: hunger and longing for God to touch the church in Scotland/the UK is growing, we feel it so desperately as a family, to bursting point sometimes. We're sure we're not the only ones.

Please post in the comments if you feel that too!

Breathe, Mighty Breath of God

2010-07-25T00:34:00.005+01:00

Mr HIWWC and I are preparing for a number of seminars and teaching times at CLAN Gathering this coming week.

I've been thinking and praying and reading and writing for some time about these seminars as they are difficult ones to hit the mark on (anything to do with children, parents, church and God encounters a myriad of views/opinions/theological beliefs and personal preferences - is any wonder some people stay clear?!)

I feel that in some ways I have so little to offer or give - each year CLAN has great speakers and experts in their areas and I seemed to "fall into" being asked to do these slots, mainly,(I think) after I was invited to give some feedback on children/family/church issues. The CLAN leadership listened amazingly and demonstrate such an open heart as they have asked us to lead what is a first for CLAN as far as I know - worship and prayer times for families altogether. Whilst this is not new to me personally; its something I have tried to create opportunities for in the two churches I have been in - I still feel very nervous - because ...well, because of a number of reasons!

My chain of thoughts just now:
> I am hidden with Christ - I am safe with him
> I can't do these talks and ministry times - what do I have to give? I'm so imperfect and sinful.
> I have nothing in myself, BUT FOR GOD, I have no strength of my own BUT FOR HIM.
(sinking to the floor quite a lot today to prevent those words becoming orphan words*)
>Come Holy Spirit, please take all my thoughts about the delegates who are there, what they need help with most, take all my scribblings, my anxieties about not hitting the mark, my pride about not performing well, take ALL THESE thoughts.
> Breathe mighty breath of God on all the notes in front of me, may we do what we do to an audience of one, to you.
> Breathe, breath of God. Bring life and hope through all I say and do as the words you speak always do.I love you, not because I need you, but because you loved me first and found me.

Come mighty breath of God
Move upon this place
Oh, mighty breath of God
Won't you come in power and grace?
(Chris McClarney)

*orphan thoughts often take the form of "woe is me" type statements i.e. they give vent to beliefs that are at odds to our standing as God's children

Unhappy Hipsters

2010-07-22T21:30:00.004+01:00

Am loving this photograph.

The theme of the blog Unhappy Hipsters is "it's lonely in the modern world".
I'm not doing any theological reflection - just giggling!

I think Bad Vestments still ranks first for sheer hilarity courtesy of the caption writer(s)but this is coming a close second.

HT to Lincoln for this.

Daughters of Zelophehad

2010-07-18T23:20:00.006+01:00

I preached this morning on the Daughters of Zelophehad, in Numbers 27, 36 and also in Joshua 17.

What a passage! I love these women, not least of all for the way they conducted themselves in the light of unfairness/inequality. As the law stood, they would receive nothing in the Promised Land - with no brothers or husbands; their deceased father's inheritance would not pass to them. They brought their case to Moses who asked the Lord, who said: "What Zelophehad's daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father's relatives and turn their father's inheritance over to them".

Think of the reactions the Daughters could have displayed. I’ve thought of three:

1. They had challenged injustice - there was something that was so inherently unfair in a time where land and property was everything. Without it, they were persons without status. They could have meekly accepted that this was to be their lot and simply given up.

2. They could have – and here follows a heavy theological term - thrown a huge strop.

3. Or, a third option – they could have been very aggressive about their rights.

The daughters did none of these three things. This is such an important story as it demonstrates what I'm calling “gentle assertiveness”. I think this comes out of knowing the one to whom the appeal will be made.

The daughters understood that God cared about them.
This is the true mark of a son and and not an orphan.

Their timing was spot on – they had asked at the right time (Numbers 27), then waited (into the final part of the Wilderness journey from Moab into Canaan), then assertively issued a “reminder” to Joshua (ch 17:4-5) – and then received that which was promised to them - and this followed obedience – marrying right. (Nu 36).

They came before God with their request. They wanted a favourable outcome, but they didn’t want it against God’s will; against his best. Oh that our churches and communities become full of people with this same heart. We might be saying: I want this, I need this, there's unfairness at play fair (real or imagined; it matters not!) BUT ....your will be done O Lord.

I want to be like the Daughters of Zelophehad!

Father of the fatherless

2010-07-10T11:20:00.009+01:00

This morning just after 1am, the man wanted in Britain's biggest ever manhunt shot himself after he was cornered on the riverbank in Rothbury, Northumberland. You can read about it here.

A guest-house owner, who did not want to be named, told the BBC: "He actually said, the one thing that sticks in my mind, 'I haven't got a dad'... and he also said that, 'nobody cares about me'."

My heart is breaking as I read this. I feel incredible grief in my heart like I haven't felt for a long time. Yes, this man committed murder. This man frightened and threatened innocent people. This man was addicted to steroids and probably suffering from withdrawal which may have affected his state of mind, but his final words exposed his heart. It sounds like, all his life, this powerful man with an impressive physique and demonstrative power and control over others - wanted to be loved by Dad.

I also feel angry. Angry at an enemy who seeks to kill, destroy, break up and tear apart family and take away fathers. I'm actually going to use the word "daddy" as it demonstrates the childlikeness and intimacy of that relationship. We have an enemy who wants to take away daddies. Daddies - Papas - provide security. They hold you when you're crying. They provide shelter and safety when you feel threatened. They speak constant approval over you but because they love you so much, they also discipline within appropriate boundaries. They're proud of you and a loving dad actually speaks these words out loud over you and demonstrably shows that with his affection.

But it's not just the enemy that takes away daddies. We have to shoulder some of the blame ourselves. We have a responsibility to resist the spirit of this age, to unclutter our diaries and prioritise being mums and dads to our children. We have to leave the office early with things undone. We resign from that important position. We may not be able to run that event. We who read this may feel that we do not have much control over our work hours but many people who are not Christians have left or changed jobs or career, dropped pay, travelled abroad or VSO'd - because they have felt that urge to change something. (watch Relocation, Relocation, Relocation for proof of this!)

I don't think many Christians intend for work to take up lots of their time but there can be an insipid and unseen force at play to make many Christian dads incredibly busy. Is this the enemy at work? Is it the flesh? Do we need to be needed? I don't know the answer to this but I know that at times within our own family we have felt a rollercoaster of busy-ness to be upon us (probably rarely but at certain times of the year, like June and December)and we have had to say "NO!" No more! Stop! Rest! Thankfully that is where we are just now :-)

There were three things I wanted to have achieved in June - one an event and two certain pastoral things - but as a couple we decided, no, they will have to wait - wrong call?? Maybe. I'm a pastor, after all. Aren't I to be constantly doing and available? But for space for our family to be? For time to draw a breath? Yes, right call. But I don't always make the right call.....

Over the last seven years in many settings (I want to be careful to say this is at national events and at residential activities as well as in local churches) children have come to me crying about not having time with their parents - but especially dad. Stuck in my mind is the child who wrote on a prayer wall: I pray that I would have more time with my dad.

But what do we do about this? Parents feel trapped. They don't need the voice of condemnation for that is the surefire way to feel trapped. They are in a job that requires long hours.

So what about a few wee practical tips from things I have observed in others and do myself:

* prioritise time with your own kids. Depending on how you do social life - consider this: Resist doing lots with other families or adults where our own children are diluted amongst other children. Consider dad/mum dates - taking one child out at a time for one-on-one: the folks I know who do this say it is of immense benefit, particularly where there are several children each requiring time and attention

* switch TVs/Wiis/DVDs off - ration and limit time on these from a young age (its harder to do this when children are older as they then struggle to find alternatives, whereas young children get into the habit of this) - talk together/play games together instead. I believe strongly that the fatherless generation now is not just about broken families where dad lives elsewhere but is about absent fathers - kids in another room, him somewhere else and little chat inbetween. Home, but absent.

*try family soaking times. This refreshes and invigorates parent-child bonds like nothing else I know. It staves off the enemy. He can't stand it. It brings a whole family into God's presence - sometimes we actually feel the room become different; like electrified in its presence, sometimes we don't but we have been quiet and still for 10 minutes and talked to God in prayer and listened to him; all of us together in our living room.

I first saw this in action at the Families on Fire conference in Toronto in 2006 which I attended with my 6 year old and in 2007 I hosted this conference in Scotland. The family soaking sessions got the most postive feedback of anything I have ever arranged or put on for children and families - read about it here.

To do this at home, all you need are 10-20 minutes, a CD player and CD, and paper, pens and Bible. Email me at children.pastor@gmail.com if you want further informaton but believe me it's really easy to do and you will probably be amazed at how your children enter into this.

Two church prayer meetings ago I got the children to minister to adults and vice versa during a brief (20 minute) soaking time and it was incredibly powerful. One of my colleagues had popped out to the supermarket for drinks etc (it was an all night prayer meeting) and when he came back he felt like electricity in the air - and asked straight away what had been happening. Children were praying for their mums or dads and other adults and vice versa, I replied.

During soaking times, the prayers are not wordy and not even spoken, we simply rest in God's presence (some people don't warm to the word soaking so just change the word - there are many references to resting in God's presence, meditating on his greatness - see an excellent list of biblical references which I teach from here. Check out the FAQs on the right hand side of the page, particularly the one on Soaking and the Bible).

But back to Raoul Moat. I speak and write of these things because, as Mark Stibbe has written today on Twitter: "We are on a Wilberforce mission. We are after the abolition of fatherlessness and the reformation of fatherhood in the UK and beyond. This is why Father's House Trust exists. This is why we want to address fatherlessness. This is why we want to get a Father heart course into every UK prison". Please support Mark Stibbe as he has recently had inroads into no10 Downing Street itself to help shape UK policy. I feel an Esther "for such a time as this" is upon the Father's House Trust. Please do check the website out.

Christians hold the key; the truth and the life; the way to the Father is the way to be fathered.

In 2007 I wrote about this.

Godfrey kindly gave me permission to reproduce the words of his song then.

Mr HIWWC still sings it as a lament in worship (at our last night of prayer actually, 2 weeks ago). It feels like a song for our nation just now and so apt as I cry about those words from last night: "I haven't got a dad".....

Lord turn Your footsteps towards these ruins
We need You here...We need You here...
Our homes are broken
Our children are stolen
We need You here...We need You here....

Our God and King...Ancient of days...
Alpha Omega, Jesus, Saviour
Work Your deliverance in this place.
Yours is the night...Yours is the day..
No-one is greater...come Lord save us!
Work Your deliverance in this place...

Lord turn Your footsteps towards these ruins
We need You here...We need You here...
In these streets filled with darkness
Our children fatherless
We need You here...We need You here...
Godfrey Birtill
© Whitefield Music UK

How would you World Cup your church?

2010-06-22T08:43:00.003+01:00

HT to David for this.
It's great! The comments are as funny as the post.

I think he has a prophetic gift - I saw two of our church's under 12s walking up the road on Saturday with vuvuzelas under their arms!

June....all for Christ

2010-06-12T00:06:00.005+01:00

Looking back over the four years of blog entries in June, it's always the case that June is like: "how can I manage to do all the things in this month that need to be done?"

Yet I always manage it. Although I feel like I might not be able to (I sent a crisis text to a praying friend just this week) I try to take one week at a time. I try to "rest" my way through each one of them. Sometimes I manage it, sometimes I don't.

Our church has superb administrative staff, real high quality, servant hearted, organised and caring folks who go out of their way to help me and they have been a lifeline to me as I had to initially undertake a huge tranche of admin work to get systems and paperwork in place for children and volunteers.

In May, I gained a part-time volunteer children's worker who is also very gifted and organised and a real grafter and I am hoping we can retain her.

So this month:
* I held a residential children's weekend away. Our theme can be best summed up by the Drake's song "God is Here" - He was *so* present. The kids had a total and utter breakthrough when we used this song to worship more freely than they have ever done so before which opened the way to more freedom and response to the Word. I was teaching on preventing sin becoming a stronghold and how the application of the Word of God into our minds affected our will and our emotions - our ability to obey, resist and overcome.

All I can say is that God is just so AWESOME and so faithful to reveal what he is like - I love, love, love it when children who have been part of a church community for 2 minutes (3 months) have a supernatural encounter with God's Holy Spirit without anyone telling them anything about it or manipulating anything to happen. This has happened every single year we have gone away. "I feel all wobbly, like I might fall over and I kept seeing Jesus in front of me, holding his arms out", "it feels like God is hugging me"...what were we doing? Worshipping Jesus. Singing, dancing, praying, offering up our lives to him in spontaneous worship - both leaders and children saying: here we are Father God.......
God wants to tell us AND show us that he loves us!

* I've got a Positive Parenting Course running this month, and its full, 80% folks from the community. I was told today that two of the guests were pleasantly surprised with the atmosphere and how the course ran - they had expected to be lectured in a dusty and cold hall. It's a form of guided self-help, to use the parlance, so I facilitate, not teach, the course.

* I'm also running a daytime Alpha course just now, with one of my previous guests who came to faith helping me run the course. We have seven guests and a couple of Christian "bringer-alongers" - if you read regularly you will know how much I love Alpha and next week is our Holy Spirit morning and a bacon roll breakfast! What's really great about this course is that we have two of our guests are parents from the midweek kids club, so we are seeing two or three members of the same family be immersed in the words of Jesus and in loving wee communities (small groups)at the same time! My kids team see them during the week and I see parent during the week!

Coupled with this, God continues to bring families along who are just waking up one morning and coming to church.I shouldn't compare this with my previous church, but I have been blown away by how often this is happening. It seems like a once or twice monthly occurrence. I'm visiting not one but three families this month to talk about how to have friendship with Jesus and become part of our church (and in particular, part of the missional expressions; our smaller gatherings) is why I am reminded again and again of what I believe the Lord has for us in Scotland in the realm of children and families, oh Jesus, I'm longing for the more.

I've said it before, but I sense there will be an ease in evangelism if we welcome the Spirit's leading and not rely solely on our own good effort. I've just to co-operate as he moves freely in response to the prayers over this nation. I have honestly not come up with any strategies personally except I run Alpha when I sense there are a cluster of people ready to do it, for me this usually takes the form of one teatime course and two daytime courses. I try to ask God about what else I should do in my morning a week retreating to lay the diary out. I try to be myself (this can be hard as my background is so different from the community I am now part of). Oh, and it helps that I am part of an obsessively outward-focussed church. I don't like typing that. Shouldn't every church be outward focussed?

* there are two other really big things on this month. Tomorrow I have holiday club team training day and I am really excited about this club. I knew it was a Dave Godfrey as soon as I read the daily themes - if you are a NE England person, check Dave out. He's great. I think I will post on this another time, I want to offer some theological reflection on why I think starting a holiday club with the Ascension story (Day 1) and then Pentecost (Day 2) is great :-) So I see 25 or 30 lovely people tomorrow.

* finally, before I can go on the holiday we haven't really got organised yet, I have to finalise the summer cover arrangements. Dance, drama, games and Persecuted Church Sundays.

* oh and order the loads of Bibles - see other posts. That's a fun June job. Cept the NCV translations are being reprinted and not available anywhere in the UK. Grrrr. Might have to go backwards to the Good News version for one of the age bands.....

* I've got two preaches to do and two all age services to plan but at least some of them are well underway already.

*I forgot I am leading children and family worship evening/praise event on Friday nightt with a mini-teach and ministry between the age ranges present.

*I'm actually trying to meet with some of the kids' teams (managed two so far) regarding some major changes after the summer, as well as see some pretty vulnerable parents, I'm keen to catch folks before school holidays hit us in 3 weeks. Invariably I am not going to manage all of this before July starts.

We managed to have a babysitter to get to a small group meeting together this week and the Spirit fell very powerfully and very gently. Cue: stuck to the floor in rest and having a download of joy and a vision of heaven. Just want you need to get you through the rest of the month! I just couldn't do it without you, Jesus. It's all for you because I love you so and I understand afresh this week that what I manage to accomplish - or don't - doesn't matter a jot.

Mr HIWWC

2010-06-06T23:45:00.005+01:00

Not that much is ever said about Mr HIWWC and after blogging for 4 years I felt it might be time to change this. My good friend here writes about Him Indoors quite a bit.

I want to record a little about him because I simply could not do what I do without him. He shares my passion and calling and although I am the "paid church worker/pastor", he is a very gifted man in his own right, particularly in dealing with difficult or contentious situations or individuals (children!). He has a calm, assertive and wise manner. He's also a gifted teacher and worship leader. He's a phenomenal pray-er and bold and brave in ministry situations :-)

He was asked to write a summary of himself for a worship gig-thing he's doing in another church and he emailed it to me to see what I thought - so here it is here, reproduced in all its glory (apart from some details bleeped out)

My favourite bit is the second last line of course :-)

In terms of the brief history.....always a bit tricky to write this kind of thing ......

musical influences - Elvis, the Clash, delirious, Matt Redman, Jesus Culture, Brian Johnson!
Worship influences - in the '80's/90's i was shaped by the Vineyard music of the time, especially worship leaders like Kevin Prosch and Brian Doerkson - loved the emphasis on intimacy and meeting with God. At the same time I was influenced by Graham Kendrick and his commitment to theological depth and integrity in worship songs. Both of these are key values of mine.
Led worship at XXX church for yonks. Now one of the worship leaders at XXXX.

I believe that the worship songs we sing should facilitate a worship encounter between God and us that changes us to be more like him, releases his gifts, empowers us for mission and leads to the transformation of our churches and cities. I aim to reflect this in my own songs.

I believe that worshipping with the songs God gives us is key to awakening a new day in our nation.

I love getting the chance to "go with the flow" and follow God's leading especially when worship and intercession blend together. Kevin Prosch and Godfrey Birtill have been great role models in this.

I think there's something special from God whenever we worship together as God's people of all ages, youngest to oldest and love leading worship in this kind of setting. Vineyard UK, Powerpack ministries and Nick and Becky Drake are fab at producing all-age friendly, spiritually dynamic songs for all ages to sing without feeling too daft - forget daft actions just for the sake of it - kids need the presence and power of God as much as we do and can often hear his voice unhindered by grown-up baggage! Sorry, I'm on my soap box.

The songs I am writing just now are to encourage the church to seek more of God, to know more of his presence and see him work through us to make a real difference to world about us. To quote the chorus of a very recent song:
"Heaven on earth, I'm longing for
I'm seeking your face, I'm knocking your door
I've tasted in part but now I want more
heaven on earth."

I am married to Lynn (an amazing woman) and have 2 children and a hamster. I am a teacher in a secondary school.

Children and the Holy Spirit in the World today

2010-05-27T00:24:00.008+01:00

This is a very brief splurge..........

Why is a children and family pastor at a theological conference on the Holy Spirit?
What direct application does this have for my role?
Why was my church so kind to let me go in work time and pay my train fare?
(to shut me up?)
(to get rid of me for a few days?)

No way. Wasn't for those reasons.

I have accumulated some head knowledge about God through studying, but in addition I have spent the last six years teaching and modelling things to children and more so teaching my teams who teach children the things God has taught me. I have, in particular, been watching the signs of how young people are responding - and watching the signs of what God is doing over the nations of this world through the young.

Since 2006, I have been talking with my equivalent staff members in centres of outpouring and powerful renewal moves such as Bethel and TACF. I have visited Toronto twice. I have had the Toronto guys in Scotland to minister to my families. I have studied theology and in particular church history as it pertains to children and young people. I have looked at biblical instructions to families in the OT and NT. I have read how eminent theologians saw children (early church fathers, the Reformers - check out any Marcia Bunge books). I have read scholarly reviews of how faith develops (Westerhoff and Fowler) and combined these with educational theory (Bronfenbrenner) and studies on nurture (Bushnell, Wilhoit/Dettoni)

Then I have looked at the trend of children leaving the church in swathes e.g.in Britain and in the USA (Christian Research findings, Barna Organisation, empirical observation). I have watched how families respond in church (must have toys or edible distractions for all non-puppet moments). I have listened to the thoughts of hundreds of children under my pastoral care (literally) in two churches - how they have expressed their experience of faith; their hopes for the future and their faltering fear of not making it through 12 years of education with their faith still in place.

Readers, its time for the church in Britain to stop giving birth to children whose experience of faith causes them to feel like victims. Where they are picked on and ashamed of having a faith. Where they are marginalised in their classes because they go to church. With all my heart I want to teach and train pastors, leaders, parents and children that children were created to be victors, not victims. This is *not* about triumphalism. This is about children understanding that those who love Jesus are invited into the most loving and accepting community - the Trinity!- that they could ever find. Those who are hidden in Christ become one with Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit! As much as I need the Father and the Son, I need the Holy Spirit to empower me and give me hope just when I feel I'm running low.

Pneumatology has a place in the spiritual formation of the young. We talk lots about Jesus and tell all his stories, but we also need to tell stories about the work of the Holy Spirit! I posted elsewhere on this blog: how can children love someone whose name they haven't even heard? Right now, in this nation, boys and girls are going to churches where they are taught either nothing or half-truths about the Holy Spirit. How can they keep on, keeping on without the precious Holy Spirit? I don't say this flippantly, but if I spent seven years in primary education being told the same stories again and again, engaging the head without the heart being touched by the phileo - demonstrated love of the Father - I'd be off out the door too.

And its through the Holy Spirit that we release our children into the supernatural - there is no junior Holy Spirit! It's exciting to be a Christian! Not meant to be dull and one-dimensional, but to be felt, experienced, laughed, cried, tried and practised. And dare I say - played with? Yes! It's fun listening to God! Praying for others! For more on this, read anything by Heidi Baker and how God uses the young in Mozambique. Or Visions Beyond the Veil
by H A Baker. <--- That one will get you!

I don't say any of this flippantly. I am absolutely serious about the fact that I know the set of circumstances that led me to leave a secure teaching job to do the job I do now, to labour under a second degree, to have the opportunities to influence some kids leaders and pastors in this little nation here, are all because of what is coming. Most people doing the kind of job I am doing did not intend to do it. They were involved in other work, secular or otherwise. This fact is substantiated by Becky Fischer in her book "Redefining Children's Ministry in the 21st Century".

With all my heart I believe that we will once again see children flooding through the doors of the churches who have repented of the wrong attitudes and are ready to receive a little child. I believe the hearts of fathers and mothers will be won through many, many children and we are in a season of "getting ready" - to disciple children who in turn will disciple their parents. I wrote a paper on this for Alpha at one point in the past. I also believe that theological trainers and church leaders need to weigh what I have just said: if it is true, or even possibly true, then every major church growth initiative/minister training school should have some component somewhere that looks at children and family in the Bible, looks at discipleship amongst children and families and most important of all, examines their own heart towards children. I have found these statements here to have been the most requested material I have ever written.

Further info here: Can Children Be Filled With The Holy Spirit?

And so I need good theology. I need to be well taught. I need to read and reflect because I am often so busy "doing".. I need to rest from work so that I can work from rest (HT to mark stibbe for that line!) for I think I am to help other people catch this vision and therefore I am deeply grateful to my church leaders for allowing me to go.

I am really blessed to be in a place where resources are released to me when I need them, where the leaders are permissioning, where the young are considered, even though I am probably a pain, but please do read as a last word the prophecy by Jean Darnell. I don't just believe it's coming but I believe I am witnessing some of it now.

Splurge over. This all kind of flowed out in a oner so I may just delete it in the cold light of day.....

Holy Spirit in the World Today (Part 2a)

2010-05-26T23:48:00.004+01:00

I arrived for early morning prayer to find stacks and stacks of people there - the Scottish squad lost the ability to watch the action straight on from middle aisle seats so we found ourselves in some side seats (not so good)..nevertheless HTB is good on space to move around/flex the joints so we figured we'd survive. Survivor mentality and all that.

Jane Williams opened with a homily on Matthew 12:22-32 and took on the brave topic (briefly) of grieving the Holy Spirit by what she called "deliberate, clear-eyed cold hearted acts" against the Spirit of God. She made it clear that this is not something you do by accident, and that if you mind about even the thought of having done it, then you haven't done it.

She described it as a cruel attempt to trash anything that God is doing or working out in people. "A deliberate rejection of the good". Jane was at pains to say that this was rare, and that it manifested itself as rejecting the flourishing of other people.

She drew our attention to John 16; that the Holy Spirit gives "judging power" to allow us to see (judge) the truth. And so we often say the Holy Spirit helps us to judge people (where they're at) but this can often cross over into criticism. No...really...in the church? Surely not!! Tear the sermon apart? We never do that! Yet...if someone else is "flourishing" through that sermon/ministry - shouldn't we just shut up?

She encouraged us to seek discernment; the judging gift of the Holy Spirit - which is to help us see the Father and transform this broken world. A practical tip was to look for Jesus in everything we see - a good test is: where are people working for human flourishing? This is not exclusive to Christians. I loved this point and it has really made me think over the past few days.

One of my favourite TV programmes is Secret Millionaire. There are some remarkable charities working in multiply-deprived areas doing amazing work to lift people's self-esteem and life chances. I always watch avidly for even a tiny hint that the charity is a Christian one and it doesn't look that many are - and so I will now re-look at this as a sign that Jesus is in the world - there are individuals in that little rented unit working for human flourishing - this is what Jane Williams called "a sign of Jesus" - and she encouraged us to rejoice and give thanks for that.

"Praise is a better way to change the world than condemnation" - such challenging words. I found this homily brave and bold in tackling a sensitive pastoral issue (what does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit?)

and then Jane got all the women on the platform to say the grace so that she could claim "loads of women spoke from the front at the Holy Spirit in the World Today conference!"

I need to blog about the awesome Prof Ford. Later in the week!

Connect

2010-05-25T01:37:00.003+01:00

Please do connect and comment. I loved the collegiate approach taken to discussions during the Holy Spirit in the World today conference.

I often spend time overseeing what goes on in other places other than the main auditorium on Sunday mornings and miss out on end of service chat in my day job so it's been great to have some theology chat here and down in London. I've learnt lots through it!

There have been thousands of visitors to the blog over the last four years but a bit of a hiatus in comments so any encouraging/kind/constructive comments are very welcome and feel free to read back or click on the "children and theology/worship/communion etc" links on the left.

thanks!

Holy Spirit in the World Today - Part 1(b)

2010-05-24T23:35:00.003+01:00

After lunch we headed off into our seminars. There was a pretty wide choice and I headed off to Spirit and Mission seminar. I chose this because my church has totally restructured and reoriented in the last 8 months to missional expressions (MEs) clustered around missional foci that the members themselves came up with, inspired by the Spirit and not dictated by the church leadership. That's another post in its own right but its not for now.

Again, let me acknowledge gratefully some of the words below from Jonathan Evens who had clearly had more than three hours sleep... in the afternoon I struggled a little in the heat of the Hot, sorry, I mean, Hut, as I had barely slept on the overnight train . I remember clearly seeing Mike Pilavachi snuggling deep into some beanbags on the other side of the room!

(Bishop?) Graham Cray from Fresh Expressions drew on John V. Taylor's The Go-Between God to identify criteria for discerning the work of the Spirit in leading God's mission and the part that the Church plays within it.

I found the following quote from Clark Pinnock very thought provoking:
"our theology would improve if we thought more of the church being given to the Spirit rather than the Spirit being given to the church".

and I absolutely LOVED this quote from Prof David Ford:
"The Holy Spirit is quintessentially a gift of God and one that is not simply possessed when given, rather the mark of having received is to continually ask..."
This reminds me of the way children respond to God and ask for more of him anytime this is offered or encouraged.

The presence of the Holy Spirit stirs up desire and longing for the coming kingdom (Colin Gunton) - that's exactly how I feel. I feel as if I could burst with longing and desire for more. At the same time as processing all of this information I have been praying for a very sick friend (whilst reading God on Mute - try that for a total snotfest) and I feel a desire for the kingdom to come wake me in the middle of the night, bring hot tears to my eyes, permeate my thoughts regularly throughout the day.

Back to what Graham Cray said: Discernment involves learning of what God is doing and learning to do it with him. This means understanding the shape of the Spirit's ministry. The Spirit is essentially relational and arranges the meaningless pieces of reality until they suddenly fall into shape. (note: I feel this is what I see throughout the Alpha course. The Holy Spirit works in such power every single time so that, by NOT answering people's questions the minute they ask them, pieces which form in the guests' minds fall into shape).

The Spirit anticipates in the present, things which are still to come. The Church is, therefore, to live in each culture as an anticipation of the future. Christ-likeness is the ultimate test of the Spirit's presence and where the Spirit is making Jesus more real neither caution nor convention or reputation ought to make us resist his possession of us.

Cray's specific criteria for discernment were: charism, character, content, characteristics, community, cultivation, and experience. He mentioned that if you get your image of God wrong then you get the rest wrong. And if you have any questions about this session (which I do as I was tired), Graham Cray is about to publish all of this in a Grove booklet. I asked him about the tensions between "programmed" and "spontaneous, Spirit led" missional initiatives and Graham answered really helpfully that the Spirit often gives births to "patterns" which culminate in success and fruitfulness.

Paul Weston from Ridley Hall helpfully summarised Lesslie Newbigin's understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in mission. Now I did not study Newbigin at all in my past so I listened but didn't follow everything that was said - and if I had a criticism of this session it was that it sped by - the two speakers felt like they were "rushing" a bit. For those who are interested in what was said, here are Jonathan's notes: Newbigin blazed a trinitarian trail in thinking about mission as he responded to the changing thinking seen at the major mission conferences of the twentieth century. For Newbigin pneumatology is mission, as the gifts of the Spirit are always for mission. It is the Spirit which takes the initiative bringing the Church after, in contrast to the Church-centric focus of the 1938 mission conference in India. The Spirit brings new forms of Church into being and by doing so works towards unity which is the deepest expression of the Gospel.

Miroslav Volf posed the key question in a globalised world of whether and how religious exclusivists can live comfortably with each other i.e. is monotheism by its very nature exclusivist? He answered this question by arguing that Christian monotheism contains democratising and universalist aspects which justify political pluralism, including the Spirit of justice and of many languages/cultures, so that a consistent religious exclusivist ought to be a political pluralist.

As a Scottish Baptist, I found his view that the state to have its hands off religion convincing. It seemed to me that 90%+ of the conference attenders were Anglican (and mainly clergy) and so I understand that, having had the Archbishop present earlier in the day, the assertion that pluralism was good and indeed desirable may not have been a popular one. Volf pointed out that the state does not favour one religion over another in religious pluralism and seemed to me to be advancing the Baptist distinctives of separation of church and state and freedom of religion for all. I fought as hard against dawn raids happening in the homes of Muslim asylum seekers as Christians, for example. I do believe that if we have private Christian schools then private Muslim schools should also be allowed (I worked beside one some years ago, it was shut down for breaching standards!) We don't have the English situation of RC schools AND C of E schools so there is no direct comparison for us up here.

I liked Volf's assertion that religious pluralism means that people come in freedom to the one true God. He stayed away from going too much into the universalist question, probably due to the audience he was speaking to, but I have found Volf to be quite clear in the past that people can reject the gift offered to them (forgiveness and the forgiver).

In the last daytime session, Prof Tom Greggs reflected on the day so far:-
1. that pneumatology is an engagement with theology from the middle
2. it is the doctrine with which we engage most fully with the church but pneumatology is not to be reduced to ecclesiology. We need the Spirit to have the church but we don't need to have the church to have the Spirit (I love that line!)
3. the contemporaneity and futurity of the Spirit - there are connections between the world in which we live and the Spirit. I love this idea too - the ability to be part of the realisation of God's future promise. Being able to yearn for what we were made for.
4. the holiness of the Spirit - to never reduce him in any way
5. the intensity and extensity of the Spirit - we cannot have a dividing line between the church and the world.

I was delighted to come back for the evening session which was Rev Sandy Millar (I'm sure he's got another title now, probably tending towards the bish end of the spectrum) explaining why academic theologians needed not only to know of the Holy Spirit but to experience his power. I just love this kind of evening, for those who know me know I like nothing better than time to ....be my quiet self before God....ahem.
I sensed his presence very powerfully and it was just great to have some time that wasn't sitting down at all but allowed for kneeling and crying/shouting/singing/offering up heart, mind and body. Just a great end to Day one.

Holy Spirit in the World Today - Part 1(a)

2010-05-22T22:12:00.008+01:00

I sat down tonight to attempt to put something in writing about the conference in Holy Trinity Brompton on the Holy Spirit in the World today,. This might just be one of the most significant conferences I have ever attended, alongside TACF's International Leaders School which I have blogged on before.

Lots of things have happened to me over the last seven years for a purpose. I still can't believe how I ended up with a theology degree in what started off as the most random of circumstances. I still pinch myself that we actually took the plunge and moved in quite scary circumstances to a challenging situation and not one we would every have voluntarily put ourselves in (we felt strangely reassured by an external psychological assessment for ministry accreditation reporting that we were indeed in a testing cross-cultural situation and needed supported in this!) I'm constantly amazed with how much more I love God as I have thrown myself on him in ways I could only imagine before, in that "safe place".

Anyway, I digress.
Let me begin with some reflections on the first half of Thursday. (too much for one post!)

It was so good to know no less than five people there - the Scottish contingent! - we all studied at the same institution, so for the general part of our degrees we had studied quite a bit of Moltmann in Christology and I had read a little of Volf on exclusion. I wasn't familiar at all with Prof David Ford, but I am now, for he indeed rocked. More about the other participants later.

At this point I need to acknowledge the fantastically detailed write up from another delegate - Jonathan Evens (blogging here) and say a public thanks for permission to plagarise his words!

The day got off to the best possible start with a wonderful homily from Rowan Williams (on Romans 8:14-17, 22) in which he spoke of the Holy Spirit as desire or longing to become the new humanity for which we have been created by God. I had never heard him speak before and I was really impressed with the careful use of words - nothing superfluous, nothing overstated, but powerfully presented. Quoting St Symeon - "Come, you who have become yourself desire in me, and have wanted me to desire the unreachable you!" - and Mother Maria Skobtsova - "either Christianity is fire or there is no such thing" - he argued that the Holy Spirit is the desire in us to be where Christ is - God's child - and to become Christ-like - self-emptying. True freedom, he said, is freedom for a full humanity. Full humanity is Christ-shaped. Freedom is kenotic - for self emptying - humanity overwhelmed by the energy of gift.

And then Rowan said something interesting (I remember talking about this on Jan 3rd in a sermon) - waiting for the Holy Spirit is not a passive activity, it requires movement, active desiring and longing.

Ken Costa (author of God At Work) was up next. He talked of his theological background at Cambridge and his longstanding desire to see a conference like this happen. He shared more of his personal journey of pneumatology influencing him in the world of work. Jonathan Evans records that his friends saw Costa's talk as a necessary one for those who tend to view the Spirit as primarily working through the Church. I am reminded a little of Darrell Cosden's (a previous lecturer of mine) two books on theology and work.

Moltmann, like Williams, was simply wonderful. I can't believe that I got to hear him as I wouldn't imagine, at the age of 84, that he travels to the UK regularly! A brief initial interview by Costa revealed the humanity which informs his theology (although Kilmarnock got a bit of a bashing: Moltmann was imprisoned there during WWII) and then he spoke on 'The Church in the power of the Spirit'.

His perspective is a European theological voice not commonly heard in Church debates within the UK which is informed by the destruction of state Christianity that occured in Europe following the First World War but which is only slowly occuring in the UK. As a result, he is comfortable seeing the Spirit's initiative in and the need for the Church to ally itself with human rights organisations and Greenpeace, alliances over which much of the UK Church still agonises or resists. He emphasised the extent to which his theology had been a response to world events - The Theology of Hope was a response to Germany after the War and The Crucified Christ a response to the assassination of Martin Luther King - and an attempt to resource the Church for ministering in the light of those events.

'Think globally, act locally' is a lesson that the Church can inhabit and so he began with stories of the Church in Germany and his own church of St Jacob's Tübingen. His denomination has moved from being a church for the people (religious caretaking) where people attended their parish church and did not even think of travelling to attend other churches nearby, to become an inviting, participatory community church of the people where the gifts of all are trusted. The opposite of poverty and property, he argued, is community because in community we discover our true wealth the spirit of solidarity through which all our needs can be met. Such spirit-filled communities are seen in the fulfilling of Joel's prophecy at Pentecost and the descriptions of the Jerusalem Church in Acts. Such spirit-filled communities are bridgeheads to new life on earth where righteousness will dwell.

Interestingly he commented on how his church continued to grow when the longstanding charismatic pastor retired, as many other people preached and led services. He specifically mentioned that new things happened in the church as they were "led from below". This was his local concrete example of a church in the power of the spirit.

He posited three paradigms of Church - the hierarchical, the hierarchical community and the charismatic community - which equated to the Father above us, Christ with us, and the Spirit within us. The Church is come of age, he suggested, so we are no longer just God's servants or his children but, his friends. Peace with God, however, makes us restless in the world and a revolutionary Christiaity will both call the world evil and seek to change it, ultimately by reconciling the cosmos. The Spirit of God is no respector of social distinctions which divide us and awakens democratic energies for a new humanity.

On a personal note, had I not read a word of his writings, I would have been able to pick up on Moltmann's political leanings, for they came out quite strongly. He may be 84, but that didn't stop him putting what I think was gentle pressure on Ken Costa in the Q & A session when feepaying (Christian?) schools were mentioned. I think "red Scotland" felt more than a little support for his view that state schools should have as much access to quality education! That it isnt fair for people with money to have access to better education. Amen! (I write as a former secondary school teacher).

I want to reflect a little more on Moltmann and Volf in terms of religious pluralism and the activity I was engaged in during the first half of the week - what makes my denomination distinctive?

Tomorrow (or soon) the second half of Day one of the conference.....

Quick Update

2010-05-18T00:52:00.003+01:00

Meant to write a longer post but out of time. Who stole the first half of May??

Things have been pretty phenomenal at work but my notebook and mind are stuffed and overflowing with things that need to be done and stuff I need to check out before I can progress them. There is so much I want to do and I'm itching to be able to, to have the necessary pairs of hands to do so, the physical space to do so, the resources to do so and yet......

On Friday night I went to a phenomenal Mark Stibbe meeting and this quote from him has been sitting with me:

Don't rest from work but work from rest..........

Meanwhile.... I am away to the Trossachs for two days for a denominational residential meeting/discussions.

Then I am straight off to London to a conference here on Holy Spirit and Mission with the Archbishop of Canterbury, David Ford, Miroslav Volf and Jurgen Moltmann. If you're going, drop me a message in the comments box!

I am very excited about one of this week's opportunities and filled a little with trepidation about the other............which is which do you think?

Voting Preferences

2010-05-06T10:40:00.005+01:00

Make sure you use your vote today!

Someone said that I nail my colours to the mast politically. I absolutely respect other people's right not to declare their voting preferences and would never sway them (a former pupil of mine contacted me last week through Facebook to ask for tips on who to vote for. I can't answer that for her. I advised her to read party manifestoes, find out information about each candidate and in particular about their experience in representing people, and to think about what issues were important to her and to her local community).

But for me.... I don't care if people know ...I am pleased to have been on demonstrations and rallies and to have had a history and involvement in pressure groups. It's helped me see some things differently. I have always wanted to be around people who campaign for the rights of the poor/the asylum seeker/the lone parent/children in poverty. In Glasgow ordinary people seem to get more hands on involved in campaigning (look at Rose Gentle!), we ran all kinds of different mock elections in schools and nearly all of my friends have been on a march. I've been on many - anti-poverty, anti-poll tax, education cuts, CND, dawn raids, immigration and asylum policy. It's an amazing feeling to get out and "do". So does that make me a socialist? Does that make me a left winger? I'm trying to be a Christ follower - I want to stand up and be counted sometimes and not just about how much inheritance money I can get before its taxed.

We often want to tag one another with labels......politically or theologically (am I post-charismatic? ooooh watch and see). I have been wondering why that is. Is that so we can say: oh, they're a Conservative so I won't like them because I'm not like them. They're a Calvinist so I won't be able to work with them because I'm not like them. I've been really challenged by the hypocrisy in my own heart. I want not to do the labels thing and yet at times I so know I do it in my own heart - I desperately need sanctification!

Back to the state of Britain: I worked for three years in banking and became an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers so I am little interested in economic and financial issues. I get fed up with people slating Brown about the recession. How did it start? Banks had lent out too much money in consumer credit spending - I want I want I want - they were left high and dry, they collapsed, the FT index responded, the pound weakened, house prices fell as lending was squeezed and we know the rest. Last month we were declared as comingout of recession, meaning that this recession has been a short one. This is a VERY interesting read:

"Lord Freud, a Conservative spokesman on welfare, has congratulated the government on its handling of the recession, saying it has contributed to 500,000 people not losing their jobs.

He also admitted the British experience of the recession has been much better than during the previous recession of 1992, which was overseen by John Major's Tory government.

Freud, a former businessman who has advised both Labour and the Tories, praised the government's flexible labour market during debates on the government's child poverty bill".
Worth reading the whole article here. It's a good'un.

Disclaimer: this posting is entirely my personal views and does not represent any organisation I work for or liaise with either now or in the past!!!!

Immigration back on the radar

2010-05-02T00:46:00.006+01:00

Hmmmm, I'm a bit troubled tonight about immigration due to a pastoral issue. I have never stopped caring about this issue, but for two years now it hasn't been such a live issue in the minds and lives of the people I am around. I'm again finding my thoughts drawn back the way - to the procedures, the offhand way in which some people are treated, the seemingly endless bureaucracy to even speak to someone in the Home Office....some readers with long memories may remember this blog - a joint project with two of my friends. I'm thinking it might need reawakened.

I was part of a team who pastored men, women and children who had suffered so much....I sat with women in the offices of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. I went to solicitor's appointments and to housing associations. I am delighted to say that everyone seeking to remain in Britain from my previous church (a substantial number) in time received Leave to Remain. This makes it sound easy - for some it took many years and not a little humiliation, such as every member of the family having to report to Brand St once a week, knowing that at any time they could be taken to a room round the back, interrogated and then driven away to Dungavel or Yarl's Wood if the Home Office had decreed that they had come to the end of the appeals process (all the cases I knew well were families who had been turned down and therefore were living on "borrowed time" as their solicitors lodged appeals). Some were taken away in dawn raids but didn't get so far as being put on the 'plane back. Each one I knew personally now has Indefinite Leave to Remain and indeed, some now have full citizenship.

I never understood the inherent suspicion with which these families were treated, even, sadly, by some of the legal aid solicitors. As if these women would flee to the UK for economic reasons....when all their loved ones were back in the other country....mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers they would not be able to see for years and years....

I once flew down to Yarl's Wood Detention Centre to visit a family with four children under ten years old who were taken in the middle of the night, thrown into a van bound for Manchester and then Luton and detained for 30 days. Make no mistake about it - these places are prisons. I found that the staff though were apologetic and even embarrassed about their role in locking away this family who loved Jesus and talked about him constantly. I remember *** saying that he asked for his Bible, and the dawn raid officers who were bundling clothes into black bin bags, refused his request. Never have I been so sad to be British.

On Good Friday I was interviewed by a Radio Scotland reporter about the issues that mattered to me in the forthcoming elections. I talked about our immigration and asylum policy. I said that the way we treat people who are genuinely in fear of their lives and their futures made me ashamed to be British.

You can bet my quote is on the cutting room floor.

The God of the Old Testament is the same God today. Please pray this verse over our nation's leaders and in particular over the civil servants in the relevant departments.

'When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God'. (Leviticus 19:33-34)

Hot. Topic.

2010-04-29T00:01:00.007+01:00

I don't know why I'm even posting this as lots of the comments annoy me so much I can't even bear to read them. I'm just glad I live here and not there as it's much easier in the UK, genuinely. :-(

If I was a children's pastor in charge of WoompaLand (I didn't make that name up! Explore the full horrors of the link in the first line!), I know I would have left post by now.

I was quite tickled by this view "the nursery baby-sitters don't teach them anything, just make sure they don't die"...
That's an encouraging thought for those who run the creche.

Therefore I would never post a comment, would I...............?

:-)

Living in grace not justice

2010-04-21T19:37:00.006+01:00

Last November I attended a leaders' school of ministry (if you are near Oxford at all, and can possibly attend this event, do so!) with some folks from my current church and it was fabulous. The teaching there, on the whole, was not new to me however I needed to hear it and it hit me hard. Particularly about walking in the "grace place" (I forgive) instead of the "justice place" (its not fair)

Since moving here, more than ever I have come to really understand that I need to be taught in order to teach others. The minute any of us say: I know that or I know how to do that is the minute the warning bells should start ringing; I don't think any leader is exempt from being taught or open to suggestion. And to have a comment or a suggestion made to you (us) is also not a reason to go on the automatic defence ...well, I know that... or yes, I have done that before....

I remember in October 2007 being taught about the characteristics of a heart of stone - it comes back to me often - is that me? am I doing that? hold on, if I think that there is no way that is me, then is it possible that it IS me?
Most clearly I remember that hearts of stone prefer to "do" rather than "be" and find it hard to be corrected, taught or prayed for.

So I found myself being taught again pretty forcibly about not being in the place of "justice". Hard going, over and over again recently. Oh God, you know me so well. You know what I need to learn.

It's been 20 months since we moved city, This weekend we returned to visit our previous church, where we had been since our teenage years. Apart from clapping and cheering because we were announced as being back for a visit (thanks! we were mortified!!) I wasn't as emotional as I had feared but what was so noticeable was that from the opening bar of the first song, there was complete engagement from the congregation towards God. I'd describe it in a new made-up word: one-heartedness. Heartfelt shouts, cries, whispers, prayers as well as sung words. Quiet moments of congregational adoration towards God. It felt as if people weren't worried about what others think. How I have missed that. I think I noticed these things more because I have been away for so long.

I deliberately didn't go to drop my children off in their groups, as I felt that would be insensitive for my successor as I was hugged by a number of the children earlier and I know I couldn't just have snuck in and snuck out of the hall without there being some warm greetings from the older children (which would most definitely have made me bawl)

Anyway, I'd had a hard and disappointing week. I'd been broken to pieces and asking God for help to be in the place of grace (where disappointment and hurt is OK...we are to let that out!) and not in the place of anger and judgment. A couple of the prayer team prayed for me and one woman with a prophetic gift shared a very significant biblical example with me.

The Daughters of Zelophehad were five sisters in the Bible who lived during the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and who raised before Moses the case of a woman’s right and obligation to inherit property in the absence of a male heir in the family. Zelophehad's daughters argued before Moses and the other members of the court that it was unfair that they could not use their father's right to cast lots and that some provision should be made so they could inherit and preserve their father's name upon his inheritance. Moses took their petition before the Lord and received the following answer:

Numbers 27:7 "What Zelophehad's daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father's relatives and turn their father's inheritance over to them".

The daughters used legal means to get what was theirs. But significantly, Moses, whom they turned to, consulted the Lord.

Don't you love people who pray for you and utter not their own wisdom but ask the Lord what he wants to say? Not only did these verses speak very deeply into a painful and personal situation - but....six weeks ago I was given this passage to preach on - in June!

Some SH reflections

2010-04-19T23:55:00.004+01:00

Spring Harvest Week 1 - Skegness - been back for a week now, have read some team and parent testimonies for the week, and as my current employers release me for a week to work at SH, I think its always worth doing a little theological reflection on the children and their experience of God.

I have to say that this was probably the most challenging week at SH I have ever had from a leadership point of view; there seemed to be more children than I have ever remembered (in five years); either that or the venue is shrinking!! - we took up every available space for the 3 hours 15 minute programme. This means that children towards the back of the floorspace end up fiddling more, sitting on each other more, and risk stepping on more hands and feet as they exit to the toilets at various points in the programme.

Some of the individual pastoral groups were very full and the "rising 5s", the youngest children, 4 years 9 months onwards, seemed very little indeed and seemed to struggle to cope with the programme at times.

That all sounds negative. It isn't, but I think it showed that on a "bursting at the seams" SH week (which is what the even management want), space for the children's groups is tight. Littler children do need opportunities to run around and move about.

For me, yet again, the opportunity to care for some quite vulnerable children was an immense privilege. I was able to support to a family who had recently lost their father. All the children had opportunities to hear Father God speak to them and these two children heard God speak to them very simply and powerfully about his love and care for them. And when you hear children worshipping to the Father on their own without instruments and without adults singing - oh, you hear something of heaven.

I love how, on the first day, you have been unable to learn all of the children's names and by the end of the second day you know their names, about their pets and their brothers and sisters and some of their quirky character traits and family info. You know who will lose their coat every day and who is going to stay with granny at the weekend.

As a family, we managed to catch a little of the evening meetings, taking our youngest with us to the Big Top to hear Trent, who he is very fond of. The CD had been played fairly constantly on the way down to Skeggie. He's only 7, but we play music of various genres fairly constantly in house and car, so he's pretty up on his worship leaders. Ask him what Track 7 on Brian Johnson's "Undone" album is and he will probably be able to tell you. And he has sung himself to sleep with Matt Redman songs since he was about 2. He can also name Chris Tomlin songs from just one line from the lyrics!!

I have the utmost respect for SH in the whole realm of children and families. I have noticed what I would call an "intentionality about provision" with the Big Start and All Age services. I pray now for every child who attended SH - we know some came with quite significant hurts and from some very difficult situations but they met a God who really, really cares and asks people like you and me to do so as well.

It's not an easy to be a child in 2010. We're all needed to love on these little ones.

The Word for Today

2010-04-15T00:16:00.006+01:00

Psalm 34:18-20

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

A righteous man may have many troubles,
but the LORD delivers him from them all;

he protects all his bones,
not one of them will be broken.

Evil will slay the wicked;
the foes of the righteous will be condemned.

The LORD redeems his servants;
no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.

Spring Harvest

2010-04-04T22:48:00.004+01:00

I have been working at Spring Harvest for some years. For two years I worked with 8s to 11s and this will be by fourth or fifth year working with 5s to 7s with Powerpack. It's an interesting and varied job and not a walkover - my whole family shares in this role and we come home shattered at the end of the week! But I always learn so much from my good friends Kath and Nick, Heather and Chris. Between them they have decades of experience in working with children and their families. They teach and model amazing truth in age specific ways and have real skill in working with children with Additional Support Needs.

This is the kind of week where I can sit at the feet of those who are fantastic at nitty gritty kids stuff; I can help with the pastoral and the theological but love to watch others in the areas I am weak at. I love to watch the sheer genius of the Powerpack guys who can hold the attention of 300 - 400 kids using such carefully crafted ways of responding to God.

Looking forward to it although in the afternoons I have a number of email-able work projects to finish and I have to write ten precis of books that have influenced me greatly.....erk. I know they have impacted me greatly but if I am going to be asked to describe the impact this, I need to organise my thoughts a little.

It's been a busy day, was at church from 9.30am onwards with a few hours at home this afternoon then home at 9 tonight. We have read, prayed, sang many songs, danced, watched, listened, baptised, been anointed with oil and received. I have had to stand in absolute awe at the incisive preaching by the SP. Challenging stuff with a huge response tonight. It was a privilege to watch people be prayed for all over the place. Dear God, continue to speak to hearts following tonight's awesome celebration of the resurrection. Today I've been reflective, awestruck, celebratory, broken (and more)... too many emotions in one day!

Second week of the Easter holidays I have some routine (!) interviews to prepare for and then we're around and about while I have five or six days off (a weekend AND a holiday Monday)

For the first time in twenty months we are visiting our previous church (April 18th): think this might feel not a little weird.

Will post a few updates from Skegness.

sadness

2010-04-02T22:54:00.009+01:00

My daughter sobbed into my arms again tonight.
She is feeling sadness in ways I am trying hard to teach her to walk through, let go, give over to and walk through with God's real and tangible help. We spent a long time again tonight on this, asking Holy Spirit to come help us. I am conscious of the need to teach her that other people are suffering in much more tangible ways: like not having enough to eat or living in squalor; neverthless her pain is real to her and I would be hard hearted and foolish to ignore it.

But when she experiences hard things here again and again, its hard not to think: have we made a mistake?

An adult shared with me two weeks ago how they moved primary schools due to a parent's job and she was describing the pain her wee spirit felt as she tried to settle. She's 40, so this was 30 years later. It stabbed at me a little when she said it.

Please pray for us if you can - thanks!