Vision

My church family, hunnerds of them, is gathering around a vision meal tomorrow.

Vision is absolutely essential. Communicating it is a rare gift which my SP possesses in abundance.

My take on "vision casting" , from my little bit of experience, is that getting people to let go of their own ideas of what is best is the hardest bit of all. We like our ideas, thank you very much! They have been with us a long time! I'm no exception to this.

My prayer this week is simply for open hands; a loose grip on the things that we perceive dear and a heart to bless others. To speak blessing over "signs of life" and to resist the urge to go "hmmmm" because it looks and feels different. I've done it and I freely confess my own lack of immunity!

my week

Hello dear blog

Realised I haven't posted any sort of update on the denominational conference. That's mainly because it's been a testing week - not insurmountably difficult because of the way people around us have pulled round us - but not an easy one.

My seminar at this went well; it was packed out and I was delighted that so many pastors and leaders were present, including Mark Greene of the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.

My friend and colleague had a tremendous turnout at her seminar the next day, c'mon the women :-) :-)

On Sunday it was the all age service - I meant to take a photo of the tremendously awesome banquetting table (but I forgot). I really enjoyed the worship and doing the teaching but I was too long :-(

Felt disappointed with this on Monday morning. Why do we always remember the negative and not the positive? Some of the reasons for being too long were under my control i.e. it was my mouth, not anyone else's, and one or two of them weren't.

On Monday I lost all my keys (and got into fear about telling the office manager)
On Tuesday I crashed the car
On Wednesday I was late for my Moltmann class due to the above and also things house-wise came to a financial head and
On Thursday God answered a crisis prayer
On Friday the courtesy car I thought I was getting was withdrawn as I was told the car was a write off
Tomorrow (Saturday) I am heading North to do some teaching and training on faith development and disruptive children.
On Sunday I repeat the all age service with the 9.30 congregation

Promise to write more next week.

Humour, Seminars and All Age Services

I'm off to our annual denominational conference tomorrow. I would be relaxed about it as I will get to catch up with lots of friends who will be there but I will be slightly nervous on Day one as I am leading a seminar on discipling children and families new to faith.

Hmmm.

I've been trying to guess - how many people will be there? - do I have enough packs of information made up? - will I hit the mark in terms of what information people are looking for? - am I going to be explaining something that makes me look like I'm wired to the moon ("space cadet")? or will I be teaching something that is far too basic? Dear reader, I just don't know. I'll update you.

I've got a big day on Sunday as well. I've organised an all age service in my new place and I am teaching on the parable of the wedding feast as well. Ah. Senior Pastor is away somewhere. So if I make a horrible mistake with something.....?? (I might get away with it? 'cept its recorded)

I'm tempted to play the Hidden Word game sometime. If you don't know what that is then I can't tell you - watch the film Leap of Faith and listen out for "aluminum sidings". But I had the utmost respect for a friend who responded to this challenge almost exactly one year ago and totally pulled it off.

Does God have a sense of humour? This was the subject of devotions at college this week. Watch this and see what you think.........but laughter is infectious - and made by God to be so!

Mid term break

We returned on Friday from 5 days in rural Perthshire. It was beautiful.

Highlights
- the wee boy learned to ride his bike and managed a fair distance to the village (as he can't do the brakes yet this included squealing at high volumes when minor hills were traversed)
- laughing, chatting and sharing food with our good friends D and M, who now pastor a Baptist Church near where we were staying
- spending lots of time with a lovely family from our new church who were staying next door to us
- swimming every day
- not getting up before 9am every day
- plenty of time to think, pray, talk and reflect - particularly about our future with regard to housing

Thanks Father for holidays and friends.

Great evening

Tonight has been one of the best nights out since I arrived in this new city.

Started off at a Worship Central event and ended up in my favourite pub (so far in my 8 week adventure in this new place) with mountains of friends all around, in the kind of wee booths where you could chat to people (a sure sign I am getting old)

The event itself was great. Tim Hughes and Al Gordon are not only sensitive and skilled musicians and worship leaders, but they also have an ability to teach right into the heart of issues that affect worship leaders and worshippers. They teach into a specialised area as guys who are living it.

Lots of my friends from my last church came for drinks with quite a few from my new church and it was great for me to see people chatting. It felt quite emotional for me; knowing that two teams of people were there; one with whom I had shared life for years and years; who knew me; who know my heart; who would do anything to help me; who I love so, so dearly and still acutely miss .....

......and also the new friends; with whom I am shyly falling in love with; into community with; where as each day passes the insecurity of "how do I fit?" "am I supposed to be here, really?", "what can I bring?"; "why on earth did they want me to come here?" is lessening each day as I am loved into life here for who I am. They've seen me in tears; they've seen me frustrated to the eyeballs (16 rotas!?!?!?!?); they've seen me miserably homesick and incredibly alone in the midst of a busy church; they have seen me as a moany cow too.

Where do I belong? Here.
Should I go back to my old church? No. Door's closed, shop's shut.
Will I ever forget the children, teams, families, clubs in my old church? Never.
I learned so much, grew so much, received SO MUCH and now it's time to sow it elsewhere.

Lord Jesus, I commit myself afresh to this task to serve my new family.
Thanks for what I saw tonight.

Stuff coming up

Trying to set a record for my shortest ever blog postings. That was two in a row down there \/

Got a lot coming up but thankfully I have a few days off next week to head to That Hideous Man Country. I can see this is going to be one of the fastest passing (school)terms, like last January to June was (work, exams, research papers, Major Life Decisions)

Studying third year level belief and thought, Christology, on a Wednesday which involves me setting off v early in the morning once a week to travel to college, having dropped my kids off with one of my new friends here (don't know what I would do without her as I would not be able to finish this degree). The institution has moved to two semesters therefore the courses are now 15 credits long instead of 10 .....I will find this hard. Foolishly perhaps I am undertaking a 15 credit research paper on children and the Holy Spirit; far too wide a title I know but I will hone it down once I have constructed an indicative bibliography. Hah!

I am holding a repeat of the September Envisioning Day and this time I have a couple of folks from other churches coming, along with what may be a goodly number from my new place. I did enjoy presenting the last day; it really is a great privilege to talk about something I am passionate about and I like to build in time to worship and pray on these kind of days, and vary the presentation style to take account of learning styles, so there was probably something for everyone there. I think we ended that last day with a very powerful sense of God's presence; his committment to us as we committed to love kids and see them the way he does. He was so ready to take our way our guilt for the times we are awful parents or impatient carers and no-one was to go home feeling bad about themselves. I love it when that sense of "Father" being very present takes away all sense of having to perform and "do better".

Tomorrow I really have to organise the material for a seminar I am presenting at my denomination's annual conference. Was kind of hoping to use a Tubesucked clip but I've been asked to make sure I have copyright - does anyone know if its OK to show something that was on free-to-air terrestrial TV? I'm sure the answer is probably no as we have become so litigious. I'm tempted to work on the principle that it's better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission.

I am glad to say that this week has been much better. Communication has been great as we are all learning what it is to stretch and fit into becoming a new team. I've not felt as unsettled as I did last week as I feel this unmistakeable sense of God saying "it's going to be OK at work". Does that sound too simplistic? Perhaps. But I managed to get a bit of time on Saturday night and Sunday night to really talk to him about it and just wait on him in the quiet and as a result I felt something "shifted". But I'm not perfect. There are stresses around our personal circumstances in being here. I have been worrying about money a bit and this affected me one evening.

The men around me (work and home) seem to be sniffing and croaking for Britain with the dreaded man flu so we have had a good laugh in the office with this clip:-

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Vaccination for HPV virus and pre-teen/teenage girls

This vaccination is being rolled out in Scotland before the rest of the UK (reminds me of the Poll Tax in 1986) - if you have daughters, read this blogger's account of an incredible violation of their and their daughter's rights (scroll down the page a little)