Song of the week

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

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.....

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

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....

The illogical - the birthing place of faith

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

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

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."