Tuesday 27 November 2007

Coming Back

I've been asked if I will be making changes when I get back to church and if I have a new vision for church. The answer to both those questions is yes. However, before I do anything with regard to what I feel God has been saying to me over the last four months, the first thing I want to do is find out what God has been up to in Church while I've been away. I don't want to come back to church with ideas and plans that I feel are from God and then actually cut across what God has been doing in the life of our church. So my first task will be to listen.

I'm also still working on some aspects of what I feel needs to be done in Church. Some of the changes I have in mind are small, others could be quite difficult to develop, others you may not see come into effect for a couple of years and there are changes that will effect every area of church life. So probably for the next 4-8 weeks I'll still be refining some of my thoughts. As I have mentioned in a previous post I am writing down how I see things developing in Church and this will include a timed strategy . This document will then be shared with the leadership of the church. It won't be secret and it will be open for discussion.

I am really looking forward to getting back to church. You'll never know just how much I missed everyone there. I can't wait to find out what God has been doing, so don't hold back on telling me your stories. I also know that a number of people have been working incredibly hard during my absence - Mike, Sue, Julia and Anna, - to name but a few. I hope you all appreciate what they have done for you.

Wednesday 21 November 2007

Nothing New Under The Sun

At the beginning of my sabbatical I had two things in mind. Firstly, how were we going to develop a process that allowed people to grow in their faith in a practical and intentional way. The second thing was really just a hunch that real discipleship happened best within a framework of small group and one to one relationships.

I really liked that word 'intentional', it kind of caught my imagination, perhaps because it was what I saw of Jesus discipling of the twelve. It was by accident, it had purpose and direction. So I started to use the phrase 'intentional discipleship' in my thinking and when I talked to other church leaders on my travels. This was a phrase I was quite 'proud' of really, I'd never heard it used before - that was until I got to page 73 of the book I'm currently reading (Transforming Discipleship) and there in bold lettering is the phrase 'Intentional Discipleship'. I was gutted!! This was my phrase - I'd thought of it all on my own. In fact I'm writing down the things I believe we need to work on out my sabbatical in a document I'm calling 'Intentional Discipleship'. But there really is nothing new under the sun is there?.

However, despite being gutted, I'm also really encouraged by this as I feel it is confirmation from God that all that I've been thinking of over the last four months is really from him. Interestingly, the book (which I bought in America) is all about using relationships as the main focus for discipleship and even goes on to say some the very same things I'd been inspired by at last weeks conference (There really is nothing new!). I didn't know the book was going to say these things and I hadn't been inspired to read until this week. So I really feel God is confirming things to me.

Who Are You Being Discipled By?

Everyone, Christian and non-Christian, is being discipled by someone! A person is either being discipled into the ways of the world, the flesh and the devil or into the ways of Christ. In our discipling of others we are constantly in a battle against these other disciplers (media, influential friends and family, tradition etc).

Individuals have responsibility for their own discipleship. They should be looking to learn and grow in their following of Christ at every opportunity. However, it is the responsibility of the Church to provide the time, resources, relationships and encouragement to ensure that everyone has the right opportunities to grow. The Church needs to create an ethos in which everyone is expected to grow in their faith and is hungry to grow.

What I have realised more than anything else in my time off is that radical discipleship happens within a type of relationship that we see don't see enough of in Church. It is the kind of relationship Jesus had with his disciples, that Paul had with Timothy, Titus and others and that Barnabus had with Mark. Yes, we can grow through all sorts of ways - Bible Study, Cell groups, sermons, training events and courses, the list is endless. But what we see in the New Testament is discipleship through relationship. The kind of relationship in which one person takes a small group of others and invests something of themselves into that group of people. Within that group there is honesty, love, authenticity and accountability.

I see discipleship as being about the formation of the whole person into the likeness of Christ in terms of character, purpose, motivations, action and destiny. It is helping a person discover who they are in Christ and to live in that discovery for the rest of their lives and in every area of their life. This is a huge task and one that no person can do on their own - all the evidence of the New Testament says that. I know some people would want to say that they are being discipled by Jesus through his Holy Spirit. That is true - but it is absolutely clear in the New Testament that this only happens through the mediation of other people.

So who are you being discipled by? Very few people in our church would be able to answer that. However, it is my intention that, within a few years, anyone who is serious about their growth as a Christian would be able to give a very clear answer to that question. To actually get to that point will require some changes in Church life and it is really hard to say just how big a change will be required.

Sunday 18 November 2007

Relational Discipleship

It only takes a casual reading of the Gospels to understand that Jesus spent most of his time with just twelve people. It seems that a huge part of the purpose of his ministry was to invest all of who he was into the lives of those twelve guys. He deliberately chose those twelve out of the many who he could of chosen. He spent most of his time, not in teaching the crowds or healing the sick, but in letting these twelve into his life so that they could understand who he was, what he was like and to share in his passion for God and the lost. Finally, he deliberately left the twelve to carry on the work that he had started in the cross and resurrection.

This is one aspect of discipleship that we are very weak on. I knew this when I first started my sabbatical and it was one subject that I wanted to work on. Last week I attended a conference at St Thomas Church in Sheffield. This is the Church that LifeShapes came out of and they have worked hard at developing what could be called relational discipleship. I attended the conference because I knew that there would be a lot of teaching on how they have established these kind of relationships.

The Church is really three Churches. It started at St Thomas, Crookes, but as that grew they developed another congregation which is now called St Thomas, Philadelphia. Since then The King's Centre in Sheffield has become part of the set up there. Altogether they are about 2000 people and are a very mission focussed Church. This is based on a strong ethos of discipleship, worship and innovation.

It was a really stimulating week for me. I came away with a lot to think about, not just on relational discipleship but also cells, my leadership and the direction of our church. There is a lot I could put in this post but I'll refrain for now until I have processed it a little more and integrated it with some of the things I have been thinking about. For now I'll share a word I was given on the last day by Nicole Brown (who some of you will know). She said she had a picture of me standing on my 'land' (our community). She said that God knows how much I love the land I am in and that he was saying the land will yield its fruit. She also had the words 'shattered glass', although she wasn't sure what they meant. Although I'm not sure what those words mean, I did remember a time a few years ago when I felt that God was talking to me about a glass ceiling in church. In other words there was something hidden that was hindering our growth. May those words relate to that, maybe they don't. If you have any insight let me know.

Monday 5 November 2007

Growing Through Encounter

In the last two posts I've outlined two things needed for a person to grow in Christlikeness. The first was education, the second was experience and the third one I want to look at now (also begins with an 'e'!) is encounter. Everyone who wants to grow in their faith needs to encounter the living lifechanging God we worship and to do that on a regular basis.

When you look through scripture and reflect on the lives of people in our Church it is clear that an encounter with God can (and should) change lives. There are those who say that we shouldn't be basing our faith on 'experiences' or events that could have an emotional content. They would say that these things can lead people astray and of course they are right. However, when encounters are balanced by education and experience then they have perhaps even more potential to encourage growth.

When I think of some of the things I have struggled with personally over the last few years I find that I have only really found some level of victory over them when I have encountered the power and the presence of God. This year, during the New Wine Leadership Conference in May, the presence of God was powerfully at work amongst everyone there. It was there in the presence of God that he changed something in my life that I had been struggling with. I hadn't asked the Father to do it, I wasn't even aware of what he did at that time but in the encounter I had with him then he did something that I couldn't have done myself.

Unfortunately, we cannot program in the time and place were we can encounter the powerful presence of God. It is something the He, in his grace, decides to do. There are two things that we can do that make it more possible to meet with God in that way. Firstly, expect that God will change you and that it is his desire and his will to change you. We need to create an ethos in which people believe that God can and will act at any moment in time. We need to teach them to understand it means to be a child of God and to live every day in His presence. There are too many people in St Andrew's who know that God can change lives but they don't trust Him to do it to them! Underneath it all, the underlying belief system at work in their hearts is that God doesn't love me enough to do anything in my life.

Secondly, we can create as many opportunities for God to act as possible. This is something we are pretty good at in St Andrew's. Every opportunity is given to receive prayer and to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit at work amongst us on a Sunday morning. Perhaps we need to do more work on this in cell groups and other meetings we have. Someone in Church once complained to me about the times we have when we invite the Holy Spirit to come. They, quite rightly, said "he is here all the time isn't he so why pray that prayer". The fact is that in asking the Holy Spirit to come in that way we are asking him to work in us in a more specific and powerful way. We are putting ourselves in a place where He has full access to our lives to mould us and change us into the likeness of Christ.

I believe that these three; education, experience and encounter, form the basis of our growth in Christ and provide the structure for discipleship to take place in the Church.

Thursday 1 November 2007

Growing Through Experience

Following on from my last blog. the second thing we need to grow in our faith is experience. It is obvious that just being around God, living the Christian life and belonging to a group of Christ followers is part of growing in the faith, or at least it should be. However, I've seen lots of people who have lived a long time without ever growing up emotionally, relationally and intellectually because they have never bothered to learn from their life experience. In the same way just being a Christ follower for a long time is no guarantee that a person is mature in their faith unless they have taken time to learn the spiritual lessons that their life experience provides them.

Every experience of life we have is an opportunity to grow in our understanding of who God is, how he works and who we are as God's children. In Romans 5 Paul says "we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." Everyone in our Church has life experiences that they can use to grow in their faith. Those life experiences do not have to be overtly spiritual in nature for us to learn spiritual truths, to God everything is spiritual. We have seen people in our church go through incredibly difficult times, some of those people grow amazingly through those times, others seem to wilt and die. Lots of people do all sorts of work in Church, some of them seem to thrive and grow in that work, others just find it a drag and don't grow. What makes the difference?

the difference is a person's ability to stop, reflect, learn and act on their experiences. It's their ability to look honestly at what is happening, to ask questions and to seek the answers from God that determines their growth. That is why I thought the first session in the lifeshapes course was so important as it provides a focused way of reflecting, earning and growing through our experience of life and service. Some people are naturally reflective types and do this sort of thing naturally. Others of us need to make time and intentionally go through the learning process, but we all need to do it. The alternative is that our life experience is wasted, we don't grow as we should and we miss out on all that God can do through us.

Monday 29 October 2007

How Do We Grow?

During the last couple of months (as you will have gathered from my last post) I've been thinking about how it is that people grow, what is that they need to be changed into the likeness of Christ? I've come to the conclusion that there are three things needed if a person is to come to maturity in the faith.
The first is EDUCATION. We all need to learn about what it means to follow God and to keep on learning all of our lives. God is too big and the adventure of following him too expansive for us to get to know all that we can in one lifetime. I've used the word education rather than teaching. 'Teaching' puts the emphasis on the teacher, education puts more of an emphasis on the learner. We each have the responsibility to discover for ourselves the riches of Christ's grace. This is not about getting to know the Bible better, although it is part of it. When Jesus gave the great commission he said "Go and make disciples of all nations....teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you". The whole point of learning more is about the transformation of our character and behaviour. If what we learn doesn't transform us in some way then it is a pointless exercise.
There are three things here that I have been thinking about. The first is how we encourage people to 'feed' themselves and to take responsibility for their own growth. In all the conversations I've had with people from church it is clear that few actually do that. They will ocassionally read the scriptures, but not in a regular systematic way, perhaps never read a christian book and very rarely attend any christian event, apart from sunday worship (and then not every week), where there may be life transforming teaching.
The other thing is about the responsibility of those who teach in church to teach well and to seek to accommodate those who learn in different ways. Not everyone learns well by simply sitting listen to a sermon, not matter how good it is. I'd like us to work harder at making sermons and other teaching events more interactive, visual and relevant. This is an incredibly difficult thing to do well, as anyone who has seen our different attempts up until now, will testify. However, we have to keep working on it more and more. James 3:1 says that those of us who teach will be judged more strictly than others. This is not just about being doctrinally or biblically correct in our teaching but also in the character of the teachers and the way in which the teaching is presented.
The last thing is what other ways can we provide for teaching on certain subjects and what should those subjects be. For a person to grow in their faith I have, after a lot of thought, concluded that there are certain things that we need to provide teaching on for basic discipleship. They are; how to learn, spiritual disciplines, overview of the Bible, who we are in Christ, discovering your gifts/strengths/purpose, how to develop a supernatural lifestyle and understanding evangelism/our mission. It's a bit of a list and I'm sure that other could suggest other subjects, but these are I believe the ones that we need to work on. How they will be delivered though is another question (and yes I have thoughts on that as well).
The next two blogs will cover the other aspects of what is needed to grow in discipleship.

Wednesday 17 October 2007

Measuring Growth

Most Church leaders I know (and I include myself in this) have a major obsession and that is the number of bums on pews on a sunday morning. There is a very good reason for this, how else is a church leader going to know if they are being 'successful'. Things like bums on pews and also how much money is given every week are one of the few things we can measure as church leaders. We all know that numbers on a sunday are not necessarily the best way of measuring success (Jesus wasn't always very good with numbers!!), but they are one of the few things we can actually measure in Church. I use the word 'success' guardedly because it's not a word that sits easily in the context of Church life. Some people don't like it because it makes the church sound like a business. We could easily use biblical words like fruitful but for now I'll use 'success'.
There's some research come out of Willow Creek Church, and documented in the book 'Reveal', that looks at how we can measure the one thing that needs to be measured in order to gauge 'success' and that is our hearts. After all a truly successful church is one in which all its members are growing in their discipleship. Success is really defined by the christlikeness of our membership but how do you measure that. Wiilow Creek have tried to do that. Drawing on the skills of a top market researcher who specialises in assessing people's attitudes and behaviours to different products, they have tried to assess their church members on how they feel they are growing in the faith. It is a very interesting book that expresses the struggle they had in trying to develop a tool to assess whether people are growing or not. Through the research they make a number of interesting discoveries and were able to create predictive models of how people might feel as they grow in faith.
The interesting thing for me on this is that I have been thinking about how we could develop a questionnaire that helped us to consider whether people felt they were growing in their faith, what they found helped them most in growing and how the church could help them grow. Can it be done, can we really measure people's hearts. I think whatever could be done would only ever give an indication of what was happening in the hearts and lives of church members, but it is certainly better than what we have now in terms of that kind of information which is simply hearsay and intuition. So at the moment I'm slowly working on trying to develop this form. Maybe nothing will come of it but you never know in a few weeks time I might be asking you all to help me measure your heartsand let's see how 'succesful' we really are!

Monday 8 October 2007

Developing Strengths

Over the weekend Andrea and I were at the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit. There were 8 sessions across two days and each session had something major to reflect on afterwards. However, the session that stood out for me was by a guy called Marcus Buckingham who advises companies and corporations on how to recognise, develop and use the individual strengths of their employees. He made the point that all to often we focus on building up a persons weaknesses rather than fulfilling the potential of their strengths.
This obviously has relevance to the church and to our discipleship. We recognise that we have God-given natural abilities and personalities and we also have supernatural gifts that all must be used in serving God in the world. A major part of our discipleship is recognising what they are and looking for the best way to use them. Most Christians I know would say that they haven't yet discovered what those gifts and abilities are, despite the fact that there are great tools for helping with this, Willow's network course and the S.H.A.P.E. course from Saddleback Church are great for helping people with this.
Part of the problem I think is they way we run church. Churches tend to focus on fitting people into their existing programs rather than fitting their programs around the gifts and strengths of the people in the church.
Listening to Marcus got me thinking about what would St Andrew's look like if we focussed on people's strengths and gifts. If we only developed our Church life around what people had been gifted to do rather than trying to shoehorn them into what we are already doing or think we should do. The strengths and gifts of the people in our church is our most valuable resource - maybe we are wasting that resource?

Monday 24 September 2007

"And All Is Stripped Away"

I've been reflecting on these words from Matt Redman's song 'When the Music Fades'. They pretty much sum up how I've been feeling over the last few weeks. After all the excitement of going away in August, September has been a much quieter and more difficult time for both Andrea and I. It's hard to put into words why it has been difficult and I suppose there are a number of things going on.
Firstly, we are both missing everyone at St Andrew's very much. While we have seen a few people about, it's not the same as seeing people regularly throughout the week.
Secondly, we are missing being involved in the work of the Church. When it has been part of our lives 24/7 for the last 10 years, it is difficult to just have that taken away.
Thirdly, we have sensed God speaking to us about what we should be doing over the rest of the sabbatical and that is different to what we have planned.
So it feels for us like a lot of what makes us who we are has been stripped away and now it is just us and God. Actually, while that sounds great, it is not an easy place to be at. The outcome of this is that we are changing the focus of the rest of the sabbatical. I had focussed a lot on learning from other churches and church leaders (in other words pandering to my need to do stuff!). However, from now on the focus of the next two months for us will be more about being with God and deepening our relationship with him.
In reality the plans we had made will not change much, except for the fact that we will now not be going to California for a conference. I will still be doing a lot of reading and thinking about discipleship and how we 'make disciples'. The main change is the focus or emphasis.
Over the last weekend Andrea went on an 'Encounter' weekend with Frontline Church and had a great time. The weekend deals with all sorts of things that can hinder a persons walk with Jesus - sin, unforgiveness, the demonic etc. - so she's come back a different woman!! I'm planning to go on an Encounter early next year, for my own benefit but also because I believe that there are things we need to learn from these Encounter weekends.

Friday 14 September 2007

Reflections on American Visits

While all the churches we visited in America were different and had things that I liked and disliked, there are some general reflections that I have made since getting back to the UK.
Firstly, there was a huge emphasis in these churches on the creative arts. All the Churches, apart from Mars Hill, were very visual in that they used excellent images on the screens, they used dance and drama effectively and, as I have already said in my descriptions, had very good music groups. Most of them used lighting to very good effect, for instance at Willow Creek the lighting colour on the stage would change depending on the type of worship at the time.This level of emphasis on the creative and visual is something that we do not see very often in the UK. When it is done as well as these churches did then it can be a real help in worship and learning.
Secondly, All the churches emphasised organised, instructional and relevant teaching. What I found particularly helpful in some churches was each member of the congregation was given a sheet outlining the sermon and containing all the relevant Bible verses. They may also have questions for personal reflection and questions for Cells on the sheets as well as ideas for further reading.
Thirdly, all the churches had clear, well organised and multipliable leadership structures. They were particularly good at identifying and making space for new and young leaders.
Fourthly, on a negative note, there was very little emphasis on encouraging people to encounter God in worship or through prayer ministry. The worship was well performed but there was little passion or space for God to move. By the end of three weeks we were desperate for worship that seemed to connect the heart as well as the mind.
Finally, there was a great openness and forthrightness about money. Not in a TV evangelist kind of way but in a positive, 'this is part of your worship' kind of way. A number of the churches had courses on how to deal with money in a Biblical way.

Thursday 6 September 2007

Visit to New York

At New York we only go to visit one church, The Journy. The other Church I hoped to visit, New Life Fellowship, is based in Queens which was a train journey out of Manhatten. Unfortunately there werte problems with the trains and they were stopping at the station we needed, so we never got there.
However, the visit to The Journey was well worth the visit. The Journey has a number of sites throughout New York and seems to attract a mainly young and highly networked congregation. Like the others this church is well into the creative arts and the service included a well performed dance by someone for whom dance must be their career.. Normally dance in worship leaves me pretty cold but this wasn't too bad.
The talk was very good and was helped by the fact that everyone received a leaflet with the outline of the talk, the main Bible verses used and spaces to write in - a great idea. Nearly all the Churches we visited were good at provided free material and information to new comers and new Christians, but this one was especially good. The was a free book, CD's of talks and a whole bunch of other stuff as well.
I also enjoyed the worship at this Church a bit more than the others as the worship time was longer and perhaps more passionate than at some of the other churches we visited. It felt a little more like being at St Andrew's.

Wednesday 5 September 2007

Visiting Churches in Grand Rapids

The next two Churches we visited were both in Grand Rapids.
The first, Daybreak, has a big emphasis on 'Seeker' services in the same way that willow Creek does. The main difference it seemed was there is a greater emphasis on using the creative arts in the services at Daybreak. The music, visual media etc were stunning. Every year they host a conference on using the creative arts in worship. I was given a complimentary copy of the magazine they produce along side the conference and it was one of the best quality magazines I'd seen produce by any Christian organisation. The interesting thing for me was that they introduced at the service a new member of staff whose sole purpose was to work on spiritual formation and discipleship, which of course is what my sabbatical is all about. I was able to spend a good time with him just talking through how he saw his new role and how churches can disciple people.
Later that evening we went to Mars Hill. If any of you have seen one of the nooma videos or read the book Velvet Elvis then the guy in the Videos is Rob Bell and he is the teaching pastor and founder at Mars Hill. They meet in a converted shopping centre with the main meeting place right at the centre of the large building. The service actually happens in the round, the stage area is in the centre of the floor space. It felt a bit weird at first getting used to seeing peoples back on stage but we soon got used to it. The service was great, although we were dissappointed that Rob Bell and the Mars Hill worship band weren't there. Instead they had a guest preacher and worship band from another church, so we didn't really get a real feel of what the church was like on a sunday. But we got to spend some time with someone on the staff there and talk through what they get up to as a Church.
One of the things that came up in both the visits to these churches was just how highly 'churched' much of that area was. One of the comments made to me was that they were horrified to discover that only 50% of their local community go to Church! I informed this guy that for us here in the UK that would be like going to heaven, he just couldn't get his head around the fact that attendance at church here is well below 10%!!

Tuesday 4 September 2007

Good to be Back

Well it's great to be back. We had a wonderful time in America saw some great places, visited interesting churches and met some amazing people. I thought I'd fill you you in on the Churches we visited for a few days and then some reflections on our experiences of them.

We visited two Churches in Chicago. Of course we went to Willow Creek. This was on the Saturday night at one of their 'seeker services' (a service geared to non church members). The first thing top say about the place was what an amazing building it was. It's on a huge campus with car parking for possibly 1000's of cars. We arrived late (it's an hour out of Chicago) and went into the wrong auditorium. What we thought was the main meeting place was just the venue for the youth work. The main auditorium seats over 7000 people in really comfortable chairs. The sound, lighting, comfort and just general attention to detail was fantastic. The place has its own restaurant (it seats hundreds of people and has a variety of food) and huge bookstall.
For me the service wasn't as good as the facilities, but then again the service wasn't aimed at people like me. That's not to say it wasn't well done. The talk was interesting and memorable and the music was of a really high standard, but for me seemed a bit straight and passionless.
This was a big contrast to the church we went to the next day. Community Christian Church (CCC) is a network of 8 Churches across the Chicago area that are doing some innovative things. The Church we went to is their newest. Its was planted about 14months ago and meets in a local school. I think there are about 150 people meeting in two services, one a spanish speaking service. The way they do the talks at CCC is interesting. To ensure that all the churches are getting the same high standard is projected on big screens at the other venues. I really wasn't sure how I'd like this but to be honest it really didn't make much different. The talk was on how we can be 'hooked' on all sorts of things. While the talk was going on on one screen, there was another screen showing the powerpoint presentation. During the talk a young guy came on the stage and started moving a pile of stones from one place to another and then back again. The idea was to show the pointlessness of some of the things we get stuck on. The service had the same attention to detail as Willow Creek with the lighting sound etc just done on a smaller scale.
This particular Church is situated in one of the poorer areas of Chicago and out of all the churches we visited was the one Andrea and I felt most at home in. The service dealt with real issues, the worship was nowhere near and professionally done as at Willow Creek but had more passion and the people were warm and welcoming. I had a great chat with the pastor a few days later and I will comment on that in a future post.

Wednesday 8 August 2007

The Next Post

I go off to America tomorrow to visit a number of churches. Unfortunately, I don't know if or how often I'm going to be able to update the blog. If not there will be a lot to catch up on when I return.

Empire or Kingdom

This is the title of a chapter in the book 'Let My People Grow'. The chapter asks the question of whether churches, and especially church leaders, are seeking to build the Kingdom or to build an empire. The writer then goes on to say that if we are to build the Kingdom Churches need to spend far more time in eqiupping their members to be salt and light in the homes, workplaces etc rather than getting them to just do church stuff better.
This is a comment I've heard a lot and I know that I constantly find myself in the empire building role rather than the Kingdom building one. However, I'm not yet sure anyone really knows what it would take to equip Church members to be radically live out their faith in the workplace etc. Most books on discipleship are about learning to pray, reading the Bible, fellowship etc not about how to see Kingdom values in a secular workplace or how to be a good employee!
So what does the Church need to do to provide a better base from which it's members can enter their everyday world and live for Jesus in it? Certainly at St Andrew's we need to be working on people discovering a sense of vocation to their jobs (paid or unpaid - ie home maker) and then showing that the Church values the work they do. After all it really is in the home and in the workplace that Christians have the most opportunity to witness and make a difference.
For me I know I need to keep working at changing my focus to a Kingdom mentality.

Sunday 5 August 2007

Here we go!

Well after all the months of planning and organising my sabbatical has now started and what a strange feeling it is.
Firstly, I've been overwhelmed with God's goodness. When we started to plan this we never for one minute thought we would raise enough money to be able to do even half of what we wanted to do and yet through all sorts of ways God has provided for us. I have been amazed at how generous the people of St Andrew's have been to us, and yet really we shouldn't have been. In the 10 years we have been there they have repeatedly shown themselves to be an amazing and wonderful people of God.
Secondly, It is a slightly unnerving feeling to know that for the next 4 months I'm not working. Andrea has also just left her job and she put it succinctly when she said 'who am I now'. When your identity is so wrapped up in what you do (and that's not a good thing) to suddenly have nothing to do is - well, just weird! I keep coming to my desk to just look for something to do out of desperation. I've had strange thoughts, like 'what am I going to talk to God about now there's no church?', 'what am I going to do all day?, 'Will Andrea and I get on now that we are together 24/7!!!?'
The fact is that I do have things to do, it's just different to what I've been used to and so my other main emotion at the moment is excitement. Excitement about what I will see of God in other Churches, excitement about what I will discover about myself and excitement about spending more time with God and also with my family.
And so here we go - four months into the unknown - I can't wait.