music »

It’s a song. It’s a song about a Duck. Nuff said.

It is also very catchy and that rare thing: everyone in this house finds it funny. Apparently there are Duck Songs2,3 and 4 as well. But there is only so much time that you can spend on youtube.

thoughts »

I like lists. I make lists to keep me sane: something written down stops my head whirring off into the distance with all the things I feel I have to do.

I rarely get through a list that I made at the start of a week by the end of the week. The biggest reason is people; messy unpredictable people. This used to bother me; it rarely does now- that is why I am here, doing what I do.

‘Define your job’

 ’Well I do x and y and sometimes z, but mostly I just get interrupted.’

‘Does that bother you; not getting things done?’

‘It did, but then I realised that most times I am supposed to ‘loiter with intent’. When that works well you get interupted more. I have come to see God’s Grace mediated more through the fractures, lost schedules and plain brokenness than strategies, tight organisation and set goals. Besides, I realised long ago that I am most used when I am not an expert healer (anyone who thinks they are, are a fraud) but more in touch with my own messy unpredictability’.

But I still make lists and get frustrated….

thoughts »

This thought is not original; I cribbed it from someone a few years back.

I am training myself to say in public ‘I am not busy’. Partly because it can inflate a sense of self importance: ‘Look at me- see how needed and valuable I am’ . Partly too because of this thought:-

How can I tell people who ask me if I am busy and answer honestly ‘actually if there were two of me, I would struggle to cope’. At the same time how can I reply to someone who is going through major life trauma and saying ‘I wanted to talk to you but I didn’t want to bother you as I know you are so busy?’ , that actually all I have got on is of no importance- you are the most important?

It is something to which I have never developed an answer to…

Bible, thoughts »

I have known him for a while; someone who seems to do a lot, yet ‘be’ a lot and doesn’t shout about what he is doing. I respect him enormously.

Last week we were around a table in a pub and he asked us ‘What inspires you, fires you as a Methodist minister?’ After a few had spoken he began to speak about his real passion which was spending time with people outside formal church with only the faintest flickerings towards faith. He had realised that an increasing number of people wanted to get married or baptised in a church that had pastoral charge over (that is one of our quaint phrases, but I like it better than ‘his’ church or ‘my’ church; it is not- it is God’s church).

He began to visit them. Always his first words were ‘Yes of course, love to’. But his second words were ‘Shouldn’t you check us out first- see if you are happy? How about finding out more so that your day will mean more?’ I have heard others say something similar and it always seemed a bit disingenuous. This person, in contrast, is totally sincere.

So people did, and gradually, often after the event, he asked them if they wanted to know more. Some did. He began meeting with them. I had heard many say ‘But I haven’t got time for that; I wish I had.’ By any measure he hasn’t; but months in advance he began to block weekly evenings. Slowly, prayerfully, but never ‘hard sell’, he began to invite people. I asked him if he used anything: courses, techniques etc. ‘No, just the lectionary; we pray, someone reads the passage and it would just go from there’.

I loved listening; he wasn’t brash and had a depth, realism and a trust that warmed me. Sensitive to God, his area and context and not flashy. And he has made me think so much….

quotations, thoughts »

Really, really helpful posting at http://www.backyardmissionary.com/2012/01/failure-success-perspective.html. Written by a bloke of a similar age and with some parallels in background. The whole article repays careful reading. What sticks with me as my thought for today is:-

‘My vision of success wasn’t in blessing and serving a community and seeing God’s kingdom come. It was in growing and expanding a church (albeit of a different kind to the norm) that would do some good things but that would ultimately make me look pretty good’.

…and that is the goal and the battle…