Building Thai Stylee

We've been in Tak for nearly 24 hours and already there's been lots to think about reflect upon and enjoy. Lots of laughs, several hot hours on a building site and some great new friends and reaquaintances with old ones.

Early night tonight as the next lot of building starts early tomorrow, and web time is at a premium.

Forgot to mention - new blogger Rich Johnson's made contact and is as much of a newbie as me which really encourages me when I see some of the rest of your start of the art blogs out there!

Off to Thailand

I always have mixed feelings of excitement and nervousness when I head off into the unknown. It's about half an hour before set off, and we arrive at our final destination 6 hours north of Bangkok at about 1.00am Friday morning.

I managed to do my back in playing squash (the muscles had spent too long unused) and it possibly wasn't the best preparation for church building. It's quite a concept to be going to physcally build a church and I'm hoping my new very expensive back support will get me through.

The team are great and one of the things I'm most looking forward to is just hanging out with them, getting to know them better and seeing how they operate under pressure. They're a high calibre crew of younger leaders and it's going to be fun.

I hope to post some photos and refections as I go.

Just Practising...the good ole c of e and other random thoughts

Well it's been a week since I last posted and I'm trying to make sure that I don't leave it longer than a week or it'll never happen..
I was warned that blogging becomes addictive and certainly I'm enjoying reading other people's, and feeling slightly embarrassed about the standard blog template that I'm using but hey I'm sure one day I'll work our how to add pictures and things. (at least I've managed to link a photopage.)

I've come across a few discussions about the emerging church and am trying to follow a few threads at the moment, but it does feel like things go round in circles a bit. I've got to the stage where I'm very happy to be having a go at something knowing that it's not the finished article and could probably be torn to shreds by any number of people for all sorts of reasons, but as I said to someone the other day and will probably say again 'cos it sounded good and I do repeat myself, "I'm just a practitioner who's practising," and I'm gonna keep on practising this church thing until I get it right, which I can confidently say is going to take some time.

The good ole C of E continues to provide me with encouragement, hope & great frustration in equal measures most days. The big encouragement is the recently released report by the Bishop of Maidstone, Graham Cray encouraging new expressions of Church and approved by synod. I've attached a link to ekklesia for more info. http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_2004_02_12_cafe.shtml Graham spoke at the New Wine leading the Emerging Gen conference in January and it's great that his report's got the thumbs up. However the frustrating part will be seeing it put into action or not....

On a completely different note, today was Luke's 8th birthday and we've had great fun playing on all his new play station games..

Off to Thailand on Wednesday and hoping my dodgy back will cope with some hard graft when we get there. May post again sometime you never know....

Retreating and Returning

The start of the week was spent in Suffolk with my colleagues from St.B's. It was a great time and there are a selection of photos linked below. It's a priviledge to work with a group of people who are Godly and yet very real.

We enjoyed a few pints of Mole Trap and Adnams at the the Crown Inn. (They're real beers Eric, not like that Miller lite stuff..) We laughed a lot and we prayed for each other and for North London.

Personally I was given some really encouraging words about leadership which I see more and more as being about the facilitation of others rather than the elevation of self (unfortunately self still gets in the way a lot). God also spoke to me through a wall that had mostly fallen down(it's pictured if your interested). I found myself wondering if the remaining bit represented the righteous remnant of God's people standing against the failing world, but the impression I think I got from God was that he'd knocked the wall down, and was keen for us to create churches without walls, rather than holding failing ones up.

This evening I met with the Thailand team. At fairly short notice I've got a team of 8 together to head out to Thailand for ten days to build a church. We've got some friends working with a community six hours north of Bangkok and they want some help building a church that literally has no walls. It will provide shade in the summer and shelter in the rainy season and a place for the children who they're working with to hang out after school. We go on the 25th Feb, and I'm sure it will be an adventure, that challenges me in ways that I'm not anticipating. It's a great team and pictures and thoughts will follow.

Well I've not been very good at writing stuff, but I've managed to down load a few photos from the last 18 months on the photo link. So why not check them out as they give a snapshot of life.

Live to Surf was the prophetic sweatshirt that I came back wearing from Canada. I'm not sure the surfshop in Tofino meant it to be prophetic but it worked for me.

At the moment it feels like the waves are pretty big and I'm in danger of getting submerged...

More soon - maybe....