1 Birthday,2 Funerals and lots of school visits

It's been a craaaazy few days. Thomas was 11 on Sunday and the weekend involved Pizza, sleepovers, aqua splash swimming pools, and visits from the family. It was a great time but slightly shocking at how quickly we got to 11. I know I'm sounding like my parents but time flies..Today I buried an 88 year old and a 94 year old (that doubled my tally of funerals for the year), but there's nothing quite like a funeral to focus the mind on what you're going to achieve in however long you've got here, and how quickly the time's going to go...

Form starts next week and we've got 6 trainees coming at the moment. 3 UK & 3 Swedes with possibly a 4th Swede on the way as well. It's an interesting time from a training point of view as following the The Shaping Of Things to Come Conference next week, I'm going to be chatting with a number of UK bods about the development of missional training opportunities/programmes. It does feel like it's quite an opportune time as New Wine think through their training programmes with a view to advertising things a little better.

I'm really looking forward to a New Wine 24 hour younger leaders forum that I'm helping to facilitate Thursday through Friday at Nettle Hill near Coventry. About 20 younger leaders are going to get together, chat, pray, drink beer and hear from John Chapman who helped keep me sane during my training. He's going to share some insights on feeding our Souls from the Bendictine and Celtic traditions.

Now I'm off to defeat Darth Vader and the Clone Army on the PS2 in Starwars: Battlefront, which was definitely the best Birthday present as it allows me to return to my childhood, on a day when I'm feeling older by the second!

Strange New Worlds

My life seems strangely surreal at the moment, I feel like I'm floating between worlds. The Church of England seems to be a universe with many different planets, and sometimes I'm not quite sure which planet I'm on!

This last week has included taking a funeral for an 86 year old who'd been married for 65 years, attending a consultation about the need to attract younger leaders to the church and attending a study day with the Archbishop of Canterbury for the London Clergy (which highlighted the need for younger leaders...I was one of the younger ones there which is great for making me feel young, but not so great for the future of the C of E).

At the same time I'm getting quite excited by some of the Church planting opportunities and ideas being thrown up by Mission Shaped Church I'm beginning (with the full encouragement and support of my boss) to gather a team who are seriously considering planting with me, and I'm struggling to work out how that plant might take shape. Should it be a network model or a renewal model, how does it begin and maintain as a truly missional and incarnational community and not just become attractional? Questions, questions...

From that statement some of you may have spotted the book I'm reading at the moment which is The Shaping of Things to Come in preparation for the conference of the same name next month. It should be good.

In the midst of all of this we've begun the hunt for a secondary school for our oldest son, this is proving to us that parental choice is not much choice at all!

It's a funny old world.

Holy Space....the Final Frontier

I'm working through a little dilemma at the moment which is the future of Holy Space. It's the first one of the new term tomorrow and we meet in a great local bar twice a month on a Sunday morning. It's been a great place for inviting friends along to, building community and trying a few new things out. However I'm not sure about it's long term future, I don't think it's the blue print for a church plant, and yet for it to develop it probably needs to go weekly, just thinking through the implications.

New Bishop, New Thinking

The Church of England has taken a fairly radical step by allowing Sandy Millar vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton to become a Ugandan Bishop and to work alongside the Bishop of London as a sort of professor of Church planting and Mission Bishop. There's some info on the HTB website and below is the article from yesterdays Times, which of course has managed to make it about the homosexual debate (wrong - this is not an appointment aimed at apeasing evangelicals as I'm sure a few will be quite unhappy with it.) For me as a hopeful church planter in the Diocese of London it's very exciting news.

Uganda to send missionary to Britain By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has given his blessing to an extraordinary scheme for an African archbishop to consecrate a leading evangelical clergymen as a bishop to work as a missionary in Britain.

The Most Rev Henry Orombi, Archbishop and Primate of Uganda, is to consecrate the Rev Sandy Millar, former Rector of Holy Trinity Brompton, as a Bishop in Uganda.

Mr Millar, who helped to pioneer the Alpha course that has revived evangelical Christianity in Britain and worldwide, will serve in Uganda and London, where he will be titled Bishop in Mission.

An announcement is expected from Lambeth Palace later this week.

The scheme is understood to have been worked out by Dr Williams and the Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres.

It will reward Mr Millar and appease evangelicals who are furious about the advancement of the liberal agenda throughout the Church of England. Evangelical churches that disagree with their diocesan bishops on gays and were thinking of importing conservative African or Asian bishops for confirmations and other services will now be able to call on Mr Millar, one of the international evangelical movement’s most respected figures.

The appointment — disclosed, on the Virtuosity evangelical website — comes on the eve of the meeting in Windsor of the Lambeth Commission set up by Dr Williams to resolve the gay crisis.

Dr Williams is desperate to keep the Church united and is expected to go as far as possible in appeasing evangelicals in order to prevent their departure. The Episcopal Church of America is expected to be penalised for its consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.

No pressure

As a follow up to Soul in the City I received this quote from the local paper's editorial that came while I was away at New Wine but someone sent me.

From the news analysis Comment page in the Hendon and Finchley Times & Barnet and Potters Bar Times, August 4th 2004:

Faith in Action

Soul in the City is a welcome relief for those of us used to religious groups handing out tracts or haranguing us with clapperboards declaring 'the end of the world is nigh'.
The fact that volunteers have expressed their faith by helping to clear up rubbish and graffiti in some of the borough's most deprived areas really does speak volumes. Let's hope that some of them will be back again next year.

Coupla things

My old New Testament lecturer Conrad Gempf is blogging and well worth reading. When I say old he's not that old and used to be a mean frisbee golf player, but he must have been at the London School of Theology for quite a while 'cos I left years ago when it was still a Bible College. Also if you haven't caught it yet check out Jason's things he likes and dislikes about emerging church some great thoughts.

Snapped

I do enjoy reading others' blogs, they're informative, provocative and occassionally challenging. However I get really excited when I discover a new toy and flickr has appealed to my simple mind. So check out a few piccies from France more to follow. If you feel tempted to open a flicr account yourself let me know and I'll invite you 'cos then I get an upgraded account. No mixed motives there at all.....

The Changing Seasons

The school holidays ended today, we started with a curry and finished with a game of pitch and putt. Tiger Woods is not sweating yet. It does feel like a real season change not just the weather. With the start of the Autumn term I've been going through my emails deleting all the Soul in the City and New Wine ones and starting to think about the future.
I've come back from my hols more committed to raising up younger leaders and developing the network that we seem to have started. I'm excited about the prospects of church planting, and have got the first team meeting planned for October (not sure how big the team is yet!)
I sense that God's got some things round the corner, and I know they're going to be good.