Great Weekend

Friday night was my leaving party with the staff at St B's. It feels strange to be going after nearly 9 years of being part of the team. In some ways the parting is going to be a bit drawn out as although we're being sent out to start a Fresh Expression of church on the 29th Jan, I will be involved with some weekday stuff at St B's until the summer. After that we will maintain relational links and do some work together so although we're going it's not a complete departure. Having said that the staff wanted to mark the move and hired a function room at a very classy indian restaurant. It was a fantastic meal, followed by some gift giving as well. They came up trumps with the 30 GB ipod. I've now downloaded all my CD's and 60 photos and have only used about 2 GB, still it's a good excuse to update my music collection!

On Sunday Mike Moynagh from Fresh Expressions spent the morning with our team. It was a really good reminder of the need to not settle into our default Sunday gathering mode and focus on mission. Our intention has always been to develop a dispersed missional community however in reality it's so hard not to fall back to default and end up with a gathered service..so the challenge is for more faith and more thinking outside the box. I love the verse in Mark where the father who needs Jesus to heal his son says "I do believe, but help me not to doubt." You can work out why I like it for yourself!