Refreshed

Just had a great couple of days away recharging the family batteries. We have a lot of people through our home and so it's good to get regular opportunities to regroup. Particularly enjoyed watching the sunset on the beach one evening.

The way things work out

Yesterday my cousin appeared in an article in the Daily Telegraph "Health Section" telling of the challenges that he and his wife face raising their autistic daughter Yvette. Andy and I spent a lot of time together when we were kids as our mums who are sisters are very close to each other. It doesn't feel like 30 years since we were playing on beaches together in Cornwall, and we had no ideas of the joys and challenges that lay ahead. The article is well written and worth a read not just because he's my cousin but because it gives quite an insight into autism. (Forgive him for being a former telegraph writer, they were the only broadsheet who would give him a job...

Gooooooooaaaaaaaaal

I'm not quite sure if it's a good idea to take up football when you're approaching your 40th, surely the sensible thing would be to be thinking about retiring. However this morning was my first ever competitive game of football as the ENC team was desperately short. So I made my debut at right back we lost 7-1(the net got quite a bit of abuse) but the week before they lost 9-2 so that's an improvement and generally it was felt I did quite well for an old man. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get out of bed in the morning!

technorati tags:football

Good Living Tips

I just finished
it really is one of those books that make for uncomfortable reading but is well worth it. Now the challenge is to put it into practice and there is so much to put into practice. Shane challenges thinking about community living, the poor, tithing, war, the environment, fair trade to name but a few little issues. Practical help for some ideas about ethical and enviromental living comes on this new site good living that I found through Jonny.

technorati tags:Community

Crash chaos

We live in a cul-de-sac off a main road, yesterday as I headed out at 7.30am to take my son to the school bus I discovered the police had blocked off the stretch of road at the end of our road. We were allowed to drive out and proceeded to pass smashed car after smashed car it looked like something out of a disaster movie. I returned home the other way round the block and had to park up and walk home past the culprit, which according to the newspaper report was a runaway bus caused by a passenger fighting with the driver. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt and I was pleased I hadn't been heading home when it was coming the other way!

Bus crashes as passenger fights driver | News | This is London

See you later alligator

Saturday night was Sombrero and Salsa night as we sent Caroline off to work with Food for the Hungry in Bolivia. Caroline is going to be the first overseas member of our community as she heads off to work with streetkids in Cochabamba you can find out more about what she's doing here. We're going to miss the passion and challenge that she brings to us, but hopefully through skype and flickr will keep up with what she's doing. Yesterday we said goodbye and I spoke about the challenges we face as we become a family community and it certainly felt like we were saying goodbye to a family member rather than a church member. I also highlighted that we're called to be a very different sort of church from the one we've come from, and was really encouraged by the response as we talked about creatively helping one couple from the community with their housing.

I saw this today

Simple/organic church people have got a cold shoulder from “church” leaders for a decade. Singularity frowns on modularity. They are considered a threat to the system. They are called “house church” but that doesn't really fit what they [we] are doing. Its not house church and its not “small groups” and its not rebellion against church. Its attempting to BE the church as God intended it. Even in the emerging church, finding people who understand that is not an easy task. Nor is it an attractive proposition - if you want to be a well known conference speaker or a local pastor with CLOUT in your denomination which measures success in the cold-war terms of size, weight and longevity (Friedman), then a shift to the emerging-missional-organic church is a VERY BAD CAREER MOVE. It may be great for the Kingdom, but it will NOT pimp your image or make you money or get you on the speaker list at conferences - Most conferences only invite speakers who RE-INFORCE their existing model which in most Christian circles, is the centralized ecclesial model with a tithing system, a set of buildings that need butt-filling and an army of M.Div Seminary graduates who need a position as pastor in the kind of church that theological education has trained them for. Not saying that system is bad, but I am saying it is DIFFERENT and difference is a threat that the promoters of that system do not want to deal with.

on tallskinnykiwi today and realised that my mother's hope of me becoming Archbishop has obviously been decimated by the decision to help set up ENC!

Still I quickly cheered myself up with this mindless but very amusing star wars spoof.

technorati tags:Bolivia, tallskinnykiwi

The Simple Way

I know another post, what's going on. I've had flock for a while now but am only just getting round  to discovering it's full capabilities - it's quite good! Can I recommend this book which I'm only half way through but finding that it's deeply challenging. It's a sort of autobiographical look at the start of the simple way a community in Philadelphia of which Shane Claiborne the author was a co founder. It's a great story with lots to think about and will hopefully result in some orthopraxis as well.

technorati tags:Community

Reading - Anticipation September 30th

Reading 2

Better late than never a brief post about the day at St Laurences at the end of September. It felt like a really good day about 50 of us pitched up and chatted about what we were doing around the country. Chris Russell kicked off with his 57 questions (it might have been 58) for the church, we will eventually get his notes up somewhere. We worshipped together, ate together, laughed together and decided we want to do it again sometime, so now just got to work out when and where. I'll keep you posted...eventually!

technorati tags:Reading, Anticipation

Pictobrowser

Thanks to Jonny for the heads up about Pictobrowser. I'm not very good at blogging but I do like flickr and photos and now I can add photostreams, so I have..the ENC launch seemed a good place to start.




Who knows I might start blogging more!