This time of year is my anniversary time.
In June 1996 I married Louise. That was without doubt the best decision I ever made and the best day in my life so far. I can still remember the drum roll as Louise came into the chapel... I think I ought to write it all down one day.
In the summer of 1998 I started training as Student Minister at
Long Whatton in Leicestershire. I did my study at
St. John's college Nottingham.
In May 2003 I was ordained, which was the culmination of my time at Long Whatton, in Leicestershire. That was a good day as well, I enjoyed the service and the party. Funny thing is that the further away I get from the day the less I seem to think ordination is a good idea... oh well...
In June 2003 I was inducted into my role as Minister of
Stanley Road Baptist Church Morecambe. There was loads of family round, plenty of visitors and friends. I love living in Morecambe, despite its problems I think it is an ace place to live. I love my work as well I can't think of anything I would like to do more.
As a newly accredited minister I have to complete some essays and one of them will be about the way my thinking about the mission of the church has changed over the past seven years (since starting my training. I have
begun to post some of it over at Emerging Evangelism. I hope that it will generate some comments that will sharpen my thinking. I didn't post it here because I don't want to make this into a religious blog, I just do this for fun.
These people are surveying people who blog. It took less than 10 minutes.
Andy Rourke
I was taking the train from Lancaster to Rugby last week so I could go to a "Baptist Bash". That is where I was last week, in case you wondered. The train was full, crowded and not a particularly jolly experience. I noticed a man dressed in black and carrying a guitar case get on. He looked like a bass player, and I wondered if my suspicions were correct.
We both got up to get off at Rugby and were stood waiting for the train to come into the station. I seized my chance to confirm or destroy my stereotypes. He was a bass player and he said his name, though I forget it now, and that he used to be the Bass player for The Smiths. That must make him Andy Rourke. He said he played a bit now just to pay the rent.
If I had been fast enough thinking, which I am not, I would have come up with a load of questions.
Fantastic!
I have been put of from downloading loads of MP3's mainly because it is illegal and I had a hunch that eventually someone would get round to prosecuting a serial downloader, and
they have.
I started to use iTunes because it was easy, but it was still fairly expensive. If you want a whole album, it's not much cheaper than going to amazon and buying it, and getting a proper disck and a cover.
This week I have descovered
www.allofmp3.com. It is amazing and really easy to use. They charge for bandwidth rather than for the song and have a huge range of downloading options. If you were really clever I am sure you would work out which format has the highest quality with the lowest file size, but I just download MP3. I downloaded 13 songs for $2.40 which is about £1.32 or just over 10p a track! That beats buying them from car boot sales.
I initially thought it was a scam, but
apparently not.
Thanks to the forums at
moneysavingexpert.com for the tip.
They are all the names we use for Elizabeth. I put some photos together of her last night:
We have never been particularly successful at crabbing, we probably did it at the wrong time of year. Every time I have tried to catch crabs we have done it exactly as our friend Track has told us to do:
1. Find a muscle.
2. Prize it open.
3. Tie it to some string.
4. Dangle it in the water.
Our friends Andy and Alison Boston were staying the weekend with us after leading the Sunday Special anniversary on Saturday and Sunday at our church. After lunch we decided we would go crabbing and see what we could get. We found some muscles clinging to the wall of the pool that retains sea water near Sandylands prom. We let them down, ready prized open, into the pool... not much happened. Then people started catching them left right and centre. Little ones and big ones. Isaac got a bit miffed because Alice was catching loads of tiddlers, but then he caught one that was a good size which pleased him no end.
All the children thought it was great catching so many.
In the end we raced them all by putting them on the concrete run in to the pool and seeing which one made it to the water in time. It was very exciting.
We all visited the circus on Tuesday evening. Alice talks about it on an audio blog. There are a few things you need to know when you listen to this:
- Fair=Circus
- Lost Warrior=Circus
- She keeps playing with the microphone
20050608_alice_talks_about_visiting_the_circus.mp3
I have two friends who love to apologise when they don't blog for a while. I find it fascinating that they feel the need to apologise. I commented after one of Matt's frequent apologies that you blog because you can, not because you must.
However, recently Matt
posted that although he knew he didn't need to apologise he still felt guilty. Guilt is a funny emotion, people hide from it, rationalise it and feel crippled by it. Sometimes we feel guilty because its a built in reaction, there may be no reason to feel guilty but we can't help ourselves.
Of course sometimes we have done something wrong, and the guilt is there to prompt us into action. The best way to deal with that kind of guilt is to apologise or put right what you have done and move on. There is no doubt that that is a hard thing to do sometimes but I think it is better to risk looking stupid than to live with guilt.
When the guilt is there when we have not done anything wrong then we need to ask ourselves why the guilt is there. Take not blogging as an example. We may feel guilty because we are aware that there is an audience that read our musings and we feel like we are letting them down. The reality is that the audience don't rely on our blog postings they just enjoy reading, our lack of blogging does not actually affect them much (only they might wonder how we are). The guilt is perceived rather than actual.
A guy called Paul said that we should take captive every thought and make it obedient to God's purpose. When we feel guilty for no reason, that is exactly what we need to do. It is not God's purpose for us to be crippled by guilt. I think that if we spend allot of time feeling guilty we probably need to evaluate it.
If we do this whenever we feel guilty then we will start to be transformed by thinking right about ourselves and acting right towards other people.
Light bulbs.
I had a great idea. It started with my
project with Isaac which made me srart to think about the rest of the house. In the lower floor of our house we have 42 down lighters (spotlights set into the ceiling). The light is fantastic, it makes the rooms feel bright and airy however there is a downside. Each one consumes 50 Watts power. That is a combined total of 2.1kW.
While I was searching for high intensity LED's for our project I found some built into bulbs that fit the fittings I have installed (GU10). "Great", I thought, "low power consumption bright lights". So I went about sourcing a fairly cheap supply.
I found them at my local electrical supplies store (Discount Electrical Supplies), which is a very good shop, he always gets what you need and doesn't charge the earth for it. I bought 10 and took them home and excitedly fitted them. The result was less than inspiring. The light was blueish rather than yellowish and the brightness was poor. The good news is that the room used to use 500W of power now only uses 10W, only you can't see very well!
I have put two of the originals back in, which has improved it no end. Now it consumes 108W, but that is still an improvement.
Once upon a time a
man who was really fed up with the abuses and distortions of truth that he saw in religious Christianity, went up to a cathedral and nailed his
views to the front door. His actions sparked a worldwide revolution which transformed the church. It was called the
reformation.
Many people are calling for a new reformation of the church today. I have read several books which call for it, or think that they have the answer.
Matthew Fox (who has been expelled from the Catholic Church) has even gone to the same cathedral as Martin Luther and symbolically nailed his views to the front door (read the news
here and
here).
I am not particularly radical in my views about the church and Fox's theology does little to inspire me but I think that Christians in local places who meet and call themselves "church" have the potential to make an explosive impact on their communities. The Christian message is basically a radical and life transforming. What worries me is that churches become institutions and that hampers creativity and growth.
I believe that the church as an institution needs a reformation, but it is not an institutional restructuring but a personal freedom that comes from understanding why Jesus came and what he set out to do. In some ways it is a very radical thing because it involves each person and their own relationship with God.
I have found this book quite helpful but be warned, it is not for the feint-hearted, you will need your dictionary handy!
Next Page »
If we do this whenever we feel guilty then we will start to be transformed by thinking right about ourselves and acting right towards other people.
