Sports Saturday

Got home quite late last night. Spent a great night with our Youth Team at a friends house. We had a great food and great fun even though they are completely mad. It was good to hang out with them they are doing a great job with our young people.


Although Nicola believes that they have captured Lenny the mascot of the Children's Ministry. She keeps on getting ransom notes demanding chocolate be left in various places. She has even received a photo with Lenny being held by a gorilla. Things are getting tense!

Today some of our leadership team are meeting for brunch at or Senior Pastors place. After that its wall to wall sport.

10 am - Cricket - England V India
12 noon - Golf - The Walker Cup
1 pm - Motor sport - Qualifying for Italian Grand Prix
3 pm - Football - Scotland v Lithuania
5 pm - Football - England v Israel
5 pm - Rugby World Cup - England v USA

The remote control will be hot. And its church tomorrow.

Life is good apart from the whereabouts of Lenny.

Things I wish I had known

Although I am getting on a bit, I'm 45 next year, I am still quite new to this church leadership game. I've been around church all my life and been really involved most of my adult life. But I have only worked as a full time paid leader for the last 5 years. Looking back I just was not aware of what I was letting myself in for.

Don't get me wrong there is nothing else I would rather do but its also the most difficult thing I have ever done. Garry posted an item in response to a question asking "What do I now know that I wish I had known then?" You can read Gary's list here. Many of them strike a cord with me.

A few on my list:

1. Christian's tell lies. A bit harsh I know but I've lost count of the people who show up pledge there undying loyalty for you and the church. They are going to do anything for you and the church. Then you here that God has told them that it is time to move on and join another church.

2. There are a lot of experts out there. I love watching football on TV. One of the interesting things is that they always have a panel of EXPERTS who dissect what is going on. Now many of them tend to be ex players so they have some knowledge of the game but they tend to be ex players who have either failed at management or never had the guts to become a manager. But they from the comfort of the armchair know exactly what the manager should be doing to win the game. They even suggest that maybe its time for the manager to be moved on. Why is it that so many Christian's who do very little in church life seem to think they know how things should be done.

3. There is lots of ways to swing a cat. Or should I say build a church. Its so easy to get pulled around by all the different ways that leaders are building church. Its easy to follow the latest "new" thing. The Internet is such a blessing but is also a distraction. This works here, something else works there. It is so important to keep focused.

I keep reminding myself of these things: Its all about Jesus. Communicate grace, authenticity and humility. Church is for those who don't know Jesus yet. Oh and did I say its all about Jesus.

Back to school

The kids went back to school today after their long summer break. Its good to get back to a bit of normality and into a routeen again although that means some homework. Can't believe I am doing algebra again. (well I mean the kids are doing it with my help) Does anyone actually use algebra after school?

Liam went up into year 9 and Abbie is now in her last year of school. Scary. Abbie returns with a plastered foot after breaking it during the summer. So she returns centre of attention so she is happy.

Difficult days

I have not posted much over the last week or so. There seems to be so much going on. Some great things and some not so great. The variety of stuff that you seem to have to get your mind around as a local church pastor is literally mind blowing. It seems to go from the sublime to the ridiculous and all the time your actions are on view to be scrutinised by so many people.

High on the agenda is preparing for our planning application for our new building which has slipped a week as we try to finalise our traffic policy and liaise with the council transport department to ensure they are comfortable with what we are doing.

One of our major difficulties is that we do not have ample parking on site for our church members. We have however secured the use of a college car park which is about a 5 minute walk away. It continually amazes me that some (only a few) people will not walk 5 minutes. They insist on parking their car on residential streets restricting traffic flow. Even if we had the room it would not be good use of finance to develop a huge car park that only really gets used to its capacity on one day a week when there is ample spaces a few minutes walk away.

My frustration is that these few people jeopardise relations with our near neighbours and make our planning application more difficult.

We are in the business of building Jesus kingdom. He was prepared to walk to a cross for us surely we are prepared once a week to walk 5 minutes for His cause. A little inconvenience for us once a week surely is no price to pay.

If you are reading this from MKCC please just park across the road.