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This year I did my tax return ages ago, about May time, one of the advantages of this I discovered is that you can chose to pay your bill through your tax code which I thought would be good. Shortly afterwards I received a new tax code which has since been used. It was therefore a surprise when last week I got a bill through telling me I had to pay by today! I phoned the tax office who didn’t really seam to know what was going on but assured me I didn’t need to pay the bill as the money had been collected through my tax code. I’m now thinking I should have asked for this in writing, there is this little voice at the back of my head that is saying if they told me wrong I am going to be fined for late payment, although I don’t owe them any money, it should be fine, stop worrying!
I seem to be having a few technical problems with wordpress at the moment as the template keep changing to the default, I don’t know what is causing it which means I don’t know how to fix it, anybody got any ideas?
As part of going through a course in our church at the moment I have a regular meeting with a mentor (which is absolutely fantastic and we even spend some time talking about things to do with the course), My mentor is a retired clergyman, with great wisdom and I find it really helpful to talk with him about all kinds of issues surrounding my ministry and where it’s future lies as well as the specifics of the course, (in many respects I suppose the future stuff is linked).
Anyway this week we got to talking a little about the image of the church, I guess for several years now the church has had a reputation for being an outdated institution, I remember someone saying a few years ago (can’t remember who) “the church is a organisation for old ladies run by middle aged men” and I guess I can see the argument, for many who don’t attend our churches it does have a reputation of not having changed much in the last 150 years or so. Perhaps another part of the problem is that many people don’t distinguish between the Church and being a Christian, leading to an idea of “if you are a Christian then you are everything that my idea of church is” and looking at the media’s portal of Christians and the church in recent years we have ‘Christian characters’ from the telly like Dot Cotton who I would say is not a great advert, the Vicar of Dibley perhaps slightly better, in that it put a normal human face that people can relate to in the church. Then you go on to look at the news and the church suddenly becomes a place full of child molesters and homophobes. Even from within the church at the moment we seem to be full of infighting and disagreement.
It’s time for a change, lets look to Jesus, as for the infighting, yes we all interpret different parts of the bible differently, but lets face it, as confident as we maybe in our own interpretation somewhere we have probably all got it wrong, I am looking forward to getting to heaven and finding out where I was wrong! No matter how right we are, “let those who are without sin cast the first stone”, and I don’t recall “love your neighbour” having a clause about “so long as they agree with you”. If we are the body of Christ lets celebrate our common ground, love one another and get on with the job of serving him, yes lets discuss the areas where we disagree, but not let it stop us from serving and loving one another. Surly the image the church needs to be displaying is one of compassion, one of concern for our communities, their individual members and our world. One of the phrases I have heard a few times recently is about the gospel being for the Last, the least and the lost, I also remember Mike Yaconelli speaking at Greenbelt (probably back in the late 80′s) and talking about the church is the only organisation that exists for it’s non members, and yet these are the people we are putting off. it’s time we stopped casting stones and started loving and forgiving. it’s time to improve our image and become more Christ like.
Where do you go, and who do you talk to when you are thinking about your future, your career or ministry etc, the big decisions?
As most of you have probably worked out by now these are the kind of questions going round in my mind at the moment.
The other evening we were round at some friends, sitting around chatting, eating while the kids were playing upstairs (we had fed them as well!) and we had a Wii going with a brain quiz kind of thing on. One of the things you could do on this game was a series of personal tests and it would give you some interpretations as to your strengths and weaknesses etc and then give you an ideal career. All a bit of fun and those that had done it some of the results were quite funny. So I had a go and the conclusion was I should be a photographer, now I have to admit there have been times when this idea has crossed my mind recently so it seemed rather bizarre that this is what the Wii also suggested. However I’m not sure this is where God is calling and as tempting a proposition as it may be in some respects I believe the calling from above should probably take a higher priority than a Wii but it did make me laugh.
Well I know it’s already here but hey better late than never. It’s looking like a busy year in may respects. One thing I am looking forward to would have to primarily include getting back into photography, before heading off to Bible collage in 95 I worked in the photo trade (and ran my own very small part time photography business along side my work in labs) I have finally got on the digital bandwagon and now have a digital SLR (for those interested a Nikon D40x with 18-55 + 55-200VR) already used it a bit but looking forward to getting out a lot more and hopefully getting more active on my flickr account!
Also this year there is going to be a lot of thinking, praying, talking and exploring possibilities for the future and where God might be leading me.
Other ideas, expand this site/blog a bit, try and be a bit more regular in posting (but don’t hold your breath) and also get some more stuff available.
I’m sure there is plenty of other stuff coming up as well but for now I shall leave you by saying I hope Christmas was a good and meaningful time for you and that this new year proves to be a positive step forward with God as your guide to all that it may hold.
God bless.
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