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a little about the image of the church, I guess for several years now the church has had a reputation for being an outdated institution, I remember someone saying a few years ago (can’t remember who) “the church is a organisation for old ladies run by middle aged men” and I guess I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.

written by Simo

So far I have only seen two of the Nooma DVD�s, the first one �Rain�, about a year ago and the second one �Rich� last night, both with my youth group. I have been very impressed with both and last nights was very challenging. If you haven�t seen or used any of them yet then I highly recommend them, I am going to try and use them a little more regularly than once a year I think now. They are superbly done and really do make you think, even though Rich was very American in some respects it still translated and although we don�t have the �God Bless America� bumper stickers (although one girl in the group is now trying to convince her parents to get one!) it still translated really easily.
The only down side is the cost, they have come down since I brought the first one when most of them were around �12 now you can get the for about �9.50 but for a small group that is quite a lot of money especially when you consider in the US they are $10 which is about �5. The discs are multi region so it�s not like they have to be repressed for over here or anything it�s just part of the whole rip off Britain that we live in, I was reading about a piece of software the other day that was $180 in America or �185 over here for exactly the same box, it�s bad enough when secular society wants to rip us off like that but why the difference within the Christian community?

written by Simo

Well there has been loads happening and several things I want to write about so where to start, I could go with returning to my office to find 4 dead hornets on the floor and another one flying around, nice experience, but I won�t discuss that I think I�ll start by talking about the state of the British media. Now I have to say in all honesty that on Saturday the only news I heard on the radio or saw on the TV were national BBC stations so I can�t comment on others or the paper but for both of these the big headline was Prince William splitting up with his girlfriend after 6 years friends ship and 4 of those going out. Car bombs in Iraq were further down the list and the number of dead were just mentioned in passing almost, but price William had several different people as experts analysing the situation. Both of them are in there early 20�s now from my work I see young people who go in and out of relationships to well beyond this age, some times they can be together longer as well, it�s part of life, it happens, LEAVE THEM ALONE! To be honest I�m not that bothered about his relationships, yes I expect there will be a big deal made when he finally meets the right person and decides to get married, and maybe that is right, he is second inline and all that but let him have a life, he has been born into a family that automatically restricts him in so many ways, he did not chose the life in the lime light he has to lead and surly he deserves (and his friends/girlfriends for that matter) the right to be able to live with at least some aspects of normality, it makes no difference to us so give him some space, let him live his life, he will have enough to contend with in the future, so let him be a 20 something let him have friends, go out with people and get to know them without the pressure of someone always looking over his shoulder to tell the world.

written by Simo

Yesterday was the second Birthday of OnMeBus and it was the day I was hoping to relaunch with the new look etc, however there have been a few set back but that should happen possibly later today but more likely early next week.

I also wanted to talk about Top Gear though. Yesterday also being Valentines Gill and I celebrated with a Chinese take away and watched Top Gear (how romantic I know, but then it was about 3 in the afternoon before we even remembered it was valentines!) This was a repeat of Sunday episode so if you saw it you will know what I am talking about if not you can see the relevant clip here (I would watch it no before you read on!) Now I know that a lot of Top Gear now is about stupid stunts etc but I felt this decorate each others cars to see if you can get the other arrested or shot was going too far and in poor taste only made worse by the fact that it is only a few months since Richard Hammond nearly lost his life filming for the show! But this act was set up to deliberately, deeply offend people, now some of their stunts have annoyed people, drive time radio show, road resurfacing, trying to play golf and keep arguing and holding up the whole course, but these were not offensive unlike this latest stunt in America, there was indeed one point where they did nearly get them selves caught by the locals who were not at all impressed. What�s more it had nothing to do with the cars or even what they were trying to show you could do (or not as the case turned out which was to do a fly drive holiday but buy a car instead of rent.) I personally think this was irresponsible and distasteful programming by the producers and the BBC and I was very disappointed that they would call this entertainment.

The slight redeeming aspect of the programme was finishing off in an area that a year ago had been hit by hurricane Katrina and they were supposed to be trying to sell the cars, however they were so hit by the devastation that still existed that they offered them to a local charity who put them in contact with local people who still had no car after the hurricane took everything they owned.

written by Simo

Yesterday was Gill�s birthday, I think she had a good day! we went out as a family for a meal in the evening which was really nice, a good local family restaurant but my meal which was very nice was slightly spoilt but a few stupid people. I like my steak to be shown the heat but not actually put it on! So I ordered my steak blue, to be told we can�t do blue steak! �WHAT!� apparently the problem is too many people have ordered their steak blue and then complained because it wasn�t hot in the middle, I say it again �WHAT!� people get real if you order a steak blue it means it�s still raw in the middle, heat cooks food, so a blue steak will not be hot in the middle, it is your moronic idea that you can have a blue steak HOT, when have you ever had hot raw food? Other than that it was a good meal and I ate way too much. Happy Birthday Gill.

written by Simo

So here we are 2007, Christmas is over and soon all the decorations will be put away and everywhere will look bare again. I just can�t help wondering if every year we (as in the whole church) misses an opportunity. It seems to me that every year many people get Jesus out of the box along with the other decorations, they do the Church thing over Christmas because it�s a nice traditional Christmas story (even if the traditionally story is possibly largely based on bad interpretation, see my post from last Christmas). The problem comes about now, when Jesus goes back in the box with the decorations, and back in the loft to be forgotten about until next year. The question then comes as to what we can do during this brief period when people are actually thinking about the person of Jesus and wanting to remember him, whether out of quaint family tradition or a deeper desire to find more meaning to life and the Christmas season. Somehow during this period we need to challenge people to think about what the Christmas message is, taking it from �nice traditional story� to a life changing historical event, we need to move them from leaving saying �wasn�t it nice to sing those carols� to saying �there was something about that, something there and I don�t know what it was but I want to find out�. I sometimes wonder if we have got so bogged down in the tradition ourselves that we have almost forgotten the Gospel. I remember Mike Yaconelly at Greenbelt talking about the church being full of the people it�s not meant for, Jesus himself said �it�s not the healthy who need a doctor�. Are we missing an opportunity so keen to offer the nice traditional Christmas services that we focus on this baby being born and we forget to tell people that he was born with a purpose. If you look at the web address above you will see the domain name �notashamed� coming from Romans 1:16 �I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes�. Is this true for our services over Christmas if like Paul we are not ashamed then we need to show it, we need to tell people the gospel and Christmas is a major opportunity to do so, yes lets talk about the nice story of the first Christmas but lets put it in the context of salvation and the worlds need for it!

End of rant, hope you did have a good Christmas and pray that you might find peace and grace through the knowledge of salvation this year. God bless

written by Simo