Sludge and rubber ducks

Just mopping up still after returning from church today to the splosh splosh sound of water pouring from dining room light after my 3 year old had been creating pond in sink for rubber ducks before church without anyone else knowing! Eternal consequences nil though – so a welcome change from day to day church matters really! Brightened up the day in fact now I think about it!

Also, this same daughter, with a gift for creative and inspiring vocabulary if you’ll remember, came up with another great one at Legoland on Friday: on passing one of the snack stands – “Mummy can I have some sludge please?”

Great things I remember from sermon today: “And what persecutors forget is that when they try to squash Christians it doesn’t make them go, it makes them grow. The Romans tried it, the Nazi’s tried it, and the Chinese government has tried it but instead of wilting and giving up, Christians with the right attitude to persecution grow.”

And: “The beginning of persecution is that words and terms begin to be redefined. 20 years ago I was an orthodox Bible believing Christian, and Peter Tatchell was a gay rights activist. In that time neither of us have changed our views I don’t think but today I would be labelled an evangelical fundamentalist, a danger to both church and state, and he is now termed a human rights campaigner.” Persecution is coming to us and we need to choose if we will be silenced or not.”

My 3 year old shared the gospel with me

“Mummy a shining angel man was there.” …. ” Jesus died and did the punishment” …. “and his friends were sad when Jesus died” … “but the shining angel man said Jesus was alive”

Thank you God for sending my 3 year old daughter to share the gospel with me. I really needed it. Uncomfortably doling out unhealthy chocolate spread on toast to toddlers and babies just now at breakfast before going to our new church, and with YFRidays Great and Glorious CD playing, God spoke to me afresh. PLease Jesus help me know Jesus’s power, available to us who believe, that can do the impossible – things that we can never imagine are possible, for your glory, Lord

Willow conference – Handing over our churches to the next generation

Willow creek Leadership conference

This conference at the City Temple in central London was very thought provoking and helpful if not mindblowing. There were a lot of guys there who pastor churches of between 500 and 3000 people who clearly demand a fair amount of respect, as well as ladies too who were either Heads of departments or teenage apprentices for leadership – so very encouraging.

Helped me move forward another step with Lead for England, and also had some helpful insights into handing churches over to the next generation. Basically the first generation people and the next generation people, (very tactful and constructive terms! Which link to the issues God’s people faced in the wilderness) need to ask themselves 3 questions:

1) Do I really want to do this? hand the church over.
2) What is it? transfer of authority and responsibility together. Whereas first generation people are often OK at handing over responsibility but still want control; and the next generation are OK about having their ideas implemented but want first generation people to pay for them! Need to work at making sure the two roles are linked properly then transfer them both together.
3) There are risks. but there are bigger risks to not doing it! Ie a church dwindles down and finds there’s no 18 year olds left to hand stuff onto! They’ve long gone and we’ve failed God by not trusting his ongoing purposes for the church but clinging onto how we like things rather than handing stuff onto our 18 year olds. As 30 somethings we need to be ready to train our teenagers and begin to hand stuff over.

I’m looking forward to it though I think. Do yourself out of a job every 3 years that’s a related axiom I heard from a church leader which seems to make great sense and be a sign of a healthy church I would think. Any thoughts? Comments?

(Must just say thanks to my amazing husband who looked after the kids today on his day off so I could go)

Chocolate mini-moles

My youngest daughter always manages to invent brilliant new names for things that are actually better than the proper words! I don’t know what career this could lead to?

A month or so back it was “puddling in the puddling pool” which is pretty good as a paddling pool is just like a puddle really. And today we were having chocolate mini-rolls for the ‘pudding’ bit of lunch when she accidently called them chocolate mini-moles. To much laughter from her 4 year old sister. And actually, I think there’s potential there!

I think would be Apprentices could easily get a product out there that was a bit more expensive than cadbury’s mini rolls but did have a tapered ‘nose’ end, and cute little icing black eyes and little legs. I’m fairly sure that with the right packaging, and display height my pre-schoolers would get them off the shelves and put them in the trolley, and I would have that one too many emotionally draining verbal and physical tussle to get them back out again. A sale results.

Can I get some commission back on this idea, if a food marketeer is up for taking this on?!

Anglican liturgy is dull, (and other assumptions to question..)

Sharing contemporary Anglican resourses:

Morning Prayer v3
</aHoly Communion v3

Well I’ve just completed some new designs of the Anglican morning prayer and Holy Communion orders of service.

I’m not really an Anglican, just a follower of Jesus, but as I’d previously suspected, there is some incredible words of truth in the Anglican standard prayers, (probably cos a lot of is from the Bible ie word of God basically!  So that figures). 

It’s just if you’re anything like me there are too many memories of leafing through p142 section C1 and” then we’ll pray togehter the prayer on the middle of para 14.2 on p169″.  And I know lots of growing church dispense with much of it all together  which is great if you can do excellent stuff in its place consistently.

Anyway, had a hunch if i got rid of the presentation obstacles, I could make a big improvement for people.  And they’ve been very well received so far.  So please use them for ideas, and also forward me your good stuff.

Why are we so timid?

We’ve not been given a spirit of timidity! But of power, of love, and of self discipline.

Why are we so timid?  I think I’m only really just starting to get to realise again what following Jesus really means, and the huge, exciting, supernatural adventure it is.  Jesus can be everything, and his Spirit is really powerful! And actually it’s hard to be timid when you’re up close to that.  Anyway hopefully will get chance to reflect further on this soon but tons to do and be….XX

OK it went like this …..

Today, (as most days at the moment), was fairly important.  It was my son’s birthday party, and also pinned to that, it was the first event with the other mothers of the other boys in his new Pre-Prep school.

Somewhat crazily, in a flip a coin, shall we shan’t we sort of way, I’d decided we would do his party at home in our garden.

Yes you may have already guessed most of the rest of this story by now – !  Anyway somehow 14 boys and their associated mums, nannies, and siblings were in the garden, football was going well, (though I should have thought to dig out the whistle for my husband), the BBQ was lit, tea had been made for the adults with chocolate fingers too, and all was running fairly smoothly as I took over the games.

The ‘build a rocket’ in two teams out of giant ‘Home Bargains’ bargains connectors was grabbing the boys interest and I’d managed to spin it out for quite a while.  But on completion of the judging, I noticed the food still wasn’t on the barbie and there was only 45 mins left to cook food and eat it and do the cake.  What could have gone wrong?  My husband was in the upstairs loo at the end of a trail of ‘mess’ !  How does she do it!!  My youngest daughterknows exactly when the worst moment is, and in the last 6 months the only times she’s done this is this time, and all over the house of some people who’d been generous enough to invite the whole family round to dinner!

The rest of the party got pretty hectic and also horror of unforgivable horrors the party bags ran out!  They hadn’t got much in anyway but to kids that it not the point! (Though I thought I had done about 5 spares, I hadn’t accounted for my girls taking one each unfortunately – ooops) The boys all had a great time and the mums were lovely, but I fear they have got to know me a bit better than I intended for the first occasion – to put it in a positive light.

And I only found out later that the incident began in a totally embarassingly dramatic way – with my 3 year old appearing starkers out of the french windows, people laughing and my husband asking her what was the matter, she then tuned round to reveal all smeared up her from her feet to her hair!  I know – it’s a bit much detail.  So I will now go down in school history as the mum who did the most scuzzy party with not enough party bags.  Boo hoo hoo can I really face everyone on Monday morning.

Check out new website!

Hi – I’m getting used to late nights at the moment!  Anyway thought I’d just check you’ve all had chance to see the website  for our local church St James New Barnet – all feedback / comments gratefully received, plus join the Facebook group if you want to keep in touch with how things are going in this outpost of God’s kingdom.  www.stjamesnewbarnet.com    (Also gotta get it up the Google ratings a bit so people can find us OK – come on we can do it!)

Really better go to bed now – ohh …………  I’ll just check Facebook!

R. I. P. Peter Rabbit

 

 

Well our newest addition to the family has gone!  This rabbit was very nice and after 6 weeks the kids were just getting used to having him around and getting confident with lifting him in and out of his hutch.  And visiting children were all enjoying seeing the rabbit and stroking his soft fur…  blub blub.  And they were all being really careful about not leaving the doors open, and the baby liked watching him and even I, a pragmatic pet-o-phobe on grounds of extra unnecessary work, was enjoying having him around!  But the large fox we’ve seen skulking through the bushes at the end of the garden managed to undo the door catches last night, and no more baby rabbit.

And we’ve all spent the day feeling very bad about this, and very sad for the poor rabbit as a familiar theme from cosy bedtime ‘FastFox’ stories has become a gory reality in front of our eyes!  And we’ve got no Slow Dog and today all supposedly ‘foxproof’ rabbit hutch designs we could find on the internet seem to have matching discussion threads of people with reports to the contrary! So we’ve all been quite deflated – will the kids have to give up on the idea of a rabbit?

But I am not going to see my kids defeated on this one, and as I was planning how I would somehow build the ultimate foxproof rabbit hutch with my son and I will not let this fox foil their hopes of pets, it occured that assuming the fox isn’t skilled with screwdrivers or saws, all we need to do is make sure the fastenings on the doors are able to be opened by the kids but not the fox.  This way should be a lot cheaper than a different hutch, or a shed to keep the hutch in.  SO current thinking is padlocks; probably key and number code versions for good measure.  And as long as the kids can keep a secret, and don’t tell the fox the code accidently……. !

Some piccies