Life affirming

check out this post and the blog of my friend Roy. This is a beautiful thing.

Leading out of who you are

Today I am in the middle of 3  separate meetings with youth work/ministry students. I love my role supporting them, challenging them, helping them to reflect. This is probably the hat out of the various that I wear I feel the most comfortable with. I love the journey from a seemingly insignificant comment to the joining of the dots between events, attitudes, thoughts and dreams. It makes me happy, I like to challenge them and help them to dive deeper.

For me inbetween these meetings I have been reading Simon’s Walker’s ‘Leading out of who you are.’ This is on the recommendation of my spiritual director Tony Cant and already this book is hitting me hard, articulating beautifully my struggles, fears and hopes. I’m sure there will be more to follow.

I am astounded however within my place of lonely leadership/pioneering that the 2 books that I am reading prove the often ignored fact that I am not alone through this, that this is a path already trodden and there are lessons to learn.

 

Splurge

Here is the last month of non-blogging in bite sized pieces:

1) Good Christmas and New Year back London way.

2) The Wander of Wonder went well.

3) Great weekend in Center Parcs.

4) Extremely busy start to the new year.

5) Very thought provoking meeting with my Spiritual Director.

6) reCreate Festival in Alderholt is given the go ahead from the PCC, much to do.

7) Fun helping out co-hosting on HopeFM.

8) Struggling with all there is to do and my sense of vocation.

9) Editing a Lent Book

10) Learning to give myself ‘a break’ not in terms of time off but in terms of my expectations of myself and my perceived expectations from others.

11) 9 Mile training run for the London Marathon this morning.

12) Lack of enthusiasm for my blog.

13) Cracked the secret to making a good beef and guiness pie.

What happens when you stop running

I post this from the wonderful Don Miller for me to come back to and reflect upon in the coming days. I have a feeling some of his thoughts are tied up with where I am at currently.

 

Nativity

love it. More brilliance from Naked Pastor

Santa Run

It was fun on Saturday to do the Salisbury Santa Run with a group of friends from Alderholt. Only a couple of miles but still a bit of mileage towards the London Marathon in April.

I’m planning another run today. Please remember that I am running for Voice UK and you can sponsor me here if you wish.

Advent Song

It’s been a hard advent for me to be completely honest. I’ve struggled to be still and to slow down. It’s about as distracted from advent as I have been for many a year. However this beautiful song has been my solace at times during these weeks of advent

The Wander of Wonder

This evening sees the launch of our Wander of Wonder. After being inspired by the Advent Beach Huts in Brighton over the past few years I asked myself the questions well what has Alderholt got? We don’t have beach hut but we do have gardens so the wander of wonder started life from there, that alongside the history of the village doing a Posada.

So from this evening we will have a new part of the Christmas story illustrated each weds and sat in the run up to Christmas in gardens around the village. We will serve free hot choc and read the element of the story and been done and dusted in about 15 mins. The plan is then on the final day to walk the whole story taking in each of the gardens in term before finishing up with refreshments at our coffee shop.

Also each person will get a item each time to illustrate the story that they have just heard.

I have had a lot of interest shown but tonight we will see. We could have 5 people we could have 45 I just don’t know!

Fresh Expressions – Diocese of Salisbury

Off to a gathering of people interested/involved in Fresh Expressions of church in the Diocese of Salisbury this afternoon/evening. It should be interesting to meet some people and also to check out Ivy House retreat centre in Warminster.

We have made tentative steps over the course of the past year hear in Alderholt, with our first prayer walk a couple of weeks back. I hope that we might be able to create a small ‘missional’ community in the new year.

The plan for the way home is to try and catch the Spurs v Villa game on the way home

Training Session 13

Hard run today, started feeling a bit achy and lacking in energy. Still, pleased to have got around the 5 miles to complete my longest training run to date even if it was a bit on the slow side.