Shooting For Trouble or Trouble Shooting

Having spent another morning at my Mum's trying to answer another question like "Why isn't my printer working?" I admit I considered the option of starting to apply a call-out charge. I did get breakfast so we've called it quits.

Anyone that's a troubleshooter for a living must be the most flexible person ever. Whether it's an IT support guy, the paramedic or the fire fighter, they turn up to a random scene and immediately need to make an assessment of the situation before acting accordingly. Maybe the IT guy has a little less urgency... Or at least less riding on his success. No offence to any IT people out there but nobody's going to die if you don't answer the phone!

This made me think... what a way to live! Waking up each morning ready with your life tool kit waiting to see what starts leaking, or what starts breaking down, so you can quickly patch it up before it gets any worse. If you ever heard the story of Noah, or watched Evan Almighty, there's a guy that couldn't afford to take the troubleshoot option. If Noah or Evan had started waiting til the floods came then good luck to them trying to build a giant-zoo-boat neck deep in water!

Despite it being a little odd (bear in mind nobody had even seen a boat let alone an ark before Noah, he could have been building a space ship and nobody would have known any better), Noah and Evan build their lives so that when the floods came they were ready. They were in a position to shoot for trouble.

Floods will come so either bury your head in the day to dayness of life and stock up on gaffa tape, or position yourself so you can look in the distance at the first wave of the next flood and say 'bring it on'!

When I was a thief...

I don't remember a great deal to be honest. That's why I rely so heavily on things like iPhones and reminders and to do lists and tattoos like that guy from the film Memento. What you've never seen it? You really should.

Every now and then, though, I remember something completely bizarre and irrelevant. Like I just remembered the time in my first year infants class where this kid broke the glass bottle of milk that forever after meant we only got (smaller) carton milk. Then somehow that just reminded me of sports day that same year and I was too embarrassed to enter in the parent-kid-combo-three-legged-race. Sorry Dad.

So Thursday night I was about to fall asleep and I remembered the first time I ever stole something. Every day for as many years as I lived there, Dominic's the ice cream van would stop outside my house in Dagenham. Like clockwork Dominic would drive up Naseby Road with the pride of a royal precession and like a pied piper would lure my friends and neighbours from their homes with the unmissable tune of Greensleeves. I have since wondered why a product largely targeting a market of children uses a 16th century folk song as it's theme tune.

It seemed as though aaaaall my friends got to get an ice cream from Dominic but I never was. My Mum knew it wasn't money well spent, knew ice cream every day wouldn't be good for me, knew I was hyper enough without extra sugar, and maybe she also knew Dominic sold cigarettes for 20p each to anyone that asked. I'm not blaming my Mum for what happened next but maybe the odd ice cream here and there could have stopped me sinking to the depths I then did.

I must have been 5 or 6 years old and despite our recently installed double glazing I heard Dominic in his cream machine purring his way up the road and pull up outside the house. Dad wasn't in and Mum was upstairs - Mum's purse however... on the brass trolley we used for roast dinners on Sundays. My window of opportunity was slim. I opened the purse, unzipped the coin section, grabbed out the biggest coin I could find and sneaked out the front door to join the queue of kids buying their 99's, popeyes and toffee crumbles. My turn came and I was way too short for the window so I had to stretch up with my coin to reach Dominic's open hand, presented him with just a two pence piece and asked what I could get. All 2p would get me was a bubble gum. Which incidentally I wasn't allowed either, but I took it anyway, ran back into the house and hid feeling really guilty.

Remembering this story made me think... why do we sometimes get so focused on something that we break the rules trying to get it. All I got out of it was two pence and then a bubble gum and I had to steal to get it. So much effort for such a small prize, and would it have been worth it if I found the note section rather than the coins? Never is.

Education and Experience

Earlier this year I made the amazing discovery of iTunes U. I was at a conference where everyone went to bed really early (!) and while browsing the iTunes store came across free lectures from the top universities in the world... Few others can say they trained at Harvard, Stanford and Oxford all in one evening.

I was looking for some seminars on leadership or business processes and came across a series of video interviews carried out by McGill University in Canada. One interview was with Larry Smith, president of Canadian Football League team Montreal Alouettes. He talked about the balance between education and experience...

Imagine a bike's wheels, one wheel represents education and the other experience. The smoothest, safest and fastest ride comes when the wheels are matched in size - unlike the rather ridiculous looking (although groundbreaking at the time) penny farthing pictured above. The penny farthing's shape meant it had such an odd centre of gravity that anyone breaking on a downhill descent were more than likely to end up flying over the handlebars.

Most pastors, or leaders, or anyone doing any job in fact, get regular experience in their job - whether it's leading a church every day, the office team leader or the chef in their kitchen. Each day that experience wheel grows larger and larger. Which makes me think... I can't halt the growth process of my experience wheel without quitting my job so I better get working on my education. Everything I read, listen to or invest in adds to making that balance a touch more even - and makes me a lot less likely to fly over the handlebars!

A Certain Place

Louise and I just got back at the weekend from a holiday to Austria and Slovakia - I say a holiday, it was definitely a rest for the brain but maybe not so much for the body. Lots of walking around cities and up mountains! One day I ate a sword full of meat, another day we went into a random guy's house to look at his furniture.

While in Vienna we visit St. Stephensdom - the cathedral in the city centre. Call me biased but you can see more stuff for free in Gloucester Cathedral. That's not the point of this blog post... In the picture there's a mini altar with candles and a picture of Jesus (I really hope Jesus didn't look anything life the pictures but hey) with some pews. There was about half a dozen of these around the Cathedral each one of them had a few people either praying, thinking or musing.

I found this pretty strange - obviously I'm used to church but this was different. The altar in this picture was literally by the front door, and what you can't see are the hundreds of people standing around, walking by, taking photos or led by tour guides and their Wikipedia printouts. This made me think... of all the places you could go to pray why would you go to an exposed wooden bench surrounded by a hundred other people speaking a dozen other languages? I think for two reasons: Number 1, it's because they have been brought up in a culture that says go to church because it's where God is. Number 2, it's somewhere they believe their prayers will be heard by the Big Guy. I believe you can pray everywhere and anywhere and God will hear you, but there's clearly some who feel that the one place they can speak to God, even if it means sharing that moment in front of a lanky English guy with an iPhone camera, is in church.

So how do we make church accessible to people... make it somewhere people can connect with God, and create moments where people genuinely feel they can speak to Him.

I Choose To Stand For My Generation

Apparently contrary to the belief of the cashier from the pound shop that asked for ID to buy a disposable BBQ, I was born in 1982. The same year of the Falklands War, Jacko sold his 20 millionth Thriller album, Prince William was born, liposuction was invented, and the Delorean Motor Co. went bust (despite being time machines - see pic from Back To The Future).

Since the age of 16 I have worked with young people either as a volunteer youth worker, or for four years I was a full time Youth Pastor for a church - amazing time of my life, getting paid to do a job that was an absolute joy every day.

I've always had this drive, and still do today, to see young people reach their potential in life. Everyone has had different backgrounds, family life and education but the one thing that they have in common is the ability to shape their future into something great. There's a song that's been around for a few years now called 'Pick It Up' by Planetshakers, and in this song is a line that says "I choose to stand for my generation." I love it. I love it because that's what I've been about - choosing to stand on behalf of a generation of young people that have had their legs taken from underneath them.

Since I changed jobs at the beginning of the year, I have a new role which doesn't have as much involvement with youth work as I did before. This made me think... What generation am I standing for now? I've decided I now need to stand for two... I am still passionate about young people living life to the full, but I can't ignore my own generation.

I look around me now and see my generation that's paying the price for it's poor choices. Post modernism kicked in and made everything permissible. But in my generation are friends with kids without a family unit, there's friends with uni education sitting in a dead-end office job and a £15k debt over their head, and friends only just realising what life's all about a decade too late.

I choose to stand for my generation.

When did I stop being a 'morning person'?

My alarm went off at 7am this morning. I hit snooze. It rudely went off again at 7:09am.

Thinking I was awake enough to turn my alarm off (and not snooze it again) I lay quietly with my eyes open, just, gearing myself up for a trip to the bathroom. Then it was 7:16am. Eh? Where did those seven minutes go? How could my own brain trick me into thinking I was awake only to shut everything down again once I'd turned the alarm off!?

Now invigorated by the time pressures at stake from losing those seven minutes I leapt out of bed with great purpose and magnificentness. Actually it was more like some thick lava moving across the upper floor of the house and into the shower. Maybe I'm just not a morning person.

That makes me think... when did I stop being a morning person? My parents tell me that as a kid I would wake up at 5 or 6am ready to bounce around for the day in my usual hyperactive way. I remember being nine or ten years old and getting up at 6am to watch Trans World Sport on Channel Four on a Saturday morning. AND you would think that 13 years of full time education might train you to be able to cope with pre-9am-world but no.

From now on, if I ever say "I'm not a morning person", I must be wrong because the evidence... my childhood and my 13 years of training... suggests otherwise.

Now Wash Your Hands!

I had to go to another church yesterday afternoon for a meeting with a bunch of other church leaders from Gloucester. Very generously there was an abundance of free water although this inevitably required a visit to test the urination facilities.

Moments into this 'test' I noticed this big sign in front of me... "Now Wash Your Hands" (it was ok to take a photo, there wasn't any other people testing at the time.) Just in case anyone may have considered a quick test without a post-test hand wash they would be forced to reconsider their actions after reading such a sign. There's no please or thank you with this sign, just an absolute command, like being told off by an old fashioned P.E. teacher.

This church clearly takes hygiene seriously. Then it made me think... I wonder if this church had many more signs like this, maybe to represent other things they took seriously? It probably works in the toilets at least - so maybe we could try it here at Robinswood Church with things we're serious about...

"Now be enthusiastic!"

"Now love God and people!"

"Now serve!"

"Now smile during the preach!"

"Now go to Connect!"

Or something like that. You never know, it might work as well as that sign in the toilets. If you're in Robinswood Church on Sunday then beware of commanding signs ;)

Pay vs. Passion

I was admiring my bench from the office window last week when I spotted someone doing what I think has got to be one of the funnest jobs in the world.

If you look at the picture carefully you'll see a guy in an orange hi-vis jacket testing the climbing frame in the park. Yep that's right, he's testing the climbing frame! Not to mention the swings, the slide and the springy animal things. What an amazing job - paid by the council to drive around the city and mess around in play areas testing the equipment. However there's something you need to know about our local (I made up a title) Child Recreational Enclosure Safety Technician... he hates his job!! He mopes around the park like his work is such a chore, he'll give one swing a push, glance at the slide and kick the springy animal things - before ticking it all off on his clipboard and getting back into his white van.

Maybe as a young man he held dreams of making it big in the Child Recreational Enclosure Safety industry - starting as an eager apprentice with chalked hopscotches on an infant school playground musing about the day he'll hit the lights and glamour of Alton Towers and Thorpe Park. But today those dreams are like dust, and no salary can replace the passion he once had to make a difference in his world.

Makes me think... it doesn't matter how much I get paid for what I do if there's no passion. As it happens I love my job and I'm not driven by pay day or by how many days left until the weekend - I'm driven by a genuine feeling that I can play a part in something that will change the world.

Shake The Tree

I read this quote from a 19th Century preacher called Charles Spurgeon last week, which made me think...

"Get a promise everyday and take it wherever you go. Make it, learn it and inwardly digest it... I take a promise, I shake it to and fro and sometimes the mellow fruit falls into my hand. At other times the fruit is less ready to fall, but I never give up until I get it. I shake and shake all day long."

There's some things that have always been some of my 'one days'... Some trivial like 'one day I'll have a Ford Puma', some materialistic like 'one day I'll have a big house with a pool table, hot tub and golf course in the garden', then some a bit more heartfelt like 'one day I'll have a family'. What changes these from being 'one days' into 'to-days'? Tree shaking.

Sometime I go after something and I shake the tree and fruit drops right away, other times I have to shake and shake and shake because one day might be to-day.

[Bench update... I drove into the car park this week and saw a couple sitting on my bench! I would have said something but they had two big dogs. I'll have a quiet word next time.]

Too easy to become a fan

There's a bunch of other blogs I read to help me think more... Some of them are listed on the panel of this page and I usually read them in bed just before I nod off - thank you iPhone ;)

One I highly recommend is from my favourite Kiwi since my year 7 PE teacher Mr Kay - Al Ronberg. Check out his blog here. His many talents include photography so at the very least you get a nice photo every day... but he brought up the point in his blog today about how Facebook has now got a tad swamped with sooo much junk - it's less about micro blogging and sharing and networking and more like top 5's and what kind of carrier bag you are most likely to marry. At least when I got 50 zombie requests per day they were kept hidden in a notifications panel somewhere! Facebook even listed that a highlight of today was that 15 of my friends have become fans of hot chocolate. Which prompted this thought...

How can you be such a fan of hot chocolate that you'd want to tell the world? If you're one of those 15 people, do you wear I 'heart' Hot Choc shirts? Do you regularly contribute to the hot chocolate Wikipedia page? Are you searching eBay for overpriced tickets to a mug of hot chocolate's sold out stadium tour? Or do you just like the occasional mug on a winter's evening and does that really make you a fan?

It's way too easy to become a fan of something. I want to be a fan of things I am genuinely passionate about, things that contribute towards enriching or taking care of my life. Everything else, well, I enjoy loads of things (including the odd hot chocolate) but you just wouldn't catch me traveling to an away match.

Thanks, Al for prompting this thought.

I think Easter is real

I almost feel guilty saying this, but I'm not sure I really GOT Easter until this year. Hold your gasp for just one second while I try and figure out why... I think it's because of the whole routine of it all - there is such little variety in it every year it's like it's become a holy box ticking exercise where we go "Good Friday bank holiday half day - check" "Saturday just like any other - check" "Church on Sunday followed Easter eggs - check!"

It doesn't carry the same weight commercially as Christmas, and as a result I might be a Christian that's forgotten how to celebrate Easter. But we did something different this year which was just what we needed to snap out of another year of stale tradition.

This picture is a poor res image of our communion table before our church service on Good Friday. When we take communion we use it as a tool to remember Jesus' death and it's an imitation of the 'Last Supper' where Jesus spent some time with his friends over a meal. That's a meal. Not a 1cm squared piece of bread and a thimble of juice. So at our church on Friday we ordered 55 loaves of bread and had jugs of juice... I ate so much bread I sat sooo bloated through the sermon. The message that day said there's room for everyone to eat at this table (there was loads left over!), no matter who you are, what you've done or where you've been, Jesus died so there would always be room at his table.

I get it now.

This Week's Greatest Achievement!

From my office window I watched someone come and put this new bench in the park by our church. There's nothing special about it... It's just a bench. But this bench created an opportunity of a lifetime for me.

There's a cliche that says "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Well for me it was today! This afternoon I became the first person ever to sit on that bench. Nobody will ever take that title away and maybe in twenty years the bench will still be there and a single glance at it would cast my mind back to a sunny April lunch break with a cup of tea and a honey mustard chicken pasta.

Have I done more significant things in my life? Probably.

Will I do more significant things in the future? Hopefully.

Will I always be the first person ever to sit on the bench? Absolutely.

My Poor Brain

Our brains are crazily complex and insanely powerful - and it has really weird ways of working. I think my brain is an elitist snob that decides on it's own which facts and memories are deemed worthy enough to grace a hallowed memory slot. Unfortunately, I'm yet to be on friendly enough terms with my brain to guarantee that something you tell me - a date, a meeting, a joke, a story - will be granted one of these slots.

For example, on holiday Louise and I had spent the day by the hotel pool before heading back to the room to get ready for dinner. The next day we did exactly the same thing only when we went to leave I couldn't find our camera. We turned the room upside down and inside out and I was convinced that some scumbag thieving cleaner had nicked it - I even complained to the hotel manager! An hour later I found it inside the shoe I had carried it back from the pool in. Brain why wouldn't you remember that?? Why can't you remember where I left my wallet instead of my defunct BT calling card number from when I was 11?? (144536067377184).

Billions have been spent on trying to make computers do what a brain can do in a fraction of a second - but better than a computer it can imagine and create new thoughts without the need of any pre-programmed input... which is why I want to learn how to tame it. I want to be able to drive my thoughts and train my brain to think clearly and positively so it's power is unleashed for good. In Matthew chapter 5 Jesus understood this already, he said before you've even done anything wrong if your brain has imagined it then you're already there.

Train the brain.

An Ageing Perspective

Technically I'm just one day older today than I was yesterday. In fact, just 12 hours ago I was quite happily carrying on through life as a 26 year old. So why does this feel so different!?

Somewhere in the incredible complicity of my human brain something made me wake up this morning and think "right, 27, that's waaaay different to the 26 you've been used to." Or maybe that seven hours sleep I had was what I needed to up a level of maturity, or the thought that 'late twenties' suddenly changes some of your outlooks.

The last time I had this feeling was when I turned 20. It scared the poo out of me to think I was entering my twenties knowing that this was the decade that many important things happen in... weddings, careers families etc. But now at the grand old age of 27 I sit with a measured assurance that I'm doing ok - great wife, cracking new job and a God looking out for me. So what if I feel a touch older than I did yesterday, I like the big two-seven anyways...

All our worldly possessions

"All my worldly possessions" is a pretty general saying that covers any time we're referring to a load of our stuff. But in this picture you can literally see ALL our worldly possessions!

26.9 years of stuff we have bought, been given and collected all loaded into the back of a lorry within the space of about three hours. The best bit is I didn't think anything of it - we sat and watched three guys load everything we own into their lorry, then watched them drive away into the sunset with just a piece of headed notepaper and an empty flat to show for it.

Everyone has stuff they are thinking about. Everyone has things that are constantly going on in the back of their head as a bit of a worry list, things that there's no immediate answer for or stuff on the horizon coming their way. Maybe just me but hey. One cracking thing about being a Christian is that the relationship I have with God means I can share the burden of my worry list with Him. Makes me think, if I can leave all my worldly possessions in the hands of strangers, then I can trust God with my worry list.

Dabbling with a bit of Reggie

Yesterday the Youth Alive Tour with Reggie Dabbs came to Gloucester.
It was my privilege to take Reggie around the schools during the day
and we estimate around 700 students heard his story.

As I found myself laughing at the same stories for the fifth or sixth
time I wondered why Reggie's story works so well? Why it gives him the
opportunity to speak to two million teenagers around the world every
year.

I didn't need to think too hard because I think the answer is
simple... It's his story but he'll let anyone know about it if it
means someone might me better off by hearing it.

That means my story, as miles away from Reggie's as it is, can also be
useful. It might never be millions that hear it but as long as one or
two are better off because of it...

Moving Home

For 56 days now Louise and I have been living in Gloucester. We moved from Woodford in London for my new job at Robinswood Church and I can't believe how quickly those 56 days have passed.

Unfortunately, because of the 'current financial climate' or 'credit crunch' or 'downturn' or whatever you want to call it we've been unable to sell our flat and buy a house here. Great news today though as next Wednesday we have agreed to move into a rented house where we'll have all our own stuff all in our own home once again. Living out of a suitcase has it's challenges but thinking about it there's been a load of benefits of living with family...

1. It's free

Both my brother and my parent's have let us stay with them rent free! Not bad especially when you consider the level of service we're getting.

2. Processing stuff

My bro is my boss, so when I leave the office and go home for dinner he's there too. But that's cool because we can still process thoughts and plans and actions in our own time - I think differently on a sofa or kitchen stool than I do at my desk.

3. Louise is in the loop

While I'd much rather get home and crash in front of the TV, I have a wife who wants to know how my day was and needs to know what's going on in my world. Living with other people that are in the same loop means we share the info and everyone's a winner.

4. We've been useful

Whether it's been cooking, babysitting, picking up, dropping off, fixing the living room door, or finding the right website for 'snowed off schools' I like to think we've been useful to my brother's family while we've been staying there. I'm sure they'll miss us when we're gone lol.

I'd much rather have had this whole move done and dusted by 1st January, and be typing this in the living room of my new house, but I can't. But now I've taken the time to think about it, there's a ton of reasons why moving house in stages has been a good thing. Even though we want to do things our own way there's always a rhyme or reason for them to happen the way they do and I'm glad that this time I realise why.