Cage Football in Shrewsbury

Sometime in the next couple of weeks a Football Cage is arriving in Shrewsbury!


It has been quite a long slog to get here, with the usual highs and lows, setbacks and successes.

But now we are about to launch a really high profile community project looking to encourage young people across the town and help the different agencies serving young people to have a bridge to connect to them with.

So we can go out with the fire service and the cage to an area where the young people might be bored and setting fire to stuff.

We can go into schools and help run citizenship lessons and PSE activities using the cage.

We can go with the Police to a community fun day and gather young people and give them information about drugs awareness.

Preventing a public nuisance. Teamwork. Healthy eating. The Church, other local community agencies, the public services, all working together for the good of our society.

There are already 5 Churches looking to use the Cage: 2 Anglican, 2 newfrontiers and one Baptist.

Let's do it!

Officiating a wedding

I have now officiated my first wedding, and what a great day it was!

Two friends, people I have known for several years, coming together and committing themselves to one another.

The service was fun, packed and very meaningful.

Here is what I learned from the process.

1. Traditional Churches have such a huge missional opportunity in our culture through weddings
2. When it comes to wanting to plan a wedding service the best resources I could find were Anglican
3. Writing everything out was vital for me, as those legal bits are important!
4. A massively important thing is that the couple are being themselves in the songs, the fashion, the style of the service. It feels right if their friends and family know it is "them"
5. It is great to have people who know them well lead the prayers.

It leaves us towards the end of our 3 weddings in 4 weeks in the Church. That is the problem with all this pastoral advice that suggests Christians who are committed to each other for life should marry: they actually do!

It is all about relationship! NEGATIVES

In my last post I post the question: is it really "All about relationship"?

There are many positives. But is it always good? What do we need to watch out for?

5 potential negative outcomes of being "all about relationship"

• Are we sometimes too confident in how deep our relationships really are? Do we actually know each other all that well? There is a massive difference between being "friendly" and being "friends". Aside from the pleasantries are we really that close? Does time / geography allow it? Would you even be able to tell if I was sad? My friends know before I tell them.
  

• If things are "all about relationship" does that restrict progress and growth? For example: if I want to recruit a team I would probably do it from people I know. I would ask people I know if there are people they know who would be suitable. Are we missing quality input from people in our Churches because the right connections have not been made to get them to places or situations where they can be used fully? Are there job descriptions and application processes to fulfill roles in conferences and on teams? Or do people just invite who they know? Is that person the best person for the role? How would we ever know? Does that risk it becoming more important to be called / gifted or "well known"? Does that lead to people actually trying to "make themselves known" in a way that is based on ambition?
  

• How do you get involved? Our Church has a guy who with his wife leads a youth work of over 60 teenagers in a congregation of 300. Lots of other Churches in the town have young people coming here on fridays. How do we release a tremendously able communicator / leader who has built a large town wide youth work in a small town like Shrewsbury when the fact he works 60 hour weeks as an I.T. project manager over 80 miles from home means it is almost impossible for him to be "known", even though he did two years serving a major Newfrontiers Church in Capetown, South Africa? (His wife does not like to do public speaking, for those following a parallel discussion about gender). Is there a danger the criteria swings in favour of 1) Church leaders 2) Full time staff 3) people who have done Newfrontiers training in the UK because it is "all about relationships"?
  
  
• Does it look a bit like the Mafia from the outside? That is entirely tongue in cheek! We need to be careful I think, that "one big family" does not exclude new people. It can feel a bit "in house" to those outside. It is possible to get very comfortable within Newfrontiers and does that cause our relationships with other Church groups to stagnate? We have all we need "in house" so why bother? I am not saying that happens, I am saying it is a potential pitfall. If we only do our training, go to our conferences and preach in our Churches then are we only part of our body of Christ or the body of Christ?
  
  
• Do people actually need to be "friends" first? Does that mean we only work with people we are "comfortable" with? Some of the most exciting and dynamic teams have people who are very different working together. Would we ever get to that stage if it was "all about relationship" because that "relationship" is only ever going to be built up by working together and we won't necessarily choose to work together because we don't have relationship? Is that a vicious circle? Do we end up pooling similar people and not celebrating diversity because of the cost of building friendship across cultural / personality / demographic factors?

• Oops, I thought of a sixth! When it goes wrong, if there are differing views, if there is an issue that causes a divergence in the future, then it is all the more painful because relationships were close. Especially when it feels like people you thought were "friends" turn against you. That is the criticism I hear from people who have left Newfrontiers. Closeness is a double edged sword, expectations are higher. On the one hand lots of things can be sorted out via friendship rather than committees and tribunals. On the other hand if things reach the point of no return in a situation everyone feels let down by each other and that is painful.
  

I don't think any of these are majorly prevalent issues we face, but I do think it is good to discuss the way some of these processes work. I am thoroughly blessed to be part of a movement of Churches which is "all about relationship" but I thought it was worth raising some of the potential issues.

It is all about relationship! POSITIVES

That is almost a motto for newfrontiers.

Who we work with regionally is not just about geography, rather "it is all about relationship"

Who oversees a Church is not determined by a random decision from above, rather "it is all about relationship"

The make up of Church, small groups, team ministry, eldership teams, is "all about relationship".

Last weekend I was talking to my friend Dom and he used the exact expression, "It is all about relationship", and it got me thinking: is it? I mean really, is it? Is it always a good thing?

There are lots of positives. Here are a quick five.

5 positive outcomes of being "all about relationship"

• People are beings, not roles or structures, but beings.
• Working together is not based on systems or hierarchy but on mutual respect and love.
• Permission is not demanded by "the system" but given by the friend.
  
• Decisions from "above" are rarely out of touch because people remain close to the action. If you are genuinely friends with those on the frontline, the ivory tower does not insulate you from reality.
• Loyalty is earned not demanded. Respect is shared not faked. Unity is developed not imposed.

Being "all about relationship" is a major factor why I love newfrontiers. I love the people. I can use the term "we" not as a company salesperson who "represents" an institution but "we" as in being part of a group of friends.

In turn Martin Charlesworth says "we" amongst us, as he represents another group of friends, the UK regional leaders. One stage past a group of friends (National team, I know 4 of them personally) is our regional team. We meet fortnightly for worship and prayer, with twenty or so friends representing 7 churches. Then our eldership team meets weekly, the three of us. So from the "top" of the system to me, on the frontline, there are three groups of friends, and I am part of two of them.

Maybe it really is "all about relationship"?

How close is close?

Phil Whittall, AKA the Simple Pastor, lives about 100 metres from my house.

Recently we had a brilliant weekend at the Newfrontiers younger leaders conference, catching up with him and Emma, and their son Noah. It was great.

It was then we realised just how long it was since we had last seen them properly: something like 5 months. 5 months = approx 150 days. That is about 67cm per day! I should be able to make it further than that!

He is in a different church (whatever that means!), and we are both very busy people in different ways, but even so? Those are excuses not reasons. I live just 100m away and I read his blog more than I see him, and I dare to call him a friend?

As I think about community, society, communications, social networking, it makes me wonder have I lost something? I will know what I have learned by how big Noah is the next time I see him. Hopefully it won't be long, and there won't be a Christmas Tree up either.