Lama's log

With some excitement we're trying to gear up for hosting rough sleepers on very cold nights. I'm quite excited about it. Something happened around it though that has caused me to wonder somewhat.

There has been that absolute mistrust of people that have anything to do with the council. Initially then, suggestions that we should not take this on because it was a council initiative and that they must be trying to dump this or have bad motives. Later talk about making the council pay for and staff anything and everything we can think of with lines like 'make them pay', 'they should do it', again all the while assuming that their motivation must be bad. This has taken me aback a little.

It made me think of David Cameron's first speech as Tory party leader in Prime Ministers question time. He won the day and did it by agreeing with Tony Blair. Blair was floored by the approach. He expected a fight, instead what he got was someone who didn't disagree with him for the sake of it.

There's something in that for me. Jody spoke to me of playing snap in our communities. Looking at what people are doing and being and then saying 'snap', that's what Jesus did/said. I see no reason not to do this with authorities too. The trick will of course be staying on our agenda rather than theirs, but where the agendas overlap then let's cheer and go forward.

There's something too about remembering that 'the council' is made up of people that we wish to encounter. This is boldly displayed in the fact that we have a member of our community who works for the council. He's a social worker and a lover of Jesus (not in that order). He sits at the front line and does the best he can for those he sees. He often feels vilified for his role as a social worker and a 'service provider'. I wonder if instead of saying 'the council/government are not doing enough', we should say, 'oh I have a spare room' and if we can't then perhaps just stay humbly quiet.

Been tagged by Glen Marshal

The Rules:

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1) I once had a ride on a giant tortoise whilst eating my packed lunch.
2) I faint if I give blood (they've told me not to go back).
3) If I had my time over I would drop out much much more.
4) I like people a lot (this isn't always immediately obvious).
5) The family pet taught me how to walk ( does that make me sound feral?)
6) My favourite all time film is On Golden Pond



My six tagees ... Stuart, Mark,Pete Rolins, sadly everyone else seems to have already been tagged.

I spent 3 days there and would have blogged direct from there except I didn't take my charger so had to be content with playing with my new phone. One day I'll remember things....

Sometimes, as I'm sat in those series of meetings, it seems to me that council is really important but that those there are the only ones who know it and boy do they know it.

The agenda was lousy but this for me then served to point out the worth of the agenda committee (a group which previously just baffled me). We are willing to do business but it needs putting before us in the first place.

The issue of civil partnerships came up. I was incensed by a document which declared that any minister who enters into such a partnership will be asked to resign as an accredited minister. It is outrageous on any level that I can understand but there it was. I was very grateful for a question which came before mine and which opened the issue for some discussion well and with sensitivity. My feel after the meeting was that there was far more support in the room than I suspected.

It still astounds me that the ministry exec decided to exclude someone one the basis of their sexuality without any wider or formal conversation with it's members. I am astounded of how we stroll breezily into the category of being homophobic without any expressed difficulty or voiced worry.

The area that really stirred up energy and feeling was that of roles and tasks. A real highlight for me was the point at which a woman stood up and made a detrimental reference to the colour of paper the report was written on. I'm still not sure what I can make of all that. The roles and tasks group set out to define roles and tasks. They were asked to do this by the council body and then they were mightily stood on for doing so. It was a low point.

Still, next March may be better.

One of the things that I'm not very good at is seeing something that has not already been seen before. What I mean is, I am very good at replica, I'm also very good at critique and repair of existing models, I am lousy though at imagining the totally new.

Unfortunately for me I am now starting to be in the position that I need to start doing just that. I understand increasingly a sort of Gospel imperative. I've talked about it before, it involves radical discipleship and seeking and befriending the least. My problem has been and , well is, how do you lead a whole church of people down that road? If we discount for a moment a few books of the Bible (I know, it's a big if) there is no precedent that I can seem to find. Where is the handy copy of 'The Gospel Driven Church', '40 days of Cross Carrying'? The examples I come across seem to be about communities outside the mainstream that are striving for it. What about examples of mainstream Baptist places walking down this rout?

I seem to be walking in interesting times around Wakey. There are murmurings of Gospel living and passion and heartfelt following and frankly it’s scaring me witless whilst making me quite beside myself with excitement. I just wish I had a safety net of precedent. So an appeal; if you are of, or know of other quite normal church communities who have decided to walk a most definite Gospel rout could you point me in their direction? I need to ask some questions, search for some answers and try to reassure myself that I'm not going bonkers.

I have had a real mixed month. October has come and gone in a blur of challenge and sadness. Right at the end of it though I attended my first BU Council exec meeting for women's justice.

I need to confess as I think I have done previously that I have been a reluctant advocate for the cause. This is for many reasons. In the end though, women, especially women in the church, get stood on and it's wrong, so off I went.

In as much as the group were trying to put women's voices and concerns on the agenda across the spectrum of the BU it was good. On a personal level and at the risk of already compounding a wobbly debut, it was markedly evident that I am not even on the same planet as the others in the room, let alone on the same agenda.

I don't understand a main aim of a justice committee as one which is to preserve the interests of the BU and the BU itself. That seems to me to be crazy. So, if speaking up for women's rights, gay rights, or any other form of rights clashes with the timescale of thought for the union then that's a shame but that's all it is. There was a lot of talk at the meeting of waiting for kairos moments, of comparison to the slave trade apology. But before we go down that root let's be honest, when the apology for the slave trade came up it wasn't because the union thought it a kairos time and was committed to this agenda, it was because we had missed the boat big style and many of the black churches were far from happy about it. We are also left where many of the ministers and members in our churches have no commitment to the apology and real work needs to be done for the apology to be lived and felt.

It was patiently pointed out to me that I was speaking to a man who wanted unity and inclusion and that that being his desire you had to wait until you had reached a majority view before you went forward and spoke your agenda, otherwise you simply wouldn't have a union. Well, I don't buy it. I understand, grace, openness and a desire for unity, but I don't understand it as an objective over and above that of seeking Jesus and living Gospel. I understand putting in work, patience and dialogue, I don't understand perpetuating oppression in order to keep the Temple, sorry, the Union functioning.

I was not on any other wavelength other than my own. It was nice to get back to Wakefield and discuss the possibility of refusing a wage in order to re-look at the theology and commitment to community and stipend with Andy. It was nice to get back and feel the commitment of a people together under a shadow of death. I could see Jesus in that. I'm not too sure how I go about supporting a union though who wants to self perpetuate more that it wants the agenda of the least to be voiced.