A quick catch up:
The conference, which was the last thing I actually blogged about, was a great time of encouragement in the midst of a fairly tricky time. I took a lot of notes and was thinking that I might put some of them on here but incase I don't my highlights would have to be Paul Scanlon who exhorted us to be braver; the Bishop of Kensington who spoke brilliantly on developing leaders - "Jesus delegated responsibility and authority, not just tasks."; and the church planting stream which I attended on each of the afternoons. In this stream it was great to hear about how so many failing and close-to-closing churches in London and further afield are being injected with new life and not only staying open but growing in incredible ways as they share the gospel and impact their communities. Probably the phrase that sticks most with me out of this stream was "we plant pregnant churches." In other words, churches are planted to become planting churches themselves - something which shows in the statistics: HTB has planted 30 churches in 25 years, and 5 in the last 6 months.
Coming back from these sort of things always leaves me with a "what now?" sort of question: i.e. "how do I take what I've learnt on from here?" In all honesty, I've not done too well so far as I had quite a down week last week - but even in the midst of it I managed to move forward with a few things; but it's going to be a slow and painful process.
So what are the things I'm going to try and do? Well, I'm trying to find some ways of getting involved in some sort of service in the community; I'm endeavouring to read more and am currently working through Church Unplugged which is "the story of one of the first "fresh expressions of church" in England", and God on Mute, subtitled "Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer"; and, with the decision made that I'm not going to able to play again this season due to my neck injury, I'm trying to find a new sport to get involved in (squash is currently top of the list).
So that's about it in terms of the catch up: I really mustn't leave it so long next time...
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