PULLING WHEELIES

The other day Grace and I went for a bike ride on the Purbeck hills (its tough in Dorset). When we crossed back into Poole via the chain ferry there were a couple of other cyclists behind us, one of whom was a kid on a mountain bike.

It was a good mountain bike, with lockout suspension. But it was a mountain bike, and I was on my road bike. I’m not as quick as I once was, but I’m not that shabby. Anyway, I pedalled off, and thought Grace was behind me, but sneaked a peak and realized it was the kid on the mountain bike.

So I speeded up. (You must understand that it is not done to be overtaken by a kid on a mountain bike. As a male, I don’t like to be overtaken by anyone.)

I wasn’t going absolutely flat out, but I was going as fast as I could while still looking nonchalant. In not being overtaken it is important not to look like one is trying too hard.

Anyway, the kid tracked me for about a mile, until I turned off and he carried on ahead.

But here’s the thing: Grace – who was obviously some way behind us – told me that the kid was doing a wheelie the whole time he was following me.

A mile long wheelie. At speed. On a mountain bike. That is just taking the p.

I only hope he has been signed up by the GB cycling squad.

I’ll tell you something else that annoyed me – the case of the two policewomen who have been told by Ofsted that they can’t look after one anothers children because they are not registered childminders.

Why does the Government get to tell anyone who can look after their kids?

If a parent wants someone else to look after their child and wants that person to be an Ofsted registered childminder they should have that option. But why does the Government dictate that this has to be the case? Hysteria about paedophilia has led to the State abrogating far too much power to itself over the rights of parents.

Continuing the parent/State theme, this week we are attending open evenings at secondary schools our oldest daughter might be going to next year. It is interesting to watch head teachers giving their pitch. The other night I had to give one head good marks for content but low marks for delivery – he was just trying too hard to be chummy. It seems to me that what parents are looking for in a head is someone who commands instant respect, not chumminess. Anyway, no-one was laughing at his jokes.

Delivering a speech is of course a fiendishly tricky business. Which brings us back to politics as in the UK it is the party conference season.

I like politics and respect those in office, but political speeches so rarely get the pulse racing. To me, it too often ends up sounding like clichés.

Most Sundays I get to stand up and speak uninterrupted for 40 minutes. Party political leaders and head teachers don’t get to do that. I’m working with better material of course – opening up the Bible and lifting up Jesus, rather than trying to sell a school or canvas for votes – but listening to those other speeches has given me a spur to be increasingly diligent in my preaching.

Neither chumminess not cliché will cut it. It takes application to be able to pull a preaching wheelie.

OPEN MY EYES

Went out fishing with Daughter No. 3 yesterday. Had a wonderful time. Always good to be in a boat with a daughter – not many things to distract them when out on the sea. She caught a lot of mackerel, and a beautiful garfish, one of the most striking looking fish we get in our waters. They have incredible turquoise scales (which are now ringing our bath tub), and even their bones glow a bluey-green, apparently caused by a phosphate of iron.



We didn’t realize there was a whale in Poole Bay.

We must have gone right past it. We saw the RNLI lifeguards on their jetski looking for something, but didn’t know it was a struggling whale that had been reported by someone. The poor thing later washed ashore, dead.

The sea is full of surprises – didn’t expect to get a garfish, and didn’t think there was a whale about. Funny how you can miss the obvious – how could we not see a whale that must have been right where we were?

I did manage to avoid the nutter who has taken to swimming across the incredibly dangerous harbour mouth each day, although with the low sun behind him I didn’t spot him until quite late on. It can only be a matter of time before he goes the same way as the whale.

A friend rebuked me today for not adding tags to my blog posts – said it makes it hard to find things I’ve written on subjects that might interest him. I was puzzled as to why he couldn’t just type a word into the search box at the top of the page.

Different ones of us have different ways of spotting the obvious I guess.

Its only in the past couple of days that I’ve realized the mudflats of Poole Harbour are stuffed with clams. Having discovered it, Grace and I stuffed ourselves with them last night – fresh clams, in a wine and cream sauce with linguine. Delicious.

Life is full of surprises. The obvious often stares us in the face and we walk past, oblivious.

Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law (Psalm 119:18)… I pray that that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you (Ephesians 1:17-19).

9/11: LIFE GOES ON

Eight years on from the momentous events of 9/11.

I’m sitting in the café of Lighthouse, Poole’s Arts Centre. (The lack of the definite article ‘the’ before ‘Lighthouse’ is very irritating. It is one of those peculiar arty pretences that insists on it just being ‘Lighthouse’, when this feels very uncomfortable, because really it is the Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts, rather than an individual who we correctly refer to as, say, Matthew, and not the Matthew; unless of course people are irritated with me – which happens – and they then tend to refer to me as that Matthew. But I digress. I’m sitting in [the] Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts.)

I’ve come here to write a sermon (it helps the mind sometimes to work in a different environment) and around me life continues as normal. People drinking coffee; buying tickets for concerts (I’m going to get some for Seth Lakeman in a minute); an arty looking group having an arty meeting. The events of eight years ago are not making much impact here. Life goes on.

My oldest daughter starts at our church youth group this evening. Life goes on. And life goes fast. Where did those 12 years go?

Some things last longer than expected. I had to finally throw away a favourite t-shirt this morning, that I have been wearing for the past ten years (not continually, you’ll understand). I know I’ve had it for ten years because I got it on a trip to South Africa in 1999. It was the first time I had taken a group of young people out there – young people from the church youth group I was leading at the time. One of the lads (who is now a medical doctor and a fine young man, married to another doctor) bought a Quicksilver t-shirt (we were staying by a surfers beach) but then spilt blackcurrant juice all over it. So he bought another. But the juice washed out of the original, and I bought it from him and have been wearing it since. I didn’t expect it to last ten years.

We have some camping gas bottles that we have been using for 12 years. I know we got them in 1997 because we bought all our camping gear the summer before my oldest daughter was born. Those bottles have done several bible weeks, holidays in France, and local camping trips. Every time we use them we say, “Surely they’re not going to last this time – we really should get them refilled.” But, like the widows oil, they never seem to run dry.

Most things don’t last as long as we expect though. At least, it feels that life goes very fast. Eight years since 9/11. A daughter in the youth group. Former members of my youth group becoming responsible members of society.

As the Teacher puts it in Ecclesiastes, A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever.

THREE FANTASTIC WEEKENDS

Grace & I think this has perhaps been our best ever summer. A wonderful holiday in France at the end of July, followed by an August in which I have been able to get lots of work done, while also enjoying lots of time with the family. And the past three weekends have been particularly good...

Two weeks ago was the Bournemouth International Air Festival. I am not a plane-spotter, but it is a great event - loads going on for all the family, a vast, good-natured crowd, and there is nothing quite like the Red Arrows. And all for free!



Last weekend was our Together At... event which felt a big step up from the previous year. 1,500 people gathered together in the New Forest, enjoying God. It was wonderful.



And then this weekend... Yesterday was the Dorset County Show, which we love - everything from giant vegetables to monster trucks to dozens of foxhounds.



Then today was Vision Sunday at Gateway, which seemed to go really well, followed by the rather funky Party in the Park at Ashley Cross.

We just feel very blessed to be living here.

Tomorrow the kids go back to school, normal life resumes, and there is much to be done. Life keeps rolling on, but we have savored these past few weeks.

Soli Deo Gloria!

BOOK REVIEW: VIRGINITY

Virginity, A Positive Approach to Celibacy for the Sake of the Kingdom of Heaven by Raniero Cantalamessa

“Its too late for you!” was my wife’s comment when she saw me reading this book (or booklet really – its only 94 pages long). Indeed, reading a book on virginity written by a Roman Catholic priest might seem an odd choice for a protestant pastor with four children and a frequently expressed enthusiasm for marriage and family life. However, it is good to be broadminded!

One of my first posts on this blog was to reference a book I was reading by Cantalamessa on the Holy Spirit. He is a very good writer. Engaging and clear; succinct yet profound. I’ve had this one on the shelf for ages, and it was a spare August moment that made me pick it up and read it.

If you want to understand why the Church of Rome insists on its clergy being celibate you should read this book. Rome’s position is often ridiculed, but as is generally the case with Catholic moral theology, there is a well-reasoned and carefully nuanced explanation behind it. (After all, they’ve been thinking about this stuff for hundreds of years!) Even if you are not interested in Catholic theology and practice, Cantalamessa does have something to say on a subject we Evangelicals do not always do too well on. Because we see marriage as normal and desirable, we do not always know how to regard those who are single. We also tend to trip over those passages of scripture which seem to encourage a way of life that does not involve marriage.

Cantalamessa focuses on two of these passages – Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 19:10-12 (“There are some who choose not to marry for the sake of the kingdom of heaven”) and Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians (“The unmarried man concerns himself with the Lord’s affairs” 1 Cor 7:31-35). And he makes some very good points, following very much in the tradition of St Augustine. Some of his points are just too Catholic for me to take seriously, but the good points include these:

• To be a virgin is not something to be ashamed of, and the Church should seek to recover the use of the word in its positive sense, rather than in the negative way it is so often portrayed by the world.
• To choose celibacy is not to deny the goodness of marriage but in fact to recognize its goodness – if something is not good there is no cost in choosing not to take hold of it.
• Choosing celibacy is in some way a choosing in this life of what will be the pattern of life in the new creation, for then we will not marry (Luke 20:34-36). As Cantalamessa puts it, “I believe that it is not ontologically (that is, in itself) a more perfect state, but it is an eschatologically more advanced state, in the sense that it is more like the definitive state towards which we are journeying.”
• Christians are called not to an eternal relationship in a couple, but to an eternal relationship with God.

If you can cope with the Catholic-isms, this is a thought provoking book for both the single and married to read. Cantalamessa flags up the dangers facing Catholic clergy who are celibate and who also live singly, rather than in community (and this was written before all the child abuse scandals in the Catholic church broke). While the notion of a class of clergy who as part of their call to ministry must remain celibate is a strange one for me (thank God for Martin Luther!), this does highlight a challenge we all face in our churches – How do we build genuine community, in which both the married and single take a full part? Married people need single people, and single people need the married and families – we are meant to be mixed up together, serve one another, and learn from the different joys and sorrows we experience.

We are re-launching small groups at Gateway this month – I am not naïve enough to think this will offer a full solution, but I do sincerely pray that our Life Groups will help us form genuine community. Missional communities where young and old, male and female, single and married can together pursue their calling in Christ.

WAR

70 years on from the start of the WW2.

Yesterdays various commemorations cast interesting light on the ongoing impact of the war - Germany's contrition; Russia's beligerance; the terrible suffering endured by Poland; the experience of evacuees from the East End moved out to the countryside.

When I was 17 my burning ambition was to join the Army. God then led me on a different course, and although the more I think about it the more I see the strength of the argument in favor of pacifism, there is still a large part of me that regrets never having served in the military.

A favorite Newfrontiers quote is that, "The Christian life is not like a battle. It is a battle." Guy Miller, who leads the Newfrontiers team that serves churches in the Wessex region and beyond, quoted this at our Together At event over the weekend. He also talked about his brother-in-law - a real life action hero who served in the Special Forces and died recently (you can read his obituary here).

The beginning of September always feels like the start of a battle for me. It is when church life gets fired up again after the easier pace of August. I'm preparing to preach on Sunday from Ephesians 3:8-12, setting out our plan of campaign for the next few months. Paul writes that we are to have boldness and confidence because of what Jesus has done in us. Boldness and confidence - characteristics of a good soldier.

Bring it on!