#TOAM11 FRIEND TO FRIENDS

As my friend Liam Thatcher wittily expressed it, we are now hoam from toam.

I have my friend Mpi Ndebele from Bulawayo with me, and took him to the pub to meet my heathen friends. The juxtaposition was stark - from being in the crowd of thousands at Brighton, of whom I personally know (to some degree) hundreds of people, and all of us joined in celebrating Jesus, to being back at the end of the bar in the Bermuda Triangle with my Christ-denying buddies, trying to explain something of what I have experienced this week.

Money talks, so I told thoam that we had given away £925,147 at toam. That is pretty fuse blowing to the average man standing at the bar.

What a privilege to have friends. But - oh - for the day when my heathen buddies are Christ-denying no more.

"What a friend I've found, closer than a brother..." Thank you Jesus, for your friendship.

#TOAM11 THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

In August 1986 my family moved from Bournemouth to Brighton (I was 16) and although I only lived in Brighton a relatively short time, the town (I still can't quite choke out the word "city" to describe it) has been a constant in my life. I got married here, ran my first triathlon here, backslid here, got a renewed vision for the church here - and have attended innumerable conferences here! Now, in a strange closing of the circle of the years my parents have moved back to Bournemouth, just 10 minutes from where I am in Poole and with Together on a Mission ending too, my reasons for returning to Brighton on a regular basis begin to shrivel.

Yesterday at the conference was an emotional day, with - to be honest - a lot of nostalgia in play. And - to be honest - I won't be sorry to have that behind us. Newfrontiers has always been a future focussed movement, and we are at our best when we are moving on. Forward momentum was much in evidence at our prayer night, last night. This conference marks the end of an era, but also the beginning of our latest reinvention, and that is good.

So, just two more sessions to get through. First off, I am back into the seminar stream I have been helping out with, and this morning we are reviewing Wayne Grudem's book Politics According to the Bible. I'm afraid it's not going to be pretty... (As an aside - if you are looking for downloads worth listening to, there is a wealth of good content from the seminars here. And not just the ones I have spoken at...!) And then it is the final, final session, with David Holden delivering the final message.

And then it is home - and another day.

#TOAM11 STATUS UPDATE

Another big day at the Brighton Conference. Terry Virgo gave his last message as "father of the movement" this afternoon, as he spoke about the history and future of Newfrontiers and recognized the many new "fathers" who will be leading us on from this point, while he takes more of a "grandfather" role.

There is  much that could be said about this, but now is not the time. Simply let me say: Terry Virgo - what a man!

Also, there is not the time as I am blogging on the run, with a meeting to get to. Tonight is prayer and party time as we celebrate, give away lots of money, pray for the nations, and generally whoop it up.

Of the main sessions, PJ Smyth's word from last night will, I think, rank as one of the all time top drawer contributions from the years this conference has run. Superb theological reflection, pastoral application and apostolic faith mingled together in a sermon that left the thousands of us listening in amazed awe at the grace of God.

Must fly...

#TOAM11

A very quick update on the very last Together on a Mission conference in Brighton.

It has to be quick as I am between meetings – and that is pretty much how the conference is. The sessions are long, the breaks short, and every break is booked with seeing someone. The sessions are obviously important, but for my money it is very often the between meeting meetings that are more important. The one thing I will miss more than anything else about this conference is the opportunity to catch up with all my friends.

Friends and heroes.

The likes of Tom Eaton, church planting in Japan, and PJ Smyth, leading the incredible Godfirst in Johannesburg. Friends from the US, from the Pacific region, from Africa, and from all corners of the UK. There is a multitude of precious people here, who I love and treasure, and this is the short time each year that I get to see many of them. And that I will miss. Tonight is our annual curry night when as many of us as we can round up go out after the meeting for a catch up over something hot – an absolute highlight.

Today I also had the added bonus of being able to grab lunch with Mike Ovey, principal of Oak Hill theological college. Chatting theology with him was fascinating – especially as it followed a seminar I had been in debating the on going debate between John Piper and NT Wright. Mike had some very illuminating things to say about that particular discussion!

This evening PJ Smyth is preaching and is sure to get a rapturous reception. PJ missed last years conference as he discovered a cancerous lump in his neck just before he was about to fly out. Twelve months on and cancer free his message tonight will be – I am sure – inspirational!

The main sessions from the conference are being downloaded as we go, so you can listen to what PJ, and Co. have to say by clicking here. 

WHOA! FACEBOOK FRIENDS!

When my oldest daughter started at high school there was an induction meeting for parents at which one of the senior management team urged us to keep our children away from Facebook. This was due to his pastoral observation that Facebook was a huge distraction that often keeps pupils from focussing on what they need to focus on; and that Facebook often causes emotional harm, as it can become a minefield of bitchiness and bullying (big problems, for adolescent girls particularly).

Daughter No. 1 is now 13, but because we agree with that teachers opinions we are still holding the line and haven’t yet allowed her to have a fb account.

It has been interesting to see the comments provoked by my mild post last week about Facebook – comments on this blog (interestingly, far more than I normally manage to generate), via Twitter, email and so on. I haven’t looked at my fb page for a few days, but I should imagine there are some comments on that too!

OK, so my headline was a bit inflammatory (I find it hard to resist a good headline!) and I would perhaps have been wiser to title my brief thoughts as, “Facebook, Friend and Foe.” But, the title aside, reading back through what I wrote it doesn’t really seem that polemical. It simply reflects an irrefutable pastoral observation, similar to the one my daughter’s deputy-principal made.

It’s not even as if I claimed that peoples status updates were wrong – the very nature of status updates (or Twitter) is that one tends to post either boasting moments or wallowing moments – I do this myself, and don’t feel any need to proclaim a mea culpa about it. The point I was making was simply this: that to immerse yourself in the boasting or wallowing updates of others can have a negative impact upon your own emotional wellbeing. And as I say, this is pastorally observable, and irrefutable.

I am a fairly disciplined person, but even so there are times when I find it hard to focus on the task at hand because social media, email, and the internet generally are so distracting. Back in the day when I was at school I would get distracted by plenty of things, and spent many hours “organizing my files” rather than actually doing homework or revising for exams, but those distractions are as nothing compared with what we have to wrestle today.

It was not wrong to organize my files – but it was a mistake to not actually do any work, as my ‘A’ Level results testify! Facebook is not wrong – but (to return to my original delicious headline) it most surely can be turned to the devil’s work. Facebook can be a very fickle friend – so those who are likely to be dragged down by it would do well to stay away from it.

That is all I was saying – and you can stick that in your status update!

FACEBOOK: THE GREAT SATAN

Do you use Facebook?

As you are reading a blog I guess you do.

I do, but only in a very limited way. My blogs and twitter account are linked to it, so anything I post there appears on Facebook too, but that’s about all I do with it. I don’t check it very often, and if you have tried to message me via fb, sorry, but I probably haven’t read it. I just don’t like it very much. I recognize its usefulness – it can be great for sharing church news for example – but I’m also alert to its dangers.

There have been some well publicised accounts of church leaders getting uppity about Facebook – the most well publicised being the case of the pastor who ordered church members to shutdown their fb accounts because it was a ‘portal to infidelity’, only to be exposed as having had an affair himself.

While (unlike that pastor) I am not having an affair, the way in which fb can lead people to forming unhealthy online relationships that then become anything but virtual does concern me. (Or, perhaps more frequently, the danger is in rekindling the flame of relationships from the past.) But more prosaically, I am concerned about how fb often messes with peoples emotions.

Mrs Hosier & I were discussing this over lunch with some friends – the trouble with Facebook is that it skews reality. This is what I mean…

If you follow the status updates of your Facebook ‘friends’ you will tend to get a stream either of peoples ‘boasting moments’ in which they say how great their life is; or you will get someone’s wallowing moments, in which they bleat on about how awful everything is. And neither of these do us much good.

Facebook is like friendship porn. You sit alone in your bedroom with your computer, imaging you are entering into something real, but in reality it is a fiction.

If you believe all the boasting moments you are left feeling deflated, isolated, lonely and sad – “Why wasn’t I invited to that? How come I don’t get to do that? Why are they having so much fun and I just have this useless life?” By measuring our normal experiences against everyone else’s best experiences, we will always end up feeling second rate. But the reality is that no-one’s life is that perfect! If you could compare your life with the averageness of everyone else’s life you wouldn’t feel so bad about yourself! And you wouldn’t be so easily led into the deadly sin of envy.

On the other hand, if you keep reading the status updates of people who constantly complain about how tired/ill/depressed/overworked/overstressed they are, then you are going to end up being dragged down with them. But if you spent more time with real people, you would realize that things are not as bad as all that, and you would be less prone to the deadly sin of sloth.

Because the thing is, when I am with real people – whether it be at church on a Sunday morning, or in the pub on a Friday evening – what I find is that some people have had fantastic weeks, with exciting things to talk about, while others have had difficulty, but taken as a whole, most of us are pretty much muddling along ok – and, importantly! – we all muddle along much better when we are looking someone in the eye, patting each other on the shoulder, and generally being present with one another rather than virtual.

So here’s my advice: Try going a week without checking your Facebook page. It won’t kill you you know. It might actually make life better!