That woman is a super hero

"Set up signposts to mark your trip home.
Get a good map.
Study the road conditions.
The road out is the road back.
Come back, dear virgin Israel,
come back to your hometowns.
How long will you flit here and there, indecisive?
How long before you make up your fickle mind?
God will create a new thing in this land:
A transformed woman will embrace the transforming God!"
Jeremiah 31:21&22 The Message


I thought I needed to take note of the path I am traveling as I will be coming back this way one day, but I am now wondering if this is my return journey and that is why things are feeling so familiar.
I have a memory like a sieve and I seem to be like this with movies especially. When watching Hancock with she who is 12, I said I reckoned there was something about the wife which made me suspect she was a super hero, and I amazed said 12 year old who said she hadn't seen that coming first time she watched it - I felt chuffed coz she is really into films. So I told Ben that night and he told me we had all watched it together a few months before. It was really familiar but I hadn't remembered it. Rather annoyingly I did the same thing with The Usual Suspects and declared a guess at who-it-is, only to figure out in the final scene that I've seen it before, having now ruined it for those I was watching with.
Of these paths I am now, some of them feel familiar. This time I am taking note of the landmarks.

The Contemporary English Bible presents the last line like this...
"I will make sure that someday

things will be different,

as different as a woman

protecting a man"

I like that kind of new thing - a lot. The question I am wrestling with at the moment, is can the new thing be a lay person leading a church?
I am finding increasing numbers of like minded souls, but they all appear to be Ordained, or Candidating, which is more than little worrying as I have been avoiding that particular lifestyle for 25 years now. Surely a lay woman can lead a church? What is Ordination anyway? What are Sacraments? I really really struggle to see why some can and some cannot.... but as I said when I was 21 in my final Local preacher interview when the wicked Leo Osborn asked if I thought this was an initial step before ordination, I replied, 'no, I don't have magic fingers to wave over the bread'. I still don't, but I do long to share the bread.

Then there is the proper good news in these verses, the bit I need to really focus on....

It is God who does the creating of new things, not me. What a relief for everyone.

this is not a cul-de-sac

I went to work today and did my duty, and then I bumped into a young man from the church I grew up in, and I knew he is now a big proper grown up, and was an VentureFX person, so for some reason the first thing I said was 'how do you know when what you are doing is church?'
Not a usual way to start a conversation with someone your little brother was in Youth Group with!
But Ric Stott is a star, and took my musings seriously, and of the many insightful things he said, the one which is still with me this evening, is that exploring the question of what church is, or is not, is not a cul-de-sac.
So I will carry on asking this question, including the place of worship.
Which others at Methodist Conference are also asking - including Martyn Atkins in his General Sec report, and indeed is an issue the Missing Generation Report is also highlighting. And then there is all the stuff on pastoral theology.
All of this is crucial for me as I muse on the new church I long to be a part of

the teaching from teenage years is being retaught

A week on retreat within my life, has led to some interesting developments. None of which sound ground breaking, all of which have changed my life and all of which I was taught as a young person and am being re taught now.
Just because I have resigned from jobs at church with the expectation of starting something new, I do not have to start anything immediately, or indeed ever!
I do suspect that I need some time out of doing, to ground my being, so that whatever comes next I am ready for. I am called by god to be me, not to do. It might be that from being me, certain things happen- indeed that is inevitable and good.
So my message to myself, and anyone else is, get grounded in god, be strong in your being and let god shape the mission.
During retreat i prayed through a passage in Jeremiah, and might share the reflections here in due course.
Already an outcome has been that I have been braver in leading prayers with groups. With a preachers away day I led a guided reflection based on woman at the well and set in 24 hour supermarket, the following day led paper chain prayers with non Christians, both of which I would have avoided a week ago. Would probably have led more structured prayers , but feel much freer and increased confidence in gods spirit to do what she needs in each person present.

i fear the church_ after all this time

On Sunday I challenged the congregation to make a commitment that every step they take this week to be the footsteps of an authentic follower of Jesus. My commitment was to be the real me in all my persona... Twitter, Facebook, work, home etc.
And what have I found?
I've found that I fear bring the real me on Twitter as so many people there are part of 'the church'.
And yet, I was not able to avoid the commitment I had made on Sunday as there were so many tweets from the Christian new media conference that were exploring issues of authenticity, persona etc that I was faced with my explorations regularly.
So it was 'the church' which kept me on track, and also 'the church whose judgement I fear.
What have I learnt this week? Engaging with social media honestly forces up issues which have been laying dormant for years.
And what does this teach me about the new type of 'church' I want to be a part of? That it has to take people as they really are, and that I have to be in it as I really am.

Again, nothing I am saying here which is new. But saying it here is new.

church leaders in cunning disguise

Today was in a meeting to discuss youth worker training, in the midst of the conversations there were some gems from the marvellous Brec Seaton. It has got me wondering if my exploration of a new kind of church community in Lancaster combined with my youth work experience and training have a connection... maybe I am not put of my depth with the new stuff as I have been leading 'church' for years with young people.
So if there are so- called youth workers in our churches they might be church leaders in cunning disguse. But the challenge to my work in that , and the institution of church , is what are we doing to train, support and develop these church leaders? Little I would suggest because we thought they were 'just' youth workers and we've been offering training and support for that.

so what is worship?

There was unanimous agreement from the family that what we all needed was a new kind of church where we sit and eat and chat about God and things.
I asked the wise 15 year old christian, 12 year old agnostic and 41 year old atheist if we did that, would it be worship. They agreed it would if we were talking about God; and of course the super-wise 15 year old said that it would make a difference if we had conversations with a sense of Hope. She truly is very wise.
So now I am musing, is it worship? or is it fellowship? and is there a difference? and is that difference a sense of Hope of encounter with God?

amazing people tapped in thd church

Totally inspired by Lyn and her family today. Energy to raise 3 disabled / challenged children, fight homophobia and still run a youth club, setting up youth drop in. Youth club is more than that, it is church.
And still she feels it necessary to seek formal accreditation to really create church. So even when the Where and Who are sorted, and the Why is clear it is really tough for lay people to lead meaningful new forms of church.
How can we release people to go and make church alive?
Also today I met 2 incredibly competent trainers of senior leaders who, of course, their local church has snapped up to take on roles. But they too are frustrated and want to build church which is meaningful for their generation, not even never-churched people, but church folk who are hanging on by their finger tips.
I know I am not alone. I am beginning to see that maybe with my work I am uniquely placed to connect all these people. Maybe God has brought a community to me and we can muddle through together.
Looks like time to call on the trusty Moxon and Street.

who stole all the boundaries?

This little blog is a space for me to muse as I take a different track in life.. after years of not being able to invite my friends to church (not because it is bad, but simply because it is culturally irrelevant) I am resigning from church voluntary roles to actually do something new.
However, I have no idea what or with whom. And today, to top it all I am not even sure there is a god. My experience and tradition say there is. My reason says there isn't.
Ben asked me yesterday "why did god not just create us without drive to kill". Good question.
You see the trouble I am having is that in inherited church there are boundaries, questions we dare not ask, and there are clergy with 'answers'... where I want to be there are no boundaries and the clergy, much as many of them would love to be where I am, are trapped in church.
So, today I am scared. Today I am vulnerable. So today I am real.
A thought did cross my mind. If I am free from inherited church roles from September, then maybe I am free from attending too? What if I go where everyone else is on a Sunday and join them there... eating brunch , strolling and chatting and cutting the grass? How can that become community?
Too many questions.

stumbling blocks bringing disgrace

"You can train as a local preacher" they said."are you sure she asked?" Yes they replied. Then in her first interview they said 'don't talk about your family, it might upset some people".
This homophobia brings the greatest of disgrace on our ministry.
This is why I want to provide a real, safe-enough place to build worshipping community.
The theory is great, getting started is terrifying.
I think our theology starts within the body, the experience of life as a woman, an able bodied person, an unfit person. Just as that local preachers story telling has to start , in part, with bring lesbian. And yet St Paul says its about the spiritual- and he is right. But maybe we have to start with the corporeal. If we ignore it, are we not creating stumbling blocks.

So, what will this new community look like? What will we do? Who will we be? I have no idea, but I know we must not discredit our ministry by placing stumbling blocks in the way of people of The Way

the unwise trade off

This is my first blog entry and it comes on a day when I am very scared as I am stepping out into being brave.
Despite appearances I rarely feel brave.
Today I resigned from 2 jobs in church - not a big deal it might appear, except one was as a leader of the under 18s work; and me a JNC youth & comm worker too, the shame is real.
But I also agreed to join the new church leadership/council team. Not a sensible trade off you might think, and you are possibly correct.
The thinking behind the ridiculous decision is this... I have God stirring me up and agitating me to step out and see if I can form some kind of new community of doubters where my real self and my real friends can do God stuff.
This blog might be a view into my journey into this new community. It might also be how I hold myself accountable and stop myself bottling out. It might also be a space where if I tell people this blog exists they could help me with words of wisdom ; and if that happens it would mean that either I have been brave and told people or alternatively that there is a button I have not noticed and google will tell all my contacts anyway.
Being brave also means that on this space I have to be real about my home life, a life with 2 teenish age daughters and a partner who claims not to know God - although through whom the light of God shines out and to whom I am not married. Big grown up, inherited church seems to be uneasy about this, but as this blog is a step into a new brave world here is no place for secrets.
Here is also not a place where I speak for anyone but myself and certainly not for my current employer.
Ok, enough bravery for day one.
Not hard to ask the 'where is God in all of this?' question today as God is always in the scared who are being brave. Thank God for that.