Monthly Archives: November 2016

Remember ‘Making Friends’

Posted on by
3

Should churches still run small groups?

Obviously the answer is ‘yes’, because everyone does – and everyone can’t be wrong… Right?…

Or maybe its time to give ‘small groups’ away?

Seriously…

Maybe its time to rethink what we are trying to achieve and try some different mechanisms. I want to suggest one. Its called ‘making friends’.

For most churches the purpose of small groups is connection and discipleship. People form stronger connections in these smaller groups than they do on Sunday and in engagement with one another, the Bible and prayer there is some element of spiritual formation taking place. Sometimes they do those things well and other times they limp along.

And for the most part I think that is true. For some their small group is their lifeline, while others do not attend a group of any kind and live with that nagging sense of ‘ought’ gnawing at them – even though they don’t want to.

I am wondering if small groups operate on the basis of people being somewhat relationally incompetent. Maybe that’s overstating it, but I do wonder if we develop groups structures because people are not good at simply making friends.

Remember ‘making friends’?

And I realise we want to go beyond just ‘making friends’ to having ‘soul/spiritual friends’, but I wonder if its time to put the onus back on individuals to make the significant connections. How often have I heard people moan about their small group not being ‘deep enough’, ‘biblical enough’, ‘friendly enough’, whatever enough! And the small group simply becomes another aspect of our religious consumption.

What if we said ‘we don’t do small groups here – we do spiritual friendship (and yes we would need to unpack that) – so the onus is on you to make friends – to invite people around for a meal, open your life up (as appropriate) and form a friendship that doesn’t rely on a leader, a curriculum or an overseeing body. And its on you to sustain and nurture that relationship because that’s just what people do…

I wonder what would happen if said ‘hey you’re all adults – just do what adults do! Get on the phone to someone you’d like to know better and invite them over. Maybe invite a couple of people…’ Then see how it goes and if you connect well, then do it again.

I am 100% convinced that in an age of individualism, a strong commitment to community is essential if we are to really ‘be’ the church, but I wonder how much of that initiative needs to come from a structured approach and how much needs to be pushed back to the people who genuinely want spiritual friendships.

Those who don’t will never attend a small group anyway and often for those who do, a small group doesn’t come close to the depth of conversation needed to really be called spiritual formation or discipleship.

So I’m wondering – what would it look like if we said ‘no small groups for 12 months, but just connect with people as you feel the need.’ It may be your need or their need.

The idealist in me sees this as a way of reforming imagination around this issue. The pragmatist in me says people will find it too hard and if they aren’t ‘forced’ into being part of a group they will lack any sense of greater connection.

The ‘pastor’ in me says what can it hurt to begin encouraging people back into intentional, meaty relationships that go beyond the trivial and inane and genuinely nurture faith for both parties

Psycho Season

Posted on by
Reply

con

For farmers it’s harvest season and for retic blokes it’s late spring or early summer where life ramps up and you just run hard. It’s partly about ‘making hay’ and partly about trying to help the people you’ve come to know over a long period time.

Here’s what my Wednesday looked like:

6.00 hazy prayer and I think I read a Psalm

6.30 on the road to the first job

7.00 bang on the door and a sleepy owner answers looking like he may have forgotten our appointment. I begin to swap his retic controller out and at 7.05 the first phone call comes in. ‘Am I coming today?…’ Its from someone who called last week but never did get back to me, so unlikely… I tell him to text the address and if the day goes well maybe I will squeeze it in. I change a couple of nozzles and keep moving.

7.40 arrive Mindarie to fix a seized solenoid. The owner is running late but when he arrives it seems the solenoid has unseized… nice… for me… he looks puzzled… I do a couple of small repairs and hit the road. An hour job becomes 10 minutes. I’m glad because my hands have been sore and the less work I have to do today the better.

7.55 also in Mindarie, apparently a solenoid that has stuck open this time, but when I get there it is working fine. I call the owner – a regular – who says he didn’t really check it out that closely so maybe I’m right. Another few nozzles changed and I’m on the road by 8.20 and driving past the school to pick up some pipe I had left at home and that Sam was going to bring down… except he forgot… bugger…

8.30 Ridgewood – a ‘fuse’ message – a typical issue for Irritrol controllers, but in keeping with the day it won’t misbehave with me present. I advise the owner we can either do nothing and I will just charge a call out or we can change the controller over because it will recur… so he does. I mount a new controller while discussing with him his marriage, history of mental illness, bad experience with church and Christians and then discover the controller is DOA. So I start again… that’s annoying. (The controller not the conversation)

9.15 Heading south to Kinross to do some work for a real estate agent. I know what the problem is so should be an easy fix. Another controller swap over, a few sprinklers and I’m on my way to Currambine to hunt for solenoids.

kerb

10.10 Currambine now… Five jobs knocked over and it’s only 10am – it’s a good feeling to be running ahead as it’s heating up. I arrive to finish a job I started the week before. It’s for a new real estate agency who have signed me up. It’s a pain in the butt job but it’s a foot in the door with a new crew. There are logical places to locate solenoids and then there are real dumbarse places – like right next to the kerb where they can get driven over. After 20 minutes of tracing and wondering I finally realise what has happened. My solenoid detector does its thing and I find them and fix them. There are a few little glitches that get wearying in the pre-seabreeze heat but I’m done by 11.30 and ready to have some lunch.

11.30 Maccas in Currambine – Classic Angus meal (small) while I catch my breath, send some invoices, clear emails and read the paper. The coke goes down well…

12.00 Padbury – another controller swap out that takes all of 15 minutes in the shade of a patio. A nice bloke and an easy job. I keep waiting for the day to turn to excrement… inevitably the next job will be a broken wire that I have to dig up the entire yard to find, or a solenoid deep in tree roots… That’s usually how it rolls.

12.45 Carine – I remember the morning phone call, so figure I can squeeze this bloke in. Its a bit out of my normal area, but an older man is having trouble with his controller so I figure it could be another easy job. I arrive and he begins to point out where every solenoid and sprinkler is in his entire system… I just want to know what’s wrong! Anyway I listen patiently – and then I eventually tell him I don’t need to know this stuff and we look at his controller. It’s fine – he just didn’t know how to set it. I set it then try to escape.

fuel

1.15 I’m running out of control boxes so I drop in at Total Eden in Joondalup to see the guys and pick up some supplies. I’d like to hang around and chat, but I have a couple more jobs to squeeze in. The manager gives me an early Christmas present – a Milwaukee impact driver – not something I have a lot of use for but I’m sure Gumtree will help out!

1.45 Kinross – a call came in while I was on the road – a riser stuck in a fitting – please help. I can spare 5 minutes for a regular. And a backyard retic quote please?… established yard with lots of paving to lift… this isn’t going to be a pretty quote. And yet I win the job anyway…

2.00 Iluka – an elderly man is concerned about this lawn not looking good. I laid it 5 years ago and he wants me to drop in and check it out. I want to keep moving both but I promised him I would check it out, so I do. Black beetle – just like I told him on the phone. I don’t stop to talk to him because I will be there for half an hour easily. Its funny how as some people get older their world gets smaller and the tiniest things become major issues for discussion.

2.30 Mindarie again – a controller swap out – yet again. It’s an easy day and this one is a quick job.

3.00 Off to Ocean Drive Quinns Rocks – to see a lady with another dodgy controller. As I drive along the beach front I recognise the car in front. Its Chucky my larrikin, carpenter mate from just around the corner. He pulls over and pull up alongside. We chat for a while until I need to get off the road. A 15 minute interlude ends with me off to do more work and him going for a swim.

I’m glad I restocked on controllers because another one gets swapped out. While I’m there Susan calls and tells me her retic I fixed last week isn’t fixed after all… (and I’m an idiot) ok.. I will be back. I’d been back once and she was wrong about the issue. I think she is wrong again, but her tone tells me she isn’t convinced. Sometimes people are right – I do get stuff wrong – and sometimes it’s another issue entirely. But those who default to ‘blame the retic bloke’ in the first instance go to the bottom of the queue.

3.30 heading home and one job left in Eglinton. That’ll be my 13th job for the day. ‘My sprinklers won’t pop up’. so I get there and discover one broken sprinkler affecting the rest. I fix it and I’m now really ready to head home, but I notice the other sprinklers are all dodgy… What to do… I want to bale, but I let the owner know as I can’t look away, so I’m there a bit longer changing them out. By this point I am over it…

4.00 Now I’m driving home… and trying to clear voicemail that has accumulated as I drive. it’s been a good day and a pretty easy one all things considered. The ugly job didn’t turn up and I managed to get everything done.

4.15 home for a couple of frosty fruits, a coffee, and an hour of invoicing, returning calls and writing quotes.

On days like these I remember why I love autumn, when work start at 8.00am and the cool breeze makes being outside a pleasure.

The phone rarely rings and it’s just a few jobs for the day before trundling home about 2 to go for a surf or walk the dog. I get to stop and linger with people, have that cup of tea, look them in the eye.

But for now it’s psycho season and I will run hard… and sleep well.

 

When The Cupboard is Bare

Posted on by
9

empty-cupboardI haven’t preached at church for nearly 4 weeks now and I haven’t blogged on here for over 3 weeks.

Its lucky I haven’t had to preach because the cupboard feels pretty bare. I am lacking inspiration and spark – maybe if I was more spiritual I would say the Spirit’s voice is quiet, but the more honest reality is that I have been ‘blue arsed fly’ busy – and my thoughts have been consumed with my business and its demands.

As a seasonal worker whose ‘season’ started late after a long cold winter, I have now been deluged with phone calls and service requests. People have turned their sprinklers back on and discovered they don’t work… and the rush is on to get them fixed before the real heat begins.

After 10 years in business I have enough regular clients to never run short of work so my phone rings constantly and no matter what I am doing, I am almost always interrupted. Texts come in from 6.00am to midnight and sometimes in the middle of the night…

Its not a pace of life I enjoy, but I surrender to it for the three months each year that it requires. It means the rest of life suffers during that time as I work 10 hour days from Tuesday to Thursday and try to get thru as much work as possible.

Its difficult to be a good dad and husband when you are preoccupied and weary. Its hard to get motivated to see people, or go out. I eat dinner, watch some braindead TV and then chug off to bed around 9pm and generally I’m asleep in minutes. I was going to go to swimming training with the kids on Friday mornings but I just can’t bring myself to physical exertion on a day when I don’t have to go hard.

That’s one way in which busyness takes its toll, but the other way I see it impacting is on my creativity.  In this time creativity shrivels up and lives in a dark corner of my world and the tasks which it fuels (preaching, blogging, future dreaming) get dropped or done sub-standard because there is little fuel in the tank.

I sometimes open this blog, click on ‘new post’ with a vague idea percolating and discover that there just isn’t the clarity of thought or turn of phrase that comes so easily when my head is in a different, slower space.

My observation is that (at least for me) busyness is absolutely incompatible with creativity – that for the mind to be in a generative mode there needs to be peace and space and quiet. Even in the still moments I do set aside at the start and end of each day I am conscious of the need to ‘get going’ or of other important business pressing in on me. Prayer becomes a task – often a futile one – and I sometimes just give it up and go and ‘do something useful’.

Some of my most creative moments are actually on holidays – when there is nothing to do and nothing to think about. But even then it can take a while to get into that zone.

So for now this blog will show signs of neglect. I will do my best to pull together ideas for teaching at church, but chances are I won’t be ‘in the zone’ for a little while to come.

That said, I know there will come a day – I’m guessing in January once people have overspent on credit cards – when I will get a breath and I will be able to sit at peace with little pressing and listen to the ‘other voice’.

I know that will happen… but what about those for whom ‘January’ never comes – those for whom all of life is lived in the frantic zone? I’d suggest one of the reasons imagination and creativity is seen as the domain of children is because they have wide open mental spaces in which to play and they are not caught up in a life of activity – yet…

I would suggest we all have a creative side to us, but unless it is tended it gets squeezed out of us by a world that insists we get busy. I know there are times we need to be run hard, but I sense the world would be a richer place if the creative spark were fanned into flame more often albeit at the expense of productivity.

The Gift of Reassurance

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been going to see the same Physio for over four years now and almost every time I see him I walk out feeling better – hopeful and with a lighter step – not necessarily because he has ‘fixed’ me.

Ever since the ‘running debacle’ back in July I have struggled with painful knees and more recently with them making a mild crunching sound as I bend. Scary… they sound like a twig being bent almost to snapping but then released.

And then over the last two months as retic work has fired up my hands and fingers have begun to ache, my forearms are telling me a story and my back is chipping in with his own complaints. Its that time of year, but 10 years into this form of work and I know my body is being worked harder than it should be.

So last Friday I went to see Damian. I’d been to the Doc who was quite nice, but whose advice was simply to take some anti-inflammatories and slow down (next patient please). I wasn’t satisfied. I still felt concerned and anxious about the state of my body and the potential damage I was doing.

So I chat to Damian about my knees and explain the problem.

‘Any pain?’

‘No – not really – none really…’

‘Nothing to worry about!’

‘Really?… It sounds bad. Will the noise go away?’ I am concerned at his lack of concern.

‘No – it will get louder – but if there is no pain then you don’t need to worry. It’s just like creaky suspension’ he says.

‘Ok..’ I say, digesting this info. And my hands?’

‘They’re just adjusting to the new pace of life. Nothing to worry about there either. Keep working and they will get used to it.’ (Read – ‘toughen up princess…’)

‘And what about my back?’

I explain that it’s been spasming for a few months and even though I’ve stretched it every day it hasn’t stopped.

‘Ok – let’s stick some needles in you and free that up. If it isn’t better in 48 hrs come back and we will repeat the procedure.’ And so my acupuncture loving physio gets to crack open his needle box and turn me into a human pin cushion.

I write this seven days later after 3 x 11 hour retic days with over 30 different service jobs and my back definitely feels better, my hands are also better (not perfect), and I’m no longer worried about my knees.

I have realised that I don’t go to see Damian just for physical healing. I go for reassurance – to hear someone tell me that despite what I feel about myself I’m going to be ok. Or – if I’m not going to be ok to hear the truth and how I can be fixed.

And as I ponder that I am conscious of the power of reassurance and the truth that I bring to bear on the lives of those I connect with.

Some really need someone to remind them that God loves them… no matter what… no really… no matter what… that he never gives up and despite their failure he will stay with them. More than that he will love them.

That simple but profound truth sits so often beyond our comprehension and we live in constant dread of ‘what may happen’.

Some need to know ‘despite what you feel it’s all going to be ok.’ Our feelings are notoriously deceptive. As Damian told me not to worry about my knees my anxiety lifted. ‘Really?…’ I asked in disbelief.

‘Really.’ he said. There was no ambiguity in his tone.

He has also told me when I’m doing something stupid or that is going to make pain worse. And I have listened and obeyed.

In the same way some people need to hear the truth – to be told their life is headed for disaster if they keep on the track they are on. Its not ‘judgement’ to do that. Its love and wisdom being given.

My hope is to get at least another 8 years of physical labour out of this body. That’ll make me 60 and almost of an age when I should slow down.

As I left the consulting room the other day I was conscious of my spirits lifting, of my load lightening and my hope that I could keep working being restored. Most of us are ‘bad Christians’ at best and barely Christian at our worst and constantly in desperate need of the knowledge that God doesn’t just tolerate us because he has to – but he loves us more than we can ever know.

Maybe you need to know that now – its true.

Or maybe you know it – and you just need to remind someone else whose heart is heavy and spirit depleted.

Reassurance… its powerful… but its something we can’t do for ourselves.