Mt Tribe

Labels are important, they give us information, they identify things especially in cooking or the kitchen. We wear labels to identify ourselves as such and such a person. We wear clothing labels to say a number of things from look at the money i have, to I'm sporty, our football shirt identifies us with other like minded people and gives us a sense of belonging. Labels it would seem are important, they help us, sometimes they hinder us, but we all wear a label of some description whether its a real one or a metaphorical one.

But there is a downside to labels, they can create an us and them mentality or worse still a have and have not mentality, they can especially in the young and teenagers help create bullying so its not all good, so do we need labels?

In cooking we do, you don't want to put half a jar of Paprika on your roast chicken, you don't want to use sugar if you don't like it. So labels have a point they inform us and help us. We wear them as a badge of honor and some of us wear them with pride, I'm a Leeds fan and am happy to nail my label as such to the mast. Also I'm a biker so i wear the uniform or label of that as well. My faith is my biggest label as its the biggest part of my life.

This is where it gets sticky, you see i genuinely think and believe Jesus was not and is not interested in the label we wear, he was all for equality, he was all for understanding and never sent someone away because they never wore the right label. He engaged with those outside and inside the circle of faith, treating all equally and not giving a snide remark towards those of a different class or social construct. It saddens me that many Christians will deride other Christians for not wearing the correct label, whether that is their church, their particular brand of theology or because they have differing opinions. Debate is great and needs to happen, but when it gets personal thats really not on. Over the last few weeks i have been told my theology on such and such is wrong, that my opinion is not as valid as someone else's as apparently i don't take the Bible seriously, not because of heresy, but because i think differently, my labels often get me into trouble. It has to stop, we serve a God of Love and as such need to temper everything we say with that love, we are not better than anyone else because they think differently, respect needs to be shown. Those labels are just that they are labels, they help but can hinder and cause division. Society wants to label everybody in someway, the Church should be acting differently and not labelling, one of the labels that really gets my goat is "Fundie" short for fundamentalist, its used as an insult 9 times out of 10. So what if i do have some fundamental traits does that give anyone the right to put in a slight dig and insult? One of my great friends is Tom Osbourne he is a minister (or will be soon) we are as different as chalk and cheese. He is very liturgical and likes his worship that way, I'm very add hoc in how i do things during worship. But Tom and i get on really well, he has seen my band a few times and i enjoy our chats, at no time have we hung those labels on each other or used them, we just accept each other and get on with Gods business.

Labels can be good they can be bad, i guess what I'm asking for is a bit of understanding, a bit of thought before we label people, especially without knowing all the facts, but we jump because we don't like the label someone wears. Thats maybe a big ask for some people, because their Labelism/Tribalism is very much ingrained, lets just try and be a bit more considerate about labelling people before we know all the facts and just have a quick soundbite to go on.

THANKS TO THOSE WHO ANSWERED THE QUESTION I POSED YESTERDAY ON UK METHODIST, YOUR IMPUT WAS REALLY HELPFUL.

In the beginning

Firsts are very important milestones in our lives, they can define something for us, they can ruin something for us, they can make something magical for us, we all like firsts (and seconds). We have our first kiss, our first love, normally followed by the crushing blow of the first heartbreak. We have our first drink, our first push bike, our firsts are vitally important to how we view things in our lives, those first give us experience, some good some bad, but we learn from them or at least we should. One of my great loves in life is music and in particular Rock in its purest form, the first time i saw Whitesnake live for the first time i was hooked, the beat the lyrics, being stood with 5000 other fans screaming at the top of our voices, it was a defining moment in my musical education, a love affair that is still going strong since 1981, i often joke that the band has been the only stable thing in my life and in some respects its true.

But we have first in other parts of our life too, we have the first time we respond to God and how he responds to us, the first time a prayer is answered is phenomenal, it shows that God is interested in us as individuals. That moment when you realise for the first time is defining, it sets the pattern for what we start to understand about God, how he interacts with us and how we interact with him, because we do interact with him. First times are vital for our growth and for our ability to say "look it may look dark now, but it will get better". As we move along through life we tend to forget those first times, life compresses us, society compresses us and for some unknown reason CHURCH compresses you into a box of its own design, and we forget.
Over the last few months i have been saddened by somethings i here people say, saddened by peoples ability to forget the first, and think its always going to be bad news, its not all doom and gloom, we just sometimes need to change our glasses and look at things differently. We all go through bad times, none of us are immune, the time my father died was the first time in my life i had seen death up close and personal. It knocked the life out of me, stopped me in my tracks, you never do forget the death of a loved one, but through that pain and grief when Dennis died (my mums 2nd husband) i was able to do the funeral, it was hard, it was painful, it was a first time. But this time it was different, you see i believe in life after death, as much as i believe in life before death, and this time it was easier in some respects.
First times are vital to us, i can still remember my first kiss, my first girlfriend, my first bike (push and motor) i can still remember like it was yesterday that first encounter with God, that moment when God reached down into my messed up crappy life and said" hey son, take my hand i got you" that will never leave me. Firsts are important they are brilliant, they can be fun, they can hurt. Spend sometime soon thinking of firsts, and celebrating when things where probably a lot easier, because we all need to be child like at times.

My church is a football ground.

Football IS a funny old game and those who follow it tend to be fanatically passionate about it. The football season has finally ended in England, Man City won the premiership, Liverpool despite everything didn't and some teams performed escape miracles on par with Houdini himself. There was blood, sweat and tears on the final day and it should be no different, i want my team to play with passion, to play like life depended upon that 3 point win. There is this theory that Football is the new religion, stadiums are the new churches, managers the new ministers and the players are the new idols to be worshipped and in some respects that is perfectly true, but if you dig a bit deeper it actually goes to the core of a person, it goes as deep as and in some cases deeper than faith. 

We pick a church because it resonates with us, our folks went there, a friend, there is something that gets you to a church to start with. Then invariably that church stays with us (well at least from a denominational) point and we become………. (fill in your own blank) Its no different with football, i'm a Leeds fan have been since i was 6 years old, something about that team hit me and stuck with me, i'm now coming up the fast side to 50 this year. The team has let me down, they have lost, they have won, they have made me cry with happiness and weep tears of pain, it's all very real when it's a team you are passionate about. Church/God can do the same to us, make us happy make us weep, and affect us in various ways, you see church and teams are very close bed fellows. It requires faith in God to be a Christian it's difficult to believe without faith. To follow Leeds requires an amount of faith that is monumental, it requires me to put my trust for 90 minutes in 11 guys running around a football pitch, who at times seem to have no idea what they are doing. Church is the same at times, when its going great we are all happy, when its going bad we all bitch and moan. Offering up sage advice to those in charge, offering our "expert" opinion when actually we sometimes only have a small idea of what is going on, we see the 90 minutes of play not the effort gone into getting there on the pitch. You see you can be a passionless follower of a team or God, only interested when they are winning or doing well, or you can have a passion which is all consuming, a passion which makes you go back time and time again, and gets you believing things will get better. Faith is required to follow a team, its a foregone conclusion that you need it to follow God, yes stadiums are the new churches, people attend because they feel they belong, they feel wanted. In our churches do people feel that way? if we are truthful we have to say at times no they are not. Football and faith are not that far apart they require certain common things to make them active work. For those of you who don't follow football, you can now cat ch up and watch your normal tv for 3-4 weeks, then its going to be wall to wall football for a month as it's the World cup, Passions will run high, things will be said, advice will be given. Lets actually try and be as passionate about God as we are about something we follow, whether a team or a programme, whether it makes sense or not, lets just practise a bit of passion and faith, because thats going to win through at the end of the day

Ramble on

I'm going to probably upset a few people with this entry and i guess sometimes you gotta do it. For all of my walk with God i have classed myself as Evangelical, I'm a proclaimer of the good news, a born again fundamentalist with reasonable leanings. So its with some sadness that yesterday i found out that Steve Chalke and Oasis trust have been removed from the evangelical alliance. Now this was heart breaking for myself on a number of levels, but thats another day. What has become apparent now to me is that whether you call yourself, fundamentalist, liberal, conservative, or just plain weird, you have to stay within the confines of the label you wear, and don't you dare move away from it. All of my christian life i have struggled with church, i have struggled with its systems, its idiocy, its stubbornness to move forward, because we are holding onto the past, and in truth it sucks big time. You see i was never comfortable with being a Christian, i was never part of the in crowd, but i became the go to guy if you needed brutal honesty. Sometimes churches accepted what was said with grace, other times i was asked to apologise for what i said (yes really) My formative years of faith where in a hardline Pentecostal church, then into Methodism where i seemed to find some sort of fit for my faith. The problem is i despair and weep at times over what the church does and what Christians do, more time spent in committees, more time arguing over that semi colon in Timothy, more time denying the God of the Bible, and questioning whether or not the Bible is literal or not, whether it was written by monkeys or a spaceman. If I'm going to be brutally honest I'm thinking of throwing in the towel, just upping sticks and saying "stuff it" you see all i ever wanted from my faith was acceptance, acceptance from God which i got in spades, and acceptance from Christians, which has never been fully functional or fully coming from certain parts. The church should be a place where everybody feels safe, where everybody feels welcome and in all honesty its not. Christians have difficulty accepting each others diverse views, so what chance have we really got with dealing with the views of other outside of the church.
Over the years i have been fortunate to have met some incredible people, they have challenged me, nurtured me, helped me and saved me from myself, some have been Christians others have been as unbelieving as you could ever imagine. What that has taught me over the years is that all views count even if i don't like them, even if we disagree at least we know our voice counts. The exclusion of Oasis from the Evangelical Alliance is a step to far for me, its a step that says "if you do not agree completely you aint coming in" which is wrong wrong wrong. We should be able to accommodate creationists alongside those who think differently. Those who hold to male headship and those who don't, just when did sexuality become the defining factor on inclusion, when did my sexuality become an issue because it flipping well should not be, when other things are never seen as definitive.

Tomorrow being May 4th i take my last service on the preaching plan, as i have after praying long and hard realised i need to take a step back and stand down. Part of this is due to ill health,part not being able to fulfil the study side of local preaching, and not wanting to get stuck in a rut. Its taken me nearly a year to reach this decision, and I'm some what sad but excited about the future. My ministry has  taken me to some different and funky places (baptising a new convert in an oil drum at the Glastonbury festival) was one of the great highlights, met weird and wonderful people and enabled me to see a whole lot of life and acceptance.

Be at peace people, be with grace, be love.

A bumblebee don't understand it can't fly

A bumblebee has no idea that according to Physics and aviation it cannot take off, its impossible for it to fly (and being blown by the wind is not flying) You see the shape is all wrong, power to weight ratio all wrong and its not meant to happen. The humble bee is a freak of nature, a mishap of creation and on  paper as much use as a chocolate fireguard. This set me to thinking about things, life the universe etc.

When i first found faith in God it was a very simple time, God seemed to wrap me in a blanket of doing and looking back on it , it was Gods way of showing me he was around. Prayed and things happened, asked and received, it was a great time, a simpler time, things happened because we knew and i knew no better. If it said it in the Bible i believed it, did not understand it but i believed it and for that stupid faith God moved in me and for me it was great. Then i started to read, i started to listen to other people, i started to take their doubts on board, i needed an education about God i needed to be able to understand every last part of what was written, what was and is said, and that was detrimental. People would start to explain why God did not do certain things in this day and age, why prayer was pointless, why healing never happened, and asked why i was so stupid to believe like a child, funnily enough when i was a child i had a lot less grief and a lot less hassle and a lot less need to understand.

Maybe its the age we live in, but too many Christians are trying to legitimise their faith by turning it into an academic or faithyscience style of thing, we are trying to be all things to all men and failing. Genuinely i believe with all the hassle, grief, struggling, worry most of us go through on a regular basis, people are not looking for academic arguments, they are looking for something real, something that gives them hope, a hope that most of us had as a child and we seem to have lost it along the way. You see God is not in a box of his design, but he is in a box of my design, a box we have created to make God understandable a box which enables us to understand the mystery and remove it. For me i don't need all the answers, for me i just need to hear and hit and hope, I'm glad God is a mystery, I'm glad i don't get it, and I'm really glad God does not give a flying fig if i do or don't.

You see that Bumblebee has no idea but fulfils its purpose, we have lots of ideas and sometimes fail to fulfil our purpose. That Bumblebee really should know better, it really should, but if it knew the scientific facts about flight and what its meant to do it would do very little. Maybe we just need to stop trying so hard, revel in mystery, and achieve lift off even if other things tell us we can't. You gotta love that Bumblebee.

P.S. this is not against education or academic study, its about a simpler way of life.

Potholes as far as the eye can see

Riding a motorcycle in this day and age is a dangerous occupation, it used to be you had to look out for  other road users (you still do by the way) but a bigger more silent menace lurks on our roads, POTHOLES, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE AND BREEDING LIKE A BUNCH OF RABBITS AT AN ORGY. The roads have had to put up with a lot in the last 3 months especially rain washing out repaired holes and making new ones in the wake of the deluges we have had. We had a meeting just before Christmas with a lovely lady from our local highways department, she explained to s how they deal with potholes, how they are categorised and the amount of money they have to repair the entire road network in Devon. At present they have over 600 million worth of repairs to do, on a budget of 66 million, so its obvious they are on a loosing wicket to deal with it all. Potholes are a pain in the neck, this week my wife hit one on the bike and it was such a powerful hit, it shook the battery loose and cut out all power to the bike, she was fine. Ian Norton and myself had to go and rescue and get the bike working again so she could get home.

This brings us to the potholes of life, we all get them, they creep up slowly and then BANG they hit you when you least expect it and can throw you off what you are doing. It can be a situation that starts as a little bit of loose talk or thinking, then as the wear and tear starts we end up with a hole in our pathway and no real idea on what to do about it. The highways department patch a lot of holes because it's apparently cost effective, we have no option in our lives but to deal with the potholes correctly first time, we need to sort them out, if we don't they will keep derailing us time and time again. So what do we do with these potholes of life, simply put if they are holding us back or throwing us off our path we need to fill them in. It maybe something you said or someone said to you which keeps cropping up and causing resentment, fill the hole in, it maybe a habit that is out of control, fill it in, in fact the pothole can be anything that causes you grief in any form. Filling them in requires work, just like the highways department, so we need to work at sorting out the debris, cleaning out the rubbish, so a new filling can get put into place, which will hold and not rot out again. Many people i know are carrying around lots of grudges and heartache, they are holding onto the pothole because they have become used to it and feel they know how it's going to catch them out. In some cases this is true. We have a  pothole at the end of our road, it's big enough to see and i ride or drive over it everyday, avoiding it if i'm able to do so. But every now and then it catches me by surprise, normally when i'm not think ing about it. We all have them in our lives people, time to let them go, fill them in and get a relatively smooth pathway in front of us. These potholes can be hurt, they can be hard to let go of, but letting go and filling them in is the right thing to do. It amazes me that as adults we tell Children that they should forgive and forget, let it go, it's not worth it. But we are guilty of a double standard, because we hold onto things when we really should be letting go. You will know what your potholes are, but they need to be repaired so life can go on smoothly.

Forgiveness and reconciliation

Last night Sunday 5th i had the joy of leading worship at my home church and we looked at forgiveness and reconciliation. It's something which has been playing on my mind for a few months now as i have noticed i have got a real low tolerance for idiots and thats the way it goes. Now as i'm not a note user i'm going to try and get the points down from it and hopefully it will help someone out.

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation, forgiveness is the act of pardon for wrong done. Reconciliation is the renewal of broken bridges or relationships, they differ but can be intertwined but not necessarily so, in fact you can forgive but not reconcile to the situation in hand, logically if you forgive then reconciliation should follow. But being human and holding grudges is a by product of us being hurt, when we hurt we want the offender to hurt as well, we say we don't but we do and we need to be honest about this. Forgiving someone is an act of our will, we have to mean it when we say we do, we have to live it and most importantly we need to learn to let go of the hurt and problem. For some of us that is hard, we want our case heard we want some form of justice or is it revenge we want. Also we often want our own way and this is where part of the problem comes. As Christians we are called to act like Christ, we are called to surrender to him and his will, for some of us thats harder to do than to say, but it's time to stop paying lip service to the idea of forgiving and letting go, we can really only do it with Gods help if we claim Christ as our own. We need to understand that carrying around the baggage we have causes us pain and heartache at some stage in our lives. Some Christians i know have been carrying hurt around for an age and it's affected their faith, their understanding of God, and invariably God gets blamed for an act of human interference and it just runs around in an ever decreasing circle, it's time to let it go.

Reconciliation is the process of rebuilding in Corinthians Paul says we have the ministry of reconciliation, we are called to reconcile as God reconciled us to himself by the death of Jesus on the cross and his ressurection, we are called to reconcile as we have been reconciled. It's hard and will not always be easy, but it's something we do need to get to grips with. Reconciliation is a hard path but a worthwhile one, it requires grace which we tend to lack when we are hurting or have been hurt. Ironically most of us believe the problem is the other persons and ignore our own part in why relations have broken down, we ignore our attitude, our words, our efforts, because obviously we are right how could i/we be wrong. If you are carrying baggage, if you are hurting instead of your ego taking over, instead of making it everyone else's problem, actually own it and deal with it. As we stand at the start of a new year it is time for us to wake up, leave the past behind we can't change it, but we can change our attitude to it and move forward into a better future. We have to decide in very real and logical terms, am i happy to carry this around for another period of time, which some are because the hurt goes deep and ego kicks in (personal perpendicular pronounitis) we become fairly stubborn, and just won't let it go. One thing which we will need to do is surrender to God, we will need to take a bigger picture, because as much as we don't like to admit it we put God into a box, and he will operate in that box and it has to be right because we understand it, but God does not need your understanding he needs you as you are broken, whole, hurting, joyful and ready to do business with him. The kingdom is all important, it's the kingdom we want to see come, it's the kingdom we live in. It's time to show people grace and reconciliation in action, it's time to deal with whats holding you back and move forward. What are you gonna do about it.