Big Beefy Boy

My wife is great, she is so much more interesting than me and just to prove it, fo rthe last 2 years she has taken part in something called the Dorset Doddle, which isnt a doddle (slow walk) at all, as its 32 miles in one go. When she arrives back with her near 60 year old father - both look as though they have lost at least a year of their lives, they look hollow with that "never again" + "why oh why" look about them.
This week my wife said 'lets go for a walk' together, somewhere secret, it will be a surprise. Ok, i said humouring her........she sits to put her thin and thick pairs of super socks on and now very 'used' walking boots.................. i dont have walking boots, so i opt for super comfey trainers, the kind that would pass for a pair of slippers to go with your tv, pipe tobacco and newspaper.
Ok...... so it become apparant that we are goping to walk along the coast, up very high hills and rocky paths with steep inclines and falls. We walk for an hour and a half before i ask where we are heading................................ which, according to how i recieved the information sounded very much like a circuit......we keep walking and end up back at the car. 2 hours in a realise that we have to go back the way we came.......... i look back across the cliffs, along the coast and my spirit of wife pleasing promptly takes a nose dive. I talk her into not taking us all the way, so we head back and by the grace of god meet a man who says we can indeed walk in a circle.
So, we are on the last stretch of track with trees in the distance and car park awaiting when i turn to her and say, 'see those trees over there - if youd of said we were gonna go just that far i would have told you to get stuffed and get the car'. I am not a walker (can you hear the winging teen trying to get out).

Anyways.............. i had a meet with a senior leader in town this week, one i respect and so i ask him to convince me that 10 years on, we wont still be trying to transition the culture of the church, and will indeed have begun to focus wholeheartedly upon the church changing the culture of our town. As only a much older leader can, he points out how the church really didnt have a whole lot to shout about in the fifties, and it has, indeed since then been through a constant barrage of Gods awakening and reforming. He listed many awesome things that have occurred in terms of change which i have to conceed, are pretty awesome for a new boy who wants it all now and wont take no or later for an answer. Anyways, we both arrived at a place of not really being able to answer that question - that God wont still be having to fix the body, and that perhaps - until He comes again, this is going to be a constant.

SO that leaves me with another question, " IF that IS likely to be a constant, then its pretty conclusive that we must - in the mix - get beyond ourselves, get past our own need for change and dispite defecits - BECOME AGENTS OF CHANGE ELSWHERE, if not as a primary aim, it at the very least needs to be a shared aim.
In light of that question i am feeling that soon and very soon we must do that, shift our focus of energy and generational effort. Otherwise we say to the children - "mummy and daddy are having counselling at the moment (yes - again), so if you wouldnt mind putting your lives on hold until we have done - thatd be lovely.
I am reminded at times of thinking such as this, that the disciples and apostles lived and died, living and engaing the lost as though Christs return was imminent, in their lifetime even. So whats going on 2000 years on from that? Do we still engage the lost like He is coming back very soon, tomorrow maybe? I dont think this is often in our frame of reference, neither of our time, our energy, our leadership etc.
Ill repeat myself: God wants you well for you, God needs you well for THEM, but how well is well when God uses a broken army to get his will done?

I really dont want to spend a lifetime adjusting the church and not extending the kingdom. Not to be confused with 'adding to the church construct' which in my view isnt wholly extending the kingdom - but making people safe (addition - not multiplication).
Back to walking:
Its not that i dont like walking or that i wont walk - but i want to get somewhere far more than i want to walk as a past time or leisure pursuit 0r even for a 'personal' challenge. I want to see church change, i WILL give time to that, but not as an end in itself, not for something to do or to fulfill a narrow mandate that i hope will lead to the other stuff happening - it has to be For something - for someone, perhaps everyone.

Bla d bla
Gaz