Thursday was an official milestone in my recovery from surgery - at two weeks I had to move from the basic physio excercsies to the more advanced ones, specifically those that will allow me to regain full extension of my right arm. This is essential before I can start radiotherapy - it has to be said the radiotherapist fell about laughing when she asked me to show her how far I could raise my arm on Wednesday.

For the wall climbing excercise, I mark with a pencil how far I can reach the first time I do the exercise each morning - after a few reps and as the day goes on I can reach further but I have chosen to use my first attempt as the benchmark. In four days I have improved by around 7cm (or nearly 3 inches in real money). Today's improvement over yesterday was the smallest being 'only' about 1cm but still an improvement.

All of this got me thinking about the expectations that we in churches put on people to develop their 'spiritual muscles' whether they are new to faith or have sustained some kind of injury to their faith. Just as I am not going to regain full use of my arm for several weeks - if indeed ever - so it takes time to build up, or re-build spirtual strength.

Sometimes people new to faith go at it like the proverbial bull at a gate - only to burn out or get injured in the process. Sometimes people's life experiences or, sadly, church experiences leave them with aching or gaping wounds and it takes a very long time and a lot of hard work to recover. I find myself wondering if sometimes we get too impatient, with ourselves or with others, either wanting to run before we can walk or feeling that 'surely by now you should be over it' whatever 'it' was.

Every church has its share of wounded people - those who have sustained injuries to their faith and who may never be able to regain the 'strength' or 'flexibility' they once had. All too often they have to move churches to find acceptance as they now are.

My right arm still has a long way to go to reach the extension I can achieve with my left arm, and I will always have to be extra careful with it to avoid possible delayed complications, but little by little, cm by cm, it will get there.

As yet I haven't had a day when it goes 'backwards' but I know that's possible too - and a possibility we need to allow for among those, oursleves included, who are trying to develop or redevelop healthy spiritual lives.

Well, I've been back home a week now, two weeks since surgery, and things are already moving along into the last phase of active treatment.  I have been surprised just how tired I get doing relatively little all day, and more specifically how quickly I get extremely tired once it begins.

I am dutifully doing my physio exercises thrice daily and am steadily regaining flexibility, if not yet strength, in my right side.  One of the exercises I've just begun is called, amusingly enough, 'wall climbing' and I mark each day how far I managed to 'climb' - I have a substantial way to go to get full movement back, but it's improving a little each time I try.  Hair-brushing seems a mean exercise - and the diagram of an Asian woman with a waist length plait doing some of the exercises is insult to injury - but at least I have a sparse crew cut that is slowly thickening.

My brain is still on a go-slow and my memory not as good as usual but I am functioning adequately to maintain independent, if assisted, living.  It is quite strange having a whole church-load of people of standby to help if needed.  Learning to 'be done unto' is not easy but not as hard as I feared - maybe they dampened my 'flipping independent' nature with some of the drugs?

It has to be said, my typing is worse than ever and without spell checks, fallible as they are, would be near illegible in places.

Hopefully in a week or two I will feel more like myself but for now I am a 'tired teddy bear' taking life easy and re-learning how to do jigsaws after a gap of around forty years!

Anyone with eagle eyes may have noticed I've deleted a comment that purported to be an advert for Manchester SCM.  It wasn't!  It was some clever spam produced by copying a block of text from said SCM website and then linking to a website in the USA concerned with selling tyres!  I do wonder just who is employed to do such peurile work - most blog hosts now have 'robot proof' final steps.

If the real Mcr SCM want to add a comment via my blog to advertise their meetings, OK, but not some annoying person trying to sell their own products or "servcies" ... often not quite as innocuous as tyres it has to be said (beware anything with Greek/Cyrilic characters!).

This week's Baptist Times includes a short report on the SCM gathering in Manchester (I'm sure it's a press release but even so, it's in) and one of our lovely students is quoted in the report whilst another, who holds national role in SCM is on the front row of the photo in a purple top.

I know we're an 'odd' Baptist church being an SCM base but hey, that's part of the delight of who we are.  We love our students to bits (not literally) and on the Univeral Day of Prayer for Students (20th Feb) we are having one of our popular Student Lunches for any and all students and their friends.  If I'm strong enough I might even sneak along - we shall see.

This weeks readings from IBRA follow the title 'Five Marks of a Successful Church' and then proceed to offer six reflections.  This seems to give it a hint of a 'wisdom literature' feel - there are "five marks, even six..." kind of thing.

So what are they?

Light for our path offers:

• Time to make friends in the world
• Valuing every member
• Lifestyle integrity
• The right word at the right time (everyone equipped to bear witness)
• Accepting church (inclusivity)
• Supporting the mission

Words for Today offers essentially a series of sentences:

• A successful church lets go of defences and pretences.
• ... means spontaneous generosity.
• ... inspires exploration, questioning and growing in faith.
• ... empowers the powerless.
• ... pulls down barriers.
• ... lives poverty.

It is interesting how the same set of readings prompts two different lists (albeit not mutually exclusive) and it is interesting what is not included that many 'church growth' how-to manuals might suggest.

I wonder what five (or six) marks of a successful church we would draw up and why.

I wonder how our own churches measure up against either of these lists?

I wonder what the relationship is between success measured with these criteria and things like numbers, baptisms, members admitted etc, and even if there really needs to be one.  I have a suspicion it is perfectly feasible to be a successful church that is static or shrinking in size if success is measured using such values as those above.  If successful is about gospel authenticity then size really does not matter... even if it is rather nice that my church is getting bigger and even more multi-ethnic.