We wonder why people aren't coming to faith, why people think Christians are stark staring bonkers, why they dismiss God as a fairy story... and then our denominational newspapers publish cringeworthy stories.

A few weeks back there was the story of the cross shaped cloud formation, taken as a sign of blessing.  This week the 'minor miracle' of 'respectable surf' on a previously flat calm sea for a Christian surfers meet.  I thought the 'my God is bigger than your God' approach went out with Elijah, but evidently not.

Why would people take seriously a religion that claims God gives us surf and cloud patterns while (seemingly) ignoring the cries of people who are hungry, ill or suffering abuse?

Small wonder when we peddle this twadlle that real life destroys a faith built on the sand of a Devon beach.

Yesterday I received an official Baptist communication, written by an accredited minister, that ended...

 

"PS Please do make copies of this letter to pass on to others in your church or group, including your minister if he has not received one."

Whilst this had to be pointed out to me - I'd glanced at the paper and put it in my briefcase ready to put on the church noticeboard - it toubles me that even within our own, official stuff we can't get it right.  Still, when I work out who he is, I'll give a copy to my minister!

Today we took our lunch club on an outing to Cambridge, and had lunch at the church where I preached with a view unsuccessfully four years ago.

It was a good day out, even if the coach driver seemed incapable of grasping that the best way from Dibley to the A14 is via the M1.  Ah well.  Some interesting leafy lanes made a pleasant, if over-long journey.

It was good to see the folk in Cambridge, and I was touched that one former deacon made a special trip in to see me.  They did us proud with lunch, making the room very welcoming and accommodating the countless foibles my people have - including one or two that turned out to be fictitious.  Slightly odd to think that that might have been my church had things worked out differently but an awful lot of water has flowed down the Cam since then.

I spent the afternoon wandering around Cambridge with the lunch club co-ordinator and two folk who had come alone and had not been gathered up by any of the friendship groups.  Walking at dead slow and stop is not my greatest gift, but I managed it, and we were able to give these folk an enjoyable afternoon - which was what it was all about.

Cambridge is a beautiful city, and I will always believe that I was called to minister there, but I have no regrets that I ended up where I am.  The unlovely folk on the margins of anywhere need our love and support, and in some small measure we are able to do that here.

As I walked home fom the coach drop off point, a man (not part of the club) who can be abusive and rude called me over and told me he wanted to join our church.  Part of my heart sank, he is a very difficult person to deal with, yet this is what we are called to do.  There are some of our unlovely people I find it quite easy to love, and I'd spent the afternoon with one of them.  Now I need to find it within me to see this other man as Jesus sees him, a man who perhaps is lost and desperately seeking to be found.

I got told off by one woman because I didn't say grace after the meal as well as before it; some of our church folk don't really see that me spending a day on an outing is 'work;' the niggles are always there.  But this is what we do, and with God's help, we go on doing it. 

Just got an email from a friend who started their ministreial training a year before I did.  They have just received their degree result - a 2.i - for which they have worked very hard.  The scary thing is that it is longer since I finished mine than I took to complete it, and hearing this news just made me aware how much I've forgotten since then.

According to Glen (in a very blokey post) there are droves of new Baptist ministerial students this year.  In my year, with an intake of 4 (I think) I was the only one on the BA and there was only one in the year above me... things change it seems.  He poses some interesting questions, but the kaliedoscope metaphor was mine first (even if I nicked it, so far as I recall, from someone called Minear!!)

Julie echoes some of my own feelings on the gap that ending college study creates for some of us (perhaps why I'm nutty enough to do this doctoral stuff...) and the tensions that being a theologian (of sorts, in my case) and a minister bring.

Not sure this really goes anywhere, but congrats to those who have just completed their degrees and every blessing to those just starting out.

Tonight the lunch club committee met.  As church committee meetings go, it isn't too bad, it is small, low key and a reasonable level of banter.  We were talking about how to develop the work it does, in particular how to strengthen the links with the worshipping community.  At the last Church Meeting someone suggested a lunch club service - something that sounded fine but we hadn't a clue what they meant.  We came up with a couple of ideas that I think have good potential... twice a year we could have a 'Songs of Praise' service followed by tea and cake (or tea, if I can convince them...) to which we invite the lunch club folk...  and twice a year we could up sticks and take our service to the sheltered housing complexes and take tea with us.

I find these ideas quite exciting because they make the boundaries more fuzzy between the two groups, avoid the threshold issues of coming into "church" (even if its a school hall) and actually means we engage with each other.

I will be praying between now and Thursday that the church give us the green light...