No words needed…

Goodbye to smallgroup

Tonight is our last ever smallgroup.

I’ve been a part of this little part of our church community for 2.5 years.

It’s going to be tough to say goodbye. It has been tough to say goodbye. although we plan to still see each other, the ‘realistic’ part of me recognises how busy we all are and how tough it was to find one evening a week to set aside to gather together.

A typical night at smallgroup looks like this…

Our leaders try and get the youngest member to sleep before we arrive(which she doesn’t like so much because she knows we’re all coming around!! )

At 8 p.m. we start arriving with bags of yummy stuff…bread, juices, cheeses, much pizza, salads and of course….the sweet stuff!

Much chatting is had, and eventually someone says ’should we sit down and eat?’

More chatting is had as we pass plates around and Mr TSTIAI jumps up when the oven timer goes off (pizza). Oh, this will include quite a lot of teasing too.

By 9 p.m. we’ll suggest maybe we should get on with the bible study or whatever we have planned. Coffee is made. It smells yummy. Me and J have peppermint tea.

We’ll gather our sweet stuff, mugs of warm stuff and move to the sofa area. Study and discussion begins.

Next thing you know it’s almost 11 p.m. or something and we’re like….oh pants, we should be in our beds! Praying is done and we go our separate ways, taking turns to give non-driving members a lift home.

In the last 2.5 years…

Our youngest member has fast become our most gifted evangelist. To the point where she took her toy microphone and begun a singing call to us all to pray in the middle of a restaurant a few weeks ago!

There have been lots of job changes – some people getting promotions, others facing tough times at work, some leaving their job roles to spend more time with family.

New adventures have begun…new theatre companies, new businesses, new charities.

Some of us have travelled to spread love to people in foreign lands…and helped each other get there.

Our confidence in who we are in Christ has grown. At times our theology has been changing as we’ve learned and thought together.

There have been tears, hurt and pain. Grace has been given, honest conversations have been spoken, prayers have been sent to the heavens.

We aren’t just people who meet together in someone’s house anymore. We’ve grown to love and care for each other. These people aren’t just ‘people in my church’. They are true friends…more like family than friends. Which is probably why people who see us together think we are related. Or dating.

Much fun has been had, and great food has been eaten!

I believe God has done much in us and through us in the last few years, and I wonder if we’d had that courage to step out in faith as much as members of our group has if it hadn’t been for the support mechanism of smallgroup.

These are the people who kept me going in faith when I was waiting for 2 months to hear if I would be working at the pregnancy crisis centre. These are the people who supported me during the ‘great bathroom disaster of 2007′. These are the people who I hung out with to eat food and watch american TV dramas or a film with. These are the people who encouraged me to go to South Africa and prayed for me every day I was there (and sent me out with BK-friendly snacks that probably saved me ending up in hospital on a drip!!) These are people that trusted me with their car, their house, their daughter. These are people who I can be honest with. They are the first people I told when I discovered exactly what had been going on with my Dad and family. They are people who  I sit next to in church so it’s not quite so lonely going every Sunday. These are the people who came up with the idea of  The Art of Joy and made it become reality. These are people that are different in so many ways but have learned how to be friends and grow together. These are people I really love and care for, and seriously if you messed with any one of them, I’d be after your blood. These are people who taught me about posh cheeses and blogging. These are people that have made the transition from Aberdeen back to Edinburgh bearable.

So yes, tonight will be a night of good food and lots of laughter, but it’s also to be sad. It’s the end of an era.

Confessions and Questions

Last week, a post of Pete Wilson’s caught my attention, (as they often d0). I have been running on empty for a looonnnnggg time now.

I realise that part of my stuggle was trying to separate God’s expectations from my own/other people’s expectations.

Since 2004, I’ve always used the sentence ‘I have been healed from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’.

This week I’ve been forced to recognise that as much as I really want to believe that to be true, there is a strong possibility that it’s not true.

I hate admitting this.

It brings so many questions.

How do you balance that with being in leadership? How do you still serve as part of church? How do you get spiritually replenished when you can barely get out of bed in the morning?

How do you say ‘no’ to things you really believe in and are passionate about? Should you be saying no at all? Should you just be trying to push through?

How do you cope when someone gives you a compliment and it just makes you want to cry because more and more you are struggling to do what you love? How do you cope when your spirit says one thing and your body says another?

When the culture you are part of is ‘all or nothing’…how do you deal with the fact that your limitations force you to try find a compromise? Will people accept that, or is it that you’re going to have to be replaced in God’s kingdom?

Something I’ll never forget was the first year of dealing with CFS and the different responses from people in church.

On a really bad day I was rota-ed on to sing in the music team, the worship leader was awesome. He picked me up from my flat because he knew I wouldn’t be able to walk at that time in the morning. They had a seat so I could sit between songs or while I sang if I couldn’t manage to stand.

After the service the band and service leaders came together in a prayer huddle.

A leader turned to me to tell me off for having a seat because it wasn’t ‘worshipful’.

Should I just have not sang?

Should I have stayed home?

Was it my lack of faith?

And why couldn’t I just ’snap out of it’ like so many people suggested I should?

These are the questions in my head right now. As I struggle to even pray. I can pray for everyone who has really life threatening stuff going on. That stuff is the real stuff that needs prayer.

As I keep trying to do all the work I can, so thankful now that I only work part-time. Thankful I work with an amazing group of people who are incredibly understanding. Thankful (in a wish you hadn’t been through it too, but glad you understand what it’s like) that someone in my soon-to-be-made-extinct smallgroup has been through this. Thankful for social networking which is becoming a lifeline & at times my only connection to the outside world. Thankful for people I connect with online who understand what this is like. Thankful for so many encouraging blog friends who encourage and get me thinking.

But scared.

Scared as I look ahead to heading to Basingstoke in a couple of weeks time (booking a 6 a.m. flight now seems utter folly). Scared as I know that there will be no smallgroup come January…it’s going to be just little me from there forward.  Scared when I think of the training course Sarah and I will be leading January-May. Scared as I think of schools visits, the germs, and no one to replace me if I get ill.

Holding on…

Holding on to the words of Isaiah

“The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Isaiah 40: 28-31

Summarising the South African experience

Help ma boab! Someone from my church e-mailed me yesterday asking for a summary of my trip to South Africa when I took part in Soul in the City Durban in July.

A summary…huh.

errrrr….now just how many blog posts did it take me (at least 14). And I think the photo slideshow my poor suffering smallgroup got was at least 8 minutes long.

Help please! What do you reckon are the important points to include, people who followed the journey all the way from before I even got to South Africa…if you can even remember anything I said about it?!

 

 

Learning from Lenny and Rita

So my American friends have introduced me to the wonders of being part of church online. Because of the time difference, their morning services are in the evening UK time.

2 weeks ago, I went to Table Rock Fellowship with Diane, David and Tam. I was so encouraged by the music but also by the fact that Table Rock support their local pregnancy resource centre – I know this because they had a whole big announcement about it and the importance of it right at the start of their service. Yay for TRF! (not that I’m biased working for a similar ministry…no not at all…)

This week I was shattered for a variety of reasons, and trying to get prepared for a schools visit on Monday, so I ended up going to Central Christian Church in Las Vegas with Lori.

They’ve been doing a series called Lovestruck, which I think has all been based on Songs of Solomon (correct me if I’m wrong Central folks!). Jud is a fantastic teacher. But the highlight was definitely this testimony from the loveliest Italian couple ever.

Married people (or people who may one day get married)….this is for you.

A big shout out to Lenny and Rita. You guys are amazing!

Something that got stuck in my mind recently…

A couple of weeks ago, we were chatting about the upcoming restructuring in our church and where each of us were at with it. It was probably one of the toughest nights with our smallgroup that I can remember.

The purpose is to get us to be more focused on being missional.

I have my concerns and my worries, but you know…I’m not in leadership at our church, God’s placed our leaders, to be well, uh, leaders. And I guess you know, you’ve got to go with the flow, get stuck in unless God tells you otherwise.

But I had a very interesting conversation afterwards driving a couple of folks back home.

You see this summer, I heard a lot of teaching and took part in some discussion about how the church has started haemorrhaging people in their 20s and 30s. A while ago we realised we were losing teenagers, so we got our act together and put lots of resources and training into youth ministry. Well, now I’m a minority in ‘the church’.

People in our age group are getting married older, having children later, are more transient in terms of moving around, and a lot of church ‘ministries’ are based on vulnerable groups, children, youth, university students, parents, married couples…

And over the recent months I’ve discovered many of my friends in my age group gradually go to church less and less after graduating because the majority of the ‘inward’ ministry is completely irrelevant to them. And a number of them have done so because they felt that the church only wanted them so they could ‘use them’. They’re young, they’re single…so they have time to do all these various things that need doing.

And it’s not that they don’t want to serve. It’s that all that they do is serve, and they end up wondering…if I wasn’t someone who was doing all this stuff, would anyone care if I was here?

I’ll fully admit that I, myself, have pondered that a time or two.

You might say we’ve all got to stop whining and just get on with it. That’s life.

Hmmm…

And then someone said this (actually a few people have said this in different ways recently).

“Being single in church is lonely. When something big is happening in church which means you lose the community you’ve built up, if you’re married you naturally have someone to face it with together. But you don’t necessarily have that if you’re single.”

Now.

I’m not married, but I know that marriage is NOT easy. No rose tinted glasses for me.

BUT.

I do think there is some truth in that statement.

I don’t write this to be like ‘pity us’ or anything.

But I do think this is something that we…the church…need to address.

I just wonder how we can fix that. How can we truly be community when we’re all so different? And how do we be more inclusive?

And what happens if we become so focused on being missional that we forget the importance of being pastoral?

How do we find the balance?

Hearing God’s voice & speaking funny languages

Ok, ok, ok. I went to a fairly charismatic church when I lived in Aberdeen. People spoke and sometimes sang out in tongues. People prophecied. People had dreams and visions. Some of my friends interpret dreams. We saw miraculous healing through prayer unexplained by the medics.

I reason I started going to that particular church (aside from the fact that I ended up there often because of friendships I was making via various connections and it was close to where I lived at the time) was after I came back from Soul Survivor and got the gift of tongues.

I came back to church to find people didn’t believe that gifts of the Holy Spirit were for ‘today’.

I really, really don’t understand that.

I get why people might be a bit freaked out, unsure, confused or scared about the ‘Holy Spirit’ stuff. There are often valid reasons for that.

But I don’t get how people can say ‘oh yeah, they don’t exist anymore’.

Last time I read my bible it didn’t say ‘And the Holy Spirit shall be with you for a few months after I leave, your sons and daughters will dream dreams, and prophecy for a couple of weeks, then you’ll be without any God manifesting himself on earth until Jesus comes back’. It talked about how Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would come down to earth to be with us until He returned. It talked of how that happened, and people’s response. It talked about the things that the apostles and others did through the power of the Holy Spirit. You read it, and you try to picture it, and it must have looked totally crazy!

So yes folks. I believe in prophecy. I believe in the gift of speaking in other languages without the years learning how to say ‘Hello, My name is Laura Anne’ and so on, I believe in healing without medicine (that does not mean I think we shouldn’t use medicine), I believe in the gift of teaching, I believe in the gift of discernment…..you get the idea?

I was hurt at first – because although they had a right to believe that Spiritual Gifts don’t exist anymore or whatever – if they still thought that after I’d told them I’d experienced otherwise, logic says well, they think I’m lying or making it up. I was so excited about this experience and being able to communicate with God in this new and really helpful way, and I wanted to share it with my brothers and sisters in Christ!

And I really wasn’t making it up. I didn’t fully understand what it was at first, but I didn’t just accept it. I went to other older, wiser Christians I trusted and respected as I tried to make sense of what this all was. They pointed me in the direction of certain passages in the bible where it talked about spiritual gifts and how they should be used. I studied those passages.

Over. And over.

Until I was like…this is describing what I’ve experienced. This seems to confirm to me that this is from God.

I don’t know what your thoughts and experience of the supernatural side of God are, but I’d be interested to hear them.

Here are a few of the questions I’ve been asked by people…

How do you hear from God?

How do you know it’s God’s voice you are hearing?

What does the gift of tongues sound like? (this intrigue resulted in a couple of teens trying to sit near me in church services to see if they could catch me doing it?!?!)

What happens if someone prophecises something and it doesn’t happen?

Should we use the gift of tongues in church services?

How do you know if a dream is from God or is just a ‘normal’ dream?

Maybe you have a question you’d like an answer to on this topic. I guess I promised some chat about the Holy Spirit and Spiritual gifts a loooonnnng time ago (ahem 2 years ago) on Musings of a Koala…and maybe now it’s time that I actually came through on that one!

I’m not a scholar or a teacher. Just a lassie with a bible and a relationship with a God who is three people in one with 365 names…! (God that is…not me)

But I’m willing to give it a whirl…

Look! Don’t you see it?

There’s been some talk about evangelism going on lately. I’m not so keen on the whole ‘evangelism techniques’ chat, and I guess most of what I’ve learned about sharing my faith is hearing the journeys of others coming from a place where they didn’t believe in God to a place where they accept Jesus is the son of God. And I do take stock of what was helpful/unhelpful in my own experience too.

This is a brief (believe it or not) version of my own story which I shared on my old blog a couple of years ago.

“Look at the new thing I’m going to do. It is already happening. Don’t you see it? I will make a road in the desert and rivers in the dry land”

Isaiah 43:19 (NCV)

This is one very special pendant. It’s purple and turqoise coloured, and is a cross inside the icthus sign. But that’s not why it is special. It was a prophetic purchase made by one of my friends…and given to me.

In August 2001, this friend bought two pendant necklaces. One for her sister. And another. God told her that the second necklace was to be given to a person she would meet who was going to become a Christian that year.

This girl went to university in Aberdeen, and she really wanted to be all out for Jesus when she got there…but how to bring up the conversation with her new mates at uni? She prayed to God for the opportunity to share her testimony in Freshers Week.

And here is what happened…

I arrived in Aberdeen, a year younger than everyone else, confused, and not sure of where I stood or what I believed in. I was looking for a way out of the mess that was my life in Edinburgh, and felt strongly that moving to Aberdeen was going to help me to find it. I’d been given advice by some graduates to try and get involved in all the Fresher’s Week activities except any to do with the Chaplaincy Centre, because only the ’sad’ people went there. Having left school a year early, and under 18, a lot of people expected that I wouldn’t stick out first year. A lot of people thought I was just going through ‘a phase’ when I decided to apply and my family wanted me to stay at home. I was ready and up for anything (except any weird Christian church things) because I was determined to prove to them that I could do it.

Two of my friends from home went to church and SU camps every summer. They wore bracelets with the letters ‘WWJD’, but they wouldn’t tell me what it stood for. I figured out it must be a Christian thing, because they’d usually talk to me about anything – but they were well aware of my thoughts on Christianity (I made them pretty clear – church is boring, pointless and full of judgemental busybodies; bible is a bunch of fairy tales).

When I arrived in halls, a girl (the one who had bought 2 pendants) came bounding up to me in the corridor. I introduced myself, and she just screamed ‘Ooooh! you’re Scottish‘ revealing a southern English accent. Anyway, just about all our corridor (21 girls) went to dinner together, and I noticed she was wearing one of those WWJD bracelets. I pointed to it, and asked her ‘What does that stand for? Is it a Christian thing, because 2 of my friends have bracelets like that and they wouldn’t tell me what it means’…

God had answered her prayer. Here was the opportunity for her to give her testimony to well…pretty much everyone!

She told everyone how she had become a Christian, how her family was against it so she had to sneak out her house to go to Church. How she’d come to understand and believe in the bible being God’s Word.

I wished at the time that I’d never asked. I would usually haved slagged off her beliefs, but I wanted to make sure I made a good impression to everyone in Fresher’s week.

Over the next couple of months, we’d have many deep and meaningful conversations late into the night. And I kept meeting more and more Christians. In my tutorial group. In my lectures. In halls. In pubs.

It got really annoying.

11th November was Remembrance Sunday, and I decided to go to church with one of the Northern Irish medics who lived on my floor. I was shocked at how welcome everyone made me. How unjudgemental, caring and friendly everyone seemed. I had never experienced that in church before. Everyone in that church seemed to genuinely love and care for one another. They all seemed to have something I didn’t have, and I really wanted whatever it was. I asked her if she’d drag me out of my bed every Sunday to go to church come rain, hail or hangovers – and she did.

I called my old school friend, who doing a gap year with SU to tell her I’d started going to church. She was totally shocked and said…

‘Of all the people I thought would become a Christian, you were the last on my list‘

When I came home for Christmas, my family laughed at the thought of me being a Christian.

‘How could someone as un-Christian as me become a Christian?’

I went to church on Christmas Eve with my school friend’s family. They were willing to answer so many of questions no matter how simple they seemed. For the first time I began to talk about my true feelings on what life had been like before I’d left Edinburgh, and share with my friend what had been going on to make me the angry and depressed young woman that had left school at 16, only to return months later for 5 highers and a UCAS form. They encouraged me to go on an Alpha Course and to start going along to the CU.

In January, I went to my first CU meeting. I can’t remember who the speaker was that night, but the talk was on God’s gifts. They handed out little notebooks we could use as prayer diaries. Something began to click, and I was challenged.

‘What were my gifts? How was I going to be able to use them to honour God?’

That night (unknown to anyone) I went back to my room and prayed to God…I told him that I wanted to know how to get to know him, and asked him to guide me to do the things He wanted me to do.

2 girls in halls started talking about starting a prayer group for revival. I asked them what that was. They told me. I asked if I could join them. They couldn’t hide their shock but agreed that I could come along. We started praying for one of our friends to become a Christian, and I invited her along to Alpha. I thought it would be great if she became a Christian.

I still hadn’t.

I got asked to join the worship band. I said yes. I didn’t know any of the songs, and got really upset about it. On the Friday night, I broke down in my friend’s room, and confessed to him why I thought I couldn’t be a Christian…he began to point out bible verses to me talking about God’s forgiveness. He took me through the basics of Christianity, and prayed with me. I became a Christian that night. I was bouncing around full of the Holy Spirit for about a week. Timely, since it was the AUCU Mission Week!

Just over a month later, my friend who I’d invited along to Alpha became a Christian too.

At the end of my first year, I was asked if I could write my testimony to go on the CU website and I wrote this…

“I know that if someone who was as ‘un-Christian’ as me can become a Christian, then anything is possible – because this is the way God has made it. I had scarely become a Christian myself when someone I thought would never believe became a Christian too. It’s great to be proven wrong sometimes.

If you see me around Aberdeen, you’ll notice that I’m probably wearing a pendant round my neck. It’s the icthus sign with the cross inside it. My friend bought it before she came to uni not knowing what she was going to do with it and gave it as a gift to me soon after I became a Christian…it reminds me of the work that God is doing around us and through us…even when we don’t realise it’s happening – as He constantly has to say to me “Look at the new thing I’m going to do. It is already happening. Don’t you see it?“…”

The lies spoken into our lives

Before I went away to Momentum I got a little bit hurt by the words of some Christians that I respect and care about. I don’t think I realised how much their comments had eaten into me until some of the conversations that came up during my time driving down there, or during some of the talks I sat and listened to.

It never ceases to amaze me how we can become so arrogant about our ability to ‘know’ others. It takes time – quantity and quality time – to get to know a person. And I know I’ve written off people in my arrogance and ignorance, and know I’ve had it done to me a time or two.

There’s nothing more devaluing or that makes you feel worthless and question yourself or what God has done in your life than having something quite critical spoken over you.

It’s tough enough when it is true, but it’s even more tough when it isn’t true.

Especially when it comes from within people you thought were on your side.

Especially when it speaks into something you and God have mostly sorted because it is some of things you have actually dealt with as opposed to the things you really struggle with.

I’m thankful that I have friends that have spoken truth into my life. They are the ones who I know who are highly unlikely to lie to me just to make me feel better.

And I’m thankful for a lot of my blog community too. You guys are tops! People questioned whether I should be as open as I am about my life and faith and relationship with God warts and all earlier this year, and whether you realised it or not your comments on some of my posts, the e-mails you sent to me…they were the signs I needed to know that I needed to keep on what God has called me to do in life, which is to stand firm in my beliefs and the truths He has taught me in various ways and try never to lose my integrity. And to speak out, to start the discussion…

Some of us, we’ve been told lies about how we should live out our faith, and ‘do’ church.

We’re told we need to have it sorted. Put on the smile. We shouldn’t be ill, we shouldn’t doubt, we shouldn’t struggle. And if we do, we just take it to God behind closed doors and don’t talk about it. Especially if we’re in leadership position.

Because how will anyone come to know Jesus if they see us angry, scared, failing, confused, crying in anguish, sick or struggling with the circumstances that we find ourselves in life?

It’s a load of crap folks.

You know why?

Because God is only strong in our weakness.

The pain brings us to a deeper reliance on God.

And if we are healed of anything it can only be for His glory, as miracles are signs of heaven coming down to earth. All miracles in the bible were so that people came to believe in God. They weren’t miracles for the sake of miracles.

God has healed me of many things amazingly over the years. He helped me to forgive people. He healed me of an addiction to self harm. He helped me off a path of self destruction. He taught me how to rest. He healed my Dad from a life threatening condition. He brought me through the hurt and pain after losing my first (and probably only) child. Even more incredibly He released me from the guilt about the part I had in that happening in the first place.

But I also still get colds and sinus infections that last for weeks on end. And I still have to get injections of hormones every 3 months. And I still can’t eat or drink lots of things without getting migraines or spending 24 hours in a bathroom. And I still can’t play my guitar for more than 10 minutes without my wrist ending up in a splint for days after. And sometimes I get angry about the things God asks me to do, like love my enemies. And sometimes when I get hurt, I turn on God and question his trustworthiness when I can’t see past the pain to the bigger picture.

Open your bible and read my fellow broken people…because you will then see that God picks those who are foolish, those who aren’t so eloquent or competent, those who are weak, those who are trembling.

He doesn’t often pick the ones who are already accomplished, celebrated, acknowledged or sorted.

Christians are not any more intellectual, better dressed, more physically attractive or more eloquently spoken that those who don’t believe in our God. The only thing that makes us different is the presence of Jesus in our lives.

The power of imaginary make up

We had an impromptu smallgroup barbecue on Sunday afternoon (and it didn’t even rain…woot!) mainly so as smallgroupers we could make the sacrifice of serving Bringonthejoy and TheStateThatIAmIn by consuming a lot of leftover puddings they had from BOTJ’s leaving party the evening before as pictured below…

NB: I notice Jesus is there, suspiciously near some bottles of water…I wonder what he’s planning?

But you know, Miss S, she’s started a sort of beauty salon and when Gavin arrived she used her skills to turn him into ‘a handsome prince’. Here is Gavin in the make up chair as Miss S shows off her face painting skills…

What do you mean you can’t tell the difference?! (you guys lack imagination…honestly…)

Later another of our smallgroupers came along and she visited Miss S’s shop and became a pirate…

…just another day in the life of our smallgroup…

We do honestly you know, pray and read the bible and stuff as well as doing the eating of yummy food and the silliness (sometimes we multi-task and do both at the same time).

In fact, we’re about to start working on a set of studies based on a book by Bill Hybels called ‘Just Walk Across The Room‘. As the majority of our group consists on introverts, this could be interesting! I’m sure we’ll be letting you know how it goes via the blogosphere…