Giving Jesus a bed for the night.

The church of which i'm part has agreed to a contract offered by the local council to run emergency sheltered accommodation for rough sleepers through the winter. This means using our building, time, personnel and other resources dramatically differently from how we have been until now.

WWWWwwwwwooooooooooooooooooooooooo - Hhhhhhhhooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Exciting. Terrifying. Huge massive big deal. Only the beginning?

What's brilliant about this is:
How the move is seen and understood by the church as something truly 'gospel', something we can't as Christians deny or shirk.

The preparedness to address the wealth and complexity of 'how' questions in order to make it happen, rather than use the 'how' questions as reasons not to go ahead with it.

The fact that we will now have something of real substance around which to gather, theologise, worship and serve.

What's of concern, and worthy of further reflection is:
That it's taken an invitation from local government and financial payment for us to start doing this. If Jesus is our Lord, and not government or money, we ought to have been doing it already, or we need to exceed the terms of service agreed.

The potential for this work to continue but as a separate project from the church; rather than it be something the church does, it becoming something the church allows to happen so it can get on with its 'proper religious business'.

Other thoughts include:
My excitement over having large amounts of ministerial time taken up by night-time service to homeless people meaning that there could be a void of 'Sunday stuff' and pastoral stuff for the wider church to fill. I'm excited that this could force a fuller recognition of what 'community' means, ie. what it is to belong to one another and to take responsibility for one another, as well as for our religious practise. This has to be preferable to attitudes that look to be served and catered to.

The council has offered some of its resources from when it was running the scheme, things like camp beds, but most importantly two industrial washer dryers. The question of where we put these is a big one. Personally, i'd love them to go into the chapel space where they could also serve as an altar. Such an act could save us from any intentions of looking to continue to separate our 'holy spaces' from the nitty gritty of our work with 'the least' - like the two aren't radically intertwined!

Anyway, i'm sure you'll hear much more on this as it all continues to unfold. For now though, Wwwwwwwwooooooooooooooo - Hhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

Six Random Facts Meme.

Been tagged by Glen Marshall

The Rules:

*Link to the person who tagged you.
*Post the rules on your blog.
*Write six random things about yourself.
*Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
*Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
*Let the tagger know when your entry is up.


1. I wanted to be a footballer, a pilot, a policeman, a missionary, an archaeologist and an actor when i grew up.
2. Mushrooms make me think of mould, slugs and ear lobes. I cannot abide them.
3. I can juggle basketballs.
4. I sometimes wonder how different my life would be if i were just 3 inches taller.
5. My first French kiss was in France. It was on a school trip, i was 11. She was Helen Ketteridge, she was 12.
6. I got a 'G' in GCSE RE. Ha!

My six tagees ... ASBO Jesus, Blake Huggins, Dan Hussey, Gareth Higgins, Rob Reed
sarcasmo

On a lighter note...

Well, October has been quite a month for several reasons i shan't go into here. Suffice to say this post is in relation to a few things which have served as distractions.

Tottenham - What the...?
Bottom of the table? Ramos, unable to identify his player's abilities or inabilities, proceeds in picking teams, week-in-week-out, which have no semblance of rhyme or reason. Comolli smugly sat, fantasising about being a premiership manager. Levy desperately trying to work out how to save his own skin.

Cue 'Arry Redknapp - TA-DA! Comolli, Ramos and coaching staff sacked, Pavlychenko scores, Spurs get first win of the season and then, after being 3-1 down, draw 4-4 with the gooners - away!

What on Earth next? Watch this space.

TV - Police procedurals.
Dexter is brilliant. Like Quincy... only Quincy's a psychopath. Serial killers have never been portrayed so favourably. Balances really well its dark subject matter with quirky humour. Unlike...

The Wire, which is just gritty. And i don't mean gritty like a eating a sandwich on the beach, i mean gritty like eating rocks on a scree slope. Its realism and moral complexity even gets two pages worth of mention and theological reflection in John D. Caputo's 'What would Jesus Deconstruct?'.

Quantum of Solace - Moore is less.
Craig is still brilliant, the action is still amped, it's more stylistic then any Bond before it, the plot is credible while still being Bondian, so why is it unsatisfying?
The action is too amped. It looks like it's been edited by a whole class of kids whose Ritalin has been cruelly exchanged for candyfloss. It is riding purely on the back of the emotional investment in Casino Royale, which negates any reason for having any of its own.
And, where Royale stripped lots of Bond lores back but still remained very 'Bond', this seems to have stripped more back (though what, i'm not sure), but it's at its expense. No 'Bond, James Bond', no Q or Moneypenny, no theme (until the credits), no Martini, No bacarat (or hold 'em), and no shooting down the gun barrel (until the credits).
Still worth a look, but there's something, erm, empty, about it. One positive comment it does make is to show how pseudo-environmentalism has become a tool for the powerful. But even this this is a little hard to swallow given the glut of sponsorship from C*ke, S*ny, B*rcl*ys, F*rd and Om*ga et al.