slacking

Its my birthday today, so a very lazy post. Here's a picture.

On second thoughts, no, it was taking too long to upload and my beer's getting warm.

There seem to be lots of interesting conversations about leadership going round at the moment. There seem to be a number of tensions in church life which they revolve around:
Tension 1: between being a gathered church with a town-wide ministry, and trying to help people live their Christian lives in their neighbourhood.

Tension 2: between having a plan and a sense of direction, and being open to God's surprises

Tension 3: between letting the lovely building you have inherited shape the ministry and outreach of the church, and letting the mission and ministry you want to have shape the way you use (or don't use) the building.

Tension 4: between the style of leadership that leaders are comfortable with, and the style the church needs.

Tension 5: between the nature of the church as a body, in which all exercise gifts in free response to God's grace, and the nature of the church as an organisation which deals with other organisations in real time, where sometimes paid staff seem to be the best way forward.

Tension 6: between the urgency of the gospel and the peace of God, and how to abide in the peace of Jesus and be enthusiastic and energised at the same time.

Tension 7: between working primarily for my own church/denomination and trying to build up what they do, and recognising that perhaps other churches are in a better position to do certain things than we are. Do we leave most of the youth work up to the community church? Is it ok to have several churches working on one estate, on different projects, or do we need to organise and co-ordinate it all under a single leadership? I find this one tough because the CofE trains you to think territorially, so every inch of ground is in someone's parish. When we make the Kingdom of God co-extensive with our own church activites , we're in trouble.

biblically speaking, 7 is a complete number, so that's enough tension for now. Need a beer just to unwind....