I reckon it's such and important and helpful thing to show people what living the values will look like. I'm in the middle of thinking about values and stuff like that so this was well timed.B. We bless
Each week we aspire to bless others in our Christian community and local neighbourhood in word, action or gift at least three times.L. We listen
Each week we aspire to listen to God, looking for him to guide us through his word and Spirit. And we listen to people around us to understand their stories and the story of our culture.E. We eat
Each week we aspire to eat or have a drink with people outside our immediate family at least three times, offering friendship and community.S. We speak
Each week we aspire to tell people the story of Jesus and our story of Jesus, making Jesus a normal part of our conversations. And we speak to God through prayer, recognising our dependence on him in all things.S. We sabbath
Each week we aspire to spend time in rest, praise, play, partying and creativity.
The life of a Crowded House Christian
Tim Chester has posted 5 'rhythms' which describe what living out their core values will look like. It looks pretty good to me.
While we're down
We're just about to catch the plane! These are some of the things we're going to be up to on our trip to Tassie:
- Visiting a couple of the churches to ask them to pray for us as we work towards planting a church
- Going to the church planting conference
- Having a dinner with some of the keen young blokes
- Going for a prayer walk in Glenorchy with James B
- Spending time with a few ministers and asking for advice
- Catching up with a few friends
- Breathing Tasmanian air
German beer and sausages
We had a few guys from church over last night for Weihenstephaner and bratwurst. It was pretty great. We tried 6 different beers and ate the sausages with sauerkraut, mustard and not-very-German pita bread.It was great fun and so nice to actually spend time with
those guys aside from the few minutes each week at church.Next stop: Belgium!
* These photos are a dramatic reconstruction only! I was too busy cooking, eating and drinking to take photos.
Taking time out
One of the pieces of advice Stetzer and Putman gave in Breaking the Missional Code is for church planters and leaders to make sure they have regular and decent holidays and to make a point of travelling around to learn from other leaders. This helps give you distance and freedom to be creative and get inspired again.
On reflection, that's been one of the best things about coming to Sydney for a few years. I think about ministry in Hobart very differently to how I did before.
As I was thinking about this with Bron we realised that this is exactly what David and Brian have been doing with their visits to the US and UK. Mikey and Nikki have done it with Adelaide and about to in Seattle and Dan was telling me a couple of weeks ago that this is what his holiday in Sydney was like. Bron even had 1 week of that written into her work contract. It's been screaming out at me all along. I definitely want to make sure I do this, I know how drained and uninspired I get when I'm just stuck in a routine.
On reflection, that's been one of the best things about coming to Sydney for a few years. I think about ministry in Hobart very differently to how I did before.
As I was thinking about this with Bron we realised that this is exactly what David and Brian have been doing with their visits to the US and UK. Mikey and Nikki have done it with Adelaide and about to in Seattle and Dan was telling me a couple of weeks ago that this is what his holiday in Sydney was like. Bron even had 1 week of that written into her work contract. It's been screaming out at me all along. I definitely want to make sure I do this, I know how drained and uninspired I get when I'm just stuck in a routine.
Hobart statistics
The other night I got distracted and spent ages on the Bureau of Statistics' website. They've got heaps of cool stuff. It's been a good to have the chance to look through it and think about church planting in Glenorchy and also throughout the rest of Hobart. Here are some of the useful studies I found:
Hobart suburbs - a general survey that looks at population, age, gender, occupation, income, family composition and stuff like that by suburb.
Hobart, a social atlas - this one maps out the info from the Hobart Suburbs survey. Some of the pictures really highlight the 'flannel curtain'.
General social survey - looks at how people relate, social involvement, housing and stuff like that.
Literacy skills - not a Hobart specific study but the info is broken down by state. Almost 50% of Tasmanians don't have the basic prose skills for everyday life, worse than any other state.
I'll post some more about it when I've had a chance to process the info. Do you know of any other places to get this sort of information?
Hobart suburbs - a general survey that looks at population, age, gender, occupation, income, family composition and stuff like that by suburb.
Hobart, a social atlas - this one maps out the info from the Hobart Suburbs survey. Some of the pictures really highlight the 'flannel curtain'.
General social survey - looks at how people relate, social involvement, housing and stuff like that.
Literacy skills - not a Hobart specific study but the info is broken down by state. Almost 50% of Tasmanians don't have the basic prose skills for everyday life, worse than any other state.
I'll post some more about it when I've had a chance to process the info. Do you know of any other places to get this sort of information?
Ed Stetzer training the trainers
I'm reading Breaking the Missional Code by Ed Stetzer and David Putman at the moment. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the things I'd been reading before I started it and it's been a real breath of fresh air.
Anyway, Friendly Ed has just told me that according to a study he's done on 601 church planters, churches that consider evangelism training a factor in their growth tend to be smaller than those that don't. Training people in evangelism leads to smaller, less evangelistically effective churches. It's science.
He suggests that this is because people who've trained tend to take a more programmatic approach to evangelism. He says that we live in an age when people have a totally different worldview. They need the time to see what you're like and understand a different worldview if they're going to trust in Jesus.
Tripping huh?
Anyway, Friendly Ed has just told me that according to a study he's done on 601 church planters, churches that consider evangelism training a factor in their growth tend to be smaller than those that don't. Training people in evangelism leads to smaller, less evangelistically effective churches. It's science.
He suggests that this is because people who've trained tend to take a more programmatic approach to evangelism. He says that we live in an age when people have a totally different worldview. They need the time to see what you're like and understand a different worldview if they're going to trust in Jesus.
Tripping huh?
Australia
Epic in Outback, a kids movie really.
That's our seven word review. We didn't hate it, but didn't really get it either. What on earth were they trying to do? Anyway, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon when it's 40 degrees outside. Plus, free tickets are always nice. Thanks A & K.
That's our seven word review. We didn't hate it, but didn't really get it either. What on earth were they trying to do? Anyway, there are worse ways to spend an afternoon when it's 40 degrees outside. Plus, free tickets are always nice. Thanks A & K.
Worship Evangelism
Swordfish Stetzer recommended Sally Morgenthaler's Worship Evangelism in his book Planting Missional Churches. I picked it up from the College library and I'm glad I did.
Its main focus is on evangelism through church worship but like most books on church planting/church growth she goes into the statistics of recent church decline. Her strength is that she powerfully shows our spiritual weakness as well as numerical. It's a really helpful approach to balance against the hardcore pragmatism of most books on church planting.
Its main focus is on evangelism through church worship but like most books on church planting/church growth she goes into the statistics of recent church decline. Her strength is that she powerfully shows our spiritual weakness as well as numerical. It's a really helpful approach to balance against the hardcore pragmatism of most books on church planting.
Sadly, the source of David's power, a passionate worship relationship with God, is almost foreign to the contemporary born-again experience. Many do not know the meaning of longing after God as a deer longs for water. We may long after exponential growth figures and five-thousand-seat sanctuaries, but if we are honest, not very many of us truly long after God. Rather, we tend to settle for God at a comfortable distance. The irony is, we are now inviting the lost to replicate what is basically a very stunted relationship!
Reflections on Planting Growing Churches by Aubrey Malphurs
The strength of this book is that it gives you an idea of a heap of the things you need to think through if you're planting a church. I thought Malphurs' best stuff was on the 'are you a church planter/where do you fit into the picture' stuff. He's written a few other books focussed on that side of things and on the vision/planning stuff and I'll definitely get onto them when I have the chance.There have also been heaps of little gems scattered throughout the book. I've posted a few of them and I'll probably add a couple more. Again, these gems are mostly about the organisation and planning side of things.
However, I couldn't help feeling like the sort of church he's talking about planting could very easily flourish with almost nothing other than transfer growth. I think it might be because, in contrast to Stetzer, he's left evangelism mostly out of the picture. His focus is on leadership and the development of a baby church rather than on the way you get there. He talks about setting up your church for growth in the way you teach, staff and organise but not about the actual evangelism. So the church sounds awesome but I just fear it would be an awesome church filled with Christians who came because it's better than their old church. For what it does it's really useful but that needs to be taken into account if you're using it to start planning a church plant.
He's also pretty down on small churches, he reckons that every church should be growing. I dig that in a way but I think he makes too much of that and not enough of churches planting churches. If a church has no desire and puts no effort in to grow then there's something wrong. But if a church stays small for whatever reason (context, gifts of pastor, trouble with venues) and plant churches then they're still growing in a significant way.
I think Stetzer excited me because his focus was on reaching non-Christians. Malphurs was less exciting for me because he was more about how to set things up but I definitely need that sort of info. Overall it's a good book and was definitely worth a read.
Malphurs' Negative Growth Factors III: A Powerful Person
The third common factor making growth difficult is when...
...one layperson or a group of laypeople in the church who desire to control much of what takes place.One of his positive growth factors is in having a single, clear vision. I guess this is the negative side of it, where you have a strong competing vision. He doesn't just mean people who are doing something destructive either.
Most often their motives are noble. They want to control things so that liberalism doesn't creep into the church or to protect the people in the church from young, zealous pastors who want to change things.I reckon that's important because it helps you know how to deal with them. You don't want to go to war with them, you want to win them.
Storytelling evangelism
One of the things I want to work on this year is storytelling evangelism. I was very much inspired by The Backyard Bard's version of Elisha and I'm trying to figure out how to use it as an evangelistic tool - as one off presentations or as a series, as a version of street preaching or in homes or halls or all of the above.
The way it works is that a person learns the story while paying particular attention to the movement and characters and then tells it to the audience, pretty much word for word. It's not meant to be a dramatised performance but a retelling. I reckon Pwyll would be great at this.
A telling of Daniel 3:
It's a bit like one of my favourite tv shows from when I was 4, Tales from Fat Tulip's Garden.
The way it works is that a person learns the story while paying particular attention to the movement and characters and then tells it to the audience, pretty much word for word. It's not meant to be a dramatised performance but a retelling. I reckon Pwyll would be great at this.
A telling of Daniel 3:
It's a bit like one of my favourite tv shows from when I was 4, Tales from Fat Tulip's Garden.
Malphurs' Negative Growth Factors II: A Comfortable Community
The second of three common factors that work against church growth is in a love of comfort. This works against growth because growth means change and:
... any change is threatening.It's not just an issue for people in older churches. A new church will sooner or later find it's equillibrium.
In the field of church planting, many people who catch the vision will move out of their comfort zones and work hard initially to grow the church. But once the church is established and growing and purchases or builds a facility, some tend to relax their involvement. Their ultimate goal is to return to their comfort zones.That's one reason why Philip Jensen's mantra of 'change for change's sake' is so helpful.
Getting down to the grassroots
V100 has always emphasised training new leaders through MTS apprenticeships and college and now also through CBTE. For good reason too, we need stacks of leaders to be evangelists and plant and pastor new churches. I suspect though that an unintended consequence of this focus has been that people in our churches don't feel like they're part of the vision and haven't been empowered to take initiative. They feel like if they're not leaders then their job is to wait for leaders to organise the next church plant.
A movement driven by leaders will have some strength if the leaders are good but a movement where the congregations own and strive towards the vision will be much more effective, Obama 2.0 style.
A movement driven by leaders will have some strength if the leaders are good but a movement where the congregations own and strive towards the vision will be much more effective, Obama 2.0 style.
Tentmaking/benedictmaking ministry
One of the hugely encouraging things when we were down in Tas was in talking to Gwyd (aka Gwydibach). He's doing an MTS apprenticeship this year as well as continuing to work at Machine Cafe. The really encouraging thing was that he didn't describe it as 'part-time MTS' but as 'tentmaking'. Part-time MTS has been looked down on in the past but it's exciting to have him thinking of it consciously as a ministry option for the future is fantastic. We need a heap more like him.
Looking to the destination II
I just wanted to follow on from the post about the MTS Challenge (and help get Shelob, pretty though she may be, off the front page).
I'm not hating on the conference itself, I think it's a great idea, it's just that encouraging people to go into 'ministry' is too vague. Each Challenge conference should try to paint a picture of gospel ministry in the city/state where it's held. So for Tassie it needs to be selling V100 and showing people what kind of ministry is needed. The Challenge is then 'where do you fit into this picture?'
Then you end up with a bunch of people going to college with either a plan or at least an idea of what they're heading back into, not just hoping to score a job at the end of it. Also, the conference isn't wasted on those who don't sign up for paid ministry. They're still thinking about how they fit into that vision.
I'm not hating on the conference itself, I think it's a great idea, it's just that encouraging people to go into 'ministry' is too vague. Each Challenge conference should try to paint a picture of gospel ministry in the city/state where it's held. So for Tassie it needs to be selling V100 and showing people what kind of ministry is needed. The Challenge is then 'where do you fit into this picture?'
Then you end up with a bunch of people going to college with either a plan or at least an idea of what they're heading back into, not just hoping to score a job at the end of it. Also, the conference isn't wasted on those who don't sign up for paid ministry. They're still thinking about how they fit into that vision.
Top 5 Baby Update FAQ
I do tend to go on, so there's a quick update:
1. Have you had any weird cravings?
Yes - all the time. I crave vegetables and fruit and I've had hardly any interest for chocolate or sweet things. For me, that is weird.
2. How's the sickness/tiredness?
Much better - Thank God! The occasional bad evening every now and then (it was always evening sickness for me) but pretty much fine. Tiredness is pretty much ok too - especially now that I can have naps!
3. How far along are you?
16 weeks (it ticks over every Saturday)
4. Are you going to "find out"?
You mean the sex. Yes. And we will tell you once we do (early Feb).
5. What are you going to call it?
We're tossing up between Barry and Moonunit. You'll have to wait till it's born.
1. Have you had any weird cravings?
Yes - all the time. I crave vegetables and fruit and I've had hardly any interest for chocolate or sweet things. For me, that is weird.
2. How's the sickness/tiredness?
Much better - Thank God! The occasional bad evening every now and then (it was always evening sickness for me) but pretty much fine. Tiredness is pretty much ok too - especially now that I can have naps!
3. How far along are you?
16 weeks (it ticks over every Saturday)
4. Are you going to "find out"?
You mean the sex. Yes. And we will tell you once we do (early Feb).
5. What are you going to call it?
We're tossing up between Barry and Moonunit. You'll have to wait till it's born.
Looking to the destination
Being ruthlessly biblical is one of Sydney evangelicalism's main -and best- character traits and my Christian life has benefitted from it enormously. However, I wonder if by it we've lost some things along the way, especially with the idea of calling.
The notion of the 'call to ministry' in its best sense produces people who are completely devoted to a vision for ministry. However, the rhetoric of the MTS Challenge tends to reject this idea as unbiblical and instead challenges people to think of a good reason why they shouldn't do ministry. This has been a great spur to heaps of people who definitely should have been challenged but I suspect it also creates a group who feel obliged to do ministry but don't have any vision for it beyond that.
Bron's metaphor for the MTS Challenge is this: it puts most of its energy into getting people on the train instead of telling people about the destination. It's focussed on you not on the goal.
So perhaps the MTS Challenge, while increasing the number of people studying at college, actually makes it harder to plant churches because it's not good at selling a vision for it.
The notion of the 'call to ministry' in its best sense produces people who are completely devoted to a vision for ministry. However, the rhetoric of the MTS Challenge tends to reject this idea as unbiblical and instead challenges people to think of a good reason why they shouldn't do ministry. This has been a great spur to heaps of people who definitely should have been challenged but I suspect it also creates a group who feel obliged to do ministry but don't have any vision for it beyond that.
Bron's metaphor for the MTS Challenge is this: it puts most of its energy into getting people on the train instead of telling people about the destination. It's focussed on you not on the goal.
So perhaps the MTS Challenge, while increasing the number of people studying at college, actually makes it harder to plant churches because it's not good at selling a vision for it.
Malphurs' Negative Growth Factors I: A Family Atmosphere
In Planting Growing Churches Malphurs lists three common factors which work against the growth of churches.
The first common negative factor is the desire to mintain a family atmosphere in the church.His reasoning is that people put commitment to other members, the meeting place and the concept of community ahead of striving to grow. The church may say it's about growing and reaching out but it'll never happen while its members' hearts aren't in it.
While there's nothing wrong with people caring about one another, they really aren't a church in the biblical sense. These people have missed the Great Commision mandate. They're not pursuing, evangelizing, and edifying lost people. These clans exist exclusively for themselves. It's all in-reach with no outreach.Instead of being dissatisfied by their size we love our small, community oriented churches. I wonder how often our meagre results are caused by this self-sabotage?
My church planting reading list
I've read these ones:
Ed Stetzer, Planting Missional Churches
Aubrey Malphurs, Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century
I've got these ones on my shelf:
Lyle E. Schaller, 44 Questions for Church Planters
Aubrey Malphurs, Advanced strategic planning : a new model for church and ministry leaders
Aubrey Malphurs, Developing a vision for ministry in the 21st century
Ed Stetzer, Breaking the missional code: your church can become a missionary in your community
Sally Morganthaler, Worship evangelism : inviting unbelievers into the presence of God
These are still on the list:
Tom Jones, Church Planting from the Ground Up
Charles Van Engen, God's Missionary People: Rethinking the Purpose of the Local Church
Peter C. Wagner, Church planting for a greater harvest
I got some recommendations from the Acts 29 reading list and others from Swordfish Stetzer and elsewhere. Do you know of others that are worth a read?
Ed Stetzer, Planting Missional Churches
Aubrey Malphurs, Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century
I've got these ones on my shelf:
Lyle E. Schaller, 44 Questions for Church Planters
Aubrey Malphurs, Advanced strategic planning : a new model for church and ministry leaders
Aubrey Malphurs, Developing a vision for ministry in the 21st century
Ed Stetzer, Breaking the missional code: your church can become a missionary in your community
Sally Morganthaler, Worship evangelism : inviting unbelievers into the presence of God
These are still on the list:
Tom Jones, Church Planting from the Ground Up
Charles Van Engen, God's Missionary People: Rethinking the Purpose of the Local Church
Peter C. Wagner, Church planting for a greater harvest
I got some recommendations from the Acts 29 reading list and others from Swordfish Stetzer and elsewhere. Do you know of others that are worth a read?
Becoming institutionalised
One of the dangers of Bible college is that it can train people into passivity. Meals are cooked for us, prayer groups are set up, pretty much all of life gets organised for you. Denominational stuff is the same, you're in the system and you don't need to do much to stay afloat as the current carries you along. Even if you've got some initiative it's very hard to do anything different.
That, I think, is one of the real challenges for any church planting movement and one of the reasons why I think the CBTE stuff makes so much sense. People really need to have a clear vision for the future before they go to college because it's hard enough to hang onto one while you're there.
That, I think, is one of the real challenges for any church planting movement and one of the reasons why I think the CBTE stuff makes so much sense. People really need to have a clear vision for the future before they go to college because it's hard enough to hang onto one while you're there.
Happy Birthday Nick!
Today is Nick's birthday. To start off the day I made him Eggs Benedict, complete with hollandaise sauce. You can check it out on my food blog, Delicious (for want of a better title!)The food blog is something I started as a bit of a portfolio back when I was looking for jobs last time. I'd intended to keep it going but then I got a job so you know, it kind of fell by the wayside.
Last night I had farewell drinks with the guys from work. It was really lovely to see them all again but a bit sad as I miss working with such a cool bunch of people! Anne asked me what kind of company I'd like to try and find work with and I said "One like this!" Anyway, we'll see.
The guys all chipped in and bought each of us a farewell present. As always they were very cool, very well presented and thoughtfully chosen. I got a book called Breakfast Lunch Tea from the Rose Bakery. It's absolutely beautiful!
Well, enough about work and food. I'm off to spend the rest of the day doing fun stuff with the birthday boy!
It's 34 degrees in the shade outside our back door. Weather man says it's only going to get worse! Arg. Give me 21 and early drizzle any day (but not like... every day though)
Iain Murray on the Puritans
The other day I listened to Iain Murray talking about what we can learn from the Puritans. It was a real encouragement to me and supplemented my diet of church planting books nicely.
Nicked off Brian Ingraham's blog.
Nicked off Brian Ingraham's blog.
Our Baby (eggplant)
It's well and truly time for a garden update. Especially now that we have awesomely fast internets.
It was terribly sunny today and I took these photos around noon so that's why everything is wilted. Here's my bed at the community garden:
At the front you can see some basil seedlings, some beetroots (on the right), some sad looking tomato plants (tied to the stakes) and the big foliage of the eggplants. It's funny, I always assumed eggplants grew on big bushes, but these are less than a foot high. Behind that is another plot (the beds are L shaped and they're divided into two at the corner)
Check out the gorgeous baby eggplant:
It was terribly sunny today and I took these photos around noon so that's why everything is wilted. Here's my bed at the community garden:
At the front you can see some basil seedlings, some beetroots (on the right), some sad looking tomato plants (tied to the stakes) and the big foliage of the eggplants. It's funny, I always assumed eggplants grew on big bushes, but these are less than a foot high. Behind that is another plot (the beds are L shaped and they're divided into two at the corner) Check out the gorgeous baby eggplant:
Connected!
The internet is back on and better than ever!
Three looooooong phonecalls later, some furniture re-arranged and a slightly too short cable circumventing the dodgy old King St wireless router.... and we have internets!
The guy had pretty much given up and was talking to his supervisor about possibly replacing our modem but while I was on hold I did a bit of cable stretching and managed to get our pc plugged straight in to the modem. Lo and behold - it works! Properly! Not sure why the mac didn't work when it was plugged in directly, but hey, I can call them about that later (when Nick brings it back from the internet cafe)
Ahh. This is the best, fastest internet I've had in ages. Cables rock.
Three looooooong phonecalls later, some furniture re-arranged and a slightly too short cable circumventing the dodgy old King St wireless router.... and we have internets!
The guy had pretty much given up and was talking to his supervisor about possibly replacing our modem but while I was on hold I did a bit of cable stretching and managed to get our pc plugged straight in to the modem. Lo and behold - it works! Properly! Not sure why the mac didn't work when it was plugged in directly, but hey, I can call them about that later (when Nick brings it back from the internet cafe)
Ahh. This is the best, fastest internet I've had in ages. Cables rock.
Values
I'm about halfway through Planting Growing Churches by Aubrey Malphurs and I just read a bit I thought was worth sharing. He makes an extremely helpful distinction between actual and aspirational values.
Actual values are the beliefs they own and act on regularly. Aspirational values are those the church planter or church doesn't presently own but desires to own. It's important that the leader distinguish between the two or risk losing credibility when drafting a values statement. For example, to state that the church values evangelism when no one has come to the faith through its ministry hurts the leader's integrity and results in confusion and misdirection.It'll help the minister's integrity but I reckon it'll also save the church from a fair bit of guilt.
Sometimes things can change really fast
Today I went to work on the bus. I listened to my mp3 player and fiddled with my pda, checking and making plans and making sure I was up with everything I had to do.
This morning was pretty good. I got a fair bit done, and I worked hard. Just as I was about to go to lunch me and another guy got called in to a suprise meeting. You know when someone tells you bad news with a straight face how there's that voice in your head that goes "they must be joking. Surely they're gonna crack in a minute and it'll all be a big laugh". No joke, I've been made redundant, effective immediately.
The company I work for is feeling the pressure of the financial crisis. There simply isn't enough work. So they've made two redundancies. They weren't based on performance or importance, me and J just happened to be the most recent employees.
I know that God will keep looking after us. I'm not angry or hurt, I'm just a bit sad and disappointed. I really enjoyed the job, and it seems they liked me too. I've had glowing reviews, and just received a lovely email from a friend at work saying how I would be sorely missed.
As I said in my response to her, I don't have any bad feelings towards the company. I'm proud to have worked there and thankful for having a job which I enjoyed so much, and to have worked with such lovely and cool people. I'd glad for what I've learnt and most of all I feel that the company have given me a real boost in confidence. Never before had I had such a good job where I felt appreciated, where I felt like the company cared about doing things well, where I wanted to contribute good work - even if that just meant doing the filing before it was asked of me or making sure there was always milk in the fridge.
This morning was pretty good. I got a fair bit done, and I worked hard. Just as I was about to go to lunch me and another guy got called in to a suprise meeting. You know when someone tells you bad news with a straight face how there's that voice in your head that goes "they must be joking. Surely they're gonna crack in a minute and it'll all be a big laugh". No joke, I've been made redundant, effective immediately.
The company I work for is feeling the pressure of the financial crisis. There simply isn't enough work. So they've made two redundancies. They weren't based on performance or importance, me and J just happened to be the most recent employees.
I know that God will keep looking after us. I'm not angry or hurt, I'm just a bit sad and disappointed. I really enjoyed the job, and it seems they liked me too. I've had glowing reviews, and just received a lovely email from a friend at work saying how I would be sorely missed.
As I said in my response to her, I don't have any bad feelings towards the company. I'm proud to have worked there and thankful for having a job which I enjoyed so much, and to have worked with such lovely and cool people. I'd glad for what I've learnt and most of all I feel that the company have given me a real boost in confidence. Never before had I had such a good job where I felt appreciated, where I felt like the company cared about doing things well, where I wanted to contribute good work - even if that just meant doing the filing before it was asked of me or making sure there was always milk in the fridge.
Tim Chester posted a Bible reading plan that they've developed for their church. Check it out, it's early enough in the year for you to jump on board if you like it. Maybe you could do it with your Bible study group.
Happy new year and all that
Bron and I moved house on new year's day. It was a total breeze. We got a truck, Dan came round, we loaded it, emptied it at the new place and dropped the truck back at the rental place, all in under 2 hours.
The new house is much nicer than the last couple even though it's pink on the outside. You should come round.
Bron's at work again today and I have a busy month ahead but we're both well, Bron's morning sickness seems to be diminishing which is a beautiful thing.
The new house is much nicer than the last couple even though it's pink on the outside. You should come round.
Bron's at work again today and I have a busy month ahead but we're both well, Bron's morning sickness seems to be diminishing which is a beautiful thing.
