October…

So I haven’t blogged since the start of my FP year so were to come back in… It’s always good fun…

This image captures my inner animal...

I’ll start off with October. So October consisted of an FP training block where we looked at the Doctrine of God, Social Action and Personal Development. For the Doctrine of God we looked at a lot of things ranging from “How do we know God exists?” to “Knowing God”. It was a great session where we looked at how we can see God in creation, miracles and human morals amongst other things. It is amazing that some of the world’s best minds understood some of these things yet it is very much played down forinstance Albert Einstein said:

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.”

We briefly looked at philosophical arguments which went straight over my head, guess that means I’m not a great philosopher. But on the plus side I felt at ease when this statement was made:
“The moment we understand the mind of God is the moment we become God.”

And

“While we can know God and know about God – this does not mean we can know God fully.”
That is at least a bit of relief when I think I know only a fraction about what God is like.

We then Got on to Social Action. Personally I didn’t get as much out of it as the Doctrine of God session because I don’t feel called to serve in that area. Don’t get me wrong it was interesting it just didn’t float my boat. It was interesting though that the church which the speaker came from have bought some houses in order to help homeless people, who are often also alcoholics or drug addicts. It is a great idea to help get people back on their feet. They also run a mid week meal for homeless people and have a small gospel talk, which is a great way to help and impact the homeless community.

We then did a session on Personal Development. We looked at was to grow spiritually using ‘Spiritual Growth Plans’.  We started off by identifying areas we would like/ need to grow in. Two of my areas were confidence and the other is time management. Later on in the blog updates you’ll find out how these are going I’m sure. We then had a session on ‘Decision Making’ great I thought this would sort me out because I used to be indecisive but now I’m not sure… Sorry had to get that one in. I do have a problem with making decisions because I am worried I will upset someone when I make a decision, which I’m sure a lot of people don’t know about me and just assume that I don’t like making decisions for other reasons. An encouraging thing was that the New Testament is mainly about who we are meant to be not where we are meant to be. This has meant that I am free to make decisions about where I want to do things especially next year. There were a few questions/statements at the end of the notes on this section that are very much about learn to do stuff in your home before trying it overseas, which is good because I don’t really want to go abroad now, even though I did want to go to Japan in the early days. It just seems unrealistic now. There is also a bit saying learn the lessons that God has for you in this season. Well this seems to be money management and relationship stuff. So I’m giving it my best shot. We then did a bit on ‘Developing Others’ and team work. There were a few sessions of practical application where we had to get to an underlying problem with the use of questions only. We learnt that using open ended questions were an easier way to open people up and get to the core of the problem. Team work is the next port of call. We started off with the challenge of raising someone off the ground 2cm and for 10 seconds and before the other team using paper toothpicks and balloons.. We saw Phil C’s true nature when he went over to the other team and decided to start popping the other teams balloons. I would like to point out not all of us agreed to this. So as we know, team work is key, especially when it involves the business world.

We also had a forum where the guys and girls split up to talk on respective things that we are struggling with and how we can help one another. This was really good. So that’s the recap of October. There will be a steady stream of updates over the next month to try and catch up with my posts…

Amongst all this we had the delight of going to Hazel and Jam’s wedding.This was a really great day war, sunny and they looked great together. I was apparently trying to be James Bond…

Let Blogging Commence…

So… the blogging begins…

I tried to stay away from the blogging and twitter scene because I thought that facebook was bad enough with status updates every half hour from certain people. You know who you are!

I have been asked to start blogging for the Crown Church and the student page, so thought I’d practice on my own blog first.

So for those of you who don’t know I am taking a year to volunteer for my church in Hillingdon on a part office part theological training scheme as part of the New Frontier’s “Frontier Project Impact” (FP). This consists office admin duties, which includes printing and photocopying for people serving on a Sunday to answering the phone; Student work, which includes helping students settle into the church and setting up events for the students of the church and the local Universities. I also have the privilege of doing any of the dogsbodying on Sunday mornings like fixing anything that’s broken, from blown bulbs in the Stage lighting to the shelves in the churches supboards.

Once a month the FPers converge on Wimbledon’s Queens Road Church for 3 days of theological training. On the 12th September the first training block took place. Seeing as this was the first it was scheduled for 5 days, as a posed to 3 days which the rest of the blocks will be. ” days of getting to know one another and then a session on ‘Why Theology Matters?’. A few games later and I had met at least half the group of 29 FPers. Then on the Wednesday was the ‘Doctrine of Scripture’. This was really good. It was very interesting the way in which the modern bible came together and how they decided what was to go in and what wasn’t. Then there was a session on which versions are literal or loose translations and which are dynamic equivalent. Turns out the ESV is very literal and the NIV is a dynamic equivalent. We also had a bit on spiritual disciplines, prayer and reading the bible. They were very helpful but by this time it was Thursday and I was very tired having met new people and taken in a lot of the teachings.

On the less serious side we were split into tribes and had to come up with a name for our tribe. We managed to come up with the name of ‘Cookie Dough Giraffes’… not my first choice… or second really, but that is the one the group went for so it was done. We played balloon Tennis/Netball/Football game. This was where a memeber of a team stands on a chair at the opposite end of the room to us and we play against another team with the aim of hitting the balloon to the person on the chair whilst stopping the other team achieve the same thing. It turned out we were amazing… 3 wins out of 3. Then it went to a four way match with 3 balloons and the first to 2… we came in second by a fraction of a second (well done to Heather for using initiative and using here height as an excuse… I mean an advantage by grabbing peoples arms. lol.). Did jump for one of the balloons and landed on some ones knee… Down For The Count!!! Managed to gather myself together and then went on to get to know the guy who’s knee I landed on (Yes that was you John).

We were then set the task of creating our own Haka 

This was slightly out of my comfort zone because not only am I making a fool of myself but I also feel like others are making me look foolish. It’s probably a pride issue. It ended up being quite good fun. Although the first group set the bar far too high, which kinda helped me relax knowing we weren’t going to compare… (sorry guys but they were good).

Thus ends my first blogging experience… let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements