The Reader

Went to watch ‘The Reader’ at the weekend. It’s a great film with a terrific performance by ‘what’s her name’, Kate Winslet. It’s difficult to say too much without giving the story away in some way like they do in the cinema magazines, but it’s well worth seeing. It’s been our first team leaders gathering of the year this week and good to meet up again with everyone. When sharing stuff for prayer today, we discovered no less than five children between us are off abroad later this year. Four of them, like Emily, are off on mission trips with different mission agencies, but one is off to Afghanistan with the army. No doubt I’ll be anxious when my youngest travels off on her trip, but I know my colleague Jez will be more so about his son. It kind of brings into sharp relief the discrepancy we’re always finding in the church about what roles we uphold for prayer and support, the daft nature of that and how we undermine the sense of calling many have into roles not paid for by the church in some way. I forgot to take my camera this month and, therefore, missed the brilliantly sunny, but frosty morning today – great to walk out though before breakfast. One of the challenges this year for many churches and charities is bound to be the impact of the credit crunch – it’s great we received so much for Home Mission for 2008, but this year wont be any easier. The other challenge, which has gone a little deeper through this week, is how dependent we remain on providing a full-time paid person to initiate new church plants – we have to re-uncover some other approaches.