Change

My current writing project is well on its journey presently.

Every working day starts at 8am with my old Lenovo ThinkPad X230.

I work in an old office on the top floor of the Prayer Centre Dawn and I imagined and fruitioned when we were appointed as West London development Officers back in 2013.

Coming in every day has allowed me to watch and marvel at the transformation which has taken place.

The first Sunday service I did at the Corps that was Ealing Citadel left me cold and saddened. You have to understand Dawn and I came to London from a brilliant Church we had started where uniform wasn't important, Where worship took place every day not just on Sundays, where you could go to church at 12 midnight and find people worshipping or praying, where love acceptance and compassion was the norm. Dawn and I had always up until that point been able to create new projects from scratch. This was the very first time in our Officership we had inherited a Corps. But the situation was dire. We had been brought in to try to turn the tide of dramatic decline of the Salvation Army in West London. The first thing I saw when I entered the hall that Sunday was a lady wearing a bonnet. I nearly fainted. Then I saw a songster brigade taking there places, all five of them. The hall looked like some weird kind of heritage centre with more flags than the Royal Navy, flags which represented the Eighteen or so Corps that had closed down over the previous thirty years. The hall was really only open on a Sunday and the situation was dire. really dire.

We had been asked to turn this around.

It seemed impossible that Sunday Morning.

Dawn and I went home for our dinner that day and we don't mind saying that we seriously considered packing up and fleeing the country!

But

Four years on?

I'm sitting in a thriving Corps. Open every day, financially sound, full of people who have had their lives turned upside down by encountering a saviour they had never known. full of those who desperately need help, the homeless, the addict, the lonely, the lost.

Only one person of the original Corps survived the change.

And it was a change and a half.

I had learned very early on a very profound lesson in planting new things. This lesson stood us in good stead as this sinking ship was saved by the power of prayer and the power of God. The lesson is this. In the twenty first century, Deep change is required. You can't do incremental Change. or what some people in business call straddled change. In other words you can't hold on to things and just change a bit. many people reading this will have seen SA Corps who have tried to mix tradition and so called contemporary stuff. That is straddled change and is proven not to work. and there have been some disasters believe me.

We implemented a deep change to this project. This involved a cessation of the traditions that this particular Corps had held onto while heading further and further towards extinction and I mean a complete cessation, and a reimaging of the part we could play in saving people from destruction in the community of which we are a part, which in our case was the 3.5 million people that live in Ealing borough.

In the end.

The reimaging actually turned out to be more of a reawakening. Prayer, Hospitality, Mercy and compassion were the elements that needed to be instilled into the fabric of our work and the Spirit of God really has instilled them. Many people have been touched by the kindness of  Jesus through our amazing team and our tireless work for the kingdom.
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Why do I bring you this little glimpse of our time at Ealing, a time I could actually write a 40000 word book on if I was so inclined?

Well recently I've been undergoing a bit of a change in my life. And when I have given myself the space to think and reflect, I realised I needed not an incremental change but a deep change. So right now I am in the process of trying to change everything about my life. I've realised the things that are important to me and have to stop wasting time on the things that really aren't. I am stripping back, which as it happens is what my book is about. I am reimagining my life.

I'm so looking forward to moving to Winsford in Cheshire not only because it is close to where most of my family live, but because it will be a complete change to the intensity that living and operating in a City like London brings. obviously I want to support Dawn in her new ministry there, but I also know God is gearing me up for some new ministry opportunities too from that area.

Its a complete change for us.

And.

I am excited to be on the journey I am on to a deep change.

And.

I guess I write this as always in the hope it may help someone to focus on their own situation right now.

Maybe you need a deep change too.

Head Space

It took a long time coming.

But.

I have had to admit that my life is digitally infected.

I had an epiphany moment the other day.

I realised that notifications are the framework for my daily living.

And.

As Jurgen Klopp would say, "it's not cool."

So.

I have embarked on a very difficult treatment.

A digital detox.

I declare I am giving up my smartphone.

On order is a new phone.

A Punkt MP01.

The thing about this phone is that the Swiss company Punkt, product range is designed to carry out a digital detox.

The phone although brilliantly designed by top industrial designer Jasper Morrison, only allows you to call and text. No email, No internet, NO camera No Facebook or twitter, The tweets the likes, the loves, the posts can wait until I reach my computer.

The idea?

A less distracted life.

By no means can I give up on emails, Facebook etc all work tools to me, but they will not be dropping onto my smartphone every five minutes distracting me from real things and real life.

While I've been waiting for my new phone, I have got an old nokia out of the draw and started.

Sitting in Nero's this morning I kept reaching for my phone. It took me a while to get over what I might be missing on my emails and social network platforms.

But after a while?

It was kind of nice.

I had a face to face conversation (Remember those) with my wife. I looked out of the window and admired the architecture of Turnham Green Church opposite.

I found I had some head space!

Further more when I had a little prayer time I found an interesting thing. I found I couldn't keep looking with one eye on my notification bar. I couldn't hold the phone in my hand to wait for the next vibration.

Someone called me mid head space but it was nice to have a conversation instead of whacking out a few sentences on a touchscreen keyboard.

I was able to engage in conversation with God in a way I haven't felt for a long time.

Head space is important in prayer.

Head space is important in life.

I'm really into my digital detox now and its as if life has been illuminated. Im reading books again, Im noticing things in my area I have just missed because my head has been too often in the screen stoop position.

I'm claiming my life back from the digital grip.

I am entering the real world of live face to face conversations.

Its also making feel more alive to the need around me.

Maybe you should try it

The Junction of a thousand roads

It’s been a mad week or so.

Dawn received her change of appointment that sees us both move to Winsford in Cheshire on July 13.

We have been to visit family in Yorkshire and Liverpool.

One of my daughters is pregnant and boy doesn’t she talk about anything else!

I’ve had to slip in and out of my various life roles constantly. Father, Brother, Husband, Son, Friend, acquaintance and so on and so on.

All of this?

While trying to reassess where I am in life.

And.

Attempting to engage with God about what he would have my future to look like, you know, which direction should I go down.

I kind of feel like I’m standing at a junction with a thousand roads ahead of me, anyone of which I could take.

It’s kind of exciting.

It’s kind of scary.

If you stand at the junction too long?

It gets a bit confusing.

I’m shouting at God ‘What would you have me do?’

Then

Without warning.

An old song from the days when I was stuck in traditional Salvation Army stuff, one of those golden nougats out of the time before my transformation out of that dark place, flew into my head straight from Heaven and landed smack bang in my mind and my heart.

"Mid all the traffic of the ways, turmoil’s without, within. Make in my heart a quiet place, and come and dwell within."

My study for my Master’s degree came flooding back. I wrote a dissertation on silence. I had written about how silence is massively important to be able to effectively join Gods mission.

Basically?

If we don’t stop and hear God?

Listen to what he is saying?

Reflect on what he is doing?

Then forget effective.

In fact, I remember at Sanctuary 21 in Durham, a prayer centre that Dawn and I planted from scratch, when one lady out of the hundreds of people that came for one to one prayer ministry with either Dawn or myself or one of the team, came into be prayed with, and she was in complete turmoil. Some serious stuff had happened in her life and she was all over the place. Before we minister to anyone we obviously pray to catch a hold of how God would want us to approach the session. When I was praying, I really felt an overwhelming feeling that God was saying, “Send her to the prayer room without her bible, without her handbag, and tell her to be silent before me, for however long it takes. I don’t want you to minister to her on this occasion I need to directly minister to her.” So, being as obedient as I could be I sent her to prayer room five to be alone with God. When I explained this to her she looked at me as if I had two heads. But she went. About three hours later she emerged out of the prayer room looking tearful but radiant. To cut a long story short, she had been incredibly touched and changed by God and he had given her a new direction.

So.

Hey.

Remembering all of this?

I stand at the junction with a thousand directions ahead of me.

Mid all the traffic of the ways, turmoil’s without, within. Make in my heart a quiet place and come and dwell therein.

I head for a silent space today in the third prayer centre we planted, a fantastic place that is testament to the power of God.

And.

I wait.

To hear where he requires of me next.

To point me to the right road.

And.

I write this today because there maybe someone out there standing at the junction of a thousand roads.

I urge you to try silence.

Get away, no notebook, no bible, no pen.

Just you with all your inner stuff. With all your anxieties, with all your thoughts.

Be still and know he is God.

Be silent.