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.
.
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.
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.
.
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.
