Thursday, March 22, 2007


So this morning I decide to make breakfast after everyone has gone out, I have recently switched from toast to Muesli and yoghurt, although I still need to eat it alone, so I get settled down to eat, reach for my coffee and tip the whole bowl down my jeans, it just stuck there! At first I gagged and then got it sorted. Is muesli and yoghurt healthier than toast?



On Sunday we took Tracy out for a meal on mothers day, I spilt modena vinegar down my t-shirt. It’s a brand new lemon Ralph Lauren t-shirt and the vinegar is dark, it now has a tiny speck on the front that won’t budge..

Any suggestions Please????

This is serious, it’s my favourite T-shirt.

Oh, I have been doing house work this morning as we have guests arriving for a counselling course tonight. Whilst dusting the living room I think I may have come up with an idea for a conference:

It has to be in a big city, the venue has to be within walking distance of the town centre. We start on a Friday night do a little talk about kindness making it specific to offering prayer. We worship pray for a bit and then put the delegates into twos and send half of them out into the town to pray with people and be kind in what ever way they can (before they leave we give them some examples.) they come back and then we send the second batch out, who have remained behind praying it’s a straight swap. We finish about 1.00am

Next morning we have breakfast about 10.30 then share stories of the previous night. We look some more at kindness, bible verses, examples, etc.. this time we decide to put people in slightly larger groups say 6 -8 they then have lunch together and come up with a scheme to do that afternoon in the town centre, they will need to be practical and resourceful and perhaps need a little bit of cash, so we’ll make the conference cheap, after more prayer they go out and do what they have planned. We meet back together at about 7ish and they feedback.

We spend the rest of the evening dialoguing about this:

How do we make this more than a project?
How do we take this back and integrate it into our home communities ?
How do we integrate this into our everyday lives?


We then worship God and maybe write out some form of pledge vow and take it together and we go charged up and encouraged with practical lessons learnt, and take it back to our own settings.

What do you think? It would need a name?

18 comments:

Kelly said...

i would go for sure!

Anonymous said...

How about 'Kindness in the City'?

The Wee Italian Chick said...

We all talk alot about recycling and reusable energy these days in our cities..how about "Rechargable City" for a name? or may be not.. re: balsamic vinegar on the t-shirt, considering that it is made out of the same stuff as red wine, try splashing white wine on it and then use a stain remover detergent - should come off relatively easy!
Also, I am with you with this extra healthy eating - at the moment is scrambled eggs in the mornings for me and brown rice - God help us! Musley and natural yogurt is great for you! keep it up! (Bathing suit season is on the horizon!!!) ;-)

Anonymous said...

have you tried VANISH oxy/multi-stain? it took a full glass of red wine out of our wool carpet last week ... would you like me to post you some over from the UK if you can't get it there?

Anonymous said...

Hey Brian, about that t-shirt, I have
a suggestion! Doing pretty much anything other than just taking it off and leaving it on the bedroom floor could be effective! Tracy xx

Unknown said...

Brian,
Been snoopin round your blog for a while now thanks to my lovely fiance Wiggy (fiance always sounds pretentious to me).

I think the conference is a wicked idea and you should called it 'A Kind Of Conference'. Cause it is about kindness...and it's only kind of a conference, cause half the time is practical stuff anyway!

It would be great to see something that is very practical happen instead of putting the world to right by singing songs and listening to people go on for hours about methods etc. Getting on with it and giving something a go is refreshing and new!

I agree with Yvonne...go with the white wine option for the T-Shirt.

And Tracey...nice work on your comment. Made me laugh out loud at my desk.

Mel x

Unknown said...

Oh, and what better City than the grand old Belfast!

The Wee Italian Chick said...

My vote goes to Tracy! Nice work!!!(",)

Anonymous said...

Belfast gets my vote!

Anonymous said...

mix some bicarbonate of soda with water into a paste apply to stain and leave for 30 minutes and then soak in detergant.

Anonymous said...

mix some bicarbonate of soda with water into a paste apply to stain and leave for 30 minutes and then soak in detergant.

Anonymous said...

mix some bicarbonate of soda with water into a paste apply to stain and leave for 30 minutes and then soak in detergant.

Jenelle said...

I like Mel's idea for a name. I'd really like to go to "A Kind of Conference." But only if Brian gets slain in the Spirit during worship.

Jenelle said...

(p.s. that was a tongue-in-cheek reference to Brian's recent post on "prayer.")

Globegirl said...

All is not lost on the shirt. Peroxide gets out organic stains - even on carpet. It works really well on berries, wine and blood...so when you break a tooth on your muesli and bleed down your shirt you can get that out too.

Unknown said...

And the second year could be "A New Kind of Conference" with Brian McClaren hosting :)

For years I've been playing with the word lovelocity... which when spoken out can sound like, "love the lost city". Then break it down two other ways: lovelo (love low): pave the gutters with gold. And, lo - velocity (low velocity): slow down and love people.

The other title I have awaiting the right conference is "Critical Mass"... For years, I worked my buns off with a certain ministry on a seven phase prayer and proclamation strategy for cities and "Critical Mass" was to be phase 5 of 7. But an international office changed the name of phase 5 on me... I have always loved "Critical Mass" - I know it's day will come.

Years ago, alongside the Canadian Youth Network (CYN) we worked out a nationwide idea for a city to city prayer and international justice model that we tentatively called c2c (sea to sea): city to city; coast to coast; country to country. The CYN may be willing to bring it back to the table with 24/7. I'm not sure where they are at with it these days.

This strategy stuff sends me off and running... thanks for the invite into your idea Brian.

And the whole money thing is huge - actually giving people money to do something... absolutely! Whole new ministries to the city can be born during moments like that... loaves and fishes from one friendly little boy for Jesus.

And your questions are great. I think handing it off (impartation) enthusiastically through the grass roots works great. The, "Here we did it, now it's your turn. If we could do it in the med and in Ireland, well you know you can do it anywhere, do it in your city and keep us all posted..."

What sets it apart? Hmmm... the prayer and switch, simple and powerful... and the imparting of money... that's been a big deal to me lately. Giving everything away!

Brian said...

I like kind of a conference, it feels right. By the way I have picked the T-shirt of the bed room floor and grovelled to Tracy, who I think may have had one of her bitch tablets when she wrote her only ever comment on my blog. She is now dealing with the situation I will keep you posted.......

Anonymous said...

personally i thought tracey's comment was brilliant :-)