Press On

You're going to have to forgive another one of my 4am posts.

We've had a great day, every Sunday we have a community lunch everyone brings something, we eat, then usually play water polo. The last few weeks we have had a guy who recently got out of Ibiza prison, two members of a band that are playing at Ibiza Rocks and various other friends. Today we switched the Air Con on high and had four bar workers from the west end around for a fantastic roast dinner, there were 14 of us in total, I was stuffed.

At about 6ish we have a little community time every week, worship, break bread, look at the bible and pray for each other, today Bob the local anglican vicar came and he also brought a friend who is a gospel singer doing events here in Ibiza.

We have 4 people living with us at the moment, Michael (England) Ursina (Switzerland) Laura (N.Ireland) and Becky (Australia) it's load of fun. 3 of the guys went with the rest of our team to Space, I hope they had a great night.

Anyway at 12 midnight Tracy and I got a call to go to the medical centre and take a guy whose nose was broken to the larger the hospital in Ibiza town for an xray, they don't do an ambulance facility for this and a taxi wouldn't take him, he had been robbed on his first night, no wallet, no phone and no recollection of where his hotel was! He was covered in blood and getting it everywhere. By the way Laura stayed at home and baby sat. We where with him for over 2 hours, they decided to keep him in because he was confused, so I'll go back in about 5 hours time and help him get sorted, thankfully the British Consul will help sort him out.

As we where driving home we get a call to take another girl home she was very drunk and really panicked, hyper ventilating and stuff the doctors said she was fine, so we have just spent the last hour calming her down and sitting with her until she seemed better.

I'm on the verge of being overwhelmed, we feel so inadequate to the task, it feels like trying to stop the tide. We'll keep going because this is where we are meant to be.

A little phrase comes to mind "press on"

This is the tension, on the one hand you are trying to build a solid missional community here on the island holding that with the tension of the proximity of that community to so much messiness. It's hardly like you have time to think about one because you are always tired from dealing with the mess. However as a community we are very strongly bonded by the task of helping in the Westend. If community is the only goal it will never work, communities have to exist for something other than themselves. Community for communities sake is self serving, consumeristic and in danger of becoming an inwardly focussed little huddle. Communities need mission it is the food that sustains them, all christian communities need mission as their organising principal.

A community organised around anything else other than mission can never truly be a Christ centered community. I'm thinking that statement could read a little strong and maybe even a tad self righteous, it's not meant to be. I think it is the truth.

Right, now I'm going to bed