Jesus Love is very wonderful

Paul says

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."

I need to be rooted and established in love if I am going to cope with all the pain and mayhem that we witness out on the streets.

I then need to express His love on the streets, somehow express love that surpasses all knowledge!

Think about it, what is knowledge?

Knowledge is knowing, knowledge is what we know, we know what we can define, what we can say with certaintity we understand, knowledge is our questions answered. Yet here we have a love that goes beyond that!

That’s fantastic a love that surpasses my questions, my How? Why? Where? When? An unexplainable love. A love beyond knowledge a long, high, deep love.

As a child we sang this song “Jesus love is very wonderful, it’s so high you can’t get over it, so low you can can’t get under it and so wide you can’t get around it” I love this song.

I want to live my life expressing the sentiment of this song.

Tinchy Stryder

Just to give you an idea of how varied our evenings can be, we walked into the westend at about 1am this morning. Chatted to few friends, gave a bible away, sat on a wall and talked with a lady who has mental health issues, walked back up the westend, got called to help some young guy who was completely out of it, got a wheel chair passed him on to Neil and Clare who took him to the hospital, chatted with a lap dancer about her friends drug habit walked back up to the prayer room, washed the puke from our arms and prayed for an hour. Then we walked down to Eden and went to see tinchy stryder for a few minutes because he is one of my youngest sons favourite artists. We got real close took a few snaps, then left, I'm not really into urban music even if I am only standing 8 feet from the guy. We walked back up into the westend chatted with a few more guys and then walked a dancer who we know back to her apartment, we do this a lot it's a nice part of our job, walking and talking with someone and getting them home safely.

It doesn't seem like much but as we were praying tonight I really felt that "the little things matter"

Tinchy is actually very small, but the little things matter. Tinchy matters.

Mission

We had our meeting last night, I talked from the book of Daniel. Which I enjoyed. When we came out we found a guy by the same name asleep in the street. He had drunk to much and was hugely disappointed by England's loss against Germany. We gave him a lift back to his hotel. We didn't have out T-shirts on, this wasn't a scheduled time it was just helping some poor guy out on a Sunday afternoon.

All of this got me thinking about the words "mission". We get a lot of teams coming and you often hear the phrase "on mission" or even the term "missions team". I understand the need for this kind of phraseology although the very terms and context in which they are used could be an indicator of a deeper issue.

I wonder if there is a line of thinking that still exists which regards mission as something we do as a pose to a way that we live?

I remember talking to a young lady once who talked about getting back out into the "mission field" she was home after working for a surfing mission in Australia and really only felt she would be back doing mission when she was back with a specific organisation doing a specific "christian" task.

There is no specific mission field, your mission field is your life.

You don't go on mission, your life is a mission.

You're only mission team is the community you work out your faith with.

Mission is not a project, an activity or a two week team, it is a way of life.

Thesis

Every weekend we are on call so you can be asleep and get a call from the westend to come and help someone, it was mine and Christines turn tonight. I normally show up with my grumpy face on, one minute you are asleep about 15 minutes later you are in the westend surrounded by madness.

We had a call at about 3am to go pick a guy up in the west end, he was falling asleep on a step outside a bar and had lost his mates. Christine and I sat with him for a while but couldn't get any sense out of him. We eventually got hold of his mobile and phoned a few of his friends. We waited with him until they rocked up to help us.

Whilst sitting with him I started to notice a strong smell, the guy had poohed his pants!!! he had been here one day and got so drunk that he had lost control of his bowels. Anyway we got him into the van with his friends and drove them back to their hotel. You breath through your mouth at this point! When we got him there one of his mates, who was also slightly messed up gave him a slap on the backside and told him to get moving. He then turned and shook our hands with his now pooh stained hands!!!! WWJD?

We spent about 5 minutes dissuading them from trying to give us money and then left them. When we parked up we had to spend ages just wiping pooh out of the back of the van, we disinfected it and hopefully it will be ok in the morning. But honestly the smell is rough, Christine is a nurse and we both agreed on the bodily fluid scale that pooh is the worst. Puke for some reason isn't so bad, blood is messy it covers everything, but it doesn't smell.

There is nothing worse than the smell of a drunks pooh at 4 in the morning.

The inner ring

A friend of mine was talking about a transcript of an oration given by CS Lewis at the University of London in 1944 called "The Inner Ring"

He says: "I believe that in all men’s’ lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside." It's about desire to be included and how that throughout life there are inner rings. Unofficial or even official groupings that we desperately want to be included in or are frightened of being excluded from!

This desire to be associated with certain people or included in certain conversations affects a lot of people. Inner rings will always exist they are not necessarily wrong but they do exist.

Some people want to be near the source of power and that source of power is perceived to be a certain group of individuals or a specific team it's only upon arriving into that inner ring that you realize the power is dissipated.

I have had my own struggle with this over the last year. I was on the international leadership team of 24-7 prayer which then became the international council, with a much smaller UK based core remaining as the international leadership team. Of course it all made sense to get things done, to achieve you need to be geographically close and able to make many more meetings. Being in Ibiza that didn't work for me, however with my own desire to be included in things I felt excluded, some how left out of an inner ring. This wasn't actually true, it was just a feeling that I had. It challenged my identity and where I get it from.

Am I about who I know? Am I about what team I am on? Am I defined by some sort of positional status? To be honest with you I would have to say yes for many years this has been a background tape that has driven me in many situations.

I am relational but I am also positional.
I enjoy hanging out but am also aware of political affiliations.

Anyway it's an inner battle one I am winning, but also one that I see in so many other people.

If I am honest there are a lot out there who aren't particularly self aware of their own desire to belong, their own desire to be affiliated, to be recognized, to be seen with the right people.

I felt a year up on the farm and my removal from the international leadership team was a key moment in my life. It started to teach me about hiddenness versus profile. Taught me once more about not finding my security in position but finding it in God, something we often say but I wonder if we truly scratched the surface whether we are all as sorted in this department as we think?

At my core I am relational but the shadow side of that core is that I can be overly aware of specific relational connections at the detriment of others.

Hope that make sense.

Some once said to me "Self awareness is the key to growth" I think that is so true.

Gospel Tracts

I remember when I was a child living in Belfast, people used to give out gospel tracts. These where little leaflets that explained how to become a christian. Sometimes with a pithy story or a simple illustration to make you aware of your need for God. I have often contemplated using such things here in Ibiza. However good and affective they may be it's not something I want to do anymore. I think in certain contexts they work well, so please don't misunderstand me I am not against them.

We gave out 100 bibles last week. Our biggest thinking on giving out the bibles means that it cuts out the middle man, the "expert" in the middle who explains what it all means, interprets it for you and tells you how to apply it. The bible itself is a better place of first contact, people get to read it themselves and we have to trust that the words they read are living and and active and cut through everything else and make a lasting impact.

What's weird for me is that packaging appears to be important. I don't mind this but just find it interesting. Maybe I should start an international design and bibles distribution ministry? Oh sorry the Gideons already do that. We could do more specific projects. How about "Jesus loves Firemen", "God Bless Essex" or "Jesus loves Belfast" bibles, the list is endless, if we were design specific we could do so much.

We had another Sunday service last night this time we had 6 prostitutes and a number of other people it was very good. Although I guess as a team we are struggling as to how to make small talk with the prostitutes, so often we talk with people about their work!! these girls don't really want to talk about their work or how there week has been. We've just got to work harder at how we engage. I am amazed at how many of these girls have children!

We are going to offer them foot and hand massages, which will be a lovely way of giving them some love.

Hope you like the snap, it's how I feel right now, like we have set out into the sea and are just finding our way with all of this.

The Bibles have arrived

5000 Jesus loves Ibiza bibles have been printed and are good to go!!!



I need to sell half these bibles in order that we can give the other half away for free.



£5.00 per bible, you get one and we give one away. Due to postage and shizzle like that we can only sell minimum batches of 20. For £100 plus £10 post and package you get 20 cool bibles plus the warm cozy glow of knowing that another 20 have been given away on the streets of Ibiza.




Weird seeing our logo next to the navpress logo, it makes us feel all grown up.

Church is the meeting

Busy manic time, married to a little bit of writers block has led to a little slow down on my behalf.....

The last few weeks we have been putting on a little service on a Sunday night. The team have all been working hard at not calling the service church, probably a little on my insistence that for years we have said "church is not the building" but I do think that we have subliminally said "church is the meeting". This can be so easily spotted in statements like "I am going to church" or "How was church this morning" anyway just a thought.

Our little service took on an extra dimension this week when 4 of the prostitutes we work with turned up, I found it deeply moving. It also made me think that I don't really care anymore what you call your service, christians get more hung up on names and stuff than normal people. As long as prostitutes etc keep showing up thats what makes a difference, it's more about who attends than what you call it.

5.15 am I should go to bed.

In the gutter

I love this painting by Banksy and this line from "Gabriel and the Vagabond" by Foy Vance. It has been painted on our prayer room wall. It sums up a lot of what we do and probably is the closest thing to expressing what it's all about that we do here.

Don't you just want to gently whisper hope? Enjoy the song: