Beth and me

Reaching out to the homeless

I have a friend called David. A few months ago he broke up with his wife and wound up homeless. He was also an alcoholic - a stinking drunk tramp. One day he came across our ‘Healing on the Streets’ team that goes out every Saturday to the North Finchley High Road to offer prayer for healing. I don’t know who he spoke to on that day, but all I know, he handed over his life to Christ and started coming to St B’s. I met him in his first week at church. Someone had given him a bible and he was utterly fascinated by what he was reading – especially the Jewish practices outlined in the first 5 books of the Old Testament “Sounds pretty pagan to me!”
He gave up the alcohol, and this Valentines Day we calculated that he had been ‘dry’ for just over 12 weeks. He’s moved in with my friend Julian, another church member. The other day, I dropped in to see him and noted that his room was very tidy!
“Unlike my room, which is a bit of a tip…”
He responded
“When you’ve been in a tip, you appreciate any space you’ve got”

I certainly have a better appreciation of my life

Dave’s story is not dissimilar to Josef’s. Josef came to St B’s, also moved in with Julian. Barnet Council found him a flat – I remember going on that first day to celebrate. He had tears of joy running down his face. Things were looking up for him and his life was finally getting back on track. However, just after Christmas, he descended into depression and started on the booze, things just spiralled downwards from there. Ann Marie, Julian and Dave stayed with him when he was in hospital, and afterwards checked on him at home. A couple of weeks ago he was found in his new flat – dead! Possibly from the dangerous cocktail of booze and anti-depressants- accidental or maybe even suicide

It all just seems so…. Unfair!
Why didn’t God look after Josef better?
Why did Josef give up on life just at the point when it was beginning to turn around?

There’s a new wave of homeless guys coming to church now- Steve, Lisa, Lisa with a hat, Lynn. Julian has organised a group to specifically pray for them on Monday evenings. We need God’s wisdom and direction on this. On Thursdays, Milly who owns a café on the High Road has kindly offered to give the guys a hot meal and a place to come in out of the cold for a couple of hours. These are only temporary measures though… I’d like to see the guys permanently off the streets and living whole lives.

While we were praying on Monday, I remembered the bible verses in Luke 14: 27 - 33 about counting the cost of being a disciple. The fact is, if we do take on this role of reaching out to the homeless, we will be acting like bridges –a link for these desperate, vulnerable people to get to God, wholeness, a better life, restoration etc.

Bridges are only useful when people walk on them. I shared this with the group and their interpretation- pretty obvious – is that it’s going to be messy and dirty business.
Bring it on?
Safe, cautious me? Am I willing to pay the price... to go through the pain of losing another ‘Josef’ or live constantly in fear of it happening?
I’m worried about Dave now. I’ve noticed that he’s smoking a lot more recently. Perhaps he smoked just as much before and I never noticed.
I don’t know what to do

Life's little surprises...

I've been looking forward to March. 

Ever since I splashed out (unwisely) on a MacBook for Christmas, things financially have been a bit tight. My old job, docked 7 and a half days of pay because after the annual leave adjustment, it looked like they'd overpaid me, so I got paid less in February. This was made worse by increased travel expenses and having to buy a new wardrobe for the new job. One thing after another

So March was for me, the month when everything would stabilise. I get paid my new salary which means that my disposable income is probably increasing by about £200; there's a brief respite from council tax this month - an extra £150; most of my debt is on 0% interest credit cards, allowing me to spread the repayments evenly over a 10 month period; I'm expecting pay arrears going back to June 2008 from my old job, which I was planning on sending to Uganda to kick off construction of my property there. Heck, there'd even be enough to take a cruise to Oslo in early May...

All that has changed now as Yati announced that she is moving out on the 1 March. 

Ok - not really a surprise (her moving out), but hadn't reckoned on it happening so soon and with only 2 weeks notice. My flat is almost completely furnished by her and so naturally she is taking all her stuff- sofa, bedroom furniture, in the kitchen most of the pots, glasses, plates, bowls, the iron...

There's a lesson here for me. It is going to be decidedly rough but with God's help I will ride the storm. There are people in worse situations. I guess I'll have to risk assess other areas in my life and not be caught out by the unexpected. I suppose you can't plan for every eventuality, but I should have seen this coming ages ago

You live and learn!

When it starts getting Same-ish...

... then it's time to pull out and move on to other things

Just got back from watching a Panto (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) that a colleague, Julia, wrote, produced and directed. A Pantomime is a traditional British Christmas show for children, usually based on nursery tales and featuring stock characters in costume who sing, dance and perform skits (www.freedictionary.com)

It's all quite fun. When the nasty queen announces her evil plan, the crowd hisses and boos. When good triumphs over evil- the audience cheers. 

There's the standard

Character - "Oh no you don't"

Audience: "OH YES YOU DO"

Character "Oh no you don't"

Audience "OH YES YOU DO

With other variations such as "Oh no you can't", "Oh no you won't"

When one of the characters tells a sob story, the audience empathise with an "Awwww" . The character capitalises on this by gesturing to the audience to say an even louder "AWWW"

Then when the lead character states that they are scared of spiders and bears and asks the audience to helpfully warn them if they see anything like that; said  spider/bear only appears when the character's back is turned. The audience goes wild and point frantically "There, it's behind you", by the time the character turns around the spider/bear has 'disappeared' 

Us Brits love innuendo - which flies over the kids heads, but gets all the adults chuckling. For example in this panto, they did go on about the size of the Woodcutter's 'chopper'

I really admire people like Julia who do things like that. She's putting her talents of writing, directing and playing music to good use. I'm getting bored with all the 'partying' - it's become same'ish for me. The same music, same crowd. The Valentines, Swinging Sixties party is next week, and after that I'm calling it quits - for at least a couple of months. 

Inspired by Julia, I'm going to revive guitar playing and my singing, put a band together to perform an acoustic gig at Crisis Open Christmas. It's 10 months away, so it can be done. I've done a solo performance which went down a treat the last time. I can still do it on my own again, but I think I'll need more people to make it more interesting. I'm hoping to persuade Mike, who is a gifted bass player and singer to join up. I'll need a percussionist, a soprano, and an alto. Perhaps another guitarist. 

Yeah that should be different

Digital Cathedral presents...

We Digital Cathedral (DC) folks finally presented our Epiphany event that we started preparing for a while back  I don't know why I got asked onto the team aside from the fact that I really love clubbing and dance music. Also Katie - the 18 - 30's youth pastor must have noticed me looking bored during church services which I find rather dull with their Indie type 'contemporary Christian' songs. I tend to slip in at the end of sung worship - listen to the sermon - and then away.

The best thing about being on the DC team were monthly 'planning' meetings -  brunch at James' pad, praying together, mucking about on his audio/visual equipment and researching other alternative worship events.

Rex, the vicar of St Alban's church in Golders Green (and James' boss) kindly let us use the church for the event. It's a great venue - lovely, old features -stained glass windows, statues of religious figures and all. I just love it. 

Katie appointed me 'Creative Director' (CD) because " You are a techie, so you know the stuff!"  

It's hard to describe what a CD does!  Decorate the venue? My brother who is a part time DJ, said he would lend me his 4 disco lights, but as time drew nearer, and my reminders were met with responses like, 

"Don't worry about it, I'll sort you out. When's the thing again?"

"Like I've told you gazillion times before, including the beginning of this conversation, and the beginning and end of the one we had yesterday, IT'S ON THE 31'st!!" 

I had to come up with Plan B - Enter DH! 

I love DH... I truly do! He means well - but he could do with some help with his interpersonal skills. He just seems to piss off everyone he works with - and he DOES kind of takeover which I find quite annoying. BUT we needed him as he was the source of all necessary (free) equipment for the event i.e. data projector, disco lights with gels, drapes, extra cables - in short... everything. He insisted on coming down to the venue to visualise it and see what equipment we'd need, then him and James went into 'techie speak' and completely lost me. Okay yeah I am a techie, but I don't know names of things - that grey button turns up the volume in that black speaker, and when the red light flashes it means the speaker is going to blow, unless I turn down the red button. I rolled my eyes at DH's girlfriend, who'd tagged along for support. There was a pause in the men's conversation, 

"Umm sorry Kim, we don't mean to take over here - after all you are the Creative Director. What would you like us to do?"

"Just carry on! Don't mind me. After all YOU are the experts" *you f@%king bastards*

To cut a long story short, my role ended up being the 'Muscle' , i.e. help setting up and taking down the rig. I don't mean to discount the guys - DH had some really good ideas which we used and the church looked like thisPeople walked through the canopy to get to the stage -  like the High Priests would have done in the Old Testament Tabernacle and going into the Holy of Holies (DH's idea)

The event itself was a blast for us, the DC team. James and Katie had invited church folk who didn't show up. No surprises there... they just don't get dance music. 

My crew - Stuart & Mikey came!  Some newbies to church came as well. One of them was so bowled over about clubbing in church that she gave an appreciation speech at the end. It was well... a bit... awkward"

It felt a bit like a private party. 

Nigel the DJ had prepared really good set, including that Blaze track featuring Barbara Tucker - Most Precious Love.  Matti prepared a visual presentation based on the themes of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh (Epiphany commemorates the 3 wise men presenting their gifts to Jesus). James and Katie had composed a couple of dance tracks, which she sung to (she's got an amazing voice)

Did I connect with God? Hard to tell. I know I had a good time. I'd been feeling like a waste of space - what have I really contributed to this event - but a bible verse came into mind- about all of us Christians having different gifts but it is the same Spirit that gives them.(It's in 1 Corinthians 12)

Some gifts may be more noticeable than others i.e. Katie, Matti and Nigels gifts, but my 'invisible' gifts of behind the scenes service and of encouragement are just as important - probably not in the world or church's eyes, but definitely before God. So I was happy with that.