January 21st, 2010

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about community (and not much about writing, apart from this….). Before Christmas, I picked up (and read…) a book called ‘Irresistible Revolution’, which is written by a guy who lives in a downtown area in America and who has set up a community that help each other (think I have mentioned it before). It all sounds very cool, and a little bit ‘new age’ at first, but it really challenged me on how I can get involved in my own community, and how, as a community of believers, we can support each other.

Our cell group is an exciting place to be right now – we’ve got a real sense of God’s purpose for us as a group of blokes (good job He’s got one for us….). I’ve been thinking hard about what I personally could be doing (homework club sprang to mind), but after listening to God (which is something that I find really difficult), I felt He was saying that I/we should just look at what/who around us and start there.

There’s a verse in Thessalonians where Paul says that, ‘We loved you so much that we [shared] not only the Gospel of God but our lives as well’. I liked that so much that I gave it the highlighter treatment AND made a note in biro at the top of the page…. We can’t distance ourselves from causes, particularly those right on our doorstep. Obviously, very few us will be able to go and offer practical help in Haiti, and so our support will be mainly financial or thorugh prayer, but if we should be prepared to share our lives, and hence the Gospel, with those around us. Even when we don’t like them….

A couple of other themes I’ve picked up on, both in Thessalonians and Timothy, are encouragement and perseverance. Pray continually. May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance. Never tire of doing what is right. That last one’s a bugger – I get tired of doing wrong, let alone right….. And five minutes of doing right is usually more than enough to satisfy my guilt at being a lamo. So I need to persevere in prayer for my friends, and hope they do the same for me….

And amongst all that (never start a sentence with ‘and’….), I’ve been exploring the idea of leadership. I started reading this other book called ‘Follow Me to Freedom’, which talks about the attitude needed to be good followers and good leaders. I started out thinking how much I liked the idea of being a follower (perhaps putting that into practise at some sort of cafe church….), but it challenged and confused me…. If I am to be leader, I have no idea what in (aside from leading sung worship, which I already do, with varying degrees of success…..).

I was on a course last week, on ’student mentoring’, and got really into the idea of taking that further. I noticed that a lot of the qualities that the course leader mentioned correlated with the stuff the book was talking about (we can learn from secular situations too….). A good leader sets an example; a good leader recognises where the follower(s) want to go. A good leader facilitates others to do what they need to do; they don’t do the work for them. And a good leader respects their followers. There we go -  my Masters in mentorship summarised before it’s even begun. Certificate, please….

Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »