Hello again

Sorry there's been a bit of a delay and irregular posting recently. I've been having a bit of a creative fit and started a new blog (afraid the story won't make much sense to anyone who doesn't know the University of York Gilbert & Sullivan society- and even then making sense isn't guaranteed!)

To add to that, the last two weekends I've been on conferences, the first with the Council of Scripture Union, an organisation I've been involved with for quite a few years now (I'm finally no longer the youngest on the council; however despite being second youngest I've also been going to meetings for a lot longer than many of the others! It's a bit strange...). SU, as you may know, do lots of stuff to resource churches and youth leaders, producing kids and youth club materials, publishing Christian books and Bible reading notes, running holidays for children and young people, doing work in schools and lots of other stuff you can find out more about here. One of the most exciting things we (ie, SU) have done over the last few years is the development of WordLive (sorry, I do seem to go on about this a lot, but it is great), a free website designed to encourage Christians (and any other visitors) to look at what the Bible can say to them. We're now looking at how we might be able to use electronic communication to reach even more people, young and old, with this message.

Then this last weekend was my church's weekend at home (like a weekend away, only it was held in York to allow more people to come and reduce the cost). The speaker this year was Elaine Storkey (those Today listeners among you may recognise her from Thought for the Day. Being told that John Humphries was "such a sweetie" was an amusing start to the weekend! And discovering she did a Phd in Philosophy at York). She is a fantastic speaker, in my opinion- not many people could hold over a hundred adults attention for over an hour on a Saturday morning, talking about sociological trends in our culture and how this affects the church. All her talks were highly interesting and she was able to make the theory relevant to us and what we were doing.

The challenge of thinking about and discussing these topics at both weekends has made a pleasant change from my normal routine (although the trip down to Coventry was less pleasant). It's interesting to see the links between the two- the church (or large parts of it, at least) waking up to how far out of public favour it has fallen and considering what it can do to win itself a fair hearing in modern culture. This was reflected in discussions on social networking sites and on the anniversary of Darwin.

The challenge for the church seems to be to work out how can it persuade people to listen to and consider the message it has, a message that can transform an individual life as well as the world. I won't say we came up with definitive answers at either weekend, but there were lots of ideas and stuff to think about and make part of our daily lives.

Now back to normal- but hopefully with some much-needed encouragement to keep going, to keep loving even when it seems nothing much is happening spiritually in those I care about. God know what he's doing. Even though I'm tired and looking forward to a weekend off (mid July I think is the next one I've got totally free. Maybe I should do something about that, considering what Elaine said yesterday about rest and refreshment!) I'm glad I went.