In a mirror, dimly

Good news on 2 fronts! I was hoping that in this current godless tech climate the company I work at would observe Good Friday. Seems that they do, so I have tomorrow off work. Second good news is a free Palm PDA will be arriving on my desk on Monday. Wife’s search for a PDA is now over, granted we will have to glue some loose parts back down and the backlight is broken, but it still functions. This is definitely provision - when else do you get a no-risk chance to try out an expensive new toy?

The last Wednesday of the month is our church’s Leadership Community meeting. All ministry heads and group leaders gather to talk, pray, etc. I find it really helpful - in one meeting a month I can be a small fish in a pond with lots of other bigger fishes. I can air my own struggles as a leader and receive teaching on issues that only really affect leaders too.

2 years ago at the area pastor’s conference (ministry heads and key leaders were also invited, along with the pastors) there was a comment about how the community around Jesus was structured.
There was the “throng” at the outer edge of things. 2 of his miracles were feeding 4000 and 5000 people - the throng. These folk come and go, visitiors to the church or recent additions to the community.

You get “the 120″ who had made a definite commitment to follow Him. They were plugged in and going about the work of the Kingdom of God. For our church, there are a certain percentage of solidly committed people who are attending and giving regularly, and part of the small-group bible studies. Other churches you’d have to look at the formal sighed-up membership roll.

Then there were “the 12 disciples”. The close team around Jesus, privy to His thoughts and extra teaching. It’s interesting that He taught more on Hell to his committed disciples than to unbelievers! In our church, this would equate to the “leadership community” - ministry heads and other group leaders.

Finally there were “the three” (Peter, James and John). These guys were Jesus’ inner circle, his closest companions. In a church, the senior pastor and associate pastors.

There’s a definite transition from “throng” to “120″ and from “120″ to “12″. At some point a person would sign and commit to the requirements of membership, and move from being a member to being a leader. Our aim as leaders is to keep people moving up through these transitions.

It feels very special, on a very personal level, to be invited to be part of our leadership community. I feel like I’ve arrived at a new place and new challenges have opened up. My challenges and “stuff” related to issues that these folk can relate to, and, spur me on to deeper commitment to Jesus in appropriate ways.

Two articles now posted. Firstly “Unity at any cost?” - first published over on the Christian Depression Pages. The other, “Saving Souls?” details my dislike for “saving/winning souls” … take a look and leave comments if you have any.

Another minor change: I’ve finally fixed the archives on this new template.

Minor update: Something about what I believe is now online.

I havent played my guitar in sooooo long. My fingers still look swollen and red on the fingertips and all I did was to lead worship for the Alpha meeting. Is there somewhere I could back-order some harder skin? Classic example of where discipline pays off over the long-haul: I used to have tough skin on the fingertips of my left hand from playing regularly. I should be practicing regularly but I’ve skipped it and now you see what happens.

Yes, I led. Yes I bungled the chords on some of them. I know well enough that you should simply keep going - turn them into “passing notes” and work with it. Next week will be better.

I felt like I let people down though. Somehow I failed, my playing sucked, I was a distraction rather than leading them. I know I am hard on myself … but still … I have to work harder at practicing for next week.

Oh wow. Great piece over on the Real Q+A: What Fundamentalism is _not_. This is a topic right at the forefront of my mind recently. Hank Hanegraaf (the “bible answer man”) had a caller asking him to distinguish between fundamentalists and christians. Now I am gonna have to cook something up. Slightly different from the Real Q+A piece since I would claim the label “Evangelical Charismatic“, but still… the piece is highly recommeded! Comments invited too - I’ll host any discussion ’cause I know Real Q+A doesnt have comments enabled.

Today’s been characterized by meetings. Both times I sat there quiet for about an hour while everyone else did the talking. What’s worse was that managers declared the 2 meetings to be “successful”. Perhaps this is some definition of success I previously wasnt aware of? I mean, I have goals set for the week and that meeting only took time away from the moments at my disposal for solving software challenges. I often wonder why people dont use blogs internally in companies to remove the need for a meeting. You know - write a status report and blog it, then, read the blogs of your other team members. If (like me) you’re writing Internet Applications anyhow it would be a walk in the proverbial recreation centre to link tot he latest milestone of the project too.

Fred (CTO for the company) wants to set up a “programmer’s playground”. That is, a set of old machines in a secluded section of the office for out-of-hours experimentation. It would be an ideal place to create a blog server and possibly even an internal slash style news site. Its strange: nobody at all has implemented a UBB message board or a slash news site using J2EE technologies! Someone needs to do that and release them under the BSD license!

Two major pieces of blog related news. Firstly the visible one: a complete re-design on the template. This one is home grown (as they should be!) Secondly, I have blog buddy to help create posts.

Met with the realtor again. I am so stressed out by all this! While it didnt find any show-stoppers the building inspection on “mock todor” did pull out a bunch of little things. We’ve asked for everything to be fixed and now I have feelings of stress / panic while we wait on the seller to reject it all. I suppose my fear is that he’ll simply walk away or something. I dont know. Maybe this is delayed nerves from last week? Maybe the overt emotional state of my wife is what I have internally and it’s just now leaking out?

God has a huge sense of humour, He really does. Just when I am most tempted He brings along additional items to be obedient over. We (my wife and I) believe in the biblical practice of tithing to the church. That’s been in place since the start for us yet at the moment with the house buying I have all these thoughts of what we could do with the $$$’s if we didnt cut the check to the church for the next couple of months. A long time ago God told communicated a simple rule with giving, “if I / we dont give, he / she / they dont eat“. Right now, if we (the church) dont give our assistant pastor will be going hungry. So, the temptation is a simple choise: Wayne goes hungry or we buy new appliances for the new house. See how its suddenly less tempting when there’s a face and a name?

The extra obedience came along this weekend when 2 of our friends (who are local Intervarsity workers) asked us to join their support team. We love them dearly and once again, if folks dont give they wont eat. My income is committed for the time being but if wife’s new job comes through she will be able to help them. It seems hopeful too. Would God bring along someone who needs a regular amount roughly equal to a tithe from the job she interviewed at for no reason?