I had a quick pray this evening, and was struck again by something I started thinking about a couple of weeks ago. I receive a regular email from the mailing list of www.relevantmagazine.com. They often have some great articles, with a wide diversity of subject matter on following Jesus. Good stuff, check it out.
Anyway, one particular article included a tyrade from a writer berating their church members for going out and having nice meals with their friends one minute, and feeding homeless people a more meagre offering a few hours later.
Roundtable Day 3
Wow, we’ve had a fairly intense few days! Everyone has that look of someone deprived of sleep and light for too long, so this afternoon we’ve changed the programme to enable everyone to chill out for a while, before coming back to end the first of the two gatherings on a high!
To those of you who have been praying for our time here, I just want to say THANK YOU. Over the last 36 hours we’ve had two of the best presentations I’ve ever seen. Jonah Bailey did a fantastic job presenting the results of the structure teams’ deliberations on how to run 24-7 over the next few years, and Andy Freeman presented a ‘top draw’ talk on the Boiler Rooms section of the movement. We’ve really been blessed by a great sense of unity and positivism about the year ahead, even though some of the points presented are quite contentious.
Roundtable
As I type this, 50 of the key 24-7 leaders from across the nations are meeting to seek God, worship Him, tell stories of what He is doing around the globe, and pray.
We have two gatherings at 24-7 each year – the Roundtable, and the International Leaders Gathering. I’ll be making a few posts over the next few days, and we would really value your prayers for both of these gatherings. To begin with, I’m going to concentrate on the former, the Roundtable.
An amazing weekend
We’ve just had an amazing God filled weekend here in Reading. My church, Greyfriars, has been holding regular outreaches to people in the town centre, specifically around a vision to offer prayer for healing.
As I mentioned in a previous post, these times have been an incredible encouragement to me, due to the team of people from the church being released into their many different giftings. This mix came to the fore again this weekend, with many examples of the team working together to see God glorified.
One of the main characteristics of this particular weekend was the presence of New Zealander Craig Marsh. Craig was miraculously healed of cancer in 1999 – and I mean miraculously, God giving him a new stomach after his own had been surgically removed – and he was at Greyfriars to teach on healing and evangelism.
Craig had some great insights to share with us, and the weekend ended with him preaching and praying for people’s healing on the Sunday night. People were still being prayed for when Shirley and I left at 10, the service having started at 7. Definitely the longest service I’ve been to at Greyfriars, and probably one of the most memorable.
If you’re interested, you can hear Craig’s testimony here.
Now that’s fast…
So, we hear today that Steve Irwin is killed by a Stingray. To begin with, I can’t say I was surprised, given the brave/idiotic approach he took towards deadly animals. But that’s not the reason for the post, per se.
I was wondering how on earth he actually got stung by one of these graceful creatures, so I looked them up on Wikipedia. The article had already been updated with information on how Steve died, and how incredibly rare his injury was.
Don’t you just love the internet?!
Reading Rocks!
Just had a top weekend at the Reading Festival! Hundreds of bands come to one of the biggest indie/alternative festivals in the world to ply their wares, and I found myself not disappointed with what was on offer.
I’ve been to the festival for most of the last 15 years or so, and this year was definitely one of the more memorable ones. Top performances for me this year were:
Muse
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Pearl Jam
TV on the Radio
Broken Social Scene
Tea ‘healthier’ drink than water
What we knew already…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5281046.stm
Just off to put the kettle on.
:-)#
GemmaTank
Check this out – Shirls cat Gemma is learning new forms of armoured attack…
…I tried to edit the video file but had no joy, so watch it in Real Player (there’s a free version on their site if you don’t have a copy already) and skip to about half way through.
Visitation
Just had the delightful Mr Shawn Cardwell, inventor of schmicroprizes and lead designer of the lego scale model of PNCA, visiting me in Reading.
After Shawn’s maths and the arts conference at University College London, it was great just to spend time catching up with each other. Shawn is from Portland, Oregon, and we first met through friends at the Downtown House of Prayer a couple of years ago. Anyway, enough background!
Reflection
For some time now, Shirley and I had set aside last weekend as a time to be quiet before God. Somehow life seems to crowd out such times to the point where I need to book them way in advance to make sure they happen. But when they do happen, they’re so good.
We took it easy in the morning , and then headed up to Douai Abbey, a Benedictine Monastery just to the south west of Reading. After a nice little picnic, we spent 3 hours or so just praying, listening and reading in the beautiful abbey church.