Pink sky at night…

Belfast’s pink skyline from the car window.

Gmail adverts

I sometimes notice the text ads on gmail, and often think to myself google are very smart in matching my email content to relevant ads.

Until today….

I’m not sure what ads for bloating and gas say about what google makes of the content of my email inbox…

Dublin Grafitti #2

As seen on a billboard in Pimlico

Dublin graffiti

The Lisbon Treaty Vote – What’s the Story?

Having just become a resident of Dublin, although still waiting on a bank account, I’m a little at a loss to understand the whole deal about Lisbon. I haven’t moved in time to vote. The posters all around for the yes and no campaigns certainly don’t help with an informed decision. From the yes campaign promising jobs to the no campaign scaremongering about the loss of freedom, the European defence agency (despite Ireland’s protected neutrality), and reduction of minimum wage to €1.84 none if it inspires confidence. Michael O’Leary backing the yes vote also doesn’t exactly inspire. So I was excited to see one politician (Gay Mitchell MEP)  had produced a handy guide to the treaty, promising a reasonably fair overview. All ready to get tucked in over a cuppa, I was then appalled to discover that said politician’s booklet had been distributed with a catastrophic print error. Over twenty pages of the 72 page booklet were missing. Now if you can’t even print your own booklet properly, never mind check it before you distribute probably a few thousand copies, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. So is there anyone out there who can give me a fair synopsis of the issues?

Leadership #1 – Leadership as mutual and not removed

I’ve almost finished a thesis on leadership development so thought I might share some of the insights that have been inspiring me. First up from Henri Nouwen.

..ministry is a mutual experience.. He wants us to minister not as ‘professionals’ who know their clients problems and take care of them, but as vulnerable brothers and sisters who know and are known, who care and are cared for, who forgive and are being forgiven, who love and are being loved. Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead. Medicine, psychiatry etc all offer us models in which ’service’ takes place in a one-way direction. But how can we lay down our lives for those we do not allow to enter into deep personal relationship with us?

When members of a community of faith cannot truly know and love their shepherd, shepherding quickly becomes a subtle way of exercising power over others, and begins to show authoritarian and dictatorial traits…  … the leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind than that offered by the world. It is servant leadership in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as the people need their leader.

From In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership

The soapbox has been on the move and will be back soon

The last few months have been a whirlwind of constant movement and excitement. After 30ish years in the glorious east, I’ve had to say goodbye to the iconic cranes that remind me I’m home as I’ve packed up and moved to Dublin. Despite having spent half of the last year or two in and around Dublin’s fair city, and becoming practised in moving, leaving the city that has watched me grow up and has changed round me as I’ve grown up has been more difficult than I imagined. I’ve come to appreciate just how blessed I am in terms of the friendships I have and the people around me who I love, respect and have had the privilege of sharing life with over the past years. I know those friendships remain, but there is a wrench when you realise the possibility of nipping across Belfast to see someone is no longer there, and has to be prearranged into two/three day trips north. Moving (and going long periods of not spending more than 5 consecutive nights in one bed) certainly helps with decluttering lots of the stuff that I’ve accumulated, and giving a sense a freedom from the slavery of possessions.

The last months have taken in a wild variety of things – the encounter summer team, a holiday in Spain, Leading for Life in Vienna, leadership training with Cuban youth leaders, Summer Madness, U2 at Croke, Greenbelt and trying to write a dissertation on leadership development, never mind moving city and country. Oh and leaving the organisation I’ve worked with for the last 9 years. Apart from being ridiculously expensive I’m loving Dublin, the future is bright as I look forward to finishing my MDiv after 5 years, Innovista Ireland begins to come online, and a trip to Hong Kong provides space and celebration of all this change. Come 15 September I’m sure many of those musings and a wee review of Greenbelt will come to light, but for now the thesis takes over…

The Orange Order is in decline…

And I can’t say I’m too sorry to hear it. Membership of the order in Northern Ireland has more than halved in the last 60 years. Grand Secretary Drew Nelson blames the decline primarily on the increasing secularisation in Northern Ireland, and that the order was suffering the same fate as churches with people turning away from religion. Interesting and heavily ironic. As an organisation that encourages its members to be church-goers it too is struggling with the church. Or perhaps people are turning away from bad religion as experienced in the Orange Order. Growing up in East Belfast there certainly seemed little connection with church as I knew it to the drinking and sectarianism of the local bands and orangemen. Nelson’s second reason for the decline is:

“Secondly, there’s the whole ethos of the state in Northern Ireland – it appears to be leaning somewhat against the Orange Order.”

In which he refers to PSNI members having to inform superiors of their membership of the order. Just right too. I wouldn’t want any policemen or women to be members of any sort of sectarian, never mind historically misguided organisation which brings ambiguity at best to the gospel of Jesus. The Jesus who told us to love our enemies and to serve – which seem to be things the Orange Order has forgotten or fails to practise.

Could it also be suggested that the fall in membership of the Orange Order is also a result of the ending of the troubles and many trying to move away from the sectarianism that has been eating away at us for the last who knows how long?

doctrinal purity vs grace

Does an emphasis on doctrinal purity rule out grace being the most obvious smell we give off?

I’ve been mulling this over a little over the past weeks. Is it possible for the two to live in tension?  I know it must but I have rarely seen it happen..

It seems than when our focus is on making sure people think/know/believe the ‘right’ things we become arbiters of what is ‘right’ and set ourselves up in judging and defining ourselves over and against others. It can be seen in lots of ways – both in those who are nervous about the gospel being diluted and those who wish people could see the bigger picture. In fact even when we want others to espouse a more gracious and liberating way of living we can become so focused on whether they are doing it right that we lose the gracious way of life we are trying to see more of.

I wonder if our focus is on doctrinal purity (of whichever sort that may be) if we can really live, breathe and smell grace?

It keeps coming back to the far side

“it’s not what you tell them, it’s’ what they hear that counts”

Red Auerbach, Former Boston Celtics Coach

Communication is something that is so intrinsic and so key to all areas of life, and yet the source of so much conflict and misunderstanding. Perhaps if we made more efforts to develop and understand others then we would communicate more effectively, avoiding unnecessary conflict. It’s not enough (and one could say a sign of immaturity) to say “well I told them”. If they don’t understand, then we have to realise that is not simply their problem but ours too. We are the ones who need to work at making sure other people hear the right thing, what we intend them to hear.

The obvious question is how much as the church do we pay attention to this? Are we still expecting people to speak and understand our language without learning theirs?

And then in relationships, we begin to realise that maybe we aren’t so blameless after all and need to start taking some responsibility for how we communicate.

And in work it’s simply not a good enough excuse to use the ” I told him/her” as a means of shifting blame and avoiding responsibility.

Dammit, this means I need to work this out now..