DVD Amnesty

Great encouragement 14 years later

As a Relay worker with UCCF at Birmingham University I invested a fair amount of time in helping to run the CU's Just Looking programme. As far as I can recall this involved (each week) doing a couple of hours work alone on a passage in John's gospel, then meeting with Dave, the evangelism secretary, for a couple of hours, then meeting for a couple of hours with a small group of students who helped Dave and I to run the show, then holding (each Monday after lectures as I recall) the Just Looking training for an hour and a half. My memory is a bit foggy but I think there were between 10 and 30 leaders from the CU in each cycle.

I remember really enjoying it. I loved getting into John's gospel (much of which I have gone back to again and again, most recently last night). I enjoyed working with Dave, a student leader of energy and vision (if you're reading this Dave Wright, get in touch!). I loved having regular contact with the young and enthusiastic servants of God who wanted to reach their friends with the Just Looking tool. And I enjoyed leading two groups of strangers as mission follow up.

I only ever got to meet one person who was converted through it, although I heard stories and rumours of others.

Anyway, yesterday one of them was in our house for lunch!

She and her husband (who I'd known a little at Birmingham) were visiting another work in Athens and we arranged to meet up because of the Birmingham connection and some cross-over in our work now. At the end of lunch I asked how she'd become a Christian, and to my amazement it was through the Just Looking course another student who I remember working with had run for her alone in her hall of residence (my old one, Lake-Wydd if any Brummies are reading this).

How great is that. The farmer sows the word. Indeed - and years later I had the privilege of seeing part of the harvest.

The encouragements from this are on so many levels. The work we put in, the faithfulness of the first year student who reached out to someone who wasn't even her friend at the time, the growth into maturity in the years since, the other testimonies she was able to pass on of others who were also converted (four or five in that hall alone, at least some of who she is still in touch with), and of course the faithfulness of the one who makes the seed grow.

It brought a lump to my throat as I heard the story and reminded me (again) to keep indiscriminately sowing the word.

In July and August we hit the road a few times from Beeston, and by the end of our time in England we were able to look back on a truly encouraging theme to our extended stay: church planting. 

In some ways this might seem a bit faddish in the sense that you hear lots and lots about it (and I don't think we did say ten years ago) but that doesn't detract from the fact that we were privileged to witness first hand, and hear lots more about, some great, faithful, God-glorifying church planting endeavours.

From Beeston we made a weekend trip to Bristol to visit my sister and her family and take part in a church gathering of a church that has asked to support us (Emmanuel Bristol). A week later we went to Liverpool to see my little brother and his wife, and be part of a couple of gatherings of Aigburth Community Church who also support us. We also went for an afternoon to Birmingham for a more random gathering of friends, many of whom are involved either at City Church Birmingham or Grace Church Cotteridge/Stirchley. 

Then on our holiday to Northumberland we drove from Beeston to Boroughbridge for lunch and toilets at the De La Hoyde's, who have moved there in the past year to help out with a new gospel planting initiative in that barren market town. During our stay in the wilds of the north east we popped into Newcastle to see the Andersons, old friends from Beeston, who have thrown their lot in with a church plant in the city centre there. On our way down south we popped into the Duncan's (friends from Sussex), who'd been in their new house for all of 48 hours. They've moved for work reasons ish but are specifically hoping to be strategically useful for church growth in that incredibly needy area. From Hexham we then had our final toilet break in Leeds with the Marlows, and caught up with the Astons who had just moved to that similarly needy city to see how they can contribute to church planting possibilities there. 

Whilst in Beeston I also hopped over to Derby to have lunch with Jonty who has just begun leading Christ Church Derby. And the Knights came up from High Wycombe to hang out in our sunny back garden and caught us up with their church planting ish endeavours.

Anyway, what's the point? Well, isn't it great that there are people who love God enough to make difficult choices to move to a new place, or leave (for good reasons) their existing church family to plant the beginnings of a new family in a new part of town? Isn't it great that, in the face of all sorts of negative news and trends regarding church in the UK, God is still building his church. We pray for more and more such initiatives across the country.
 
We found this really encouraging and found ourselves thinking how much we would love to be involved in something like this at some point - and perhaps even be part of stimulating similar initiatives here in Greece.

Some reflections on being in England (which I wrote in August but managed to not post)

A few weeks back I spoke at the men’s group at church in Beeston. I was given carte blanche and decided in the end to do two things: a brief update on life and work in Athens (see previous post) and then some brief reflections on UK church life and ministry from our perspective as annual returners. (I did say by way of intro that the latter section really ought to come from someone older and wiser – a grandfatherly kind of fireside chat - so apologies if it comes across as a bit pretentious or arrogant. Treat it as a work in progress, it might be total bunkum, and feedback whatever you think.)

First, the church in the UK has far more resources at her disposal (in terms of quality, variety and extent) than most people realise.

Though we’ve not actually experienced this much ourselves, it is fairly common for people who are planning to leave the UK to do gospel work in other countries to have to face the question ‘why are you going there when there is so much work to do here?’

True – there is lots to do in the UK. Lots and lots – it’s a bottomless pit of gospel need and opportunity, and many people need to be at that work. But relatively speaking the pit is just a bit less bottomless in the UK than in almost all of the rest of Europe, not to mention North Africa and the Middle East, vast swathes of East Asia, and plenty of other places. I’d love to know exact stats (they don’t accurately exist) but I’d guess that if you got all the real born again believers in Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Austria and Greece in one room, there’d be far fewer than if all the English ones were gathered. I don’t really know the situation in Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, where the evangelical church is perhaps stronger than all those other countries, but there I am sure there are still far fewer Bible-teaching churches and gospel-believing individuals than in the UK.

And that’s just numbers of people – there is also I am sure more in the way of cash, colleges, books (in English at least!), training initiatives and legacy (with some notable exceptions I am sure) in the UK than in the rest of Europe.

When we look around our own country it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the largely unmet challenges for the gospel. But look across the channel and then further afield and there are many more.

So, why are you going there instead of staying here? Because there’s lots to do, and there is more in the UK to do the work in that country than there is in other places to do the work there.

That’s a really simplistic answer to a question that raises more than just statistics, but I think it’s a valid place to start. 

Middle-class aspirations hinder the progress of the gospel

You would not believe the number of conversations we’ve had this summer that end up being about this issue.

Middle class is of course a slippery and in many ways unhelpful term but I stick with it because I think it captures the point – that many of us grow up – consciously or subconsciously – with a set of assumptions about the kind of life we want to live that are shaped more by ‘middle class’ aspirations than by the gospel, which are to do with a certain level of security (financial and otherwise), comfort and status, and assume access to a certain set of services and activities.

In and of themselves perhaps none of it is wrong (not wrong for Christians to live in nice houses, play fun games, see nice places etc etc) but surely it is wrong in the sense of betraying where our hearts are and what our trust is in if our ambitions and drive are shaped by anything other than Christ? If therefore it is true that much of what shapes the living and thinking and planning of many of us is from our assumptions about the kind of life we could live, rather than the kind of life the gospel commands us to live, something is seriously amiss.

None of this is new to many of us I suppose. What has struck us this summer, however, is the myriad of ways in which that works out. Here’s a quick list:

• The kind of school my children must attend (ruling out certain catchment areas)

• The kind of house I want to live in (the one I’m in now is OK but it’s not the sort of place I want to raise my children in long term)

• The part of the country I want to live in (I would prefer to be in London/near the mountains/close enough to parents/not too close to parents!)

• The career progress I feel I ought to make (guaranteeing being at the whim of the labour market/the future of the firm/the location of the next step up)

• The extra-curricular activities I need to make sure my kids can take part in (making my life fiendishly busy in the process)

• The kind of home I feel I need to run (things being ‘just so’ becoming more important than the people to whom I can minister in my home)

That’s a quicklist – perhaps there are more significant and more subtle issues. And you see that none of the above is potentially wrong – good to go to good schools, a blessing to have a nice house, fine to live wherever, good to work hard and productively, good and fun to get involved in a range of activities, lovely to have a lovely home and so on. But when it all stacks up we see that we are driven by many things and quite easily not by the gospel at all.

We are called to reach the people in the place where we are and it seems clear that all the aspirations we have easily prevent us from doing so because we are caught up in all the other things that are important – and this doesn’t even begin to take into account all the church stuff!

The call to follow Jesus supercedes any and every call from those around us – society, parents, colleagues, closest friends, spouse, church community – and requires the giving up of everything for the sake of gaining everything. Perhaps this could just be an observation on the very simple subject of eschatology – for which world are we living and working? If it is the dream of the middle classes that drives us, we are living for now. (I know it’s not just about middle classness – people of all socioeconomic backgrounds are materialists, but this summer has been a tour of middle class England.) Jesus calls us to give up everything and follow him, and the sorts of things that come with being comfortable and secure in this world are not worth fixing our eyes on in comparison with the glory and joy to come.

Understanding this trade off would release an unbelievable amount to support the progress of the gospel – cash, yes, but perhaps more significantly time: time to love and serve people (people at church and the many around us for whom we just don’t have enough time because we’re too caught up in the machine), time to get to invest in relationships, time to give over a period of years and years because that’s how long it takes to get to know people and win their trust (which is impossible in the easy-come easy-go society we live in), time to open our homes to those who need it, time to do the every-member ministry that our churches need, time just to ‘be’ rather than to ‘do’ all the time.

The bread and butter of mission in the UK is truth spoken and good deeds done in the context of everyday life and relationships, and not rocket science.

I’ve written longer than intended already so let me be super-brief: the task of making disciples is pretty simple really, and doesn’t require experts to tell us how to do it. But if we are cut off from people around us and not confident in the truth we trust, not much is going to come of our missionary efforts.

The methodology we have inherited from the past decades of church life is simply not suited to reaching most of the people around us. What will reach them is people living good lives among them, and speaking clear truth to them. How much of this is actually happening? And can you see the clear link to the previous section?

Unless we have first the inclination (which is counter-cultural because it’s not about creating my comfortable and secure little kingdom) and second the time (which is also a precious commodity when work and housework and children’s activities and home improvements and ‘me’ time and too many church meetings are all added together) to live lives that actually touch upon the lives of those around us, what significant impact for the gospel are we going to make in our towns and villages?

The gospel will make progress as ordinary Christians live ordinary lives that are full of relating to others in which we can demonstrate the loving godly living that the gospel generates and in which we can speak the gracious words that the gospel is.

Pupil power

What should happen in a school when a teacher hits a pupil? 

In Greece, students have the right to 'occupy' a high school or university (this is the closest translation of κατάληψη or katalipsi) if they want to protest about something (or perhaps nothing). It turns out that this is what happened this week at our local high school. We saw that the school was closed yesterday morning, with the student body milling around on the street outside, not particularly bothered about the cars trying to get through.

The occupied gateway of the local high school

Today I asked one of the adults waiting around (think she was a parent) what the reason was (past reasons have included protest at educational reforms, the killing of 15-year old Alexis at Christmas 2008 and pension reform [clearly school kids are into forward planning]) and she explained that it was because of this hitting of a pupil. I should have asked for more explanation of that and I don't know what the legal issues are here, but it is interesting that the student body - or at least an active minority - has the option of shutting the school.

One of the things that most intrigues me about this is that it really does seem as though they're looking for any excuse to stop lessons. Most of the kids arrive each morning fully intending to be in classes, but some think it's a better use of the day to shut the school, cause havoc on the roads and some bother for some parents who then need to be looking after their kids, and stop the entire school from learning. 

This is all perfectly legal. And there seems to be no indication of staff trying to talk the protesters down, or parents wading in saying 'get back to school', or an active minority of pupils disagreeing with the action.  These were all possible responses that went through my mind.

I don't want to belittle physical abuse, but I think I prefer the option of the teacher in question, the family involved and the relevant legal bodies sorting out out of school. Or does that just reflect my individualistic, passivist leaning? Is it a healthy thing that the whole school takes responsibility? 

If this sort of thing happens in four years when Joel is at that school, I can imagine it being extremely frustrating. It does make me wonder whether the challenges we'll face in the future will be more complicated than they are now. Our kids are in primary school which is basically straight-forward and seemingly fairly innocent. But as other things we've been reading lately suggest, there is a distinctive and troubled societal undercurrent that is not neutral or light, but does perhaps pose significant challenges to the raising and training and educating of a family.

Having said all that, and re-read it, a large part of me thinks that sounds like over-analytical hogwash, there's nothing new under the sun, and this is a pointless musing. But I think I'll leave it up, if only to look back at in four years' time.

Some remarkable reportage on Greece PS

When I got to the end of the Vanity Fair article posted earlier this week, I remembered something that happened in our first week in Athens, January 2007. Here's the line from the magazine:

But [Greece] does not behave as a collective; it lacks the monks’ instincts. It behaves as a collection of atomized particles, each of which has grown accustomed to pursuing its own interest at the expense of the common good. There’s no question that the government is resolved to at least try to re-create Greek civic life. The only question is: Can such a thing, once lost, ever be re-created? (Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair, 1 October 2010, final para).

Now I am not Greek and I have not even lived here for four years, but I feel somewhat defensive as I read that. How would you feel if you were Greek, reading such a black-and-white national character assassination?

A few reactions: first, that is not far off a useful summary of human nature. I think we're all at heart accustomed to pursuing our own interest at the expense of the common good. Societies do it in different ways, and some of the ways Greeks do it are just less culturally acceptable in, for example, England. (I'm not sure our civic life is inherently better in England though. You don't find Greek high streets that are no-go areas on Friday nights as you do the length and breadth of England.) But fair enough to an extent - Greece has societal sin. No surprise there.

Second, I really don't know how fair a characterisation of the Greek nation this article is. I'm going to sound it out among some of our friends here. Most people we've got to know here don't hold back about criticising their compatriots (as Lewis points out) so it may be that people don't get as defensive as I think they might - maybe it's spot on.

Third, as I said I was reminded of something trivial that happened nearly four years ago.

Moving these days seems to assume a fair amount of IKEA purchasing and we were no exception - with many, many flat-pack boxes opened and the contents assembled. What to do with the mountains of cardboard? Rubbish collection here takes place each night and you have to carry your stuff to the nearest wheelie bins, in our case just at the end of our short street on the main road. I set out with load upon load and was a little concerned to find the bins already full. There was no way I could leave all those boxes without encroaching on the road itself, or piling up precariously high.

I asked Costas what to do - our friendly neighbour, now in his mid-20s. 

'Costa - should I leave a few here now and some more tomorrow and so on?

'No, just leave them all.'

'But there's too many - it will be a problem on the road.'

'Eh, this is Greece. We don't care.'

This was said with shrug of shoulders and most certainly in the sense of 'someone else's problem - sleep easy my friend'.

Part one - the moving boxes (can't locate picture of IKEA boxes which followed)

Perhaps the lack of civic duty is much more pronounced here. Can it be recreated, once lost?

As we think about teaching the truth about Jesus, the one who is Lord over all of life - including tax demands, litter and illegal software copying - we are beginning to see more clearly the way the gospel will challenge the students who epitomise the 'we don't care' of modern Greece.

This is not important...

...but worth mentioning. I noticed sadly that our favourite Greek beer (Mythos, which very handily allows one to say my Thos and your Thos) has gone up from 86c to 1.06E over the summer. This is still not much for half a litre of ideal companion to our favourite Greek fast food on a hot evening, the chicken giros with everything, but I was therefore chuffed when at the same time as noticing the raging inflation I backed into a stack of 'new product' Hellas Pils, for a mere 59c.

It turns out that this was a bad deal at half the price. The second bottle that we opened, which had a bit of fizz, might have been the collected dregs of other peoples' Mythos. The first bottle (see picture) broke as I opened it. Note the neck and cap. I poured it into glasses through a tea strainer to collect the stray shards of glass, but I shouldn't have bothered as it went straight down the drain once it was tasted.

Something is worth paying for if it is to be richly enjoyed a la 1 Timothy 6.

Some remarkable reportage on Greece

We've been made aware of this article from Vanity Fair (not a magazine to which we subscribe...) and it is fascinating and alarming all at the same time! Have a dip if you'd like some understanding of what's going on here - if the journalist is telling the truth, and if those to whom he spoke were telling the truth!

Going to church Athenian-style

Our local Greek Orthodox church with our local Joel Clark on front steps

The walk to Joel and Hannah’s school takes us past the local Greek Orthodox Church, Αγίας θεράποντας or Ayias Therapondas (this is the best thing I can find quickly for those who, like me, want to know a bit about the geezers who get the privilege of having churches named after them! Read with a pinch of salt or three).

It was a peaceful and relaxed morning and I was ahead of schedule so I popped in to the building for the first time in a while. There were a couple of priests doing their thing at the front, behind the ornate iconostasis, and perhaps 30 worshippers: 20 or so mostly women sitting or kneeling in the pews and the rest, mostly men, loitering at the back (like me). At the same time as I went in one of the mums from school came in, bought a 10c candle, lit it and left, all in the space of 30 seconds.

I went back to take this picture later when the service wasn't on

Two things struck me. The first was how very clearly it was a service. I have deliberately stopped calling our church meetings services. This is a religious word, or a civic word, not a gospel word – when we gather at church we do not partake of a service. Services are things done for us, like meals on wheels, or Watford Gap, or the NHS – good things, or at least necessary, but not really much to do with hearing God speak as a family, communion with Christ, mutual encouragement and an expression of sacrificial love.

This morning’s observations however were of a service: the priests stood with their backs turned to the congregation, who played no part whatsoever other than to kneel at the appropriate point and perhaps listen. They recited old Greek – quite relaxing to listen to, and at times even intelligible (λάβετε, φάγετε which is ‘take, eat’) – and would have carried on if no one had been in the building. This is a far cry from the one anotherness of New Testament spirituality. When I think about this kind of service, it does seem a little like the kind of service that councils provide. As long as it’s happening everything is OK, but we don’t need to participate in the delivery of it. I’m not saying that is what it’s about, but it does seem so to me as an outsider.

The second thing that struck me is that these services are being delivered daily in thousands of similar settings across the entire Orthodox world. Even though there are only a handful of ‘faithful’ in each service, that’s a fair number of Greeks coming into contact with some kind of words about Jesus. We are led to understand that very, very few Orthodox people have what you might call a living faith, a real, personal trust in Christ and his saving work on the cross. Only God knows the faith or otherwise of any person, and so our speculation is pretty useless. However, while there is little evidence from the way people live to suggest there are many followers of Jesus here, there must at least be a fair amount of spiritual hunger and questioning among these scattered groups.

Though our ministry is with students, few of whom voluntarily darken the doors of (the already gloomy) church buildings here, we would love to get more involved in the home and church lives of those around us in the neighbourhood.

Janice Clark, 14 November 1947 - 3 September 2010

We have just sent a prayer letter out. The first part was the sad news about mum, Janice Clark, who died on Friday 3rd September after suffering with cancer for over a year. Her funeral will be 14th September, with a thanksgiving on the 18th, both in Milton Keynes (ask for details). This isn’t the time or place for many words about her, but I wanted to write three things that we feel very strongly.
 
The first is that to be with Christ is better than to live, and so we are very glad for her because she has entered into God’s perfect rest, where there are no more tears, and we rejoice that she trusted him.
 
The second is that we will miss her very much, because she was mum and we have to wait to take our place in that perfect rest with Jesus and all the faithful who have gone before us.
 
The third is that we are moved and challenged by, and grateful for, a remarkable legacy that she has left. Lengthy tributes elsewhere, but she and dad taught us the gospel as children, taught and modelled contentment in Christ, set us an example of sacrifice for the sake of Christ and others, loved us well, and prayed so faithfully. (Dad showed us her prayer diary last week. It is remarkable in its comprehensiveness and consistency.) She wouldn’t want a focus on her now—her life and death point us upwards not backwards—but she would be thrilled to learn that her example lead to greater love and faithfulness on our part. God-willing, it will. I hope that my own children will look on the example of their mum and dad and know that they too have learned great treasures in such normal ways, and be encouraged that they have been taught by people who have been taught by, among others, my mum.
 
I love the fact that such a great example was set by such normal people, with no whistles and bells. It encourages and reminds me that our years are well spent if they are wasted in the cause of the gospel—not just in glamorous missionary fields, but at kids’ bedsides and around meal tables and in countless caring conversations with all sorts of people, all with the purpose of establishing others perfect in Christ—as she now truly is. And I am encouraged by the knowledge that this great work of making disciples is done by normal people with the simple truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ through open Bibles.
 
I don’t feel the need to look for silver linings in black clouds. The good things are plain to see, and mum’s death (which is really her life beginning as God always wanted it to be: face to face with him, no sin in her, no cause for sorrow, and unendingly glorious and glorifying) brings many of them into sharper focus for us. 

I hope and pray that this encourages and challenges you in the same direction as it has us.

Greece today

On my flight to England to try to see mum before she died I read the editorial in the Aegean Airlines in-flight magazine. Because many people had been asking us during our months in England what the current situation is in Greece I thought I'd post a few paragraphs here because the Aegean CEO picks up on it.

It is no secret that Greece is today facing many challenges. As a country and as a society we are only in the beginning of a very punishing process to re-establish our international credibility, our productivity, our belief in our own ability to restart the development path of our country.
The current situation is clearly the most difficult since WW2., and the international image of our country has suffered.
However, especially because we are in this environment, it is more crucial than ever to project both internationally and locally that Greece, its companies, its people can produce products that are globally competitive in quality and efficiency. Especially during this year, where international organisations have been downgrading ratings and expectations for our country, it is crucial to add a small but, I believe, very promising star [this is talking about the Star Alliance of airlines] on the map, where Greece is to show that aviation services to the country are actually upgraded.
The message is clear: new good things are still coming out of Greece, even now, and it may be happening in many more areas than you think; come and visit the country and see for yourselves.

 

The feeling from business is pessimistic - but the vibe on the street is pretty normal. We expected to see changes but food prices appear to be stable (our local gyros are now €1.90 [that's right, about £1.60 for a quality kebab], 10c up on March, and all other prices are about the same apart from petrol which is perhaps 10-15c/l higher).

Anyway, I'm not economically savvy and I gather that there will be a lag in price increases that's linked to fuel price increases, so we'll see. However, unless you listen to the chat radio or read pieces by businessmen, Greece seems the same as it did last year.

Another deletion

Seems I also deleted something about Ruth being born. We'll post something soon about her, but she does still exist.

Challenges we face

I posted this a while ago but somehow deleted it. Last time it had more detail on but I'll just post the list so that it's back up there.

Apologies.

These eight challenges were how we summed up our return to Athens next week during our recommissioning service in July.

1. Nurturing a godly marriage
2. Raising our children well and praying that they might trust Jesus themselves
3. Relating well to friends, family and other supporters
4. Loving and serving our church family
5. Leading our team with wisdom and compassion
6. Heading towards fluency in Greek
7. Reaching out to our neighbours
8. Building student ministry!

This last point is of course laughably enormous but this post is not the place to expand.

Our hearts are idol factories...

...as John Calvin once wrote. I've realised a lot lately that I am a simple fellow who inhabits a fairly simple if somewhat chaotic universe. And so it is unsurprising perhaps that it turns out one of my idols is simplicity itself!

Through analysing some of my frustrations, weaknesses and struggles in recent months and years (related to family life, church life, IFES team life, the Greek bureaucracy, UK transport policy, supermarket shelves [why so may types of baby wipes?] and many others) with Dawn, it turns out that I have idolised the easy life. This is probably related to laziness, though not only that.

I still think that simple is better than complicated, and I don't think the solution is to clutter me up, but our hearts so easily set themselves on the stuff rather than the creator - be it technological stuff, wearable stuff, the big stuff that we live in (houses I mean) or quality of life stuff: for me, a simple life with a minimum of clutter and distraction and choice! And if our hearts are excited and satisfied by the stuff rather than the provider of it, the Lord of it, it's idolatry.

What are your idols?

Dear children, keep yourself from idols.

Ruth

Well, it's over a month since she was born so high time we updated this (thanks Bec for the prod, which reminds me to ask you for any suggestions on subjects you'd be interested to read entries on. The current economic crisis for example, and how to pull through. Or the ridiculous habit of the English media to talk up England's chances at a major sporting event. Or whether the youth of today are to blame for being the youth of today that they are.)

Anyway, Ruth is very well! She came out very happily and has been largely happy since, though the last few days she's been a bit more unsettled and keeping Dawn awake more at night. I have realised that my night time feeding efforts with my three girls have not been as sterling as they were with Joel back in the winter of 2002, and I have become adept at sleeping through her 3-hourly wake-ups. She looks like all our other kids did, give or take an ounce or two, and has an impressive ability to fix one with a rather impassive stare, which really makes you feel as though she is sizing you up.

C Day

Unless Dawn goes into labour early, Bod will be dragged into the world at the QMC Nottingham on Tuesday, 4 May. Watch this space (and other ones too) for developments.

Apparently girls are better

When we had the last scan in January the doctor told us that Bod (baby number 4) was a girl. We’d had a thing in our family that Joel and I needed a boy so we’d be even, but that of course we’d be very happy with any kind of baby. Expressing this to the doctor at the time, he said we should be totally happy that we’re having another girl, because (so the saying goes) if you have a girl she’ll bring you a plate of food or a glass of water, but if you have a boy all you’ll get is a kick.

At first we told this to others thinking it was mostly ironic with a grain of truth, but given the number of times our Greek friends have said pretty much exactly the same thing since, I’m now thinking that it is spoken as absolute truth without a hint of irony! Just this morning our neighbour said the same thing to me, and elaborated with illustrations from her own family (one boy, one girl, now both grown up and both thoroughly nice people) and from her mother’s home town, Sparta, where ‘only the boys are children’ – i.e. the girls are expected to pull their weight from the off but the boys are princes. Houses are passed down always to the boys, the girls leave home with nothing.

It’s another illustration of just how ‘eastern’ Greece is.

Here’s another one, while we’re on the subject – we’ve spoken to a couple of older students this week about possibly joining us on some kind of fledgling Relay scheme. Both are positive initially, though we’ll see what comes of it. One, however, said something that you’d never hear in the UK. ‘My parents will be supportive [that you might hear] but the rest of my family might not be [i.e. uncles, grandparents etc].’

So what you might ask? Well, which graduating students in England would consider the opinion of grandparents as decisive in such decision-making?

It's not that this is either a good thing or a bad thing, though it might be one or the other, but that it just makes the whole process of influencing the decision-making of students more complicated and definitely slower. (We make no apologies for that part of our work! I needed influencing when I was a student - and still do - and it's no controversy that Athenian students also need influencing for the gospel. The influence of the extended family, however, is so much more significant than northern Europeans are used to.

Implications for us? It reminds us of the value of close family, because we are not islands. It reminds me of the need to become wise as I grow older so that I can be of good influence on my nephews and nieces and grandchildren, as well as my own four children - the alternative that I will be of no influence or actually bad influence.

(And that's the subject for another post - how much help do we get in our churches regarding our growing old? Almost all of us will do it and are doing it already, but how many of us will do it well?)

Other implications: we need more patience for it takes longer for people to change their minds or make up their minds. We need to see people not as individuals but parts of a wider network. And we also need to see how the gospel should critique (not criticise) the extended family culture, because the students we work with are still to be held accountable in the end for their choices and opportunities and effectiveness and productivity in their knowledge of Christ.

The harvest is plentiful, but...

We've just been talking with our friends and team mates Joel and Bekah, and did a quick sketch of the needs and opportunities in student ministry in the Hellenic world. I thought I'd jot it down before bed.

Let's imagine that we had in our house this evening five people or couples or families who were:

1. Willing to set aside 5-10+ years
2. Up for learning a notoriously tricky language (especially for anglophones)
3. Flexible enough to learn the ropes of life and work among Greeks
4. Committed to Christ and his gospel word
5. Keen to proclaim him among students (most of whom don't want to listen) and disciple the small number of those who already know him
   

then we'd hire a big van and drive from Athens to Patras to Ioannina to Thessaloniki to Volos and back to Athens, leaving one in each place with the remit to get stuck in for the long haul. We'd also put one on the plane to Cyprus.

And that's just scratching the surface.

The reality is that, even if we did make God's plans for him, we don't have any of those people at the moment, either Greek or non-Greek. In 10 years time we hope to have some Greeks but perhaps in rather fewer years we might have some non-Greeks (ξένοι) and so I thought I'd put this up here, to begin actively floating that boat...among those who might read this...perhaps this little thought might enter your minds, or the minds of faithful people you have influence over...perhaps...

Be prepared, in season and out of season

I was at class this morning (increasingly rare due to other pressures, not least uterine) and at last had the opportunity to greet a chap who's joined since the beginning of the year. His Greek sounds perfect (he's half Greek) but his spelling is atrocious, as I could see from the amount of red ink on his spelling test. That's not important. What is important is that through a simple introduction, and his (to be expected) surprise at our being here, I was able to explain what we do in simple terms.

His immediate response? 'I've never read the Bible but I'd like to! Something about it interests me.'

What exactly interests him I don't know, and maybe it's purely intellectual curiosity, but I'll be giving him a Greek NT on Friday and have asked if he'd like to read it it with me. I think one thing that roused his curiosity was when I said that we meet with students wherever they are - at uni, in homes, in town centres - because there are no restrictions to reading the Bible!

We'll see what comes of it, but I was reminded of Paul to Timothy in 2 Tim 4 - be prepared.

For our encouragement

I just read this post from the Gospel Coalition blog as it had been 'liked' by our team member Tim. As you'll see from the title, it's all about ways to encourage missionaries (though we don't like that word very much!), hence the title of this post.

It's not that we're feeling particularly discouraged at the moment, but almost all of the advice strikes a chord with me (as long as you read UK for USA) so, for our encouragement, which we need and value, have a read of it!

A new year, a new effort to blog

It's now an embarrassingly long time since we wrote anything on here. However, it's a new year, I'm writing a new prayer letter, and it suddenly became crystal clear that this would be a useful and easy thing to do.

In the letter I'm currently writing is the above family photo. We're inside a church which is inside a tree!

Here is the only webpage we've found about it, and be warned: the blog from which this is taken is an enormous archive of all sorts of articles about Greek Orthodoxy. We are not responsible for the content of other websites!

However, I thought I'd put this up as a useful insight into the wonderful (sic) world of Eastern Orthodoxy at a folk level. The information on these pages is not 'official' teaching, but may as well be in that it is all accepted as part of the fabric of the faith. Have a look if you're curious!