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...