Relay1/Forum

September 11th, 2006

Having just come back from relay1 and forum, I figured I would post some random thoughts and news.

Firstly, I figured I’d let you know how great I found it. First few days were well tiring - both due to lacking sleep and having to spend lots of energy taking in lots of input and talking to people I don’t know - and thus I found myself in a bad mood at about the 2 day mark. However, this quickly resided - I got to know some people fairly better which is always cool, met some really cool people who I began to feel much more comfortable with.



Highlights of the two weeks:-

* Mike Reeves, RTSF co-ordinator, giving a talk on the cross.
* Getting to know the midlands relay team (me, Frithy, Screech, Anna B., Caz, Kat, and Chris) all to some extent - all of them seem really cool as far as I know them.
* My fellowship group being a really awesome group of people.
* There being all sorts of awesome new relay workers around who did not come under either of the categories mentioned above.
* Spending a bit of (tho not much in most cases) time with people that I always knew well enough to know were cool and thus kinda wished I knew better, but never actually did (eg. Tor, Screech, Kimber)
* Having some lovely chats with my staff worker, Melinda Hendry. She seems absolutely awesome!
* Meeting Rosemary Grier, who I expect I will turn out to be a really interesting person to discuss stuff with (even if, in Chris’s words, she “whooped me” in debate!)
* Just being amazed at the awesome centrality of the cross for the whole of human existance and our understanding of all that is.
* Picking up the phrase “the cross is our theology” from Luther via Mike, which just encapsulates so much truth that the church needs to hear, and thus which I am now able to repeat endlessly to hopefully get across.

(NOTE: I have realised that I have described lots and lots of people as really cool/awesome, etc, above. I’ve been thinking recently about the fact that doing that about too many people devalues the meaning of the word, but I think in this case it was actually suitable and true - I just praise God for so many of the people that I met while away!)

I was really challenged by two things - firstly, the centrality of cross, which i’ve mentioned a bit above and may well post something later on, but also the crucial importance of prayer, and how much the western church plays it down.

I remember one of the guys in the small group I led at forum, when I asked him what role he was in the CU, he responded to the effect of “oh, just prayer” - which really does I think reflect badly on the state of the church that that position can be seen as insignificant or unimportant. Prayer secretary is a very important position on exec - in fact, it is the most important position on exec. Without prayer, nothing else in the whole CU could be done. If we never evangelised, we could still to some extent grow in godliness, although that would be much weaker. If we never taught, we could still to some extent grow in godliness and evangelise - although both would be much weaker. In either case, we could do a little to spread the kingdom - albeit only a little. But without prayer, we are nothing - God can act without prayer, but he normally chooses not to. It has been said that “prayer is the first thing, and the second thing, and the third thing”. But tragically, the bloke in my small group seemed under the impression that it was quite possibly the last thing.

No wonder the UK church is lacking if we have attitudes like that floating around. We must all emphasise prayer more and more.