New life

A strange start to the day, at 7am the phone rang, a friend of Gill’s, “I have just gone into labour and my parents live an hour and a half away, can you look after our little boy while we go to hospital and my parents will collect him when they get here.” All fine. As they arrive however it is decided that the hospital might be a bit too far away (closest around 15 miles). So we call an ambulance first a local first response team arrive including a friend from church, then the ambulance. Anyway to cut a long story short, before I had had breakfast there was a baby born in my bedroom. A beautiful baby Girl, called Katlyn, many congrats to Claire, Paul & Lewis. What a way to start the day, the funny thing that came out of it was both myself and one of the first response team both arriving with our children at preschool late with the same excuse!

ICE

I was sent this link the other day, after the events of Thursday in London, this is actually an idea launched last year and it is excellent the idea is to put a contact in you mobile phone under ICE (In Case of Emergency). If you are involved in an accident or any kind of incident the emergency services can quickly find the right people to contact, you can also have ICE1, ICE2 etc. if the first contact can not be reached. This means that the people you want to know find out sooner, but also that the emergency services can find out any medical information that might affect your treatment. A great idea!

Fresh expressions?

What is the definition of church? A friend of mine was recently at a meeting where there was much talk about fresh expressions and many people trying to get funding for their fresh expressions, This friend was there partly on behalf of our bus project. Of over 30 fresh expressions represented only 2 were from a rural environment, why is this? Is this right? People have this idea that the rural church is stuck with the 1662 still but it’s not the case and I believe that big city churches have plenty to learn from their smaller rural brothers and sisters.

Anyway to my point whilst many consider taking a bus and a group of Christians to a group of young people who have nothing to do, to show them Gods love and compassion etc and provide them with something to be a Fresh Expression of Church, after all didn’t Jesus go to those who were in need of something? It seems we will not be eligible for a grant because we don’t have baptism. Now I have a lot of respect for the Bishop, he is a good chap but I’m just not sure how to react to this idea that you are not an expression of church unless there is a place for baptism.

Should I get a font on the bus?

True Brit?

Am I not a true Brit? I keep hearing all this talk about the Olympics, and all the build up the decision today, personally I don’t really care, what difference is it going to make to most of us really, Taxes might have to go up to pay for all the building that needs to be done, but we will make a load of money, how much of it will we the tax payers see? I’m fed up with it already, there are bigger things in this world, Tony Blair visited wherever it was to promote our bid, how much did that cost us and what else could have been done with that money, someone convince me this is worth while please.
Update: oh goodie we won! (13:15)