just the rev

Delirious? have had quite impact on me and on my ministry since their early Cutting Edge days. When I was a youth worker in London I welcomed them on stage at our church in 1996 and watched about 500 people go nuts. In 1998 Lucy and I saw them here in Newport. Then in 2000 Lucy and I welcomed them on stage in Cheltenham at p2k and watched several thousand people go nuts. Last night we saw them again here in Newport playing at a very full Leisure Centre......what a fantastic evening. The songs still seem to cut it and their ministry is as encouraging as ever. Mission Bell is their latest album and if you don't have it then for crying out loud get one now! The visuals for my favourite song ever "history maker" were great as were the visuals for 'paint this town red'. Well encouraged.

LONDON: A touch of the fairground came to the Tate Modern gallery as the latest work trying to fill the cavernous turbine hall of the former power station on the River Thames.

Conceived by Belgian-born German artist Carsten Holler, Test Site consists of five helter-skelter slides – the tallest of which drops 26.5 metres from the top floor of the building and is 55.5 metres long.

"The moment of going down the slide is a moment of release," Holler told a news conference at the opening of the installation. "In my opinion, the fairground experience is completely under-rated.

"But this is not just a fairground experience. It embodies a lot of other things," he added.

This is participation art, said Tate Modern curator Jessica Morgan.

"Holler firmly believes that slides should be far more widely used in public life. The idea is that if we all went down a slide on a daily basis it might profoundly change our lives," she said.

I think Holler is on to something here. see my post on Friday 1st September. Also ties in with some reading. Looking at "The Passionate Church' by Breen and Kallestad (excellent stuff by the way!) - they talk about working from rest rather than what we all seem to do which is resting from work. perhaps there is more of a chance of being productive and fruitful if we resist being a workaholic. The true sign of being godly is pattern our life after God himself. And for God rest is vitally important. Would be interesting if we brought more of a mix of rest and the fairground experience to our discipleship.

Been down a slide recently?!

been away on a conference called Welcome to Wales. Pretty useful stuff...might have helped more to have gone on it last year! Good to be home...briefly...away for my Mum's priesting in Southwark Cathedral this Sunday.

felt a bit discouraged just recently but listened to a New Wine talk whilst at the gym this morning! It was all about courage and the bloke was talking about the Spartan army and in particular the battle of Thermopylae where just 300 men stood upto the might of the Persian Army - The performance of the defenders at the battle of Thermopylae is often used as an example of the advantages of training, equipment and good use of terrain to maximise an army's potential, as well as a symbol of courage against extremely overwhelming odds.