Time off in Shkoder (Albania)

We have a 10 day job in Albania and today we got a day off (for good behaviour??)

Church this morning was great - a privilege to break bread with a fellowship in the town. Singing sounded enthusiastic and felt "local" in style. Though we were made welcome I was heartily glad that the service was as usual - the only concession to us was someone pointing out which number we were singing. I hate it when the foreigners are made a fuss of!

Cycling down the lake it was a beautiful day - I guess about 20 degrees and blues skies. A one and a half hour bike ride to a little restaurant near the end of the road (after the end of the road is the Montenegro border)

Lunch with some of the team here, on the terrace overlooking the lake, a leisurely affair. I had kofta and salad (and chips!) Then eventually back for ice cream and expresso in the city.

Blowing God's Trumpet

Sometimes PR is easy...

Some wish to live within the sound of church or chapel bell;


I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.

C.T. Studd

It cost a fair chunk of our budget - but when this slogan was worn by about 80 recovering addicts at an event with about 10,000 Christians - it was one of the high points of my summer.

I could have sold a load of the T shirts - but it would have killed the message. (something cynical about naked money-grubbing commercialism in the church springs to mind....)

I was giving out postcards - this is what they said:

CT Studd, founder of WEC International, knew that he risked his life and his reputation when he sailed for Africa in 1913. But he believed that it was a risk worth taking. Studd worked within a yard of hell; workers joined him knowing they may not return home alive. Studd was buried in the Congo where he worked.

To follow in the spirit of WEC's founder is a continual challenge. WEC's Betel ministry, in UK and elsewhere, still epitomises that same radical, passionate, vision.

Begun in Spain, Betel is a community that demonstrates the reality of God's activity in the lives of people on the margins of society. Within a yard of hell are those whose lives have been destroyed by addiction, they live on the streets of cities in the UK, and across the world. Betel runs a rescue shop right there. The lives of Betel members demonstrate vividly the love and power of God in places some would be tempted to call ‘God-forsaken’ - they are not.

Betel communities demonstrate the power of God over addiction. They are a church which knows the cost, but pays it anyway. Many are rescued every year.

WEC International continues to reach out to the last, the least, and the lost. It is WEC's intention to demonstrate the life-giving power of God and see churches started all over the world - wherever there is no church.

Job done...

Shock and sadness

A dear fellow worker and his wife killed in Pakistan. I've stayed with them each time I visited Pakistan.

Links:

• "Thin end of the wedge"
• Daily Record (Morris County New Jersey)
  
• Pakistan Christian post

Even more shock to see how some seem to "want" this to appear to be about terrorism (Islamic I think they mean) when it appears that the suspects are "christian". Particularly because I see echoes of that in myself - not wanting one of "ours" to be to blame - how sick is that?

Playing with words

I quite like playing with words. It can be a great pastime, it can be good communication (an underrated activity in my view), and it can occasionally be a teeny bit self-serving (as illustrated in Kez's blog on the Ikon service at Greenbelt).

I read these words in Brian McLaren (Generous Orthodoxy):

language can be a window through which one glimpses God, but never a box in which God can be contained

McLaren also quotes my "favourite human author I almost understand" - C.S. Lewis (who is not trying to be clever, he just is a lot more clever than me).