Finally...
Taking quite a while to get my head around my trip to the UK and even longer to actually blog about it (No pressure other than the fact that I said I would!). It was an incredible time with many things that I could mention, but probably won't due to lack of space.
To start of with, this the first time that I have been to England where I haven't felt a major heart pull. About 5 years ago Charise and I were seriously thinking about relocating to the UK to start a church. Since then God has done some incredible things and we can truly say that Cape Town is where God wants us to be for this time, and our hearts have put down some serious roots for Cape Town and what God has for us here.
It was so good to reconnect with all our old and new friends...Simply being together was spiritually refreshing, talking about the things of the Kingdom was a special bonus and it was delightfully encouraging.
For some reason while doing some sight seeing and trying to connect with various people, we managed to get lost probably about 6 or 7 times - the great thing about this is, we were not amongst those to blame.
The 'church-planting conference' in Coventry was amazing. There were about 70 people representing 14 different nations participating. The conference didn't have a name, wasn't organised by any specific group...It was simply a get together with people who were somehow connected through relationship....So it is possible!
I was particularly encouraged by the Swiss Team who are involved in training up 'church-planting teams' in Switzerland. In the last 2 years teams have been trained up, 8 churches have been planted in a predominantly Catholic nation and many have been reached. What stood out for me with these guys was...they weren't just talking about it, they were ACTUALLY DOING IT! A good challenge for a lot of us. Shane, enough TALK dude!
Andrew and I spend our last night in the UK with Steve & Tammy Gee. The main purpose of the trip was to make sure that there actually was a Tammy. Well there was and what a pleasure it was to meet her. We had such a cool time with them and their friends. That night after dinner Steve and Aaron took us to what was supposed to be an extremely quiet pub for drinks and chats. Well, if that was a quiet pub, I would hate to be in a busy pub! It was here...amongst all the noise that we met Mark Norridge. That evening we had a fantastic time, drinking dem pints, bantering away and swapping Kingdom experiences.
Good flight home, especially good to escape the smoke filled halls of Heathrow...a couple of extreme headaches later, counted my blessings and became even more grateful for the strict smoking laws in South Africa!
I thought I would end off my UK post with a picture I took of a 'interactive sculpture' that we saw just outside the Winchester Cathedral. Basically you send a sms(text) message to a number, and the lights on the sculpture reconfigure. Pretty cool.
To start of with, this the first time that I have been to England where I haven't felt a major heart pull. About 5 years ago Charise and I were seriously thinking about relocating to the UK to start a church. Since then God has done some incredible things and we can truly say that Cape Town is where God wants us to be for this time, and our hearts have put down some serious roots for Cape Town and what God has for us here.
It was so good to reconnect with all our old and new friends...Simply being together was spiritually refreshing, talking about the things of the Kingdom was a special bonus and it was delightfully encouraging.
For some reason while doing some sight seeing and trying to connect with various people, we managed to get lost probably about 6 or 7 times - the great thing about this is, we were not amongst those to blame.
The 'church-planting conference' in Coventry was amazing. There were about 70 people representing 14 different nations participating. The conference didn't have a name, wasn't organised by any specific group...It was simply a get together with people who were somehow connected through relationship....So it is possible!
I was particularly encouraged by the Swiss Team who are involved in training up 'church-planting teams' in Switzerland. In the last 2 years teams have been trained up, 8 churches have been planted in a predominantly Catholic nation and many have been reached. What stood out for me with these guys was...they weren't just talking about it, they were ACTUALLY DOING IT! A good challenge for a lot of us. Shane, enough TALK dude!
Andrew and I spend our last night in the UK with Steve & Tammy Gee. The main purpose of the trip was to make sure that there actually was a Tammy. Well there was and what a pleasure it was to meet her. We had such a cool time with them and their friends. That night after dinner Steve and Aaron took us to what was supposed to be an extremely quiet pub for drinks and chats. Well, if that was a quiet pub, I would hate to be in a busy pub! It was here...amongst all the noise that we met Mark Norridge. That evening we had a fantastic time, drinking dem pints, bantering away and swapping Kingdom experiences.
Good flight home, especially good to escape the smoke filled halls of Heathrow...a couple of extreme headaches later, counted my blessings and became even more grateful for the strict smoking laws in South Africa!
I thought I would end off my UK post with a picture I took of a 'interactive sculpture' that we saw just outside the Winchester Cathedral. Basically you send a sms(text) message to a number, and the lights on the sculpture reconfigure. Pretty cool.
posted by Shane at 4:47 pm
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