Hidden Treasure

A watery reunion!

2010-10-17T17:09:00.005+01:00

On a sunny Sunday afternoon I took the aged parent along the river at my new work location to look for the elusive kingfisher that I spotted when I was checking out the caches in my new area. The caches are all located along the river that runs through our town and you have to access them by boat. As Mum and I wandered along, me having seen two streaks of blue but her having seen nothing because they were moving too fast, 4 canoes came into view.

As the last one went by and got grounded in the shallow weeds, I ventured to call out 'You're not geoaching are you?', to which I received a positive reply. It turns out that they were from the geocaching group I met with during my project. They had ventured out from windy Norfolk to sunny Lincolnshire and were tracking the river caches. They had all been on the halloween night caching trip that I went on.

As we were separated by the river bank and water, the coversation concluded, but I was surprised to meet so briefly and unexpectedly with them. I'll have to put a message on their forum to get them to contact me if any of them come over here again! Maybe the adventure will continue? It certainly made me more determined to catch up with my latest contact here to try again with the whole idea.

Live and learn …

2010-03-20T18:57:00.003Z

Well, Half Term (HT) came and went in a flurry of absolutely freezing coldness, so even though I’d been out and set a few local caches to try if anyone signed up, no-one did, and I don’t blame them!

After HT we heard that we are moving away from this area, so I’ve been rather pre-occupied with buying and selling houses for my mother who needs to come with us and visiting the new church, as well as worrying about how to write up a flopped emerging church assignment, contemplating an assignment on holiness, and also try to make a decision on what my dissertation might be about (considering I’m supposed to be writing some sort of detailed plan on it in 4 weeks deciding what it will be about would be really helpful). I am feeling very stressed!

All of which has meant that I did not chase up the local newspaper that promised to do an article on geocaching and the formation of a geocaching club for the ‘live healthily’ day that occurred today at our local high school. The reporter had thought it would be a good ‘nail’ to hang the advertising for the health day on, but obviously not that good, as I heard nothing from him, despite his interest in geocaching being used on both ‘Numbers’ and ‘CSI’.

Anyway, I took along an advert for geocaching to encourage people to get outdoors and get fit, with the intention of offering the opportunity to do a few geocaches together as a taster, but of course the wind blew and it rained, so that didn’t happen. So much for an outdoor emerging church! However, I did speak to several families about geocaching, and they seemed interested, but I lacked heart in pressing them to join a group which I knew would not run as soon as I leave in 2 months time.

I feel dis-heartened because it’s such a great communal activity for groups of people, but it does rely on good weather to at least get started, hence my urge to get started on the ‘church/assignment’ as soon as possible last year. I suppose if I’d had a separate stall inside the building and actually attempted to get contact details to form a group when the weather improved, it might have been a better approach. As it was, it was just an aside from the drugs and alcohol demos and experiments we were doing on the Red Bus youth project that I was on.

Reading people’s activities that are working, I see that they are generally having to provide structure for each of their sessions. I was hoping to have a more ad hoc approach if I’d ever got anyone other than converted friends to go out with me.

Ah well, live and learn …

My first cache

2010-02-14T17:40:00.005Z

This week I finally managed to ‘set a cache’ of my own – what a saga. The rules of geocaching include no solicitation for trade and no religious enticement (or something along those lines). So I based my cache on our church building, picking up on the fact that it had been bombed in WWII and had then become resurrected. Unfortunately, another rule is about how far apart caches have to be from one another, and our building is too close to another cache, so I had to use our building as a spot for further clues to a final destination – as I write I think how similar this is to our Christian life! Setting all that up in ‘virtual web-land’ took over a week!

I was well chuffed to find someone outside the building looking for clues this Sunday morning, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to stop and chat as I was busy sorting out a Love Feast that was occurring inside at the same time (now if I’d been a real people person, instead of the leader organising, then I’d have made time and invited them in …). I told the geocacher I’d set the cache and pointed her in the right direction, but being in ‘uniform’ seemed to put her off wanting to chat – can’t imagine why.

I’ve also sorted out a few possible hides for the Half Term venture, but have yet to hear if anyone will sign up and brave the cold – it’s been biting cold up here, with the inevitable forecasts of snow.

I see one of my colleagues has written about ‘Attractional v. Incarnational’ (perhaps in response to mine), citing Stuart Murray, and I agree that both are helpful/desirable; equipping people to incarnate the gospel in all areas of society is very important. I don’t think we’ll get away from a mixed economy of church very quickly; in fact, I’m not sure that we will ever want to get away from both. What concerns me, though, is how infrequently I hear members of my congregation seeing God in their everyday lives and talking about it, or seeing the possibility of spiritualising everyday things and being able to talk about them in a spiritual way. I don’t think they don’t know God, it just doesn’t seem to be something they talk about a lot. And if we can’t talk about it, how are we ever going to expose others to Him? Maybe they’re just naturally people who ‘incarnate’ rather than storytellers?

Most likely I’m just deaf or don’t listen …

Attractional v. Incarnational

2010-02-05T20:22:00.004Z

Half term is bearing down on us all, and I’ve decided to give it another go like I did last summer and advertise some guided geocaching around our town on two afternoons in half term, in the hope of connecting with some new people. So I’ve modified my original adverts and will be putting those around town to try to attract people.

There is also another event which will happen at the end of March, which is about getting fit, so I’m going to offer to take some people on a geocache to try it out, as walking is good for you. So I have two things to prepare for. I need to set some caches that we can look for, but just to protect the ones already in the vicinity, I’ll do some dummy ones of my own close to the venues. I’ve also asked a local newspaper if they can do a spiel for me about the two things. The newspaper guy had never heard of geocaching and was really intrigued when I explained, pointed out an article from the Telegraph weekend section in the last few weeks and then told him that it had started off this week’s episode of CSI. He said it must be cool if it’s on CSI! So I must set to work and come up with some details for him to polish up and put in the paper.

Of course, one of the problems with an outdoor activity, whether as the basis of a possible church or not, is that the weather dictates if you go geocaching or not. I’m a fair weather geocacher! So pray for sunshine on all three days (17th & 18th February and 20th March).

However, what is interesting me, or in reality is concerning me, is that my project has now become an ‘attractional’ thing with advertising, rather than an ‘infiltration/get to know the people and watch God at work through what’s going on’ thing. One of the main reasons for this is that the geocaching group I found always goes caching on Sunday. As a minister it’s pretty difficult to take Sunday off and go and enjoy myself!!! So much for Frost & Hirsch’s idea of infiltrating your own social networks and being incarnational within that environment (p51)!!!

I guess if I wasn’t a minister it would be easier, so does that mean that all new churches have to be started by non-ministers? It’s just like when I was at University – I could never go windsurfing or rambling because they were always on Sunday, when I was at church. In those instances, the Christians went on Saturday and were known as the God-squad windsurfers or Bible-basher ramblers. I don’t think it’s the first time someone has said go out and be church, rather than come in and do church.

What is church?

2010-02-02T11:17:00.004Z

Coming up on a couple of my fellow bloggers’ pages is the question ‘Is this church?’ I watched Rob Bell’s ‘Everything is Spiritual’ DVD this morning. Here’s his definition of what church is (after 59 minutes of brilliance):

‘a group of people bonded together in their pursuit of God – obviously they are learning to see God in each other and God is powerfully present in their midst – but they are being given eyes to see the divine everywhere they go’

If he’s right, then all of the activities our blogging group is involved in would/could fall under this definition of church, as we meet and discuss 'Questions of Heaven' (loved the song, Sylvie) – even meeting in the Scooterworks bar for the ReSource weekend!

Reflections on Resource emerging church weekend

2010-02-01T17:06:00.004Z

Amidst the snow and ice covering parts of London in January I found the Resource weekend – an opportunity to experience first-hand the two most well-known emerging church centres: Moot and Grace. I had a great time and found it really helpful to actually be there and see what their services are like. Unfortunately, that (the service) only gives you such a small part of the picture, as each community meets in small groups too.

Whilst not criticising, the main thing I noted was that in both cases the community seemed to be mainly centred on disaffected churchgoers (perhaps more so with Grace than Moot). Speaking to someone from Grace, they acknowledged that they don’t seem to attract non-believers; they had thought that if they got the worship right, then unchurched people would come, but this isn’t the case. To me, Grace seemed very much more ‘alt.worship’ and less missional, whereas Moot did seem more outward focussed in that it did seek to have activities specifically designed for stressed City-types and the underprivileged in their area. I wish I’d made more time to chat with the leaders of both churches about this.

However, one of the things that confused me the most was the lack of actual teaching/preaching during the services. Again, speaking to one of the ‘leaders’ or senior members of Grace to ask about how they would address an issue on one of the thought-provoking cards they were using without having a sermon, the response was very much ‘you have to earn the right to be able to speak to me on a one-to-one basis; you can’t preach down to me from on high’.

If emerging church fails to attract unchurched people, then how is it any better than traditional church? Or is my question an indication of the fact that I still think in terms of ‘attraction’ rather than ‘going out’? And if my question is wrongly based on ‘attraction’ v ‘going’ when it should be based on influencing the unchurched where they are, then doesn’t it make it all the more important that the life we live as individuals needs to be massively counter-cultural for there to be any obvious difference between we Christians in our everyday world and those who don’t know Christ? And does anyone really care about such counter-cultural differences in a postmodern society?

My confusion seems to come in two (and probably more) parts: (i) my need to see new people being won for Christ (a throwback from my denominational background) and (ii) an inability to picture church as something other than what happens on Sunday in a meeting based on didactic Scripture-teaching.

HELP!!!

Soul riding

2010-01-23T19:31:00.003Z

I’ve been reading Rev. Neil Elliot’s draft thoughts for his PhD on ‘The Spirituality of Snowboarding’ this afternoon. He looks at the snowboarding term ‘soul riding’, which is the term used to describe the peace and solitude that backcountry snowboarding brings to a snowboarder riding ‘out of bounds’. I guess this might be equivalent to the feeling of being the first to criss-cross the snow when off-piste skiing or ‘powder-hounding’ for the skiers amongst us.

A snowboarder doing this (soul riding) experiences something ‘spiritual’, perhaps related to certain elements which Elliot identifies as: awareness of mortality and dealing with or facing the prospect of death; themes of freedom and escape from normal life; experiences of transcendence and detachment including ‘out of the body’ experiences; renewed senses of community, senses of identity and significance; the discovery of meaning in/of life; a closeness to and awareness of nature; a commitment to a set of ethics; and finally, a rediscovery of playing. He describes these ‘spiritual’ elements as part of the sacralisation of culture.

I was also listening to a radio interview by Brian McLaren (http://godcomplexradio.com/2010/01/season-1-episode-1-brian-mclaren/), who talked about the Christian’s need for spiritual disciplines, particularly the need for solitude and silence. The link between solitude and silence, freedom, individuality, transcendence and playing connected with me. I was also reminded of the infamous line from Chariots of Fire when Eric Liddell is supposed to have said ‘When I run, I feel God’s pleasure’.

My questions are: why do we feel a connection with God when we do something we really love, i.e. something he made us for, and why are we so surprised that we’d feel a connection with Him, when He made us like that?!

Christmas - it's not happening

2009-12-02T20:37:00.006Z

After getting excited, the inevitable dip occurs ... I met up with some of my new friends to discuss a potential Christmas geocache. The other 2 parties had come with some ideas. We eventually decided on a secular seasonal song as the theme and one group volunteered to set the caches in their local area. My job will be to try them out before the final geomob event.

So on that front all is well, except I got a bit disheartened that there was no real Christmas theme (apart from possible mince pies). Somehow I'd imagined kings and donkeys, etc., making an appearance - I'm just so conventional!!!

Hubby reminded me I have to get to know them first (simple evangelistic technique - doh!).

But my own inner thoughts of doing something locally have not worked out either - I suffered a bit of a depressed fortnight and lacked any motivation for doing anything at all. I think I'm missing my holidays I haven't taken. So unfortunately guilt has set in for not achieving anything when the potential was there for the taking - still, only 3 weeks to Christmas, no really local geocacher friends to come, and I'm taking refuge in the thought that no-one would have come anyway - a true pessimist!

Instead, I'll have to think about Easter, and enjoy the secular Christmas mob and look for Christmas/Jesus opportunities when we eventually do the mob (a gathering of geocachers).

At long last ...!!!

2009-11-03T14:16:00.005Z

Good news!! I’ve finally managed to locate some fellow geocachers and have some fun with them. I found a web forum for a group that were having a Hallowe’en night cache, so I managed to sign up and get involved. When we arrived we found a lovely group of people, some with their families, who had come from far and wide to participate in this event.

What a great night it was, and we all had fun! We found broomsticks, pumpkin lanterns, spiders’ webs, bats and cats with glowing eyes, ghosts and finally the treasure trove – and along the way the kids (big and small) ate plenty of food including spider cakes (although these were surpassed by brownies later on).

OK, so some people might consider it the ultimate sin to be involved in a Hallowe’en activity, but this is where the people who enjoy what I enjoy are (and I was at a party of light the night before). But the adults gave the kids with us loads of opportunities to find the caches and get the sweets first. It was a joy to watch adults give way to the children – there was a real community feel; just like a church should have. I could really see the whole idea working as an emerging church, at least on some levels.

They’re talking of a Christmas one, and I would love to do something like that in my local area – it’s given me some great ideas, so I’ll have to get working on that, as it all took quite a bit of effort. But it would be a great activity to bring new people together in my area – with some advertising it could work!

I’m so grateful to God for introducing me to these new friends; even though several of them were located 50 miles away, some of them were fairly local. I’m so excited about the possibilities of this idea now.

Thanks Lord! And it was all in your time…

Commemorating life events

2009-10-26T20:50:00.003Z

So ... I was at a funeral the other day (this is not a joke) and it was an interesting experience. Two thoughts occurred to me:

1. The funeral was for a stillborn baby, so very sad – but it was beautifully done by the parents, who chose several contemporary songs for everyone to listen to, interspersed with some lovely readings/poems. They also had a large photograph of the hands of the parents and brother intertwined with the tiny baby’s hand, as a focal point for the service standing behind the tiny coffin.

The ceremony seemed to be a great example of the non-religious (or non-churchy), but deeply spiritual age in which we live. I was actually experiencing first hand something of what we’ve been learning about over the last year on my course, and it highlighted the importance of contemporary music (with no singing, Steve), prose and art in achieving spirituality.

But .. was it spiritual? The minister included a Bible reading, but the main ‘spirituality’ came from the music. Interestingly, Heaven was mentioned in one of the songs. But was this a form of ‘church’ (as defined by Rowan Williams in the Mission-shaped Church foreword)? Was the possibility of resurrection life through Christ celebrated?

2. The other thought was ... how on earth could I expect to achieve in a ‘geocaching church’ the commemoration of one of life’s certain events in quite such a tasteful but fully Christian way? Will people always expect to gather together in a church building, or would they just gather anywhere to celebrate or commemorate life’s major events with (or perhaps as) the body of Christ, the church?

Comments on a postcard, please ….

(And, yes, leaving co-ordinates for a final resting place did briefly cross my mind!!!)

The search continues …

2009-10-22T21:16:00.002+01:00

I’ve been on holiday recently and had opportunity to introduce 3 more sets of friends to geocaching. Unfortunately, as usual, these are all friends who don’t live near me, so the possibilities for a geocaching emerging church are again extremely limited – more like a virtual circle of keen geocachers!

On all occasions when we were out, the walking between caches provided an opportunity for us to talk about church where we are; we’ve passed information about how mutual friends from my old church are doing, and also talked about how the church I serve is doing. The walking is a good space for that.

We’ve also taken the opportunity to admire God’s creation, seeing wildlife and nature up close, and often involving dead animals. If I’d been with people new to faith, I would have taken those opportunities to talk about how life always includes death and a fight for survival (some might say a bit too much Darwinianism here (?), but it is a bicentennial year!) – my doctrine teacher in College always used to talk about nature being ‘red in tooth and claw’ (a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H., 1850 apparently). I’d have also talked about the fact that God never said becoming a follower or disciple was an easy road.

Although I’m disappointed about the lack of friends or new contacts I’m making locally, I’ve again take comfort in the fact that the people I’ve introduced to geocaching have all said ‘This might be a good activity for the whole church to do’ or ‘I’d like to do this with some of my non-Christian friends – it could be a useful communal activity that would allow us time together to chat about all sorts of things’.

Clearly geocaching is a good activity, which interests some people, but it does require a good friendship base, which I don’t have. Still, there’s still another year to go …. or is there?!

Techno-caching

2009-10-19T20:53:00.002+01:00

I’ve ventured into the realm of Facebook, but have not managed to tame the social networking scenario for my purposes, mainly due to indecision. I only have one idea of how to ‘tame the beast’, which is to open a group specifically for geocachers in my area. But how do I get people to join it? Is it just good fortune (I suppose I should say providence) when people join?

Or should I just come out of the closet and call the group ‘Geocaching church’, like Messy Church? I read the first Messy Church book recently and was interested to note that the author had given alternatives to Messy Church, such as ‘Green church’ or ‘Eco-church’. Or should I go for ‘Natural theology church’ – a catchy name that trips off the tongue, right into the land of nod… zzzzz

To be or not to be …. ‘up front and centre’ or ‘closet and amorphous’ …. now that is the question!

PS. Can’t wait for Splinterheads to come out. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vSWSXaAyP4

Geocaching gets grown up!

2009-09-25T23:04:00.002+01:00

Got my weekly geocaching news bulletin only to find out that I'm now indulging in a grown up sport - so grown up it features in the Financial Times no less!

Check out: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f16b1dce-a18f-11de-a88d-00144feabdc0.html

Introducing new people

2009-09-04T18:16:00.003+01:00

Well, so far my attempts to introduce new people to geocaching have gone quite well. Had some friends up from Eastbourne mid-August with their kids and we went to a local beach. When we were completely scorched we took shelter from the shade and did a few geocaches in the afternoon – their first. My friend had been unable to see why I enjoyed it, but once youngest son found the first cache, the whole family got involved. Even dad has been known to leave the comforts of the office at lunchtime, and even his PSP, and go geocaching. The day after they went home they did 14 in one day! I’m so jealous – I’d have to travel miles to do 14 where I live. That’s the problem with living in lovely rural isolation.
However, my attempts to introduce non-Christians to Jesus through geocaching have proved somewhat less successful! But despite this, my friend from down south has now got several of the young people in her church interested in the whole idea – after all, it’s free, cheap, outdoor fun for the whole family, even grandparents and friends, so what more do you need?

So now I’m wondering … having explained to my friend why I think geocaching is going to be the new green alternative to Messy Church, is it my job to give others a new evangelism tool, rather than be a successful geocaching church planter in my own right?

I still think there’s some comfort in God saying to Abraham in Genesis 15:5 ‘Look up to the heavens and count the stars – if indeed you can count them. …. So shall your offspring be.’

It’s not quite as much fun, but for the moment I’ll take comfort in being the innovative, early adopter of a new church planting strategy.

Geocaching video bar

2009-08-13T13:33:00.003+01:00

Hi out there! I am feeling particularly pleased with myself, as I have just managed to add a slideshow of geocaching pictures and also a video bar of geocaching videos, that I’m watching as I’m writing. What a techie whizz I am!

Hope you enjoy them – they at least give you an idea of what I’ve got linked up to. Love the first one ‘From the web to the woods’ about going out and seeing things in your area that you’d never see otherwise. It’s so true – it’s a great opportunity to get out and see God’s creation in detail.

Just about to take some new starters out with me now. Gotta go!

Getting started

2009-08-02T19:42:00.002+01:00

Well, I’ve been having a lot of fun geocaching, although I was beginning to wonder whether all geocaches are located at odorous emergency toilet facilities, especially in France – but thankfully I did some lovely ones yesterday.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to get some geocaching friends, which is much harder than anticipated. Although it’s possible to ‘befriend’ someone via the website, there aren’t that many geocachers in my particular location; they’re all in the regional cosmopolitan metropolis 25 miles way, so virtual church is becoming much more of a possibility!!!

I’ve also braved the social networking arena, but again the drawbacks of this are that almost all my friends are already Christians and from my denomination. So I’ve decided to limit my friends to those who aren’t members of the same uniform wearing brigade, which makes me look like ‘Billy no-mates’ in the process. The intention is to set up a group for my unsuspecting emerging church, but I have not dedicated the time to suss out how to do this yet.

I’ve also spent some time this week designing a poster advertising that I will do guided geocaching/treasure hunting around my area on two afternoons starting immediately. This would be fine if the summer weather improved and anyone decided to come! I thought it would be a good ‘touristy’ thing to offer for the summer months, although it has the drawbacks of attracting tourist rather than regulars/locals. Hopefully it will develop.

All in all I’ve been trying to do things, but have missed out on the one important thing that might actually achieve something, which of course is praying about it. I’d better put this at the top of my list of ‘things to do’.

At the Louvre getting the point!

2009-07-17T16:38:00.004+01:00

Been on holiday in France and managed a couple of geocaches whilst I was away. They are a really nice addition to a day out or an evening activity instead of watching the telly or playing games. Also, I’ve been looking up some of the references Jesus made in the Bible to hidden treasure: unsurprisingly they all seem to relate to the Kingdom of God.

One of the caches I did whilst away was at the Louvre museum. There’s one hidden near the giant glass pyramid that featured in the Da Vinci Code film (by the way – Angels & Demons is good too, so go and see it). Paris was crammed with people, even though it’s not quite full blown tourist season, and the Louvre courtyard was crammed with people. There must have been about 1,000 people there, and there was me trying to extract, supposedly in an unnoticeable way, a hidden geocache in front of 1,000 muggles (muggles are those not into geocaching – also something to do with Harry Potter; the newest film I have yet to see).

So there I was, as a shortie, clambering up the walls of the Louvre museum to reach up to this cache. What a kid! Hopefully not one of the 1,000 people saw me (or else they thought ‘what is this nut doing climbing the walls!’). I believe that if you do something openly in broad daylight with lots of bottle hardly anyone will notice.

And whilst researching Jesus’ comments about hidden treasure, it struck me that, once again, geocaching is like the Kingdom of God:

Thousands of people have heard about the Christian faith but don’t see it in
action, or dislike what they have seen. The real Kingdom of God is taking
place right under their noses, but they are missing it, because it’s sometimes
so obvious. They might even be doing it or participating in it themselves,
but not even realise it.

Jesus was right when he said ‘I praise you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.’ Luke 10:21

I can’t help it – I love being child-like, it’s so releasing. And it opens your eyes to the kingdom of God. So come on – find your inner self, be a child and meet with God!

Risk-taking, ‘village leaving’, active experiences

2009-06-14T20:09:00.014+01:00

One of the things that’s been troubling me about this project is telling my church members about it (for various reasons). However, they each have friends, and it would be instant access to people through them. On the other hand, if they don’t get the whole idea of emerging church, I don’t want them just to see it as a way of bringing new people into our existing fellowship, as that’s not my purpose. But I’m not sure if they’ll understand the idea of a self-sustaining community that isn’t ‘church as they know it’.

Anyway, Steve Chalke wrote an article in Christianity magazine in January 2009 that featured (in brief) a story about a young man setting out to find the source of the river that flowed through his town. He sets off and goes missing for a year until the annual river worship time comes round, when the young man re-appears and discloses that he’s actually found the source of the river. Maps are drawn of how to get there, books are written about it and other paraphernalia produced, yet no-one goes and does the same. After a while everything reverts back to normal – no-one ventures out on their own adventure to discover the source for themselves because it is still considered too dangerous a journey to make.

The point of the story was that Jesus gathered followers (apprentices to his style of living) to journey with him, to live alongside him and learn through practice. As a rabbi He taught on the move. So life for every rabbi’s apprentice became a literal journey of learning (i.e. not book learning or knowledge gaining). With a rabbi, the whole of life became a risk-taking, ‘village leaving’, active, experience. Somehow, this is what I need to show to people through this new emerging church – a journey through life, making mistakes, getting it right, reflecting on experiences and trying alternatives, all in the manner of our true rabbi, Jesus. If you know the Rob Bell Nooma DVD 'Dust', it's time to get dusty!

I’d pondered how to use this article in a sermon for my congregation, and then one day, when I was re-reading it, it dawned on me – I could tell them that this is what I’m going to be trying to do with my emerging church project. So last Sunday I cast my doubts to the wind, and told my congregation Steve’s story and something about my project. Luckily, I didn’t hold my breath expecting a barrage of eager questions, as absolutely none were forthcoming! Nor did I get anyone asking if they could join in. …. Which leads me to wonder:

(i) Is a travelling dialogue better than just preaching at people?
(ii) Will I ever manage to get anyone to come with me?
(iii) Were they all asleep anyway?
(iv) Why was I so worried?

Back to the drawing board…..

Is this furkling going to work?

2009-06-13T19:38:00.006+01:00

Been trying out the actual geocache business myself. I now have 7 finds to my name, which means that soon I'll be on my first milestone of 10 finds (and Stephen was right when he said I would turn into some sort of nerd/anorak)! I've also had a few that I couldn't find. And then there was the one I did after giving a talk for work, so I was in a skirt! I thought I'd try and fit in a quick one on the way home and found myself furkling in the undergrowth amongst knee high nettles. There I was mincing about trying to avoid getting stung and thinking 'Will this furkling about really work?' Needless to say, I was unsuccessful at finding the cache, so will have to try again.

So far I've taken a friend from back home with me and she seemed quite keen on the idea. She likes a little walk now and then, and thought this treasure hunting idea would be a nice additional twist. Then I took another lot of friends who were visiting us, a family of four with a pushchair, gave the 5 year old the GPS device and told her she was in charge. Oh, the power!! 'You can't walk in front of me because I'm the leader' became quote of the day - sounds a bit like the sort of thing we say to God: 'Follow me, I'm in charge of my life and if you could just fit in with my plans, O Creator of the Universe, and not interfere, that would be really helpful.' They enjoyed themselves and were found checking out the website later on. I explained my plans to both of these sets of friends, and they think it could catch on (nettle rash more than anything else, I think).

Then my charity shop manager asked me what I was doing this weekend, and wrote down the geocaching website address to check it out for herself. It's in the bag!

So the upshot of all this is: it seems converting people to geocaching is easy. Converting them to Jesus will be another matter! Well at least I'm getting some sermon illustrations in the process and enjoying the Norfolk scenery and wildlife - on my last cache today I walked past a quail and her family of 6 new-born babies (quailettes?), they were embedded in the hedgerow and the babies were no bigger than the top of my thumb - wished I'd had my camera. Been watching too much Springwatch obviously.

Why hidden treasure?

2009-06-11T21:42:00.005+01:00

Welcome to my first ever thoughts in cyberland!

Why hidden treasure? I'm doing an emerging church course at Cliff College (and having a lot of fun too). One of the assignments is actually starting an emerging church. So having struggled to get to grips with the fact that a thinker, reflector could possibly become an activist and do something, I then had to rack my brains about what this possible emerging church could be!

Finally hit on this idea, given that our tutor said church should be fun (and I'm all for that - I need some fun in my life) - I'm going to start a geocaching church. Cool, hey?

Never heard of 'geocaching'? Geocaching is what I would call high tech treasure hunting. Alternatively, it's walking with a purpose. Get a hand held GPS, log on to the geocaching web page (geocaching.com), find out where there's a cache hidden near you, bung the co-ordinates in your hand held and then you're off. The great thing about this is that you go outdoors in the gorgeous weather we've been having, get the wind in your hair, the sun on your face (or the rain down your neck) and experience life as it really is!

The 'hidden treasure' concept is that Jesus often talked about the kingdom of God being like hidden treasure, so in the process of having fun, chatting with anyone I can persuade to come with me, and hopefully throwing in some food along the line, I'm hoping that we might be able to discover some important things about God's hidden treasure of the gospel of Jesus.

Want to join me? Hop on.