A few weeks ago Jim spoke a bit about learning to party like Jesus and God is continuing to teach us what parties look like in His Kingdom. You see it’s not only that we have something to celebrate that sets our parties apart, God’s guest list doesn’t look like you might expect. In Luke 14 Jesus tells the story of man that was preparing a great feast.

As I write this blog, I'm on my way home from The Rage Factor. Rage Against the Machine's free gig in Finsbury Park, thrown in celebration of their Christmas number one over the X-Factor winner. For reasons that will hopefully become clear, being at "The Rage Factor" made me think a lot about how we gather as a church. I was surrounded by thousands of people passionately engaged with the experience, the music, the band and yes even the words.

We talk a lot @ CV about how ALL of our people are missionaries... NOT just the ones in foreign countries who we get slideshows from once every three years.  YOU are a missionary to your spheres of relationship.  Full stop.  The question is only whether you are effective or crap!

Jesus came to proclaim good news to the poor. That is bad news for the rich, especially when we are rich off the backs of the poor. The gospel of grace is bad news for the sorted out, for the secure and comfortable. The gospel is bad news for you until you become aquainted with your weakness.

If good news for the poor is bad news for your bank account,
Then you're rich and you find yourself on the wrong side of the gospel.

In our journey this month called "Grace Acts" we spent last Sunday talking about Compassion.  How do we understand this to be a priority for Christ? Because He lived it!  I am struck by stories like the Widow who loses her son and The Leper who asks "are you willing?"  The language of Scripture literally speaks of a heart that is erupting in Jesus' chest as he is confronted by the mess his "good" creation has become.  In an age where the problem of suffering and evil is THE great quandary, this is a powerful story to tell.  

When we first moved to the UK in 2003 we lived in North Watford.  It made sense since we were working with the Soul Survivor congregation in that area and we’d found a great little home to rent.  It was all the better when we realized that loads of the Soul Survivor gang lived in the road and roads surrounding our little neck of the woods.  We took to affectionately calling it “the ghetto.”

It was meant as a joke but most of us who used the term also realized there was something not quite right about the way had intentionally or unintentionally created an escape from the neighbors around us who were completely ignorant of Soul Survivor and its mission.  We knew we were meant to engage differently but it was just so nice and easy to stay “within the tribe.”  We knew in our heart of hearts that “ghetto” stood for “escapism.”

BBC Three have been pumping out some gems lately and I just had to share this one with you. In the hustle and bustle of election campaigning and geopolitical posturing it is easy to forget the human side of "the immigration problem". There is a story behind every statistic and this hour long documentary follows one of those stories. 21-year-old Nel has lived in Britain since she was six, the film follows as she returns to Afghanistan for the first time.

I just read this in Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk's book The Missional Leader:

“when narratives erode and social context moves into rapid discontinuity, people feel as if they have no way to make sense of their experience.They lose direction, order and purpose. A congregation becomes a receptacle for anxious individuals seeking solace and security, rather than a community that can participate in forming Kingdom witness.” p.74