Carl Belcher

Fustrated shoppers watch this..

Yet another 'Far too addictive pastime'

I had a rather wierd experience last weekend. Just before I got up to speak to the church I was visiting, the worship team introduced a new song to the congregation called "Lovely Jubly". Because I'm an "Only Fools & Horses" addict, I thought I'd keep an open mind. I must confess that I found it difficult to sing the lines "..He made birds that poo, on your shoe" and "he even gave the cat it's fury bottom" without wondering whether I was still dreaming.
If you don't believe me click on the CD. (Please note that I will not be made responsible for the results of doing so)

The Worth Of Works is a fantastic look at evangelism through the eyes of the homeless. It really smacked me in the chops and nearly had me crying thinking that many homeless people go around thinking that Christians (and hence God) are flaky due to going for the "salvation jugular".

Thought I'd treat you to another classic 'not how to share your faith' clip

Had a great time with Peter Bell yesterday who owns the Jam Magazine. I love the vision behind the magazine. Peter sees it as a tool to enable young people to bring Christianity into conversations with their peers in a non cheesy way. They are also developing youthworker guides to show how to use the mag in discussion based settings. Some churches have clubbed together to buy whole school year groups a mag each. I think it's great that much effort is being made to help young people introduce their faith to mates in a credible way. I only became a Christian when I was 20 so I missed the whole sharing my faith at school thing. I sometimes wonder whether I would have struggled to keep it real at that age if I'd become a Christian earlier. If you're a Christian did you ever struggle to share your faith at school etc?

Just watching this guy has brought a smile to my face every time I've seen this clip.

Check this guy out, seems straight forward at first but keep watching as he really goes for it... "this is rok and ro!"

We had an organizational-training-Consultant-Guru type person come and do some stuff with us on Friday which I really enjoyed. She isn't a Christian as far as I'm aware, but loads of the stuff that she delivered had a real Kingdom ethos about it. One of the things we looked at was "what makes an organization extraordinary?" Research showed that most organizations that are extraordinary exhibit the following characteristics:

• Exciting Shared Goals
• Strong Awareness of stakeholders needs
• Strong Leadership
• Empowerment culture
• Stretching plans & measures
• Accountability
• Efficient management processes
• Effective Communications
• Celebrations
• Learning & unlearning
• Extraordinary People

After looking at the list, Pete mentioned that in the context of planting churches a healthy church definitely needs "strong awareness of stakeholders needs". The problem is that we usually get confused about who the stakeholders are!
The churches stakeholders are not the church members, but rather they are the people who the church is trying to reach out to. Now I feel even more committed to always keep my efforts outward focused.

Yet another good reason not to use floppy disks...

Well what goes around comes around, and it looks like the debate is firmly out there again. The Anglican church looks set to propose a male only clergy branch of the CoE according to todays BBC news. I for one have benifitted a great deal from leading in teams where women are included and valued as part of the leadership team. I believe that you'll never reach your true potential as a team if you make it male only. I know that many would agree on this, but I know that the big question is what about non team leadership or teams where there is a senior leader. Can/should women be released into overall leadership?