Roots Prep April 27, 2008

Very many people ask me what it’s really like prepping for ROOTS, what we actually do in the days before hand, how it all comes together etc. So I thought I’d try and describe some of it in a bit more detail, with snippets from other years, and some funny photos (hopefully).

The first thing to assert is that I have remembered that I actually do enjoy doing this stuff! It may be a bit tiring, it may destroy my fingernails and necessitate lots of crawling around on my knees, it may mean spending hours fighting with recalcitrant duct tape, but I somewhere in it all, we have a good time.

There’s something about the general cameraderie that cheers you, even when you’ve been going for hours. Then there are the creative moments, when someone has a brainwave at 11.30pm on the night before we leave, and suddenly everyone is scurrying around looking for the most random components – like copper piping, or snow spray.

There’s the joy of the pre-roots shopping trip. We start in B&Q, manage to get half the list, and then head to Homebase. Invariably we are still missing something so then it is off to Wickes. This is scary because it is full of builders and we look quite out of place. We also get quite a few odd looks when asking for metres of polythene sheeting, or black netting etc. Sometimes there are ‘eureka moments’, when we find exactly what we need, or something better than we had thought of. Then there are the desperate moments when we have exhausted all the DIY shops and therefore find ourselves improvising manicly.

Once all the materials have been collected, the fun really starts. Everyone in their corner working on one display or another, and all swapping about helping each other, providing encouragement, and plying each other with hot beverages. Yesterday one of our illustrious team was spraying dust sheets black, another was delving for missing prayer tent items, while I was turning a cardboard box into a replica of a city. Yet another was on external photocopying and printing errands.

Some of my favourite moments included the year when the only time for a planning meeting was after a Tuesday night prayer meeting, so the three of us gathered with Cocoa and plotted to 1am. We had some cool ideas that year. Then there was the time when Jo lost her voice the week before Roots. We prepped with the use of sign language and by writing a lot of notes!! It’s at moments like this I miss our old hall, because the whole place used to transform into a ROOTS preparation zone at this time of year. Sawdust was ground into the carpet, corps programmes took place in the shadow of burgeoning piles of fabric, and we enjoyed the fun of throwing cushions off the balcony on to unsuspecting people below!

The challenges of this year have been how to prep without a large space in which to spread things out, remembering in which of our many storage locations things actually were, working out how to fit prep around a stacked Wandsworth programme, and some hectic work deadlines, and trying to fit everything into a smaller van. It’s been good to have to improvise and be flexible anyway!!

I think what I love most of all is the knowledge that what started as a scribbled idea in a notebook, or a bullet point on one of our many lists, will become something physical and slot into part of the bigger picture that is the prayer tent. When it’s all in place it makes all the hard work worthwhile, and it’s a joy to see people engaging with God in that place.

I love the fact that my job mixes together prayer, people and creativity, and I guess in the preparation for ROOTS I see that all the more starkly! I am very thankful, and very excited about the conference itself!!

So, a couple of snaps from the last couple of days:

 Beautiful ROOTS Prayer guides

 

 Marking out the Labryinth

 Drying spraypainted dustsheets!!

A very cool quote: April 27, 2008

“Don’t buy the lie that cultivating condemnation and wallowing in your shame is somehow pleasing to God, or that a constant, low-grade guilt will somehow promote holiness and spiritual maturity.  It’s just the opposite!  God is glorified when we believe with all our hearts that those who trust in Christ can never be condemned.  It’s only when we receive his free gift of grace and live in the good of total forgiveness that we’re able to turn from old, sinful ways of living and walk in grace-motivated obedience.”

 

 C.J. Mahaney

Blogging Backlogs… April 25, 2008

So, I seem to be suffering from a similar ailment to certain friends of mine, who neglect their blog for a couple of weeks and then have a million things to fit in one entry! I have only been neglecting for 9 days, but even still lots has been going on, and so in an attempt to be organised I am going for some categorisation

Work – Work has been very cool over the last couple of weeks. We wrote a resource to help people get to grips with praying for their communities. It basically has 28 questions you work through, which then gives you a workable foundation to build a prayer strategy on afterwards. So that was much fun. I enjoyed canvassing opinions to work out the best colour scheme for it, and spent days agonising between green and purple (all the while secretly adoring shocking pink). Purple won out in the end. I spent this week despatching said resources to lovely praying people, so that’s nearly all done. Have some other writing stuff to do but having got around to that yet.

ROOTS – (I’m cheating because the work paragraph was getting too long!!) ROOTS is the SA’s annual renewal conference, held in Southport. To cut a long story short, we get a huge tent, pack it with prayer stations and a glorious prayer team, and then 4000 people descend (There are loads of other top quality venues too).  It’s the first bank holiday weekend in May, so a week today we will be there (argh!). So this week has passed in a flurry of packing boxes, losing gazebos, purchasing silk flames, compiling endless lists, misplacing vital components, driving round South London and squeezing stuff into mini-buses. I can’t wait for ROOTS this year, it feels like God has some exciting things up his sleeve!!

Wandsworth – Wandsworth is great and wondrous. Good things are happening here. Last Saturday we held a Civic Service, with the Mayor, Head of the Council, Police and MP’s etc. We also lauched the Wandswoth Street Pastors team, which was very exciting. 170 people came and we chatted, prayed, networked and generally had a fab time. There was a cool gospel choir too! The next few weeks look exciting too, as we have a couple of specific days set aside for prayer and prophetic intercession for the borough. So I am really looking forward to those. I’m heading up a lovely team of ‘Prayer Pastors’, which is great experience. Oh, and the corps hall is nearly built. It’s looking very swish and it’s all feeling a bit more real! We should be in the new building by September. Apart from that, life at the Boiler Room is exciting. Oh, I’m speaking this weekend there and haven’t written my sermon yet – this is not so good!!

Life – Life has been an intriguing old thing the last few days. Along with a host of other joys, I was ill last week, so was looking forward to a nice week before the madness that next week will be. But my life has resembled an Eastenders script over the last few days, with one late night drunken admirer turning up at the door, and then a couple of nights later the police!! It’s ok, I do not have a secret criminal past… they just wanted me to help them with some stuff. (I’d have been wholly more appreciative had it not been 12.15am!!! )Think it’s all sorted now though. Although I think my housemates probably think I’m mad!! Hasn’t been much space for much else, what with ROOTS prep. Oh, I went to Costa on Monday and debated the issue of grace… that was a highlight!

Misc  – I can’t think of much else but I love the word miscellaneous. So must think of something interesting to say!! Oh, that’ll do. I’m looking forward to May 12th, because me and an esteemed Wandsworthian colleague are off to Sweden to teach on prayer for a week… So that will be fab.

Also, I want to recommend that you all read ‘A Certain Rumour’, by Russell Rook. It’s all about Cleopas and the journey along the Emmaus road, but it’s about so much more than that. It’s about the Kingdom of God, hope, lots of exciting things like that… a top read.

Philip Pullman is another of my favourite authors, and he’e just published a book called ‘Once Upon A Time In The North’. I am very very excited about Monday, when I will be able to buy and read this.

Now, I need a new book to read after that. (I am behind on my target of 100 this year)… anyone have any suggestions?

Unbelievable April 15, 2008

I think it is unbelievable how many things I have managed to cram in since last posting. (I also think it’s quite unbelievable that I am still standing!)

Early last Saturday (after about 2 hours sleep and a battle with an evil wasp), I jumped aboard a train at Euston and wended my way up to Liverpool. I’ve mentioned before how train travel is one of my favourite things to do, but even I ended up sat staring into space for most of the journey!

Three hours later I disembarked to a crisp yet sunny Liverpool. I navigated myself around an underground station and caught a local service to a place called Bidston. I mused on this journey that I had absolutely no idea where I was going! Eventually I made it to the small hamlet that is Heswall where I was picked up and ferried to my weekend’s location.

‘Unbelievable’ was the title for the divisional youth councils there this year (area youth celebration thing, if you’re not of a salvation army persuasion). Saturday was also the kick off of the area’s 24-7 week, so the two were merged together and the youth had a sleep-over-prayer-service thing.

My job was to be interviewed, to enthuse them about prayer, to do a little bit of speaking and to fill an hour of prayer. This all went ok, with no major disasters. As well as this, they had other prayer activities to do in the other night hours, some rocking worship times, and some passionate games of football.

After everything had finished, a very lovely friend came and picked me up from the middle of nowhere, and then we went back to Liverpool overnight. It was great to catch up. Then I got the train home yesterday.

I’m so tired it feels like I am thinking and writing through soup, but it was a journey worth making and as ever I was encouraged by the prayers and the lifestyle modelled by the youth up there.

That’s the end of my manic journeying for a couple of weeks (only for things to get super mad again in may), so I’m going to take the opportunity to relax a bit, write a bit and hopefully recoup some sleep!

Travelling Tales April 6, 2008

Sometimes seven days in the life of Vicki will involve travelling only as far as the SA’s headquarters and home, four times. Other weeks, however, involve a little more variety. Last week was one of the latter. I’ve probably racked up about 17 hours of travelling this week, on top of the usual commute, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to regale you all with some tales from my journeying

My first soiree of the week was to the wondrous town that is Maidenhead. I am a bit of an English geography wizz, and I have to admit to having almost memorised the entire British train network layout, but I was initially flummoxed as to a) where Maidenhead was (after some unfortunate confusion involving Maidstone), and b) how to get there. After a bit of websearching I worked it out, and so Thursday found me hot-footing it to Paddington and heading west.

Maidenhead was lovely. I like small English towns (maybe growing up in Northampton caused this?). Anyhow, it was nice. I met a very inspiring friend of mine, we shared some dreams over apple juice, and then we went back to the Salvation Army church there to pray. I was reminded again that there are some real visionaries out there, and found myself thanking God that I have the privilege of walking alongside some of them. It’s top!

My next journey took place on Thursday, when I headed ’down south’ to Worthing. Now, I have a long established love for the sea, so Worthing immediately makes the list of favourite places of mine. I also know some very lovely people there. So a trip that way is always a joyous occasion. Thursday was no exception to this. The sun shone (so much so that I abandoned my coat on the beach at one point), I enjoyed catching up with friends and meeting new ones, and I generally felt very relaxed and refreshed for having been there. The pace of live down there is so different from the hectic nature of London, and it is definitely good to enjoy that peace and serenity. (I’m not sure the people who watched me lobbing stones into the sea had a very serene time, but I enjoyed it!)

Friday involved the longest trip, and the one I approached with a mixture of joy and dread! (Joy, because I was going to another of my most favourite places, but dread because of the mode of transport I had chosen!). I have already mentioned my train obsession, so it was a sacrifice to go all that way on a double decker, and five hours in one challenged my short attention span and inability to sit still… but I made it. I arrived in Oldham in the late afternoon, and embarked on a whirlwind of activity:

I caught up with old friends, met cute babies, chatted to kids (who were much shorter when I lived there), admired painted fences, read cool books, entertained cute babies, talked about nappy rash, wandered round the estate, slept in my old bedroom, broke a shower without touching it, ate a glorious pub lunch, watched doctor who, played a dvd game (badly), got hit in the eye by a flying chocolate brownie, laughed a lot, discussed the legalisation of drugs (into the early hours), wandered round shops in the snow, got disorientated by road layout changes and demolished houses, crammed into church, talked about the salvation army, incarnational living, hospitality and dreadlocks, admired new homes being decorated, marvelled at gargantuan snowflakes falling in April, made a medal, shivered a lot, walked around Manchester in the snow searching for a coffee shop, and then headed homewards today (another five hour journey, exacerbated by blizzards… hmmm!).

I love Oldham, and I love my friends who live there. It is exciting to see how they are living church in their community and really having an impact there. I love that, even four years after leaving I can still go back and feel part of that family. I love seeing the colour and love and vibrancy the church can bring to a place that can look bleak and grey. I am excited to see what God is going to do there in the future.

So, those were my adventures last week. Here’s to another intrepid seven days!

Hindsight & Hope April 2, 2008

This week has been one of reflection and contemplation. A time of trying to gather together a lot of the threads of the past six weeks, and of disciplining myself to get myself before God in order to hear him for the season ahead.

Forty days ago today, my life changed pretty dramatically. Without going into too much detail here, in the limitless freedom of cyberspace, I found myself walking a landscape utterly unfamiliar to me. I felt a bit like a rabbit caught in headlights, uncertain of how I should be in this new place, how I would react to it, why God had allowed it.

Looking back, with a bit of hindsight from that time. I can’t say that everything is neatly ordered and I don’t have all the answers. When I think of those days and the path I have walked since then, it all feels pretty bittersweet: I have experienced the power and presence of God in ways I had not thought possible, and yet I have encountered some of the bleakest moments of my life. At times I have marvelled as God has revealed new things to me with clarity, and yet at times I have sat straining my ears, desperate to catch a whisper from a seemingly silent heaven.

If you’d have asked me pre these 40 days, I would happily have affirmed that I believed that God uses tough things for good. I would have pulled out a couple of practised examples, and been quite smiley at the whole thing.

At this end, with a few more battle scars. I know with a certainty that I never had that this is true. It isn’t a cheery, trite certainty, but one that comes from slogging it out through some dark nights and darker mornings, finding God in what for me, have seemed like the deepest and most unpredictable places.

When I think about his faithfulness during this time. Tears come to my eyes. I can honestly say there hasn’t been a moment during these past weeks where he has abandoned me. It has come in different ways, but everytime I have called out to him, help has come.

A song I have been listening to near on loop for the past few days is called, ‘Beauty from Pain’, by Superchick. I came across it by chance during a protracted journey on the District Line, and I was immediately stunned by the words, and the pertinence to my situation of recent:
My whole world is the pain inside me
The best i can do is just get through the day
When life before is only a memory
I’ll wonder why God lets me walk through this place
And though i can’t understand why this happened
I know that i will when i look back someday
And see how you’ve brought beauty from ashes
And made me as gold purified through these flames

After all this has passed, i still will remain
After i’ve cried my last, there’ll be beauty from pain
Though it won’t be today,
Someday i’ll hope again
And there’ll be beauty from pain
You will bring beauty from my pain

Those words sum up my testimony over the last few weeks. The truth that I have found and the hope that this has given me.

Standing on the brink of what I believe God has pointed out as a new season for me, I don’t know what the landscape is going to look like. I’m sure there will still be battles ahead, but I can face all things in the sure knowledge that my Healer and Deliverer stands beside me. That I am not alone because he is God of the Breakthrough.

I love the bit in the song about gold being purified by flames. Fire isn’t comfortable, there are moments when the heat seems too much and the smoke is choking. Sometimes the smoke stings your eyes and you lose sight of your surroundings. It can feel like all you know is flame, pain, relentless temperature.

But surely the gleam of gold is worth it?

In all the discomfort of this refining, I want to come out the other end praising.