Thanks everyone for the faith filled prayers for Jo’s healing. Many people prayed and fasted yesterday, we’re grateful to you all.

The news post-op is that Jo has come out of the surgery well. She was chatting and moving all her limbs yesterday which is great and an answer to those prayers for safety etc.

She has a headache but is bright and hopeful.

The surgeons could not actually clip the aneurysm, as it was too close to certain other blood vessels and they would have risked inducing a stroke.

As plan B, they covered it in a mesh which should promote scar tissue to act as the cap.

We need to pray that this bonds it well and that natural healing processes take their course.

Please continue to pray for Jo – that the mesh bonds well, that there are no further complications and that she continues to improve.

Please also pray for strength for the whole Norton family at this time. Ruth has important exams next week, so please pray for her in those, especially.

Thanks for all your support, love and prayers. God is faithful.

Just a short post to thank everyone for your continued and faithful prayer support. We have been overwhelmed, encouraged and amazed as we have seen God answering our prayers, and those of people from across the UK and the world.

The latest news has been really positive. Jo was bright and chatty Friday and Saturday, even cracking some jokes, and yesterday she managed two meals. It’s also been a blessing to hear her testifying that God is bigger than this situation, and to see how her strong faith is carrying her through. I saw Jo briefly on Friday evening, and she looked remarkably well considering.

The doctors say that 50% of people who experience the same thing die instantly, and only 20% of the remainder reach the point she has, so it’s incredible how well she is.

The next time when prayer cover is especially needed is tomorrow morning, when Jo will have an operation to clamp the bleed. Please pray:

- That the anaesthetisation etc will go well and that Jo will feel peaceful about it.

- That the surgery will go as planned, that there will be no complications, and that they will be able to clamp the bleed.

- For strength and swift healing for Jo in the days following the op, she will likely be in intensive care for a couple of weeks following the surgery.

- For the whole Norton family – for peace, strength, and a real awareness of the comfort of the Holy Spirit.

We gathered as a church community this morning for worship as usual, and again noted the value and strength of community, of holding each other up, of praying in unity together. We thought about the ways God uses suffering for good, and considered how to have faith during the hard times, a pertinent message for us all. At the end of the service we sang the song ‘In Christ Alone’. I don’t think I’ve ever sang, or heard that song sung with such gusto. In Him our hope is found. In Him we find strength for tomorrow. In Him we believe for full healing for Jo.

Late on Tuesday night I received news that my church leader had been rushed to hospital with an aneurysm (a bleed in her brain). I don’t think I can articulate how stunned we all were, and the feelings of unreality and denial that accompanied each text that came to update us with the news.

On one hand, when something like that happens, you go into coping mode: get people to pray, check everyone has heard, hug those who are sad and bewildered, maintain the ‘information switchboard’, encourage the community to believe for miracles, just keep going.

And at the same time, you’re expecting at any moment to get a message saying it has all been a horrid misunderstanding, that she’d woken up fine, with a bit of a headache, a bit worse for the wear but, fine, and cheery and, herself.

It felt like a daze. It felt like normal life stopped. It felt like things changed in an instant. I’d been with Jo just an hour and a half earlier and it had been incredible. We were both encouraged by the things that God is doing at present, she was buzzing with ideas fresh from an inspiring conference and a refreshing prayer meeting. She was exuberant, hopeful, energetic. How did things change so quickly? I found myself running through every stage of the evening in minute detail: the discussion we had about suncream, our complaining about mouldy blueberries, eating tea together, hugging on the corner of the road to say goodbye. It had all been so so normal, so everyday, and now things were very different, and very wrong, and very un-everyday.

And in some senses we’re still working through that as a community. We’re still praying and believing and daring to hope and trusting in our Abba Father and beseeching him for miracles and holding each other up through difficult and dark days.

But I wanted to share a couple of things that have struck me over the last couple of days, things I have held on to. And it’s not the time for deep wrangling theology, but there is still a ‘God is good, God is in this’, on my heart.

Working was pretty tough on Wednesday, and many times I found myself picking up my battered copy of ‘God on Mute’ – Pete Grieg’s starkly personal and honest exploration of unanswered prayer – from my bookshelf. He writes about the time his wife had a severe and life threatening brain tumour, and the wrangle and heartbreak and hope, and the place of prayer in all of that.

I picked it up because I found that I didn’t know what to pray. All I could pray was random incoherent sentences, like “Please heal her”, and “Oh God”… over and over again. And to begin with I felt bad – my job is prayer, I train people on it, but when it counted I was praying like a five year old. And I was comforted, opening the book, to read the same sentiments expressed there – the same bewilderment. And that made me realise that that sort of prayer is ok – is just as effective as a long well phrased liturgy. It reminded me that God knows my heart, so when I couldn’t even utter a word, my sense of pain and grief was a plaintive and amplified prayer that he heard directly.

I was blessed by this quote:

“Our hope in the face of suffering is not to reject God, but rather to rely on him even more, choosing to call him Father with a mix of desperation and hope, militantly believing that although our prayers remain unanswered, it is not because God is callous or uncaring, because he is love.”  

I think I’ve had to hang onto him tighter this week than I can remember. We’ve really experienced that mix of desperation and hope. And all we can do is keep relying, keep hoping, keep believing in his goodness.

The other thing I have noticed this week is the value of community. The Boiler Room and the wider Church have pulled together in a way I’ve never known it to before, the prayer chain multiplied and spread quickly, people in Iceland, Latvia, and the US heard the news and texted messages of support. God began to do surprising things – athiests prayed for Jo’s healing, people showed up at an inpromptu prayer meeting, others invited others for tea and support. It’s been incredible.

As I write, we hear that Jo is the brightest she has been- making jokes and smiling and testifying to God’s goodness. And he is good. We are praising him, we are believing for more, and we are holding on to hope.

One of the beautiful things about having a new church building is that there are lots of walls to fill. Blank, magnolia walls just crying out to be adorned. Metres of void space needing a little something to make the whole place a bit more communicative.

So what else to do but fill them!

I put together this collage recently, using some wonderful photos from www.zoriah.net:

I’m not sure it shows up on the photo, but we came back from an away day last week to find that someone had scribbled on the edge of one of the photos ‘thanks for what you do, it doesn’t go unnoticed. This place is a lifesaver.’

I don’t think it’s the place that’s saving lives.

I don’t think it’s us.

But I know that God is here, and I’m excited that others can feel that too.

The Open Week started brightly on Monday 16th, with a flurry of people helping to set up prayer stations around the Boiler Room. We were joined at lunchtime by four girls from 24-7 Prayer’s ‘Transit’ course, who, after cups of tea and introductions, enthusiastically got stuck in and decorated our prayer room (it looked amazing!).

The Monday evening was phenomenal. We met for a prayer concert, and were joined by a band from Rayne’s Park who led worship sensitively and powerfully. We took part in some creative prayer exercises, and then Lyndall Bywater spoke. The Holy Spirit was really evident and many people were touched.

Tuesdays’ theme was creativity, and we set up lots of different expressions of this around the Boiler Room. Centre of the activity was the main hall, where we were joined by 17 Danish students, who painted, drew, sculpted and learnt about our Boiler Room journey. It was great to meet them, and have them join us as we walked across the Council Chambers, in the heart of Wandsworth Town Hall, to pray with members of the Council Christian Fellowship. It was thrilling and significant to pray in the place where decisions are made that affect the whole borough.

Wednesday was a quieter day, we held our usual XYZ lunch and club (Pensioners church), and the Transit girls helped with the running of the day.

Thursday evening was another high point in the week, where most of our congregation, plus a whole bunch of others, joined us for our first ‘community meal’. Everyone brought something to share, so we ended up with an eclectic yet yummy mix, and there was more than enough for everyone. It was great to eat together, to spend time chatting and getting to know each other better, to just be family with the people we see in church every week, and welcoming others who perhaps we don’t see as regularly. The youth group played board games, everyone else drank a lot of tea, and fun was had by all. We’re definitely going to do this again, there was an openness and vibrancy about the place, and it was a great way to build community.

On Friday, the Social Action team led our Friday food parcels ministry. In the old building we used to just give these out at the door, but we wanted to make the afternoon more welcoming and inclusive. This way, people aren’t just getting a bag of food at the door, but have the opportunity to come in, to spend some time in the warm, to have a shower and a cup of tea, as well as spending time chatting and building relationships. This is a relatively new venture, but, on this day, 34 people came in.

Friday was rounded off with a half night of prayer, where we spent some time worshipping, praying for London and interceding about world situations.

Saturday was the brightest and warmest day of the year so far, an excellent time to embark on our first Boiler Room mini-pilgrimage. We had the pleasure of hosting some visitors from Springboard (24-7 Prayer’s leadership training track), and spent some time telling the Wandsworth story and sharing prayer requests for each other before setting off.

In times past, pilgrims may have used chariots, or walked miles on foot, but in 21st century Wandsworth, there was a certain novelty about using a bus to get us to Richmond Park, our location for the day.

Once there, we walked and walked, enjoying the sunshine and the space to share lives, share stories. We spent time chatting with the Springboarders about their future plans, and were excited to hear about all the far-flung places they will be heading to post-springboard.

We spotted some deer, and then walked a bit further until we found a grassy spot under some trees, where we shared lunch together. Again, it was lovely to chat, to take things at a slower place, and to enjoy each others’ company. Our Boiler Room literature talks about pilgrimage helping us to see things differently, to gain new perspectives, and Saturday’s journey definitely felt useful for this.

The open week, and our first week of 24-7 prayer in the new building wrapped up on the Sunday, with everyone commenting that the experience had been a positive one. People said that it made them really feel part of the Boiler Room, and that there was a buzz about the place that they hadn’t felt before. People walked into the prayer room and said they could feel the presence of God there.

When you’re just getting on with life in a Boiler Room, it’s sometimes easy to forget why we do what we do, and the privilege and excitement in what God has called us to be. It can just become very normal. The open week really helped refocus us, remind us of our calling, and reinvigorate our experience and understanding of the six elements of Boiler Room.

It shook us up a bit too. Relationships often noticeably deepen in the times when people are thrown together, undertaking tasks that break their routine and nudge them out of their comfort zones.
Sometimes the best and most honest conversations happen when we are tired and don’t have the energy to maintain a front. In a community, this sort of honesty and vulnerability helps us all move forward. Throughout the week, we worked through the challenges of fitting different programme events around our existing work, thinking about visitors and accommodation practicalities, and being flexible with our plans and expectations. I think we have come out the other end of the Open Week with a greater commitment to each other, and to what God is doing through Wandsworth Boiler Room.

It was great, through the week, to get stuck into focussed prayer for so many different people, events and situations. The prayer request sheets filled up fast, and it was great to know prayer was being raised up every hour of every day. There have already been some great answers to prayer: non- Christians coming to church for the first time, and new people signing up to be Street Pastors in the borough. Intriguingly, we heard at the weekend that the roof of the council chamber where we’d prayed later fell in… but we are claiming no responsibility for this. Hehe!

Moving forward, we’re definitely hoping to hold another Open Week, potentially in the Autumn. We’re also looking to integrate some of the one-off events of the week, like the community meal, into our main Boiler Room programme, because they were so enjoyable and beneficial. Like so many things, we can’t see all the effects of the week, some of them will be things that work out in the long term, others will be held and pondered in the hearts of those who were impacted, but all in all we are thankful to God for being with us, for helping everything to run smoothly, and for the journey that we know stretches ahead of us in the weeks and months to come.

We are in the middle of our Boiler Room Open Week at the moment. Lots to say about that, but for now a picture of this pretty scuplture will do

This is another of those posts that I know will probably not do justice to the amazing time we had… hmmm.

So, we were in Visby to lead a week of teaching about different aspects of prayer. On Tuesday we did the mechanics of prayer, on Wednesday – prayer and church, on Thursday – prayer and the community and on Friday – healing prayer.

The town of Visby is amazing, I’d recommend a visit to anyone. It is very old – some of the buildings are from the 12th century, and the section of the town we were in is walled. The town is on the West coast of the Island of Gotland, which has a rich and long history involving trading, pirates and treasure. The attached pictures hopefully show a bit what it was like.

Teaching was so much fun, and we met people from Sweden, Germany, Iceland and Denmark. It was a wondrous cacophany of languages! It was ablessing to worship and pray with the group too.

As is usual with these things, God was working and connecting and bringing about some brilliant conversations, we had ‘fika’ many times, which is like a small snack, over which we discussed boiler room, and what it means to build communities of prayer. I was thrilled to be reminded that these are springing up all over the place.

After school had finished each day, we walked all over the town and explored the windy streets, marvelling at the mix of buildings and the colours and styles. It was like we had gone back 200 years. The streets were cobbly and the whole place was just really unspoilt. It was very very quiet – so different from South West London. Even the pace of life is relaxed and laid back.

Visby’s a very creative place too. Apparently there are more artists per square mile than in any other place. We could well believe it. Something about the place just seemed to bring creativity out. We both commented that it was so easy to write there. I felt like I could have holed myself away on a hilltop and just written and written, it was that inspiring.

Food was yummy too, we had real, authentic swedish meatballs, as well as lots of nice cheese!! My personal favourites were the traditional raspberry pie, and sweetcorn soup (not together though!), we also found a lovely iron-shaped creperie, which is in one of the pictures above. The crepes were fabulous!!

I know there is more I could write, and I probably will, but for now it will suffice to say that we had an awesome time, and are excited about the connections we made out there. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to meet the people on the Saved2Save course, and to have visited Visby.

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?

Isn’t it weird that just when things look exclusively grim, God steps in with some snippets of hope. Suddenly instead of being frustrated by the constraints of my circumstance, I am excited by the possibilities of what God can do through them.

Accompanied by the most excellent 24-7 spaces devotions/podcasts, (http://www.24-7prayer.com/spaces) I have been thinking about Mary Magdalene’s experience post-crucifixion. I’m amazed by her hope, even when there was totally nothing left to hope for. I am touched by the tender scene when she meets the risen Jesus….anyway, that’s for my sermon on Sunday so I shouldn’t go down that road too much here

Today I was made hopeful by the story of a friend who’d gone into a really tough sitaution today and came out praising.

I was also made hopeful by seeing the first draft of a resource I’ve been working on for a few weeks. It’s lovely in that moment when it turns from being ideas in your head and words in an email to something you are physically holding in your hand. I get such a buzz from the creative bits of my job

Tonight in our weekly prayer meeting my hope was really ignited, as we talked about the miracles we were hoping and longing for. Focussing on that stuff really turns your mind from thinking about the restraints of the present to the thrill of what could be.

Hope is a good thing methinks.