GIRP #1 People First, Admin Second

When I am planning my day I often ask the wrong questions: Do I have time to visit anyone today? How am I going to create order out of the chaos which is my desk? Which of the events coming up demands my attention most urgently? I count it a good result at the end of the day if I feel in control of my workload and if I have managed to conduct a meeting without making a fool of myself. These should not be the primary motivations of anyone, let alone a minister.

Better questions to start with would be: Who am I going to visit today? What can I do today which will give comfort to the troubled, encourage the hesitant and move people on in their journey of faith? How can I make a positive contribution to the lives of others? Some degree of admin may be helpful or even necessary in achieving these objectives, but it should be factored into my timetable after my more direct dealings with people, not before.

Checklist: (Using the four criteria, Biblical? wise advisors? experience? Spirit?) The Bible is not a handbook on how to manage time and run organisations (although it does have some hints on such thing), it is a book about God’s dealings with people and his desire for us to love one another. If you were to ask what ordained ministry is about I can’t imagine anyone putting admin above people in their response. I do feel frustrated when (as at present) there is a huge backlog of urgent and important admin looming over me – can backlogs loom? – but that is peanuts compared to the guilt I feel when I realise how I have been neglecting those who are ill or otherwise in need. And yes, it does feel that the Spirit is prompting me to take this principle seriously, starting today!

So this becomes my first recorded "Get It Right" Prompt. (see here for explanation)

Procreation in heaven?

I have discovered an answer to a problem that has troubled me for years. It may not be a rigorously academic answer, but it satisfied me - which is all I ask for.

The problem is not the existence of natural disasters. I have long ago come to the conclusion that the same turbulent geology which gives rise to earthquakes and volcanoes also provides the conditions that give rise to living organisms. The same random mutations in our DNA which make evolution possible also give rise to disease and disability. In other words, even with all its problems, this is the best possible natural world in which human life could come into being. To put it bluntly, God could not have created a world which was a) without the potential for natural disaster and b) capable of producing intelligent life.

The problem is this: What about heaven? I want to believe in an environment which will contain no shred of suffering or pain, no sickness or disease. My concept of heaven is that it is more real and more substantial than our present existence, that one day I will look back on my 'earthly' life and see it as a pale shadow of the true life lived in heaven. But if I am going to argue that God couldn't create a pain-free earth, then how can I argue for a pain-free heaven?

And here's the recently discovered solution: There will be no procreation in heaven. It is earth which gives birth to that mysterious mix of mind, body and spirit which we call a human being. Heaven is the place where human life can flourish in all its fullness, but it is not the cradle of such life.

Let me use an illustration. The life of a plant is largely lived in an environment called 'above ground'. Here is where you see the plant grow and flourish and reach its full potential. But that life germinates in a dark gloomy place called 'underground'. Life begins in one place and flourishes in another. It may be necessary for the birthing-place to have some unpleasant aspects, but the living space can be trouble-free.

And if you think this is all mere fanciful speculation to set my mind at rest, I refer you to 1 Corinthians 15:35-49

"When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed. ... The splendour of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendour of the earthly bodies is another. ... It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."

"Get It Right" Prompts

I am halfway through a two-day "Global Leadership Summit" presented by Willow Creek. The opening session was about the process of decision making. There are four traditional guides to making a decision: What does the Bible say? What do others advise? What does past experience teach? Which way is the Spirit prompting? But Bill Hybels suggested going one stage further and coming up with 'axioms' which distil all the above into a nugget of wisdom. By way of example he quoted Abraham Lincoln - "The best way to defeat my enemy is to make him my friend." This is in keeping with the four traditional guides but is a shortcut to making the right decision.

I have a love-hate relationship with pithy sayings like this. Wisdom and truth can't always be so easily captured. There seems to be something simplistic and tacky about (for example) all the advice offered in the Baz Luhrmann single which begins "wear sunscreen...". On the other hand I sometimes find such nuggets of wisdom intriguing, interesting and even inspiring.

[later... the conference is now finished] It occurs to me that

• a) If a short saying is crafted from a careful consideration of the four traditional guides, it is not going to be trite or glib.
• b) If a short saying is not merely a repetition of someone else's wisdom but a distillation of ideas which have come out of my own particular context and are in keeping with my own particular personality, then it is going to be of some worth.
• c) If I were to think of such short nuggets not as 'wisdom' in themselves but as mere reminders of a more thoroughly developed issue, then there is less danger of oversimplifying.
• d) It is not just for guidance in making decisions that these pithy reminders will be useful for, but in many other aspects of life as I seek to live it in the way Jesus has given it - "to the full".
• e) I have plenty of ideas and inspirations arising from the Global Leadership Summit which will be lost if they are not captured somehow - say, in a computer document listing my "full life reminders" each followed by explanatory notes.
• f) Such a document will be a useful repository of future ideas and inspiration too.
• g) As I come up with meaningful and workable FLRs I can post them on this blog.
• h) I wonder if there is a catchier name for them? - and the answer is yes. Weeks later I have come up with GIRPs - a longer acronym but it can be pronounced more easily. It stands for “Get it right” prompts.
  

Not Taken

One of the many blessings I wish to place on record is that I am not like the character played by Liam Neeson in the film Taken. His attitude towards his teenage daughter was one of paranoid overprotection. By contrast I think I have a good relationship with my daughter - bearing in mind that fathers and teenagers are often not the easiest combination. Of course we have our disagreements and she can find me embarrassing in public, but we have fallen into a small ritual which really cheers me up: If we happen to pass each other as I am returning home from the paper shop and she is on her way to school, then despite the public setting and the dozens of commuters and other teenagers, we always acknowledge each other with a shoulder-height 'high five'. No words are spoken and often no eye contact is made (she is trying to catch me unprepared), but we've been doing this for years and I still appreciate it.

A second blessing is that my daughter has more than once travelled through Paris with a teenage friend and neither of them have been abducted by criminals and sold as slaves to rich foreigners.