Running Fast
When I was at school - which is more years ago than I care to think about - I used to enjoy cross country running. I even made it into the school team! I was fortunate enough to attend a school on the edge of town where we had easy access to fields and open countryside. Looking back on it now, I am puzzled as to why I enjoyed scrambling through the mud, usually in rainy, windy weather. But I have always loved running and have always been drawn to competitive sport. However, despite being reasonably successful, there were many others who were consistently better than me. I learnt that during any race there would come a point when someone upped the pace – and that was the moment when you had to do the same in order to keep up with the front runners.
Over the last couple of weeks, the pace has picked up significantly in some of the areas where I carry leadership responsibility. Hopefully this requires just a short spurt and will not have to be sustained long term. Therefore I would value your prayers for a couple of leadership challenges I am facing at the moment.
Next week I will be taking a number of our key staff away for a planning week at Paul and Charlotte Braithwaite’s house in France. Paul and Charlotte served at King’s for many years before emigrating to France and Paul is still involved in our building developments. They are now kind enough to host the team at their home for what is always a significant few days. During this time we will pray, discuss and then plan for all that we believe God is leading us towards for the next church year. Our recommendations from this week will be presented to the elders on May 19th.
Then the following week I will be running two days of coaching with twelve lead elders, before flying out with Deb to visit our friends at River of Life Church in Harare, Zimbabwe. Our itinerary in Harare is fairly packed, and includes teaching on a marriage enrichment weekend for their elders and wives as well as preaching five times on Sunday. We then travel on to Cape Town where we will be spending a few days with Steve van Rhyn and the Jubliee Church eldership as well as with some of the other guys from the Advance sphere. I finish by speaking at the church on the Sunday.
As you can see, the pace is picking up - with God’s help I will endeavour to keep running fast. But before then, I look forward to preaching at King's this Sunday. See you there.
Image: The Running Man by N Feans, used under CC
