Just an Ordinary Week

 Regular readers of my blog will know that last year I stepped aside (not down) from my key activity in rural mission.  That is the work of what we started as Rural Mission Solutions but is now more simply known as Rural Missions.  I hasten to say that Rural Missions still h\as plenty of great ideas to help village churches.  It is not without solutions!

Over more recent months I have also started reducing the amount of time I am able to give to promoting good church management, mission and evangelism.  However, reducing time does not mean reducing quality and value, so I looking at doing more while doing less.  After all, I am now 79 and have less energy but a lot more experience and wisdom.

Like many my age, I wonder where time goes.  It often feels as if someone has stolen hours out of a day and days out of a week, not to mention the loss of months in a year!  Do, what can be achieved in an ordinary week?

This week I have helped in planning an event for the block of retirement apartments in which I live alongside 43 other apartments.  The sixty or so people who live here only have two people who regularly attend a church.  Both my Baptist friend am I are keen to create opportunities to explain something about our faith to our close neighbours.  So, we have agreed a plan to hold a series of four discussion, looking at @How did we get the Bible and is it reliable?", "Who was Jesus and what did he teach?", "Why get so excited about Christmas and Easter?", and "Is there life after life, and can we be sure of heaven?".

If these do not get people talking I will eat my hat!  My friend has offered to host these in her apartment which is good as she is more tidy than me.  We are offering, tea of coffee or cold drink plus some scrumptious cake.  At least eight people have signed up, but there is a quiet buzz among others.  Watch out for more news.  I have prepared a take-away sheet for the first session as one of the things to do in an ordinary week!

The other night this week I sat up until 4.00am finishing the first draft of a booklet exploring what causes romantic and sexual attraction, and what does the Bible say about it.  Others are now checking the draft to see if it is as helpful as I hope it would be.  If you are up to speed with what God has been doing in my life, you will know that in 2024 I found God pressing me to research this issue, both from a scientific point of view as well as from the Bible.

What I discovered was quite disturbing.  I had not thought about the process of attraction before, but was not surprised that it is primarily to do with functions in our brains.  Neuroscience has demonstrated that people attracted to the same sex not only have brains that function differently to those e attracted to the opposite sex, but even the shape of the brain can be a determinator.  Simply, we cannot help how we were born.  It is not a matter of choice.

But I had to square this with what the Bible says.  To me, that seemed impossible, like squaring a circle.  So hours of Bible study followed, with the sense that for every question I had, God showed me his answer.  One by one, I found that all the arguments from scripture that opponents of same-sex relation raise, were not possible to substantiate.  At the end of 2024 I could no longer state that the Bible says that same-sex relation is wrong.  That does not mean that I promote same-sex relation; it means that I cannot condemn it because the Bible doesn't.  Now, that will be difficult for some Christians, and I have been accused of disobeying Go, but if you want to search the same scripture that I have searched, let me know and I will send you a free copy of my notes.

With over one million people in the UK who have gone public on being attracted to people of the same sex, and not attracted to the opposite sex.  This is a big issue.  In addition  there are over one million people in the UK who are born with sexual parts of their bodies neither exclusively male or female.  Dare we say they are not made in God's image because they do not fit the binary understanding that comes from our interpretation of what it means when the Bible says, "Male and female, created he them".  Is the Bible wrong or is it how we have chosen to interpret such passages?

All the above does not include the time given to play my part as part of the leadership and an active member of my church, and promoting support for Myanmar to alleviate problems caused by the earthquake.

So, it's been a pretty productive week, and so it is set to go on.  I vale your prayers and interest. Why not drop me a line to ruralbarry@gmail.com, and let me know how you are doing, please.