…To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth– and not I only, but also all who know the truth– because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love. It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands.

2 John 1:1-6

It’s been great to be accepted as minister of Kangaroo Valley. Our family is very excited and we see God’s clear intervention in our thinking and planning . What a relief that he is in charge and is the perfect leader! You can read about Kangaroo Valley here. Our last Sunday at Mittagong is May 17, we’ll move the next day to KV, then unpack as quickly as we can then take some hols. We’ll start at Kangaroo Valley on June 9. Thank you for your prayers. God has answered in a wonderful and creative way.   

I’ve been reflecting on my leadership with the upcoming move. Lately I’ve been reading a book called ‘Strengthening the Soul of your Leadership’ by Ruth Haley Barton. Although I think her attempt to link between the book of Exodus and her consequent psychological assessments of Moses are a bit of a stretch, she says some great stuff about leadership and ourselves. I wonder if, upon reflection, you would agree with these comments:

A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside him- or herself, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

Taking responsibility for oneself may well be more demanding than taking responsibility for a congregation or an organization! (p48)

The more volatile and out of control our responses are, the more we can be sure that we are reacting out of old adaptive patterns rather than God-graced, Spirit-filled responses.  (p51)

 

Powerful and very true words.

next items for sale: a genuine leather 3 seat sofa, with two matching single chairs (only one shown above). Again, all in good nick, just don’t want to take them with us.

Make a decent offer and you’ll get a decent response!

For sale: TV/audio cabinet – very nice piece, plenty of space inside. As we don’t have a tv this is now redundant to us and we don’t want to take it to the next place!

Make an offer.

this is the balcony scene from waterslea, on the shoalhaven river – the scene of our church weekend away last weekend. it’d be nice to be there. realised the other day our fam hasn’t had a holiday for six months, and it’s time to have another one! hopefully soon.

i’m fairly sure that, save for blaise, no-one from my church actually reads this blog. so i hope i can say with your confidence to not share this info – I resigned from church a couple of weeks ago. the go was that I would not be here from 2010 and maybe sooner if i find a job before then – giving sufficient notice. we’ll announce it at church when i have a spot to go to! we had always said between parties that 3 years was the go.

So again we begin the position search. would appreciate your prayers for God to place us in the spot of most benefit to him and us (as we asked in the last few posts)!

jemima and james had some fun with make up.

jemima poses (a self portrait).

Continuing from the last post – I feel like I am challenging God in a dumb human way, saying ‘OK, I have no safety net, what are you going to do? I am in your hands awaiting your future’.

Please pray us to that place.

Without going into detail (yet), was wondering if you could pray for Cecily and I and the family this week in your prayers - how God can put us in the place of best use to Him with our particular gifts.

Thanks, we feel like this is a real watershed period for us and really value your prayer.