40dayssample

" L e a r n a l l yo u c a n f r o m t h e m i s ta k e s o f o t h e r s . Y o u w o n ' t h av e t i m e t o m a k e t h e m a l l yo u r s e l f . �

3 Thanks to Everyone who contributed Jim Brown

Derek McKelvey

David Bruce

Niall McNally

Terrence Cadden

Mike Pilavachi

Steve Cave

Dave Quintana

Maurice Elliot

Paul Reid

Greg Fromholz

Mark Russell

Norman Hamilton

Naomi Rose Steinberg

Rachel Gardner

Matt Summerfield

Drew Gibson

Jamie Treadwell

Ken Good

Trevor Williams

Brian Heasley

Fanta Clarke

Lyndsey Holley

Andy Frost

Dolway Johnston

Krish Kandiah

Maria Kee

Pat Storey

John Kyle

Mike Wardlow

Rose Lynas Luke Aylen Norman Lynas Keith Lockhart Adrian McCartney Andy McCourt Linda McCredie Gordon McDade

4 Contents Why I Wanted to Produce This Book

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How to Use This Book

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There May Be Trouble Ahead

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Be Somebody 13 No Compare 16 Lost in Wonder 18 Emergency Use Only 22 From Wreckage to Restoration

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Leadership is Relational 28 Bombs, Bullets & Bigotry 30 Crisis of Identity 33 We See Through A Glass Door Dimly

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A Quiet Word for Introverts

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Beauty & the Beast 42 Running on Empty 45 Pass it On 48 It Doesn’t Fit 51 Playing with Porn 53 Come Out of the Christian Cocoon

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Pray & Reflect 59 Hope Floats 62

5 A Difficult Place to Be

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Big 67 God Can Act as the First Resort

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Wrong Choices 73 Good to Talk 76 Tears & Laughter 80 Friends 84 Disintegrated Anticipation 87 Become a Monk 90 The Great Pretender 92 Dig Up That Buried Talent

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Lucky Break 98 Losing A Parent 101 Painful 104 What Happens When You Hit The Wall?

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Rebel With A Cause

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Marriage Breakdown 112 Don’t Eat More Food Than You Can Lift

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Languages of Love 118 Reading the Gauge 121 Avoiding Tragedy 124

6 WHY I WANTED TO PRODUCE THIS BOOK JOHN KEE, DIRECTOR OF SUMMER MADNESS ‘Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself.’ Alfred Sheinwold This book really came about from wanting to pass on to my own children some of what I think I’ve learnt along the way – often the ‘hard’ way. I hoped that my kids could avoid much of that same bumpy road. Then I realised that many others could also offer more and better insights and ‘hindsights’ than I have yet even to grasp and that the potential audience was wider than my own family. So I went and asked a range of people if they would share some of those experiences. I read a quote from Sylvester Stallone – yeah, he’s right there in the book of Ecclesiastes ;-) – which summed up my thinking quite well: ‘It would be great to be able to pass on to someone all of the successes, the failures, and the knowledge that one has had. To help someone avoid all the fire, pain and anxiety would be wonderful.’

So, this book is about learning from other people’s experiences; not just their wonderful successes but perhaps more importantly their mistakes. It’s about recognising that failure is an inevitable part of the human experience and that the Christian life is not about perfection but it’s about progress. We shouldn’t be too afraid of failure. After all, ‘Fallor ergo sum’ (‘I err therefore I am’), said St Augustine. This most celebrated early Christian theologian was essentially saying that failure is the very stuff of being human. St Paul in Romans 7 describes his passionate desire to live fully in God’s will yet recognising the ongoing inner struggle to do so and in the middle of it all learning to rely on God’s grace and His encouragement to keep moving forward by His Spirit.

7 When it comes to dealing with difficulties, disappointments and failures you’ll find so many stories providing great wisdom in the Bible and you’ll discover that the advice given is immensely useful in every area of life: the worlds of business, politics and finance as well as personal relationships and spiritual life. However, sometimes in church we find this dressed up in language that can seem a bit remote to everyday life; but I hope that you will pick up from the stories in this book that the whole idea of ‘wisdom’ is very practical and fulfilling.

John 10:10 in The Message says that Jesus came that we can have ‘real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.’ Now that doesn’t mean that it will always be a bed of roses.

Sometimes we are inclined to paint a very simplistic picture of what living a Christian life is all about and even give the impression that it is always about doing better and constantly making progress. Those in church leadership naturally find it difficult to acknowledge their own struggles or failures and so I’d like to commend all those who accepted this challenge to share some of the ‘hindsight’ that they have accumulated over the years to give you the chance to jump-start your own learning. They have taken the time and effort to put down in a very short space just one or two things that they hope will be of value to you.

‘If you want to know the road ahead - ask those coming back’, goes a Chinese Proverb. So, as you think about who you are, what you will become and where you are headed, do consider these valuable comments from a seasoned group of people – who are walking the same road as yourself, who can give you some tips about dead-ends and roadblocks.

8 HOW TO USE THIS BOOK You could read the book (it’s short enough) in one sitting, or dip into it as you please but I’d like to suggest that it might be most useful if you read one per day over 40 days and shared your thoughts and reflections with a few others around you. I don’t mean that it should be necessarily within your formal youth group/fellowship meeting. Make it a commitment just to have a conversation with one or two friends each week about what really struck you from the previous days of hindsight that you’ve read.

‘A mentor is someone whose hindsight can become your foresight.’

Peter Drucker Let the authors be your mentors for those 40 days and then learn to gain insight and understanding from others as well, those that you observe around you. Make it a habit, ask yourself frequently what you can learn from what’s going on in the lives of others and of course from those in the Biblical narrative. Be sure to share it with others, the Christian walk is not a solo one.

As you read, please do remember that we are all called to go further than just the words on the page. The Bible talks about the difference between ‘hearing’ the Word of God and ‘doing’ it, so bear in mind that there may be some action required as you absorb this wisdom. Try putting some of it into practice.

We can all look back at the path we have taken, the experiences we’ve accumulated and try to learn from them. At least that way we are more likely to begin to shape our future; not simply predict it. When you are in a desert and trying to reach some distant oasis, there is only one sure way of knowing where you are headed, look back and check if your footsteps are carrying you in a straight line.

Lucky Break Believe that, whatever happens, God does not leave us

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y father was knocked off his bike by a drunken driver as he headed to take a Mission meeting in Ringsend, Dublin.

I was 9 months old when my father died and my brother five years older. My mother felt she should be at home to look after my brother and me, so we shared our home with a series of paying guests. Money was always tight and everything was budgeted carefully. But occasionally when there was a big bill coming there just wasn’t enough money in the pot. Throughout my childhood at such moments, my mother would say, ‘Don’t worry, our Heavenly Father will look after us.’ And He did. This grounding in practical faith, is still central to who I am.

I was fifteen when an older friend invited me to take a spin on his motorbike up the Dublin mountains. We stopped where a singletrack by-road forked down from the main route leading towards a bridge over a small river. ‘Why don’t you have a go?’ my friend suggested. He didn’t have to ask twice.

I remember the thrill of negotiating one bend in particular. On my third attempt I was convinced that I could make this bend at 30 mph, just a little faster than my previous attempts. So I approached at that speed, leant over and pulled the bike around. This time, the front wheel went across the crown of the road which had a light sprinkling of gravel. I was aware of the bike sliding and suddenly I was in the ditch still travelling at 30 mph. The bike hit a huge rock. I remember sitting on the road but when I tried to move I noticed that my foot didn’t budge. I had a compound fracture just above my ankle. The bleeding was so bad obviously an artery had been severed. My friend ran down the road to see what had happened.

There was a cottage just opposite where I had crashed. The home owners and my friend helped me across the road and lay me down on their sitting room settee. My friend asked for the use of their

100 telephone, but, they didn’t have a phone. No, there wasn’t a phone box anywhere nearby, and their car had been taken into town for the day. The motorcycle wasn’t drivable. After ten minutes my friend was seriously concerned because the bleeding couldn’t be stopped. We were all worried.

Just then there was a knock on the door. I heard a voice say, ‘I was driving on the road above and happened to look down and saw the bike in the ditch on the road below. Is everything alright? I’m a doctor.’ The doctor came in and was able to reduce the bleeding, while his friend drove three miles to a phone box to call for an ambulance. I was taken to hospital and although I had lost a lot of blood, the operation and recovery were successful. I still have the scar, but no other ill effects.

I thank God for owners of the cottage who looked after me, and for that doctor who happened to see the crash on the by-road and enquired if someone needed help. I believe my Heavenly Father was looking after me that day, just as my mother said He would.

And yet life has taught me that the fact that God loves us, doesn’t mean my life will be a ‘bed of roses’. Despite the best treatment available my father died from his road accident injuries. God didn’t prevent my father’s death!

God isn’t some kind of accident insurance policy. What God has promised is that no matter what happens in life, He is there with us. That is our security. Jesus said ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ And that has been my experience, and that’s why I still believe what my mother taught me as a child ‘Our Heavenly Father will look after us’.

LOSING A PARENT

Don’t let opportunities for meaningful communication slip by

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his is going to sound a bit grim, and it’s not meant to put you off thinking about the possibility of being called into ordained ministry, but when you are a member of the clergy, you do tend to encounter death quite often in the form of funerals and so on. And none of them are pleasant. As Paul writes so honestly in 1 Corinthians 15, death really is an enemy. It is cruel, it is final, it is brutal, it is painful. In short, death stinks.

So what’s the point here? Well, one of the things I learned to my cost is that sometimes death can creep up on you unexpectedly, and one of the biggest mistakes I think I ever made as a young person was not to realise what it would actually feel like to lose a parent. When you’re young, you don’t have a proper sense that most things in life are really only temporary; life is for living and you don’t really feel the passing of time. When I look back now on my teenage years, there is so much I simply took for granted.

My Dad dropped and lifted me everywhere without even a word of protest. Did I ever thank him for loving me so sacrificially? No. I admired him in so many ways, but did I ever even tell him how much I loved him? No. He gave of himself endlessly for my family and me, but was I ever genuinely aware of how much of a blessing this was in offering me permission to flourish? Probably not.

I can remember on different occasions sitting in the car with him and wondering what life might feel like without him being around: very difficult to imagine then. I recall thinking that there were times when I really should have opened my mouth to tell him things that were important, but like a lot of teenagers I never did feelings very well. I could be moody and headstrong, and I was just rubbish in terms of openness and communication with those who were closest to me.

103 Then, after school finished I headed away to university. Soon after that, work started and, before I knew it, the moment had disappeared. My Dad developed dementia and in many ways I lost him years before he eventually died. I can remember to my horror how in later years, when it was my turn to drive him around, he turned to me and no longer knew who I was.

Although he had been ill, it all happened quite unexpectedly in the end. A phone-call one cold January morning and that was it, he had gone. No chance to say goodbye. No opportunity to hold his hand. A whole pile of things I wish I had been able to say; a mind in turmoil; a heart broken.

I remember standing and looking at his body in the coffin and only then did it hit me how much I had lost. I remember writing a card to go with a wreath of flowers and trying to articulate some of my innermost thoughts, but in the end they were just words on a piece of paper. I wish, I wish, I wish...

Being a Christian gives me hope that one day I will see my Dad again, and maybe then I’ll finally be able to tell him all the things that were left unsaid, but in the meantime I am sorry for my shortcomings and thankful for the gospel’s message of grace to those who are left with regrets. I made a mistake, but in Jesus I have discovered someone who truly understands.

The problem with comprehension is, it often comes too late.

- Rasmenia Massoud

E G A I R R MA

N W O D K BREA

Seek out empathetic friends, be vulnerable with God

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wo nights before I got married, one of my out-of-town guests came up to me and said: ‘Just in case no one has said this to you, let me just tell you – you don’t have to do this.’

After he walked away I of course responded with great maturity – I huffed indignantly to one of my bridesmaids. I was 24, with no idea that in four years my marriage would crumble and that I would have a very different perspective on my wedding guest’s warning.

To be clear, I was not a girl who put marriage on a pedestal. I was in no rush to get to the altar. And I had what I consider to be realistic expectations of the enterprise. I figured part of it would be great and part of it would suck, but if I’m honest I don’t think I ever anticipated I’d be going through the Big D. Until I did.

I’m not going to go into the specific ‘whys’ of my marriage breakup. I hope it suffices to say that it’s undoubtedly the greatest failure of my life. C.S. Lewis likened divorce to having your legs cut off. I don’t know about that, but it was all a blur of pain, confusion, doubt and guilt. It was also sadly a time of rejection by certain Christian friends.

A few months after we separated and word of our split had started to spread, I made a somewhat naïve choice to attend a friend’s wedding. I barely kept it together during the ceremony and had just grabbed a drink at the reception, when a Christian colleague approached me and said: ‘You’re making Jesus cry.’

I questioned her timing more than her sentiment. Nine years later I still feel the sting of her public rebuke – rubbing salt in my wounds. I felt like the scarlet D on my chest had cast a pall over my friends’ celebrations and I wanted nothing more than to

114 disappear. When I told a friend about the encounter, she said: ‘I think you’re about to learn very quickly how much some value their principles over people.’ She was right. I lost some friends. And when I moved to London and started making new friends, I found it difficult to explain why I wasn’t even remotely interested in dating or marriage.

It happens. Things fall apart. I think that a willingness to face this fact is what prompted my out-of-town wedding guest’s words of advice. Looking back, I wish I’d taken them more seriously, humbly and graciously. After all, statistics seem to show that just as many Christian marriages end in divorce as other-than-Christian marriages. And I do think maybe that does make Jesus cry… but I cling to the hope that he’s been weeping with me in my pain, and with so many others.

I confess every time I hear wedding bells now, I automatically think of the words of Leonard Cohen: ‘Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.’

I may have been cracked but the glue of grace is holding. I wouldn’t wish the agony of divorce on anyone: Christian, not-aChristian, twenty-something, thirty-something, any-something.

But if you’re out there and you’re going through it, I pray to God you have an empathetic friend or family member you can be vulnerable about it with.

Summer Madness is a registered charity in the UK t: +44 (0) 28 9067 3379 e: office@summermadness.co.uk The Old Rectory, 217 Holywood Road, Belfast BT4 2DH @smfestival /summermadnessni