On the Road with God

This will be my last blog for a few weeks as EBC’s Leadership Team has very kindly granted me a short sabbatical which will start next Monday, 15th May! I thought you might be interested to know a little about what I will be up to before I disappear off, so here goes…

You may remember that we had a guest speaker at EBC last year called Simon Guillebaud, who brought us a message based on his excellent book of daily devotions, called “Choose Life”. A few weeks later, Simon mentioned in his regular blog that he had, the previous year, been on a Christian men’s retreat called the eXtreme Character Challenge (XCC) up in the highlands of Scotland, and he added that if anyone fancied joining him, he was putting a team together for this year’s event too. So I thought, why not see if I could take part?

After a little research about XCC, I contacted Simon and he kindly greed to add me to his team of about 8 guys, and told me it would be a good idea to do some long walks with a 20kg rucksack by way of preparation… The organisers of XCC are deliberately a bit mysterious about what exactly we will be doing, but the process definitely involves camping out, hiking, putting your trust in others, and (I imagine) lots of deep conversations about life.

The XCC itself lasts from the evening of Thursday 18th May through to Sunday evening, 21st, so with the EBC leadership having graciously given me ten days out, I decided that I would build my sabbatical around the XCC trip, and that I would turn the whole thing into a kind of road trip retreat – seeing friends and family at overnight stops along the way!

Happily, my lovely wife Claire has supported me in this idea (so I have an extended “pass” from her too!) and I have now planned the trip in some detail. I will start early next Monday with the EBC ‘Bacon Butty Club’ (7am to 9am and you’re invited!) and then head home for a final training walk and to get packed. Then on Tuesday, I will be meeting my mentor/pastoral advisor, Jonathan Edwards, for a catch up over breakfast at a location strategically chosen to be near to the M40…

After a brisk few hours on the motorway, my first stop is Chester, my home city, where I’ll spend some time with friends and family before heading off to the Lake District on Wednesday. I am booked in at a Christian retreat centre called Rydal Hall in Ambleside. This is a very special place for me, as it was in the grounds of the estate that I proposed to Claire about 25 years ago, beside the beautiful Rydal Falls.

From Rydal, I drive to Edinburgh, meeting up with Simon G and the rest of our team on Thursday afternoon before being getting aboard a minibus together to take us to the highlands. Assuming I survive the XCC alive, I will leave Scotland on Monday and head back to the Lake District (Grasmere this time, another special place) and then drive back to Chester on Tuesday for more time with my family there. After that, I head off to Nottinghamshire on the Wednesday, there to meet with old friends (I was best man at their wedding), before heading back home on the Thursday morning!

Oh, and in a little preliminary event, I am seeing another old friend this week (Thursday night) who I haven’t seen for ages. I was his best man too (and he was mine!) so I’m looking forward to catching up and talking old times and current times.

I think it’s good to stay in touch with the people who have played a big part in our lives, and visiting old friends, family and familiar places certainly helps us to reflect on our own journey of life. So I am really looking forward to seeing some very special people at my various ports of call along the way to Scotland and back, but also feel sure that I will be reflecting a lot with God in the car. Although I’ll be driving, the idea as Christians is that God should be in the driving seat (metaphorically speaking!) of our lives, so I have high hopes that this will be a very significant trip for me. Please keep me in your prayers – it’s been over 13 years since I came on staff at EBC and nearly 7 years since our previous Senior Minister, Chris Porter, was called to Andover Baptist Church. Before all that happened, I’d been happily running health clubs for 18 years, with no clue that I’d end up in church leadership and forming for ministry. I think it fair to say that the intervening years have been quite eventful!

When I return, I have a 10,000 word college dissertation to write (I’ve decided to write about the place of physical fitness in Christian spirituality) and then I return to Regent’s Park for my final year of my ministerial formation / Bachelor of Theology degree in late September.

It remains an absolute joy to be part of the family at EBC and to do all of this. I very much hope that the fortnight ahead proves to be fruitful for me, and us, for many years to come, and I really appreciate the generosity of the church for giving me the opportunity to do this.

With every blessing,
Simon