Apprentice

I bought a new phone recently and as I was reading through the manual (NNNERD!) I discovered that my new phone is equipped with a “fake call” feature. You can schedule a time you want your phone to ring “when you want to get out of meetings or unwanted conversations”. You can even use a recording with the fake call feature to make it sound like you’re talking to someone. Is it really so hard to just be straight with people that we go to such lengths to keep up false appearances ? Should dishonesty and duplicity really be seen as a feature to come pre-installed in our technology and not as a bug in the human condition?

I can’t post that last video without posting this one:

They say exercise is good for you in more than just the physical sense, it improves the mood and can ease anxiety and depression. We are holistic creatures after all, and our physical world is not divorced from our mental or emotional world. For instance, it is impossible for me to fly a kite without smiling (I defy anyone to fly a kite without smiling), also it is impossible for me to view this video without laughing:

I’ve exercised on and off for a while now. When I was a child I hated sport, because the only sport offered to me was the terminally boring soccer, which turned my school friends into angry shadows of their normal selves. I mean seriously, it’s just a ball! I didn’t really take up regular physical exercise until I was in my 20s when I started training in Shotokan karate. The karate was great fun and the exercise did improve my mood. Also, it was good to be good at a sport for once, I’d never one a trophy before in my life. I got injured and took some time off and when I got back the lack of full-contact training  seemed to bother me more than it did before and after two years of successful training I gave up.  I still have a soft spot for martial arts and would jump at the chance to give judo but it’s a bit expensive for me right now.

The other form of exercise I’ve enjoyed for a while now is running, but I lack focus when I’m not training for a specific race.  So last Christmas, while carrying a food-baby in my stomach after Christmas dinner, I decided to sign up for the Dublin City Marathon.  It seems like a big step I know, but I’m not aiming for any particular time, I just want to finish it. The training will be the hard part – sticking to a schedule whether I feel like it or not.

I’ve been quite bothered lately at how easily I give in to my moods. I haven’t fasted in ages, I eat what I like when I like, exercise if I feel like it, sleep if I feel like it. My will has atrophied. So I hope to regain some discipline through training for the marathon, improve my moods (I’m not depressed or anything but there’s always room for improvement), and achieve something that most people will never even try. This is supposed to be one of those big life experiences.

I bought a book to help me train and one of the things it suggested was signing up for the marathon and telling people that I’m going to run it. So, I’ve signed up and now you know. I’m looking forward to catching the running bug and seeing what so much regular exercise does to the rest of my life.

I recently sent the following text to myself one night:

Hi Future-John, this is yourself contacting you from the past. Just letting you know the IPC costs €135. I hope the sermon went well.

The point was to remind me to collect a cheque to pay for the Irish Preacher’s Conference. I could have used the reminder function on my phone but this seemed like more fun. It worked. I think the sermon went well too.

There is this duality to life where we try to get ourselves to follow up on the good intentions or good ideas that we have, sometimes this does not go so smoothly. Following through on good ideas that don’t really cost us is easy  but what about the times when we have to remind ourselves to die to our old habits and sins? Following through on the intention to pick up a cheque was easy for me, following through on the intentions to die to my old self and live out my new identity is not so easy?

The thing is I’m selfish and the old me was very happy to just go along being selfish, the centre of his own universe, either pursuing self-pleasure or indulging in self-pity. But I like the new me much more, my eyes have been opened to what is good. I can see the changes Christ has already made in me, dramatic changes. I am far from the person I was five years ago, but there is always a challenge to die to old habits and sins and always the struggle within myself to do what I know is good and what I know I really want in my heart.

St. Paul put it like the struggle like this:

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
(Romans 7:15-24 – ESV)

He answers his own question in the next sentence:

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:25a – ESV)

With Christ I have not just been shown where I am going wrong, laden with guilt and told to pull my socks up, but have been given a Rescuer. God doesn’t just call me to be a better man, he makes me into a new creation. He does the work, my job is to stick by Him, and even that I wouldn’t do if he didn’t open my eyes.

So here are some good intentions I have at the moment, springing from convictions I believe God has given me; you can pray for me if you like and I will lean on God to do the hard work:

I want blog here more. It’s a good discipline to have, it gets me to think and I know people are praying for me and often go for far too long without receiving any updates so I kind of owe it to them. The problem with this, and a reason my blogging is so infrequent, is I often feel like I don’t have anything to say and to simply post up what I’m doing feels a little vain. However I’ve been told a few times (one time told in a “shouty” manner, accompanied by a punch) that people actually do care about me and have an interest in me and by always keeping myself to myself and being such a loner I rob them of the opportunity to get to know me better. The blogging is really part of a bigger plan for me to stop being so distant and mechanical in my interactions with other people. I look at Jesus and I know that he really loved people and the hard truth is that I don’t see that love in myself so that’s going to change.

Are you reading this Adam? [I've recruited Adam to hold me accountable with the blogging discipline] Kick my arse if I go for a month without blogging and don’t have a good excuse

I have more but I’ll save it for another post, I have to pace myself – I’m not used to this.

I’ve been thinking about doing a series of posts about the people in my life I have learned, and continue to learn from. This is the first of however many posts I manage to get out before I run out of blogging steam again.

P is one of my closest friends, I’ve known him since I was eight years old. P and I were friends in primary and secondary school. P taught me to be true to my beliefs and not go along with the crowd.

Class and school prayer was common in both my primary and secondary schools. Each morning in my secondary school we would all gather in the assembly hall. The principal would stand at the front on a box made of MDF sheets nailed together and painted over and speak into a microphone. Mr. Moroney would stand on his box and announce some news, denounce some recent bad behaviour and then lead us in some group prayer; the “Our Father” if I remember correctly. We would say the prayer along with him and all bless ourselves together at the end.

I think we were about 15 when P and I both agreed we were atheists and that we didn’t believe in all of this religion. You can’t really blame us, all we were given was dry religious acts and an atmosphere that discouraged questioning. The hypocrisy didn’t help either. My school was an ugly place. I would physically wretch with nerves on the cold mornings as I walked to school from my sister’s house. The place was horrible, nothing beautiful could thrive there.

Everything had originally been set up nice, we had seen videos of the school after it first opened – the science lab was fully equipped, every desk with a gas supply for the Bunsen burners and a sink, the language room was set up so students could plug in headphones at their desks to help them learn, the metalwork and woodwork rooms with their large workbenches. By the time my generation got to the place it was broken to pieces, doors and desks vandalised. The gas and water supply was cut off from the desks in science lab, they were just desks with weird useless appendages now. The language room was now just more desks, painted with layer upon layer of an ugly maroon paint, with weird hollow metal boxes at the top where the school had removed the electronics. The worktops in the woodwork and metalwork rooms had been hacked at with chisels so much that there wasn’t a smooth surface left on them. The whole place seemed dirty and broken.

I was never seriously bullied but it seemed like attacks could come from anywhere – random abuse from people who didn’t even know my name. I was walking back to school after lunch one day when an older boy cycled in front of me, turned, spat in my face and laughed. He never even got off his bike, just kept cycling on up to the school. I didn’t know who he was, he didn’t know who I was but that was how things were. Many of the students just seemed to hate other students and they didn’t need a good reason for that. People would just throw things at strangers “for the laugh”.

Where was I? Hypocrisy, yes. Anyway, all us students would line up each morning – the bullied and the bullies, the vandals, the boy that spit in my face, P and I and we would all recite “Our Father, who art in heaven…”, like we were all brothers and sisters or something, like we were all following God. So P and I decided we’d had enough. And here is what P taught me: one morning I kept silent as usual during prayer, my own little rebellious protest, but at the end I went to bless myself like everyone else. P was behind me and he nudged me, “What are you blessing yourself for?” he said. I was blessing myself because it was easier to see someone refuse to bless themselves than it was to see that their lips weren’t moving. I was blessing myself to fit in.

P taught me to live out my beliefs and not simply go along with the crowd. It’s ironic, but this step into atheism helped to lead me to God. I rejected crowd-following dry religious acts and would not be satisfied with a mindless religion. I could not be satisfied by anything less than a living God. Who knows how things would have turned out if I had been happy to just go along with the crowd keeping my “real life” in one box and my little god in another? When I catch myself settling for dry heartless religion I think of P giving me a nudge in the back.

The last time I saw P he told me he was lost. He has so many questions and I only hope that I can help him somehow. I hope I can show him not to care what the crowd thinks and to seek God with all his heart.

Sarah and I are taking 8 teenagers to Germany for TeenStreet. Please pray that it all goes well.

John.

Dear friends,

It’s almost been one year since I started my work in Greystones. It looks like I’ll be sticking around here for another couple of years. There’s work to be done! I thought I’d write you a short email [this was originally sent as an email to my supporters - John] to let you know what’s happening and because Monty (Rev. David Montgomery, my boss at Greystones Presbyterian Church) suggested that he write an email for me to send out to help me raise some much needed funds for next year.

At the moment I am preparing for TeenStreet, the international youth conference in Germany. Sarah, myself and eight teenagers fly out to Germany on the 31st of July. We’ll be there along with teens and leaders from many other countries for one week of worship, teaching, fun and fellowship. I need a lot of prayer for this! The Living Stones youth ministry hasn’t even been going a year yet so this is kind of a big deal for us. Please pray that the trip will go well and there will be no complications with travel. Please pray that the leaders and the teens will both be enriched an grow in their faith through this experience.

The other big thing at the moment is fundraising for next year. I’ll be staying on at GPC in the role of Ministry Apprentice. Parts of this will be exactly the same as my current position but it will involve more pastoral and leadership roles. In order to stay on and continue to help GPC I need to raise funds for next year. Financially speaking I’ve had a pretty tight year this year and there were times when I had simply run out of money. God has provided for me all year, giving me kind friends to support financially, in prayer and in making sure I had something to eat. To scrape by next year I’ll need at least €3,000. Please do consider supporting me whether through prayer or financially. Monty will have more details in the letter which follows.

I want to thank everyone who has supported me this year, it has been tough at times but your encouragement and support and God’s provision has seen me through so far. So thanks to God and thank you my friends.

I’ll let Monty take over with his letter now.

Love,
John.

Monty’s Letter
Friends of John O’Donnell

I have suggested to John, that I write to a number of his friends to keep them in touch with what is happening, inform them about the impact John is having in our fellowship here and give them the opportunity, if they wish, to make a small donation towards his next couple of years in ministry.

John has been with us for almost a year and in that time has formed a small but very successful youth group Living Stones which is having a great impact on the lives of a number of our young people, especially the boys. In a few days he is taking a group to Germany to be part of Teen Street. In addition he has got our website up and running, co-ordinated our audio-visuals, designed our publicity for the year, which has been of a super quality, produced our magazine, started a library/bookstall, led Bible studies, contributed to a Christianity Explored group, and preached to a very high standard on a number of occasions. You can listen to some of his sermons on www.greystonespc.org.

We are delighted to have had him working with us at such an early and formative time in our ministry here in Greystones. As we all consider options for the future we wanted both to maintain the partnership in ministry which had begun this year and also to develop it slightly, giving John some experience in other areas of ministry and therefore prepare him for any further training he may wish to do in the future. With that in mind we are offering him an apprenticeship under the Ministry Training Scheme which will run for at least one, or possibly two years. He will continue to be part of an expanding team here at Greystones and hopefully develop his own gifts and be stretched in new ways.

At Greystones we will continue to provide him with accommodation and a level of ‘volunteer expenses’, but as we are a small church, and as John does not have a large ‘home church’ to which he can turn for support, he is having largely to raise the supplemental funding for this himself. Already he has run two races of 5k and 5 miles to raise sponsorship for this. Being a shy sort he doesn’t find it easy to ask folks for help- but as his boss who has benefitted greatly from his contribution over the past year, I have no such qualms!

If you would like to help him in any way you can send a cheque made payable to Greystones Presbyterian to the address below [Monty's address omitted from blog version of this letter - John] and we will be sure to let John know of your support. This can be tax-deductable if you supply us with the relevant information. Alternatively you can give John your support directly, although the former is certainly more tax-efficient.

Above all, and regardless of whether you can support him or not at this time, do pray for him and us as we seek to be faithful to God and work for him in this community at this time

Thank you for your ongoing prayers and interest

David Montgomery.

I’ve been trying to get back into running after roughly a year out. Greystones Presbyterian Church want to have me work as a Ministry Apprentice next year so I’m running two races in Phoenix Park, Dublin this month to raise funds. By the way… would you like to sponsor me?

So I’m back in training. I tried to run about two weeks ago only to find I could only manage about 3K and had to stop for a breather just after the first K. It was disappointing but also somewhat expected because that’s how I was when I started running last year.

On Monday, however, something weird happened. I saw a video about how landing on the fore-foot was a more natural and efficient way to run. I had heard this previously but thought it was rubbish, imagining someone prancing about, toes pointed, like a ballerina. Then the video said to try running barefoot, and lo and behold, I just naturally landed on the ball of my foot, not on my heels.

I decided I’d try this new form out and when I did I was pretty surprised. It got pretty tough towards the end and my form did get a bit sloppy, but I went from running just over 1K before having to stop to running over 5K (just like I was running last year before I stopped running). Not only that but I beat my record time for running the mile; that’s a faster mile than I’d run before, including last year.

Now for the bad news, my calves were killing me for days and they’re still not fully recovered. I think I know where I went wrong though. I was keeping my heel off the ground when it has to touch the ground for a moment, I think I was also running too much on my toes. I ran again today, trying to correct those mistakes but my calves were still too tired so it was back to the old disappointing run. I am determined to get this right though and I have been doing further research (as you would if you saw such a drastic improvement in your running).

I’ve watched some other videos of long distance runners and noticed how they ran. Their knees weren’t pumping up and down but were swinging in an arch and their feet landed underneath their body and swung to the back instead of landing in front. I did some more research, reading up about ChiRunning, the Pose Method and the running form of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, famed for being the greatest long-distance runners in the world – running for 24 hours straight, or for 50 or 100 miles straight. Although there were some minor differences they all seemed to agree on some points: short strides, landing on the fore-foot instead of the heel (although some people say “mid-foot” I think what they mean is on the ball of the foot but not on the toes, since the middle of the foot is the arch and it’s impossible, or at least very awkward, to land on that), leaning forward and letting gravity pull you along rather than pushing with your muscles.

I’m going to keep trying with this and let you know how I get on. My first race is a 5K on the 5th of July at the Family Fitness Festival at Farmleigh in Phoenix Park. The next race is the Irish Runner 5-Miler (8K) on the 18th of July, also In Phoenix Park.

I lost my favourite Bible on the train last week. It was a Compact ESV. I’d had it for a couple of years and it was nicely broken in and small enough to fit in my pocket so I could bring it everywhere with me. The weather was unexpectedly warm last Friday so while I was sitting on the DART I took it off and folded it over my lap. My Bible must have fallen out of my pocket as I was putting my coat back on again to get off at my stop. I’ll miss it, but if someone finds it and reads it then I’m glad they have it, I just don’t want it to end up as rubbish. It’s funny how attached I got to it. Is it wrong that I now have my eyes on the deluxe version? I won’t be buying one anytime soon, don’t worry, I can do without it.

Actually, come to think of it it was my second favorite Bible anyway. My favorite would br the wide-margin version I use for my daily reading. The wide margins are good for writing notes and I’ve “hacked” it (in the most basic sense of the word hack) by crudely sticking a few ribbon markers in it with superglue.

Still, I will miss the little one.

Peter and Christine (and James), originally uploaded by Apprentice Blog.

This is Peter and Christine (and me in the middle), Peter was the Board of Mission in Ireland worker at Cahir Presbyterian Church, my old church. Peter is retiring for health reasons and him and Christine are moving back home. They are dear friends of mine as well as leaders and mentors and I will miss them, Cahir will miss them. I had the honour of preaching the sermon at a special farewell service for them on Sunday. The church was full of people and when you’re used to having less than ten people try to fill a church with song on a Sunday having the place packed with people singing worship to God can be quite moving. There was a bit of a croak in my voice as I began to preach. The smiling man in the background is James, who faithfully picked me up on Sundays to give me a lift to church.