What a great title to steal from U2!
Okay, I promised I would write a little more about quite what's going on, so here goes.
While the picture is obviously posed and done with some dramatic license, the reality is that booking my flights and sealing my departure has very much begun to bring home quite what leaving means. For about a year I've been meeting with obstacles of one kind or another in the preparation of this venture, and so I spent a long time thinking of Durban as a possibility, and not putting too much stock in it. I was still doing lots of reading (something I'll tell you about another time), still praying, still planning things - but always aware that the mission could be aborted just before launch.
The biggest reason why I might not go has been my role with the youth at Beulah Family Church. Since finishing uni in 2003 I've worked for near on 4 years full time at Beulah - 3 of those having pretty much final responsibility for all the youth work.
While I had been involved in youth ministry before that point, I always saw it as a bit of a junior league ministry - just a stepping stone to my ultimate call of church leadership. I did it, but I didn't love it; I served, but only in part. But at the first of our new annual youth gathering, Newday (www.newday.xtn.org), in 2004 God did something dramatic for both the nation and for me. With a rain that broke all national records, and came with biggest force on Newark (where we were), God gave a demonstration of quite what he was planning to do with this generation of people. It wasn't us reading into the weather either like we rely on omens and such for God spoke prophetic word that confirmed it. In fact a dramatic natural sign was prophesied beforehand to the team who have responsibility for the youth within Newfrontiers (the family of churches I'm a part of and going to Durban with - www.newfrontiers.xtn.org), and when the woman who foretold it came up to speak to us all about it after the event (the rain) a sunny day produced another rainstorm just like the ones we had earlier (the like of which I'd never seen before!) that started as she spoke and finished when she finished! It was an awesome demonstration of power and confirmation of the message that God is indeed planning to sweep the UK and beyond (as had also been prophesied at our prayer and fasting gathering a few months before) with the Gospel and with an outpouring of His Spirit, and that He was pleased to do it with the write-off generation we see around us. Many think the Gospel is a dying thing, but it's not even confirmed by the evidence now. God is keen for this new generation to see even more the life of the Gospel!
So what I could see is that God is definitely not looking at youth and thinking that it's a second rate thing. He's also clearly not put off, as I was, by the general apathy and other massive issues that do cause people to write-off youth today (in fact over 80% of UK media coverage on youth paints them in a negative light). On the last night of our week long camp with several thousand others, and after all the adventures, God did something dramatic in me too. It was a very surreal experience but all I'll say at this point is that it was quite possibly my most significant encounter with God ever, and certainly up until that point. In it I was sure God was calling me to drop my pride and to get in wholesale with what He was doing.
"How does this all relate to Durban", you say? Well to go to Durban I will have to leave what I felt like God had given me responsibility for (the youth at Beulah). Not only that these people, both in the church and out, have been the subject of countless hours of labour, prayer, concern, rejoicing, tears, and joy. These were not just young people, they were (and are) my young people - almost as though I had shared in God's love for them as their Father. No matter how inviting the prospect of adventure, beaches, a new challenge, and so on were, I simply could not leave them.
We had been working towards finding a replacement for me who would do great things for the youth here at Beulah and in Thornton Heath. With our new centre opening and a whole new day ahead of us it seemed (and does now) only right that someone new come in to complete what I started. I still know that God has called me not to be a youth worker, but to lead the church. Only now I know youth shall always be on my heart and always at the heart of any church I lead. Because of that we do really need someone who can give their life's work to carrying out all of God's purpose for youth in Thornton Heath. It really is deserving of that, and I have genuinely prayed, "God, give them someone better than me". While I care for them as my own, God has taught me to be humble enough to know that there are people better for them than me, and also that my satisfaction and success in working with them is not the ultimate issue. God, and his mercy for them, is the ultimate issue.
However we have not received such a person even now and I simply was not prepared to leave under those conditions. Even now (I'll explain how I've come to leave even though nothing's changed on the surface) it still pains me to leave, especially in this way. The image I have used in explaining this has been like that of getting a babysitter for your kids. You may have planned the best night out and been looking forward to it for so long (like I had with Durban), and thus arranged for a babysitter (my replacement, although I'm really like the babysitter in this illustration - the temporary one) to have responsibility and care for your kids while you're gone. If the babysitter doesn't show up you don't just go out anyway! No! You stay where you are and take care of them. Your preference doesn't come before their provision. Certainly my big concern is for the blessing of my people and that particularly the ones that are part of my church family be helped through to maturity and holy happiness in God. I don't want to see them waste their lives, but to live them for Him! To have fought hard for this for years just didn't fit with just quitting now because it was convenient.
While I'm now convinced God has a bigger plan for my leaving (another post) and that I should go ahead as planned, it's still so weird to be leaving that which you've lived and breathed for so long.
Also with the new centre and the great new things God is doing at Beulah Family Church, it's so weird to just leave as it gets started. Again having laboured for it for years, to leave when it's just getting started for real is just weird.
Add to that that Beulah has been my spiritual home, family, sanctuary, and more throughout my 6 and a bit years as a follower of Christ. I've not belonged anywhere else and I don't choose to leave because I'm bored here at all!
It's been also where I've shared in my great passion for the gospel and my growing passion for young people with others too. It's the sort of thing that bonds people so tightly as you share together in something that consumes your whole life.
Finally Thornton Heath has been my home (lived in one house) for my entire 25 years. It is not one of many places I've called home, but my only home.
All this, these tickets have confirmed, I'm leaving behind. I will come back, but it will not be the same. I'll come to Thornton Heath in the same way I will go to Durban - as one travelling on a mission. It won't be my virgin homeland, but one more stop on the ever onward journey to see the Church of God grow in the nations of the world. I don't just leave for Durban, I leave for the great cause that God has called me to in Durban and beyond.
Amazing what a few pieces of paper can do!
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