now cms is in oxford i get to go into london less though i think i’ll end up in town at least one day a week…

anyway i had to come in for a meeting at the salmon centre which is the most amazing youth facility i think i have ever seen in britain. mark blundell has overseen the fundraising and redevelopment which has cost several million pounds – he is an absolute star. part of the rebuild is a set of flats for volunteers who will help run the centre. we are trying to help develop a role for someone to be a kind of spiritual director/mission leader for this team and to help develop the mission spirituality of the centre. it’s a very exciting opportunity for someone – and there is a flat for that person as part of the complex (let me know if you know someone who might be good for the role btw). anyway whilst in town i managed to hook up with pete rollins who was hosting some visitors from aldea, which was cool. always good to meet others on similar journeys in other parts of the globe.

and then richard white tipped me off that friend of his had an art exhibition so i dropped into that. it’s a stunning set of watercolour and inks of cityscapes in liverpool under construction. cecilia clearly loves the changing evolving nature of the city and cranes overhead make her feel happy (or so it says in the notes). if you are anywhere nearby do drop in and have a look. they are really good.

en route on the tube i also read a couple of george lings latest encounters on the edge. the first is cafe church part 2 – this time looking at groups exploring cafe church outside of church buildings. in one touching/challenging story a church agreed to close its worship service one sunday morning to try running a cafe type thing in the village hall. i thought that was a pretty brave move for a church. the only thing i thought the cafe church series is missing is a fuller story of a group meeting in someone else’s cafe – what hirsch and frost would call proximity space or steve collins refers to as third place. it strikes me as a much simpler strategy for engaging in cafe culture. the second one was on a church in hillingdon that has shifted its worship to be a rolling programme of half hourly worship type things. again i admired the changes a church was willing to embrace in order to rethink what it was up to though i suspect it may not be where they end up (sounds too exhausting!).

and i managed to stop by the new howies store on carnaby street (actually that was my first stopping point of the day) – amazingly i bumped into ade who had just returned from a cafe with two coffees for himself and he kindly gave me one! this is the doormat at the entrance – cool eh?!

i was also planning on meeting shannon for coffee but time ran out… (sorry shannon!)

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