I love my church. I just want to make that absolutely clear. I really love it. For someone who professes to love his church, I do seem to spend an inordinate amount of time being snide about it, but I honestly do love it. This morning, I was reminded why.
As part of this morning's service, we took communion. Now, I don't usually expect to experience God through our morning services. That probably sounds terrible, but when you consider that I'm always thinking through what I'm going to teach the youth group that morning, often I have to give a notice or lead prayers, I almost always have half a dozen people I need to talk to afterwards, and I'm not a morning person at the best of times, you can imagine why I find it difficult to concentrate on worshipping God. But this morning, God took me completely by surprise.
I was serving the bread and wine with Jo. The faithful arose and shuffled forward to meet us. The first person in the queue arrived.
"The body of Jesus, broken for you," I intoned. He tore off a small piece of bread, put it in his mouth, and moved on. Next.
"The body of Jesus, broken for you."
At around this point I glanced at the queue that was forming. Hmmm... there's rather a lot of you, isn't there? Rather a lot of people Jesus' body was broken for... Oh... I started to get the point. They kept on coming, one after another. Almost all people I knew, mostly people I knew well, and for every last one of them, "The body of Jesus, broken for you". Not just broken for us as a group, but for each one of us as individuals. The line continued; teenagers, mothers with small children, pensioners, people with struggles, people with problems, people with huge problems. And Jesus' body was broken for every last one of them. He loves every last one of them.
By the time I'd served the last person in the line, it was all I could do to avoid blubbing. In a way I really wasn't expecting, and at a time I really wasn't expecting, God reminded me why I bother. He really does love the church. I love it too.

Recent updates

OK. Thanks to Elliott's sage advice, I've now transferred my mugshot to the sidebar. It was actually gallingly simple, once I found out how. I'm trying to work out whether I can be bothered to remove yesterday's post which included it.
I'm also ammassing a quite eclectic list of links. For the spiritual, check out Grace, a monthly alt worship gathering. For the spiritual bit slightly cynical, Ship of Fools will probably be right up your alley. The Barn (youth wing of FHCC) should also be worth a look. For the thinking footy fans, you'll most likely have already discovered When Saturday Comes anyway, but it's always worthy of a visit. And for the bored or downright puerile, Kontraband is a godsend. It certainly made my Friday afternoon bearable.

So here, finally, is the promised self-important photo of yours truly. I can't remember whether, when the photo was taken, I was making a conscious effort to look deep and philosophical, or whether I was just sulking. At any rate, I hope to shift it to the sidebar, once I suss out how.

This is me, trying to look deep and mysterious

I've somehow found myself helping to lead Graceland, the church's semi-regular evening alt-worship service. (No, we haven't got a website yet...) If alt-worship is the buzzword, then really what we're trying to do is, quite simply, to seek God. It's more relective and experimental than our morning worship services, and there's more room for personal thought and self-expression. I find it encouraging that it does, after all, seem to be possible to be a Christian while still retaining the ability to think.
Planning for Graceland has got me back on one of my favourite hobby-horses, the question of what church is actually for. At the moment, I'm chewing over Bonhoeffer's ecclesiology: put very simply, the idea that church is a place where relationship is restored- our relationships with each other and with our creator. This definition appeals to me because it's simple and elegant, and has the ring of truth about it. I think it really sums up what worship and prayer are all about, and it encompasses the Bible too, which explains more what restoring relationship means in every day life. I find this definition quite liberating too, because it leaves so much scope for worshipping God and building community in new and different ways. So having a meal with a group of people who are seeking God can be every bit as much an expression of church as singing hymns, lighting candles or enjoying God as revealed in his creation.
Am I getting woolly and liberal in my old age? I just love to explore new ways to worship God. It strikes me as a particularly worthwhile exercise, since the traditional (or at least most common) modes of church seem to be becoming less and less relevant to the world outside the church. The gospel never changes, of course, but isn't it time to exercise a bit of courage and try expressing it in new ways?

Let's face it; we were lucky. The golden opportunities Ruud van Nistelrooy missed. The sheer number of times they hit the post. The at-first-glance perfectly good goal that the ref ruled out for offside. Freddy Ljungberg heading a van Nistelrooy shot onto the crossbar and back into the middle of a frenzied penalty area, to be gleefully hacked to safety. The gloriously unpredictable Jens Lehmann, despite spending all day with a thousand-yard stare, against all odds playing out of his skin and all but winning the cup single handed. But in the end, who cares? If it was any team other than United, I might feel a slight pang of guilt, or at least sympathy, but, hell, they had it coming. I'm afraid that when They are concerned, any residual sportsmanship that I carry around gets completely forgotten.
As it happens, even seeing the match was a minor logistical miracle for me. A couple of weeks ago, not realising it was cup final day, I'd agreed to go and watch one of the boys from church dancing in a London Children's Ballet production. It was only a few days before that it dawned on me that this would present me with a problem. Now, let's make something clear: it's not that I don't like ballet. I flatter myself that I'm broad-minded enough to appreciate a wide range of artisitic disciplines. In fact, I enjoyed the performance. It was very professional. Nor was I reluctant to support Jacob in his endeavours. He's clearly very talented, and deserves to be encouraged. The issue is this: I'm an unreconstructed (undeconstructed?) postmodern male. I like football. I'm not ashamed to say so. So, the only course of action open to me was as follows:
1. Watch the first half of the match on TV.
2. Rush into central London to see the ballet.
3. Make my way home, desperately trying to avoid TV screens, fellow Arsenal fans, radios, pubs where the game had been shown - really anyone or anything that could possibly give me any indication of the result. The upshot of this was me, running through central London, with my eyes shut and my hands over my ears. I hope the bruises heal soon. And I must say, those Japanese tourists were very understanding.
4. Spend the evening studiously avoiding TV news reports.
5. At 11.40pm, worn out by nerves and paranoia, slump in front of the TV in my pyjamas, to watch the highlights.
6. At approximately 12.25pm, stuff a cushion into my mouth, so as not to wake my wife with my yells of "Have some of that, you manky Scots git!!"
To my amazement, it worked. But just recalling the day's progress wears me out. Who'd be an Arsenal fan?

Praying for London

I'm trying to encourage my church youth group (11-14 year olds) to pray for London. (Isaiah 62:6-7 and all that). But how to pray creatively as a group? I hit on the idea of photocopying a London area train map, blowing it up to 4 times its original size, to the point where it practically covers the floor of an average-size meeting room. We're going to write and draw prayers all over it - covering London in prayers. Cool, huh?
Which isn't to detract from the main business of the weekend; the FA cup final. Us v Them for the fifth time this season. Do we stand a chance without St Thierry? Will those odious Manc thugs even let us touch the ball without kicking us into the stratosphere? It's over 24 hours until kick-off and my stomach's churning already. This is not good. It's at about this stage in proceedings that fans of either side look for omens in everything. We beat United in the final in '79. They've never retained the trophy. Jose Reyes apparently knows someone whose mother-in-law's dog's best friend's uncle had his path crossed by a black cat last week. We can't lose!... Nurse, more valium, please.

Today I escaped from under a pile of admin to meet Jonny Baker, my old mentor, for a curry. As expected, this was a stimulating experience. Jonny's one of those people who have a way of making you think deeply about what you're doing and why you're doing it, which is always a helpful thing to do. Even if it did give me slight indigestion.
I managed to convince him to let me loose on the blah website, which discusses cross-cultural mission and the like. Check it out at www.blahonline.net . I think I mumbled something about church-based mission in an urban context, particularly last year's Soul in the City bonanza. I think I might have picked a few holes in the Soul in the City model, which I find equally exciting and worrying. Exciting, because I always enjoy being provocative. Worrying, because I can't help feeling I'll be vilified if I dare to say a word against Soul in the City. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. And perhaps it's not Soul in the City that's flawed; perhaps it's my methods and my church's approach to local outreach that need altering. Hmmm. Some research necessary here, methinks. Once my article's finished and uploaded, I'll let you know here.
In the meantime, check out www.soulinthecity.co.uk for more on Soul in the City.

Finally, after much tutting, grumbling and muttering of expletives, I've worked out how to post photos. (See below for the results.) Once Microsoft Publisher decides to start playing ball, I'll post a suitably pretentious photo of yours truly. In the meantime, satisfy yourself by gazing on the beauty of my beloved wife (but not for too long, or I'll start getting jealous), and the loveliness of my friends from church.
Question of the day: Who should be first against the wall, come the revolution? My vote's currently with Bill Gates. Microsoft Works? Oxymoron, if you ask me.

Introducing my friends from church. We don't generally hang around in the woods, but this is the aftermath of a recent game of pooh sticks.

The happy couple... This is Jo and I on our wedding day. (Yes, that's me on the left...)

Welcome to my world. I think you'll like it here. The sun always shines, the birds sing in perfect four-part harmony and anyone caught taking themselves too seriously immediately has their trousers removed.
It's all looking rather minimalist at the moment, but this site will soon be brimming over with news, thought-provoking views, music and book recommendations, and a fair amount of humour. (Well, at least a fair amount of stuff I find funny. You might find it about as funny as a colonoscopy.)
I think you'll agree it's high-time I introduced myself. So I will. My name is Simeon Whiting. I'm 26, a londoner, and married to Jo. I'm currently employed as a youth worker by Forest Hill Community Church, but you find me at a very intriguing juncture in my life, whereby I've just handed in my notice, effective of the end of August, to try my luck as a writer. As you can imagine, this decision has raised a few eyebrows, not least those of my parents, who were labouring under the misapprehension that I was a good, responsible boy. So I'm now seeking employment in the media industry, which is proving tricky for someone with five years' experience as a youth worker and none whatsoever in journalism. Still, at least I've got my natural charm to fall back on. Oh dear.