Monday, April 21, 2025

Easter Ed and Tolkien

 John 20:1-18.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the reality TV show, The Apprentice, with Lord Alan Sugar.

Lord Sugar gives the young hopefuls business tasks to complete.

And perhaps part of the fun of the series is that often they turn out to be numpties and get fired.

We can enjoy laughing at their disasters and the stupid suggestions they make.

 

One of the recent tasks in series 19 was for the candidates to have a crack at creating a new Easter egg, before one or more of them eggs-itted the process.

 

The candidates discussed that Easter lacked a hero character.

Where was the Father Christmas of Easter?

They mused: “We don’t really have a main character for Easter.”

The Easter bunny might have felt rather slighted by this, but Frederick suggested having a mascot called ‘Easter Ed’ – who I think also turned out to be an astronaut, obviously.

It was a rather confused pitch for an Easter Egg based on the Space Man Easter Ed who is going to be the Father Christmas of Easter who gives nice well-behaved children chocolate, and takes the market by storm by becoming the new hero of Easter.  

 

But, of course, Christians around the nation were screaming at their TVs that Jesus is and ought to be the hero of Easter – and Christmas come to that!  

Jesus is the real true hero of Easter.

 

The historical case for his death and resurrection is compelling.

The evidence of the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection appearances have transformed countless lives.  

 

The story of Jesus is, as the film title put it, The Greatest Story Ever told.

In fact, all our stories could be called echoes of the gospel story, which is the story of fall and redemption – of paradise lost and regained.

 

Tolkien once suggested that we could think of Jesus’ story as a true fairy story.

It has the sudden joyous turn – the opposite of a catastrophe - the happily every after which we associate with the fairy story.

And that ending which we all long for, which we dare to hope is true, is what Jesus’ death and resurrection secures.

 

As Tolkien has Sam say in The Lord of the Rings:

“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?"
A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land.”

 

The Easter story is the ultimate reversal:

It is life from death.

 

Jesus’ story is also the ultimate journey story and quest.

He has come from heaven and gone back again – but now as the God-Man.

He has gone, as it were, from riches to rags to riches again.

And it was all a rescue mission for us.  

He who was rich beyond all measure yet for love’s sake became poor.

He lost everything and gave his very life, that we who were poor, through his poverty, might become rich – that we might live – that we might gain heaven and eternal life.

 

That first Easter death was defeated.

The monsters of sin and death were slayed.

The sting of death was drawn as sin and death were overcome.

The ogre death was tamed.

And death is now a servant who brings Jesus’ people into his nearer presence.  

 

You may know that in classic theatre – in Shakespear for example – there are tragedies and comedies.

In tragedies, everyone dies.

In comedies, they get married.

 

The death of Jesus, the promising young preacher, certainly seems like a tragedy.

The apparent tragedy of Good Friday is overcome.

The universe turns out to be a Comedy – and there’s even the wedding supper of the Lamb, the marriage of the people of God, the church, the bride, to Jesus the bridegroom.

Jesus is our victorious champion who has killed the dragon and got the girl.  

 

In the most surprising reversal ever, the crucified one is risen as the Lord of Life.  

 

The Easter story even had a case of mistaken identity.

Mary thinks that Jesus is the Gardener.

And in a way he is.

Jesus is the New and Better Adam who will restore Eden, only better.

Where Adam sinned, Jesus undid our sin.

Jesus is the human being who will rule the world faithfully.

Jesus plants the word of the gospel in us which grows and bears fruit.

And our bodies become seeds which are buried in the ground in death and then flower in New Creation.

 

Easter, it turns out, is not just for good well-behaved children who have been kind, but for all of us.

Jesus in fact came for sinners like you and me on a rescue mission.

 

So Easter already has the ultimate hero: The crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ.

 

And this is more than a story to entertain or sell chocolate.

We’re not just to admire Jesus or even to seek to emulate him.

We’re to trust him.

 

The true story of Jesus can be your story and mine.

It can give meaning and purpose to the story of our lives.

Easter is the great reality – the story of the cosmos and all God’s purposes – in the light of which we can make sense of our world and our lives.

 

Will you make Jesus your own?

Will you live in the light of his story?

Will you accept the new resurrection life he has won for all who will trust him?

 

And so we can rejoice afresh in Jesus the Hero of Easter and this greatest story ever told today – and perhaps even eat chocolate to the glory of his name.

Amen.

Friday, April 18, 2025

An imaginative re-telling of the crucifixion (adapted from Peter Marshall)


I’m going to read an imaginative re-telling of the crucifixion by Peter Marshall, an American Presbyterian pastor who died in 1949.

I’ve adapted it a bit.

 

It’s in four sections and I’ll leave some space for reflection after each one.

 

In his original version, Marshall asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”

To which the literal answer is obviously not!

But as we consider these events, you might like to think about what you might have made of it had you been there, how you might have reacted.

Perhaps there will be particular characters in the story you can identify with, at least a bit.

And you might like to remember that these events were for us.

Although they were far away and a long time ago, they are of eternal significance as the grounds of our salvation.

 

(1)

 

The morning sun had been up for some hours over the city of David.

Already pilgrims and visitors were pouring in through the gates, mingling with merchants from the villages round about, with shepherds coming down from the hills, and the gnarled streets were crowded.

 

There were the aged, stooped with years, muttering to themselves as they pushed through the throngs; and there were children playing in the streets, calling to each other in shrill voices.

There were men and women too, carrying burdens, baskets of vegetables, casks of wine, water bags.

And there were tradesmen with their tools.

Here a donkey stood sleepily beneath his burden in the sunlight.

And there, under a narrow canopy, a merchant shouted his wares from a pavement stall.

 

It was not easy to make one's way through the crowd.

But it was especially difficult for a procession that started out from the governor's palace.

At its head rode a Roman centurion, disdainful and aloof, with scorn for the like of child or cripple who might be in his way.

His lips curled in thin lines of contempt as he watched the shouting, jeering crowd.

Before him went two legionnaires, clearing the crowd aside as best they could with curses and careless blows.

The procession moved at a snail's pace.

The soldiers tried to keep step, but it was evident that the centurion guards did not relish this routine task that came to them every now and then in the government of this troublesome province.

The sunlight glanced on the spears and helmets of the soldiers.

There was a rhythmic clanking of steel as their shields touched their belt buckles and the scabbards of their swords.

 

Between the two files of soldiers staggered three condemned men each carrying a heavy bar of wood on which he was to be executed.

It was hard to keep step for the pace was slow and the soldiers were impatient to get it over: left, right, left, right.

"Come on! We haven’t got all day!"

 

The crosses were heavy, however, and the first of the victims was at the point of collapse.

He had been under severe strain for several days.

Moreover, he had been scourged, lashed with a leather whip in the thongs of which had been inserted rough pieces of lead.

The carpenter followed them with his ladder and his nails.

And they all moved forward out of the courtyard of Pilate's palace and made for one of the gates leading out of the city.

 

The sun was hot.

The sweat poured down the face of Jesus, and he swayed now and then underneath the weight of the cross.

A depression had fallen on the soldiers, and they marched in silence as if reluctant.

A group of women went with the procession, their faces hidden by their veils, but their grief could not be hidden.

Some of them were sobbing aloud.

Others were praying.

Others moaning in that deep grief that knows not what to say or what to do.

Some of them had little children by the hand and kept saving over and over again, "What harm has he done?

Why should they put him to death?

He healed my child.

A touch of his hand and this little one could see."

Another mother would chime in, "He brought my child back to life.

She had all but died.

What harm could there be in that?"

And so they wondered, and so they went.

 

And there were men too who followed as closely as they could—men who walked with the strange steps of men to whom walking was not yet familiar, and others who still carried sticks in their hands but who did not use them as once they had to tap their way through villages and towns, men who had been blind and now through habit carried sticks and who -  strangely enough - were blind again, but this time they were blinded by tears.

Their lips were moving in prayer, and their hearts were heavy.

But there was nothing that they could do.

 

Once when the procession halted for a moment, Jesus turned and spoke to them, but they could not hear him for the shouting of the rabble.

For most of the crowd hardly knew what was going on.

They did not understand.

They had caught the infection of mob spirit.

They shouted to the first of the three victims, the one with the ridiculous crown on his head, twisted from a branch of the briar.

It had lacerated his scalp and caused blood to mingle with the sweat.

They shouted at him until they were roughly pushed aside by the soldiers, and in some cases, they began to shout at the soldiers.

Some of the children, encouraged by their elders, joined in the shouting as the procession went along the way that will forever be known as the Via Dolorosa, the Sorrowful Way.

 

(2) An outsider from Cyrene arrives in Jerusalem.

 

Meanwhile outside the city gate, all unsuspecting, Simon of Cyrene had almost reached the gate.

He had just arrived in Judea and was about to enter the Holy City as a pilgrim for the Passover festival.

He had spent the night in a village nearby, and rising early this morning he had bathed and dressed himself carefully with excitement because soon he would be in Jerusalem, and all the sights that had been described to him by exiles far from home, he would see with his own eyes.

And all the sounds of Jerusalem that seemed to be wafted across the miles over the waves of the sea and to be sung by the wind, he would hear with his own ears.

And yet he tried to keep calm.

And as he set out on the short walk that lay between him and the city, he was thoughtful.

He walked along the winding path that sometimes ran through the fields, sometimes along the tortuous course of a river bed, sometimes wound up a jagged hillside to twist down again among giant boulders and huge rocks behind which highwaymen could easily hide.

He walked along beside the tall rushes and through the crops.

He could hear the sheep bleating on the inhospitable hillside while the morning sun climbed higher and higher and chased away the mists that had lain on the hilltops.

Already he could see ahead of him the temple gleaming gold in the sunshine.

And he thought of his own city, Cyrene, looking down from the elevation over the waters of the Mediterranean.

 

As he neared the city gate, he began to hear shouting that grew louder and louder.

And there seemed to Simon to be a sort of beat to it, a time in it, a rhythm—a sort of chant that he thought sounded like "Crucify, crucify crucify."

And they met right at the city gate—Simon of Cyrene and the crowd.

 

He found that the procession was headed by some Roman soldiers.

He could recognize them anywhere.

He knew a legionnaire when he saw one.

It was official, this procession.

But he had little time to gather impressions, and as for asking questions, that was impossible.

He couldn’t make himself heard in all this noise, in the confusion that seemed to be so violent and so terrible.

There was a sinister, throbbing malice in the atmosphere, and Simon shuddered.

 

And then he was aware of two moving walls of Roman steel between which there staggered a man carrying a cross.

And then he saw there were three men.

But it was one, one in particular, that attracted his attention.

He thought there must be something strange about it all, but before he could understand it, he was caught up in the procession and swept out through the gate again.

He was excited, afraid somehow and helpless.

He was puzzled and ill at ease.

He scanned face after face, quickly looking for some light of welcome, some word of explanation, some smile, some friendliness, but he found none.

The whole atmosphere was drama and cruelty.

The horror of it all crept over him like a clammy mist, and he shivered.

 

He had been captured by the procession, stumbling along, tightly wedged in the very heart of it, walking along beside the three men who staggered under the weight of crosses of heavy wood on which Simon knew they were soon to be put to death.

Each man was bent beneath the burden he carried.

Perspiration moistened each drawn face.

But that one to which he had been so attracted, that one that was strangely appealing—it was a face that arrested him, and Simon felt his gaze returning again and again to that one face.

He noticed that blood was trickling down from wounds in the brow, and then he saw what caused it: that crown of thorns pushed down on the forehead.

But it was his eyes, it was the terrible look in his eyes, that fascinated, awed, and frightened Simon.

He watched with bleeding heart as they shuffled along.

The look in those eyes!

Simon could see nothing else, and as he walked everything was forgotten: the feast, the celebration, the temple, his mission, friends he was to meet, and errands he had to accomplish.

Everything was forgotten as he watched the man carrying the cross.

And then the man looked up, his eyes almost blinded by the blood that trickled down from under that grotesque crown.

Why didn't somebody wipe his eyes?

And as Simon looked at him, he looked at Simon, and the eyes of these two met.

How did Christ know what was in Simon's heart?

What was it that made him smile that slow, sad smile that seemed to say so much to Simon, that seemed to calm his wildly beating heart?

The look that passed between them Simon never forgot as long as he lived, for no man can look at Jesus and remain the same.

 

(3) Simon carries the cross.

 

Jesus stumbled, and the soldiers, moved more by impatience than by pity, seeing that the Nazarene was almost too exhausted to carry his cross any farther, laid hands on Simon and forced him to lift it up.

Simon's heart almost stopped beating.

He couldn’t speak.

Just a few minutes before he was a lonely pilgrim quietly approaching the Holy City.

See him now: his shoulders stooped under the weight of a cross on which this man—this man with the arresting face—was soon to die: in the midst of the procession of howling men and women, walking between two moving walls of Roman steel, and carrying on his shoulder another's cross.

 

The look of gratitude and love that flashed from the eyes of Jesus as Simon lifted the load from his tired, bleeding shoulders did something to the man from Cyrene.

And in an instant all of life was changed.

Simon could never explain it afterwards.

There are some things you can't explain.

He could never tell exactly how it happened, how all at once he saw the meaning of pain.

He understood the significance of suffering.

The meaning of prayer was unveiled.

And the message of the Scriptures—  the passages he had memorized as a child: the messianic songs, the prophecy of Isaiah, whole passages of Scripture—now came to life.

He saw what they meant for the first time.

It was as if a light had been turned on in his heart and soul, as if divine illumination had given to him meanings and significances he had missed until now.

He understood.

And somehow he was glad.

And yet his joy was deeply touched with sorrow.

 

(4) They arrive at Calvary, and the execution takes place.

 

And so they came to Calvary.

They called it Golgotha – the place of the skull.

Visitors to Jerusalem would be asked if they could make out the skull-like silhouette of the hillside.

It was a place to be avoided.

It was where two highways converged upon the city —and down in the valley below a place of stench, a place of horror, an ugly place where refuse always burned.

And the evil smelling smoke curled up and was wafted over the brow of Golgotha.

That was the place of public executions.

And there the procession stops.

 

Only as the nails were driven in did the shouting stop.

There was a hush, because most of them were stunned and horrified, even the hardest of them was silenced.

It’s not pleasant to watch nails being driven through human flesh.

Mary, his mother, stopped her ears and turned away her head.

They could hear the echo across the Kidron valley—the hammer blows.

Simon of Cyrene from time to time wiped away his tears with the back of his hand.

John stood beside Mary and supported her.

The other women were weeping.

But as soon as the Nazarene had mounted his last pulpit, as soon as the cross had fallen with a thud into the pit they had dug for it, the shouting broke out again.

There were some who had followed him once, who had been attracted by the charm of the wonderworker.

There were many among them who had accepted loaves and fishes at his hands.

And now they shouted taunts at him.

They remembered what he had said, and now they hurled his sayings back in his teeth.

They threw at him, like barbed arrows of hate and malice, promises he had made, predictions and eternal truths that had fallen from his lips.

Now they taunted him.

They stabbed and wounded him with things he himself had said:

"He saved others, he can’t save himself.”

They admitted all the miracles he had performed.

He had brought back the dead to life again.

He had given sight to blind eyes.

He had straightened withered limbs.

He had caused the lame to leap and to walk and to praise God in their joy.

“He saved others, can’t he save himself?"

"Miracle man, come on down from the cross and we will believe—one more miracle, the greatest of them all!"

"You’ll re-build the temple in three days, will you, Mr. Carpenter?

You have nails in your hands, but no hammer!

You can’t build a temple up there.

Come on down from the cross and we’ll believe you!"

 

They shouted until they were hoarse.

The noise was so great that only a few of them standing near the cross heard what he said when his lips moved in prayer: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

 

One of the thieves, crucified with him cried out to Jesus, "Can't you see how we suffer?

If you are the Son of God, save yourself and us!"

He twisted himself upon his cross, he writhed his shoulders, and he leaned on the crosspiece.

And then he begged and taunted Christ, to save them all.

(What he sought was salvation from the nails, not salvation from sin; salvation from pain and suffering, not salvation from punishment.)

 

Then a spasm of pain gripped him, and he slipped until his weight once again fell upon the nails that held his hands, and he began to curse and to swear until his companion turned his head and rebuked him:

"What has this man done that you should curse him so?

Seeing that we are in the same condemnation, don’t you fear God?

They have some excuse putting us to death.

We broke the laws.

We tried to start a revolution.

But this man has done nothing.''

 

Then he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

And Jesus, his face drawn with pain but his voice still kind, answered, "This very day, when the pain is over, we shall be together again.

Truly I say to you, you shall be with me in paradise."

And the man, comforted, set his lips to endure till the end.

The sun rose higher and higher.

Time oozed out like the blood that dripped from the cross.

 

Jesus opened his eyes and saw his mother standing there and John beside her.

He called out for John to come closer.

And Jesus said, "You will take care of her, John."

And John, choked with tears, put his arm around the shoulders of Mary.

Jesus said to his mother, "He will be your son."

His lips were parched, and he spoke with difficulty.

He moved his head against the hard wood of the cross as a sick man moves his head on a hot pillow.

 

A thunderstorm was blowing up from the mountains, and the clouds hid the sun.

It was strangely dark.

The people looked up at the sky and became frightened.

Women took little children by the hand and hurried back to the city before the storm would break.

It was an uncanny darkness.

It had never been as dark before.

Something terrible must be about to happen.

Women stood praying for Jesus and for the thieves.

The centurion was silent, although every now and then he would look up at Jesus with a strange look in his eye.

The soldiers were silent, too.

Their gambling was over.

They had won and lost.

 

Suddenly Jesus opened his eyes and gave a loud cry.

The gladness in his voice startled all who heard it, for it sounded like a shout of victory.

"It is finished. Father. Into thy hands I commend my spirit."

And with that cry he died.

 

* * *

 

All sorts of people would have seen Jesus on that fateful day.

His friends and his enemies.

The religious and the irreligious, what we might call church people, and those who were rarely at the temple or synagogue.

There would have been priests and scribes, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, Zealots.

Rich and poor.

Men and women.

Locals and visitors.

They were there.

 

Simon of Cyrene was there, and the soldiers, too.

The Centurion.

The women.

John.

 

What would we have made of Jesus?

And what might he have said to us?

What would you say to him?

 

A modern hymn says:

Behold the man upon a cross,
My sin upon His shoulders;
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers.
It was my sin that held Him there
Until it was accomplished;
His dying breath has brought me life –
I know that it is finished.

 

O Lord Jesus, have mercy upon us.

Grant us your forgiveness.

Give us repentant hearts, and the gifts of faith, hope and love.  

And by thy grace make us clean.

Amen.

 

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Parish Magazine Item for May: The 50 Days of Easter

 

From The Rectory

 

Have you gobbled all your Easter eggs? Easter Day (20th April) may already feel like a distant memory. But traditionally the church celebrates Easter for fifty days. Fifty Cadbury’s Crème Eggs might be over doing it a little, but fifty mini-eggs would be highly appropriate, I think.

 

Luke tells us in his second volume, The Acts of the Apostles:

 

After his [Jesus’] suffering [death and resurrection], he presented himself to them [the apostles he had chosen] and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. (1v3)

 

The Apostle Paul itemises some of these resurrection appearances in his First Letter to the Christians at Corinth:

 

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [= Simon Peter], and then to the Twelve [Disciples / Apostles]. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep [died]. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. (15vv3-7)

 

Jesus’ ascension to heaven, his enthronement, follows forty days after Easter Sunday. We’ll be marking this at 7:30pm on Thursday 29th May at Dallington.

 

The Feast of Pentecost (or Whitsun), when we recall the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the church, comes ten days later on Sunday 8th June, and completes the Easter Season. After that we have a period of what the church calls “ordinary time” with no particular seasonal emphasis.

 

The events of Christmas and Easter really all belong together. Jesus was born to die. His resurrection is the essential conclusion of his crucifixion. But the ascension really ends the whole movement of Christ’s mission: he came from the glory of heaven, to the manger of Bethlehem, then to the cross for us. He returns to the glory he had before he took on flesh, but now with his resurrected human body. Mind-blowingly, Jesus is the God-man enthroned in heaven. And as the victor over sin, death and hell, the conquering Jesus pours out gifts on his church.

 

Before his death Jesus promised his disciples “another counsellor” to be alongside them and help them. Jesus had fulfilled this role for them during his earthly ministry, but he said he would not leave them comfortless but would send them the Holy Spirit to be this friend called alongside them. Although of course Jesus’ disciples are devastated by his death and naturally they miss him, Jesus says all this is an essential part of God’s plan and is, in a way, to their benefit. Amazingly, he calls the worldwide mission of the church in the power of the Holy Spirit even greater than his earthly ministry. Yes, Jesus raised the dead, but his work in the flesh was limited to three brief years mostly within 100 miles or so. The new life Jesus offers is available now all over the world from the gift of the Holy Spirit to all who will embrace the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection.    

 

Apart from giving us an excuse, if we want, for yet more chocolate, perhaps keeping these fifty days of Easter can help us to remember that we are not only celebrating a mighty miracle of long ago, but one which has life changing power and implications for us every day. It’s good that we celebrate every Sunday as a kind of Resurrection day because all year long we could say, “Alleluia. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd

Friday, April 04, 2025

Peter J. Williams - Leadership Lessons

Peter J. Williams, Learning from Your Mistakes: Failures in Leading and Things that Went Right

FOCLOnline - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35hJw_sXgEo

* * *

Why Visionary Leadership Fails

by Nufer Yasin AtesMurat TarakciJeanine P. PorckDaan van Knippenberg and Patrick Groenen

February 28, 2019 – Harvard Business Review

 

https://hbr.org/2019/02/why-visionary-leadership-fails

 

Summary.   

Visionary leadership is widely seen as key to strategic change. That’s because visionary leadership does not just set the strategic direction — it tells a story about why the change is worth pursuing and inspires people to embrace the change. But research finds that the positive impact of visionary leadership breaks down when middle managers aren’t aligned with top management’s strategic vision. This can cause strategic change efforts to slow down or even fail. When middle managers were aligned with top management’s strategic vision, things played out as the widespread view of visionary leadership would suggest: the more these managers engaged in visionary leadership (by communicating their vision for the future and articulating where they wanted their team to be in five years,) the greater the shared understanding of strategy in their team, and the more the team was committed to strategy execution. For managers that were misaligned with the company strategy, however, there was a dark side of visionary leadership became evident. The more these misaligned managers displayed visionary leadership, the less strategic alignment and commitment were observed among their teams.

 

* * *

 Vision without implementation is delusion – what are the steps / mechanisms for delivery?

A fantasy can distract us from getting on with doing something good

Start small, build up, show reliable growth

Don’t think God needs you or your work!

Is there a realistic plan e.g. a team to deliver this?

You can’t do everything!

We need a direction but also a vehicle and brakes! – who will be your filter?

Stage gating – what’s the process for getting this new initiative or plan tried out? Are people exhausted from your last bright idea?

How many balls can you juggle at one time?

A great number two is a real blessing – e.g. strong feedback but not necessarily needing / wanting to be number one

 It’s easy to spend other people’s money! How would you control costs if it were your money?

A certain amount of waste is of course inevitable and we have to accept that. We can’t have perfect 100% efficiency but….

Fundraising is often about friend-raising and that takes time

People don’t always want to give for ongoing costs. They want to give for new and shiny. But it is a problem to have lots of projects with restricted funds and a lack of general funds.

Don’t forget time is money. If people spend time on something, you are effectively spending time on it

Employment costs might be double salary costs. How much does a staff meeting cost? What about an away day?!

Don’t let relationships slip e.g. through busyness

Be strategic / deliberate / plan e.g. follow up

It’s really easy to undervalue or overvalue your time – sabbath!

Rushing and filling every minute / cutting stuff short

Could someone else do this pretty much just as well or better?

It is important to “waste your time” – be still! God is God!

Travelling alone can be a waste of time / loneliness etc. – fellowship in the car or on the train

Tiredness leads to vulnerability

Preparation time – recovery time

Health

Family / work / church

Burn out?

What are your core things? What gives you energy?

Fill your heart with Christ, don’t fill your time in an attempt to get meaning and fulfilment and reputation etc by doing stuff

What are the costs of this vision / what we are doing?

Personal ambition?

Obscurity and no monument would be okay, wouldn’t they?

Activism?

Keeping busy or keeping close to Christ

Over tiredness

Don’t confuse rest and play – you might be tired from playing computer games late – how can you unwind well?

What gives you energy and drains your energy?

Feeling / calling – what do I want to do? What should I do?

Employment mistakes: lack of formal process - ignoring warning signs in references / misgivings of others – trying to control other people’s futures! – don’t try to replicate yourself – consider your impact on the culture for good and ill – failure to show appreciation – allowing people in the team to get isolated – over and underpaying – the golden handcuff of overpaying (what could people get elsewhere?) – who do you want to retain? Can the pay work for them?

Don’t have one intern have four – they can entertain each other

Don’t be too flexible with junior members of staff – it can be helpful for people if they need to be in the office at 9am – framework and flexibility

Cowardice can be a big mistake if you like to be liked – should you be bolder and maybe be more forthright and risk some unpopularity?

Prayerful dependence  

God’s grace – surprising gifts / opportunities – God’s kindness in difficulty