Skating here is a bit different than what I’m used to from Canada, and by different I mean more expensive. But it was beautiful and fun and a great time.

But the best part of it was watching a few dozen non-skaters slip and slide around the rink, especially early on when the ice was extra slick, and the others extra unpracticed.

There were two main groups that stood out. Around the rim, clinging to the boards, were one group, shuffling slowly and carefully and safely in circles. The main risks they faced were the occasionally corner they dared to cut. As a group, they stayed mostly upright. But to say they went skating would be a bit of a stretch.

The other group were best personified by one of the youth, Nathan. Nathan had never skated a day in his life. Possibly he had tried out roller blades, but that doesn’t help much.

Nathan fell. A lot.

He was usually a mess of uncoordinated limbs flying at odd angles around the ice.

He trousers were caked with snow before our session was half over.

But you should have seen how good he was. Not at the beginning. At the beginning he was objectively awful. But by the end he was amazing, flying around the ice with only the occasional fall, unrecognizable from the skater who first tottered onto the ice.

It was fun to watch because although he didn’t enjoy falling any more than the next guy, it was all accepted as part of the process of learning to skate.

I love that idea, where getting anywhere significant includes the possibility of getting a few bruises and looking ridiculous. The church we are a part of here in London is considering a shift from a traditional format-Sunday services, select leadership, the usual church programs-to one that is increasingly dispersed in order to take the mission outward to the community.

Not that this doesn’t involve risk. Or the possibility of a few knocks along the way.

But for the chance to get somewhere amazing? It’s worth it all.

It may be easier to do what has been done before-hanging around the boards on the perimeter. But it is so much more fun to be the guy with the flailing limbs and trousers covered in snow, on the way to something great.

A bit of a ramble, perhaps. But I’m learning to really enjoy following the God who smiles on all sorts of adventures, if they are taken with a desire to please him. On one level we could not be more safe or secure, but at the same time there is an incredible adventure with all sorts of risks and unpredictability. I think Nathan will be a great model for me.

There may have been easier ways to spend the hour on the ice, but I can’t help but think he had the most fun.

Turin is also one of the wealthiest cities in Italy. It was the first capital of Italy upon unification 150 years ago, and although it slipped in political importance over the years, it is the centre of Fiat production, which has helped it to develop in economic importance. Of course, as countless Canadian small towns dependent on the forestry or mining industries can attest, over-reliance on a single industry can really hurt when things take a downturn. Turin is no exception, as problems at Fiat have caused a painful ripple effect throughout the city.

I spent my time there with a two-year old simple church network (or house church network, if that is more familiar). Once a traditional church, they went through a time of re-evaluation which led them to a very significant change in the trajectory of the church.

Which is rather incredible, really. To change from a traditional church to one that is dispersed among various homes is no small matter. Most churches wouldn’t be able to do it. But if the church exists for mission, then the church must be built for mission, and this is exactly what they have sought to do, and what many fail to do. It is easy to exist for special interest groups within the church, and courageous to take another path.

What their present structure allows them to do so well is to move nimbly, to respond to opportunities as they come up, and to engage the whole church (or at least a greater part of it) in reaching the area.

While I was there, an evangelist from America had joined them for a spell. The church aggressively advertised, mostly around a local university, and then approached the event as not just an opportunity to add a few individuals to the Sunday gathering, but as a chance to plant a new church, where those who getting to know Jesus for the first time can do so together.

When I think of how we approach our future ministry in Italy I hope that we can have a similar willingness to pay any necessary price to see the Kingdom advance. So many churches expect growth without actually positioning themselves for anything significant to happen, which is no less ridiculous than my expectation that I will lose my extra Christmas weight without avoiding the trifle sitting in our fridge and hitting the gym regularly.

I’m not saying that every traditional church needs to become a house church (or that every trifle needs to be avoided), or that a change in structure will every be the solution to the challenge of mission. but there is something inspiring by their willingness to pay the necessary price to see God move.

I think that God has been waking the church up to the challenge of mission both next door and around the world, but this journey will always require something of us. The only question is what we are willing to give to see our mission fulfilled.

For those of you who are not familiar with our life, here is the deal. This is our first Christmas away from home. We’ve done everything to make it as normal as possible. We bought a real Christmas tree in a “home depot” type store in London only to find out it was probably cut a few days ago and was not going to last. We made homemade eggnog but the eggs curdled up and we ended up with 2 pints of milky scrambled eggs. We decorated our flat but realized that it was the crackling of our fire place that made our house back in Canada so “Christmassy”. We played Christmas music, baked Christmas cookies, wrapped Christmas presents, enjoyed London decked out in Christmas beauty. We were determined to have this Christmas “as usual”. Now 3 days left until the big day and it might be the unusually warm and sunny December or it could be the oddity of our situation but Christmas spirit is becoming more and more difficult to access.

In attempts to fight the blues I turn on my “go-to” Christmas tunes. No such luck…”I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams” turns me into a blubbery mess. When my rational brain takes over again and tries to tell me that I have no right to feel this way because my home is not really in Canada it doesn’t help but leaves me with a sense of lostness. In 3 days I will be on the wrong side of the 30s. As if that wasn’t bad enough now to top it off I’ve come to realize that I don’t even have a home, a place where I belong, my childhood bedroom with all the sentimental stuff that is supposed to make us feel “whole and grounded”. I’ve moved countries 5 times in the last 13+ years and I’ve done it out of obedience to the call Jesus placed on my life. Why then do I have such a profound feeling of disconnect from everything that is supposed to feel familiar?

The truth is none of us are at home wherever we are. It’s just that my life exposes the condition more than in others. Painful that may be but I’d rather not feel settled and comfortable because it keeps me dreaming and longing for the place that is eternal, where I do belong. We hear so many messages this holiday season about what the true meaning of Christmas is. I won’t bore you with the list but the most popular is “spending time with the family”. Lovely sentiment but not the truth. The true meaning of Christmas is a distant promise and a dream becoming a reality through the Son of God becoming flesh and coming to live among us. I can celebrate that anywhere I am.

This quote struck me while I was reading The Faith of Leap by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. It may be referring to the church, but it is true for individual Christians as well:
“A Church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling. We must play down our longing for certainty, accept what is risky, and live by improvisation and experiment.” Hans Kung

Thinking again about Italy, I suppose that many or most of you will have been hearing something about the upheaval going on in Europe at this time. As I write this, the EU leadership is in talks aimed at saving the Euro, as well as the Union as a whole. This matters deeply to us because so much of our plan is linked to the freedom that the EU gives us. Our evolving plan stands as this: gain UK citizenship for the whole family (already having this myself) and using this to help us skirt all kinds of legal issues as we establish an English as a Second Language school in a beautiful but spiritually needy Italian city. But if the EU disintegrates, or if the Italian economy collapses as everyone seems to fear, our plan-brilliant as it may be-heads in the direction of obsolete. At this point, I think that I’ve read every article written on the subject, twice. It is a bit of a big deal for us.

But then again, maybe not.

We have all these competing interests that seek to lay claim to our lives, to our faith, to our lordship. For our future, will we trust the nation-state, the free market-or the enduring faithfulness of God? Is God in charge, or are the global market forces? Does God make the decisions that will guide our future, or do Sarkozy, Merkel, and Cameron?

We are constantly getting pulled in so many different directions, whether to freak out when the newspaper says the sky is falling, to listen to the siren song of the shopping mall and its promise of wholeness standing just one purchase away, or any number or other forces tugging at our attention. And then there is Jesus, promising that if we seek the kingdom first, everything else will be taken care of.

It’s not that those other things aren’t important, or that we should disengage from the world around us. But it does mean that we don’t have to live or die based on the latest news report or what the stock market is doing. Behind it all, God is at work, always at work, and he isn’t the least bit concerned.

If you are wondering about the work going on in Italy, check out this blog post from Tony Hedrick, with encouraging news from Parma and one of the groups we have been linked to: http://4euroinformation.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/more-inspiring-news-from-acci-and-progetto-archippo-in-italy/.

This particular city was Bologna, famous as the birthplace of lasagna, bolognese sauce, and the world’s oldest university. It’s not a small city-about a million in the metropolitan area-and rich in history. If you look at a map of the city you can still see the shape of the old medieval walls around which the city developed. The gates of must have been an impressive wall are still standing at the corners even though it was destroyed over a hundred years ago, not by an invading army, but to make way for almighty progress.

We were aided in our tour by our friend David Hannah, who works in university campus ministry for TEAM, and who arrived with his family in Bologna right around when we were touching down in London. David gave us a bit of a tour around the city centre-taking us into a few amazing places we would never have found on our own-and shared about their experiences transitioning into Italian culture. It is always encouraging to hear about what’s happening in Italy. On the surface things there seem to be moving a less than a snail’s pace, but under the surface there is the rumblings of something bigger on the move, which is deeply exciting for those of us who want to be a part of it.

At the same time, our time with David was a reminder that what we are getting in to is not the easiest thing in the world, a helpful reminder for an idealist like myself. When you add up the visa issues, the strain of learning a new language, the disorientation that comes with stepping into a new culture, the resistance to the gospel endemic in Italy, plus anything else that I am missing, it gets a bit overwhelming. I’m not even sure what the political and economic crisis in Italy would add to the equation. But I suppose this is part of the adventure, and despite it all, I meet very few who have regret for choosing the life. And I have been thinking recently about how nothing of value comes cheaply (think Israel having to battle its way into the Promised Land, the prophets facing abuse and rejection for speaking truth, Paul facing death and much more to share the gospel, and, of course, Jesus giving his life on the cross). The desire to see something big and dramatic of God-something bigger than I can explain, something of truly biblical proportions-is a large part of what has drawn me here. Maybe taking a risk and stepping in to a battle is the step we take to see something happen. And when I look at what the people of the Bible had to go through, even Italian bureaucracy holds no terror for me.

Bologna was an important stop because it has been at or near the top of cities we would love to end up in, since it meets all of the criteria we are looking for in our next home city. And while there continues to be outreach in various places in the city, like in the rest of Italy it is no where near enough to match the need. A lot can happen, of course, and maybe we’ll end up no where near Bologna. But it was fun to be able to visualize us setting up shop.

Hopefully we can spend some quality time there this summer, but I’ll have to save that musing to another time.

There is just something about Parma: pristine streets and squares, beautiful buildings, a stunning castle, and the best (and most reasonably priced) food that we’ve come across. Since it is the birthplace of parmigiano reggiano and parma ham, you know they must have something figured out. I could spend a lot of my life, without regret, strolling it’s streets and sampling it’s kitchens.

But the best part of Parma are our friends who live there, all of whom have been an incredible source of support and inspiration for us. The idea of moving to Italy is far less intimidating because we know we have them to count on.

Unfortunately, because of my inability to plan a reasonable amount of activity within a sensible amount of time, I’m left with a tinge of regret that we didn’t linger a little longer. But a 48hrs is better than none at all, and since our stay spanned a Sunday, we were able to spend some time at the church, which we have heard so much about but have never experienced firsthand. We have written previously that the Italian churches that we have seen haven’t been as boisterous as one would expect from such a fun culture, perhaps a legacy of the Catholic church. This one was the opposite, helped by a large Latin American contingent who are doing a great job setting a tone, and a place with amazing worship, hospitality, and all of those other things that a church needs.

As a representative of the Canadian church-and by extension our brothers in the UK and the US, with whom we have so much in common-I think we all need to experience a powerful church service in a foreign setting to remember that we are not the pinnacle of all that the church can be. We have spent a long time in the position of those with much to offer, and for good reason. After all, God has been doing some great stuff, and for a long time. There is nothing wrong with believing that we have something to contribute to our brothers and sisters around the world, and I am fully convinced that God expects us to be generous with all that he has given to us. But when we begin to think that they are somehow reliant on us-that without us they would wither and die-is to underestimate the work of the Holy Spirit. God hasn’t set the church in one area of the world to be givers, and everywhere else to be receivers, like some sort of missional charity. We are all givers, and all receivers, and in equal parts, all the while operating simultaneously in generosity and humility.

So although our time in Parma was far too short, we look forward to many return visits, both to offer some of ourselves and what God has entrusted to us, and to receive something in return.

And so we have arrived home, and as a substitute, I’ll write three entries over the next few days, one for each stage of the trip, plus anything else to follow as it comes up.

The first place we went was Milan, simply because that’s where Easyjet took us. I can’t say it’s really my kind of city-a bit too busy, not exactly lovely, and it’s distressing to be in a place where, even if you have your absolute best set of clothes on, you are still the worst dressed person in any given room. It seems that Milan’s main draw is shopping, judging by the prodigious quantity of catalogues scattered around our hotel, and the TV channels devoted to fashion shows.

It was a little surprising to find our ‘close to city centre’ hotel somewhere out in the suburbs, but we got over that. In the end, we were only able to see a little of the interesting parts of the city. Actually, we only got to the castle, which, along with pretty much everything else in Italy, was a little bit lessened since Napoleon dropped by. It seems that he had some great idea of a garden complex, and so knocked down the outer wall to make the necessary room. But as the garden was never completed, all that is left behind is a slightly less dramatic castle.

Our need to move along to Parma, and the impatience of the kids, kept us from seeing much more, but we’ll have to be okay with that. We came for networking, meeting some people, observing ministry, and all of those things. But at the same time we came so that the kids could finally experience Italy for themselves. We’ve been talking about it for almost two years now, and it was always a little difficult to know what they were thinking about our plans. I think that Italy existed as little more than a theoretical construct, which is hard to get excited about. Me and Julia desperately wanted them to feel as excited about Italy as we are. Maybe, in their own way, to feel God calling THEM to Italy. That, at least, was our hope and prayer as we stepped off the plane. We had no idea what God was going to do with it.

In hindsight, it seems that God, in his infinite wisdom, has chosen to use gelato and pizza to call Mitchell and Vika to Italy. Pizza of course is everywhere. And amazing. Pizza Hut is dead to me, and it will be a long time before the kids get excited about a pizza we pull from our freezer. But the highlight was the gelato, which for those of you who have never been to Italy, is even more omnipresent in Italy than Tim Horton’s are in Canada. Our days ended huddled around a takeaway container with assorted flavours, the worst of which is still better than anything Ben and Jerry could come up with.

As much as they enjoyed walking around, seeing some great things, having fun with new friends, it is the food that has stuck. I would roll my eyes at them as they go on and on about it, but maybe that is really how God is working in them. I have no difficulty in God taking something that we love-even something as trite as tasty food-and using it to ignite our passion. I even suspect that it’s a bit fun for him, that he enjoys our enjoyment. And so we enjoyed our pizza and gelato without shame, looking forward to a future with much, much more.

Meanwhile, I’ve been moving forward with the youth here in the church. It’s been an interesting journey. On the whole, it has been going well. The plan was to focus on building a leadership that can carry on after we leave, plus to work with the group as a whole to increase the depth of their relationship with God. Although I had expected progress, it’s actually been better than I had hoped. I think this is partially due to a willingness to engage with what is happening, which I suspect would be a good thing for us passively-inclined Canadians to learn.

Well that’s the good part. I’m struggling to know how to turn growth in one direction into growth in all dimensions. As happy as I am that they individuals who are there are growing in their relationship with Jesus, how does this get turned into effective outreach to their friends?

I used to think that it would happen automatically, but I’m less sure that is how it happens. Most churches that I have known are either good at building depth into their members or mission to their community, but few have been equally proficient in each. If either is missing from the DNA of a church or other group when it forms, it is horribly difficult to try to splice it in later.

But difficult though it may be, I don’t see how we have a choice.

There is so much tension necessary in recognizing what God has done without ignoring what is left to do. On one hand, it is no good becoming so caught up with what is lacking that we forget to celebrate the progress that has been made. But at the same time, we want to avoid the complacency of looking backwards while forgetting to move forwards.

So while I’m sure that one of these days the way to teach a group of youth become missionaries to their peers will all be clear, it is not today.

But it is amazing how much quicker it is. What took me an hour by bus last week took me twenty minutes, including delays where I tried to figure out where I was and if I was going anywhere near the right direction. Plus one is able to notice things that are otherwise missed, for example:
Buses are driven with the expectation that you will get out of their way. Since a bike will generally lose to a bus, I feel it best to just go with it.
A disproportionate amount of large trucks and tour buses are Polish. I’m not sure why that matters, but there you are.

We are hoping to get enough out of the lessons we have this month to have something to practice when we spend five days in Italy later this month. We had expected to spend more than five days, but we delayed buying our tickets overnight as we considered some options for our return. It was a mistake. Apparently, ticket prices can triple in less than twelve hours, which has forced us to trim a couple of days off the trip. Our intention was only to make that error once.

But then I tried to buy tickets for a separate trip to Turin in December to meet with house church networks there and assist in an outreach to university students. This time, I had bought my ticket for the way out, but had the website crash before I could get the ticket for the way home. Today, two days further on, I looked again, this time to find that the price had dropped, saving me a nice sum.

All this to say that, after more than a decade of reasonably frequent travel, I still have no idea how the airlines work.

Fellow missionaries Ann and Dawn

Exchanging stories

Having fun together and doing womanly things like “crafting”
Aldo and Mariela planted a Latin American church in Parma about 7 years ago. Their church hosted the retreat where Mariela was the main speaker.
The most incredible capuccino and brioch in all of Italy.

My friend Angela and I were so excited to the spend our week-end with all the old and new friends.