Back in town

Hi friends,

My blog of my Nigeria trip is now completed and Sue and I are back in London. (How do you people cope with this cold?). Here is a Gherkin.

Why no time?

All my friends in ministry seem so busy. They rush from place to place, bolt their meals and often have no time for conversation. It is understandable for those who are not paid but this is just as true for those who have the privilege of being paid ministers.

There must be many reasons but one is, I think, because they feel guilty just reading, meditating, praying (and chatting). It seems so passive and lazy. So unproductive.

Everyone else in the congregation seems busy. Sometimes busyness seems to be the only commonly recognised virtue in London. All else is relative. And our role as the Pastor/Teachers of churches is easy to despise when secularism rules. If only people realised how busy we are we would feel justified and so we become busy. We dress and act as busy professionals. “See my diary”, “Hear my phone ring”, “Sorry, have to dash!”

So who will do the work of hearing God speak in scripture? thinking through its implications in a world going mad and churches going adrift? working out what lives we should live in consequence of the faith delivered once for all by the Apostles and Prophets of Christ?

Who will put the Gospel of God in the language of the City of Men? Who will stand before the Lord?

I’d like to think about these things when I am less busy.

I am leaving Tiscali – hooray!!

After spending another 15 minutes on a national rate line at my expense I finally got through to the Tiscali cancellation line. They said they could get a “Senior Technician” on my case to solve my connection problem. I said that was what their complaints people said ten days ago and “Yes, I really do want to cancel my account.”

I will have to wait until 30th September to finish my term (why??) and then “allow ten to 15 days for BT to remove the Tiscali tag from my line”. It will be worth the wait.

Tiscali and BT fiasco

Further to my last post, it is now Tuesday and we are no further forward. Both BT and Tiscali have made calls from “customer service representatives”. Tiscali told my wife that they would be a few days solving the problem. It is as if they only started on the issue after my threat to leave. A BT rep rang to ask if I was “happy” with the way the problem had been resolved. I told him I was not happy, it was not resolved and by the way my dial-up connection which I was using was slow and erratic. After telling him this twice he then asked whether I was talking about broadband or dial-up, because broadband was not BT’s responsibility. I asked him to pay attention and he put the phone down.

This is what happens when people have work targets related to activity rather than results.
Today I rang Tiscali’s disconnection number – yes it is a national rate number! After an expensive quarter hour I got through to a rep who asked me to call back later because their computer system was “down”. I insisted he made a note of my phone number with pencil and paper and tell the management that this customer was going.

Tiscali and BT – aaaarrrggh

This Blog, like most of my online life has been sabotaged by the carelessness of BT and Tiscali.  I will not bore you with the ugly details.  I have been offline for nearly three weeks at home and I am using the Freeola network in the church office.  That went down for a day too and the difference in competence and helpfulness between Freeola (brilliant) and Tiscali/BT (abysmal) is a yawning chasm of contrast.

Tiscali have until 5pm today to sort themselves out otherwise our relationship is over.