Before I start I will warn readers that this post has a dangerously high God Level; you may want to secure your loose items and make sure your tray tables are in an upright and locked position before proceeding.
I had hoped to write this entry sooner as some of the thoughts I had about what I was going to write have faded slightly in my mind, but I'll plough onwards and see where I end up.
This year was my third year at Soul Survivor down in Shepton Mallet. I remember the first year I went, all the way back in 2007, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it; I thought it would be a week of camping (which I do enjoy a lot) interspersed with a week of church services just like we have here at home. Now don't get me wrong, the church services at St Johns are wonderful and I wouldn't change them for anything, but they're not the kind of experience that goes well if you have one every morning and evening for five days! Quite to the contrary, however, I remember being a) completely flabbergasted at the number of people there were and b) totally freaked out by all the crazy stuff that was going on. People falling over in "the power of the Holy Spirit"? People shouting and screaming? This was definitely not what I was used to. I remember seeing everyone jumping and dancing during the worship and the little gaggle of us from St Johns standing feeling slightly awkward - until the final evening, when we either got totally caught up in the atmosphere or someone up there in the sky gave us a little kick up the behind. Then we jumped and danced like crazy! That's my overpowering memory of the first year - a great big party for God that left me feeling more alive than I ever had before. I guess by that point I was sure in my mind that there was a God, but I didn't really get him or how he did his work.
As I headed off for my second year I felt like I knew what the game was. There was a lot more of us going so there were lots of people who hadn't been before and I remember trying to convey what it's like to them before we went - not an easy task! Because I felt more accustomed to the things that were going on I felt a lot more at ease and I always eagerly anticipated the parties in the mornings and evenings - so much so that whenever they held a prayer session I felt slightly miffed, as though we were missing out by not being able to jump and dance. I prayed along with everyone else in the prayer sessions, but nothing notable happened. Usually I just ended up sitting on the floor with my eyes closed listening to the things going on around me and trying to make sense of them in my head. Why should God want his people to fall over and shake and shout? It all seems rather over-the-top. Fortunately for me we did have another huge party on the last night and I went home feeling revitalised and refreshed. By then I knew that God listened to me, but it had never really occured to me that he might answer back - he's got much more important things to do like healing the sick or mending the broken-hearted than respond to my little woes!
Now we arrive back in the present, or rather a couple of weeks ago at about 5am on a dreary Monday morning. I forgot my pillow because I underestimated how long it would take to eat my Weetabix and ended up being the last person to arrive at the carpark - but fortunately still just before the minibus, so nobody got to tell me off. As we set off down the motorway half the people in the bus were excited, and half were asleep. I fell into the second category. Of course I was still excited, but I had learnt from the previous two years of camping in Bath, Switzerland and Iceland that sleep is far, far more important when travelling, because it's probably the only opportunity you'll get to have some for a while! I didn't really realise it at the time, but over the past year my mind had completely turned off. My brain was still working happily, storing up all those equations and diagrams I'd learnt in a year of Physics and Maths (I'm not going to lie, I can't remember anything from Chemistry!) but my mind had completely switched off. I wasn't thinking about how I felt. The year had basically turned into a long monotonous routine - get up in the morning, check what day it is, if it's a weekday then go to school, if it's a Saturday then go to work, if it's a Sunday then go to Church - after that, do the homework that's due in the next day, play some game on the computer, do some work on a random project that won't end up as anything, if it's a Monday go to Scouts, if it's a Friday then go to TIG Friday. At the time some days I felt really down and depressed, and I didn't really know why, but now I see. I wasn't tuned into what other people were feeling, and I wasn't tuned into what I was feeling.
Anyway, we're getting off topic. The first night at week C was a nice party that woke me up and let me recall the good times in previous years. It also let me loosen up a bit, as I realised I was with friends (all 10,000 of them) and I could be more open and emotional. The following morning's meeting set in motion a completely unexpected chain of events, though. It was the first of many prayer times that altogether broke my life down into lots of little wires, made me look at each one of them, then plugged them all back in a different order. I basically sat down and thought "everyone else has these spiritual experiences, why don't I?". I thought and I prayed and I said "hey God, you got anything for me here? Please?" but nothing happened. Some people prayed for me, which was nice, but still nothing happened. I mean, I didn't know what to expect anyway, but I thought that at least something might pop into my mind, some feeling or thought that would reassure me. But nothing. I left feeling a bit dejected but kept my head up and thought "that's OK, there's still four more days to go!" This happened the next day, too. And the next day. By the end of day three I felt quite down and depressed, I felt as though God was ignoring me for some reason. I was definitely starting to feel a bit cynical about the whole process, with thoughts like "these people just get swept up in the atmosphere" and "it's really just a time to think about things you've done and clear stuff up with yourself, there's no God involved." The fourth day was when I realised what was going on. On the evening of the third day Mike P had stood up on the stage and said "I get this feeling that there are lots of you feeling cynical. I want you to do a really gutsy thing and come up here and let us pray for you." I was feeling cynical myself at the time, and in my head I thought "yeah, but there must be loads and loads of people in that boat here" - sure enough, people drifted up to the front to a smattering of applause and others got up and prayed for them. There was a little voice in my head willing me to go and stand up there, but I dismissed it because I didn't think it would help at all. Mike said the same thing the next day, he said "I know there are more of you out there that God wants to talk to, you just have to be brave enough" and all of a sudden that little voice in my head that was willing me to stand up the night before slapped me across the face and I stood up and went to the front to stand with the other people who looked just as surprised as me that they had actually done it. The next half an hour is a bit of a blur, but I came out the other side with a new understanding and realisation in my head. It had taken me seventeen years, but I knew that God loved me despite my failings, and I knew that he wanted me to do so many things that that little voice in my head has been telling me to do for so long. They finished day five not with a huge party, but with powerful and reflective songs that meant so much more to me. As I look back, the whole week seems like some journey that was specifically tailored just so I could come to this new mindset I have now and hopefully keep it. I now know that God has been working in me, but not in the ways I expected at all. That's what God does - you think you've got him figured out then he throws a complete curve-ball and you're back at square one. I can't explain how he's come into my life since that week away, but since then I've been more open than I've ever been in my life before. I'd never have written a blog post like this before, I know that - and I've stood up at Church and given what I thought was a terrible testimony that was my attempt to convey all the things I've just written without any preparation in front of a crowd of people, but those people came up to me afterwards and thanked me for helping their understanding of God. I still have that voice in my head telling me that it's OK to be more open, as I still hold a lot back. I don't know why I hold it back, but I hope that whatever it is that's got into my mind I'll realise what it is and face it down, to see it run in fear.
I think a quote from Douglas Adams sums it up best:
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
I've got myself a What Would Jesus Do? bracelet that I'm firmly resolved to wear all the time, partly as a reminder to myself when I'm having trouble remebering this new mindset I definitely want to keep - and partly as a conversation-starter when I'm with other people, as I'm not quite confident enough to start off talking about my faith with other friends and random people yet!
I think that part of my calling is to help out in church and in the community with the skills that I have, and I've been motivated to finally start work on something that little voice has been bugging me about for ages - a new design for the Church website. There's nothing wrong with the website as it is; there's a lot of useful information on it and it's all well-organised and thought out, but it's never really had a 'design' as such, it's just a collection of pages that are maintained by different people and some of the stuff is a bit out of date! I've done my best to make a website that is easy to update but still looks good and works well, as anyone that knows me will know I think that visuals are very important in these things!
You can take a look at the site-in-progress at http://stjohns.webdesign.jontysewell.net/ but bear in mind that all the text is a placeholder and/or notices from places I've nicked code from! If you click a link and it comes up with an "Internal Server Error" page that's because I haven't made that page yet.
I really want to see your comments on this site, and I hope I can put it into operation by the time the building work is completed on the church - this seems an ideal time to relaunch the website!
In a vague attempt to organise my life a bit better (and because it's rather fun), I've bought a PDA off eBay. The HP iPAQ rx3715 was only £25, and it is from 2005 (running WM2003SE), but it does everything I could possibly want it to do! Synchronising Google Mail/Calendar has to be the most useful feature, although the Contacts sync doesn't work for some reason I'd rather not investigate too much in case I accidentally delete all my contacts (and therefore also wipe them and all their recognised faces from Picasa).
