Cardboard and Glue Guns

I got home from scouts today to find a e-mail from a friend and former workmate from last summer I guess you could say my old patch. 

We'd worked at a place which mad up cardboard advertising posters and frames the ones you see in supermarkets with DVD's on and those big ones in the Cinema's... the few week's I was there were fun and tough. 

Fighting with glue guns for 8 hrs a day or double sided tape which decided no matter what you did wouldn't stay in a straight line. 

But tonight it was great to hear that some of those guy's have semi perminate contracts rather than the wait for the call on your way home to find if you were needed the next day... they were and are hard working guy's... 

the other side of this was to hear the news of my friends family and how the grand Kids were growing... that he had got a new job...

we never know as we journey through life how lives cross and mingle but what impact they leave on our lives... but even though it was just a few weeks that I was there in Benfleet there will always be a part of that place in me i still have the scars from missing the a and hitting my hand with the hot glue...

I learnt a lot form those guys but most of all to be real, what you saw with them was what you got  and it was great... you got there respect by doing the same by pulling your weight... yeah there were grumbles and jokes I was on the end of a few.... questions and conversations...  one of the ways a question was asked was by starting with I don't mean to be rude but ............ genuine questions from real people 

one of my favourite conversations was a group telling me what they knew of the easter story what we got to was this...

that there were these guys who arrested  jesus and they took him to another guy who was in charge ( pilot) and then loads of people wanted him dead so they got some wood and put him on a cross.... 

we got the story down to the wood coming from B&Q and the crown of thorns well.... we got being made from stolen barbed wire off a near by warehouse fence...

it was a real meaningful way to hear the story being retold as it came gritty,rough and ready and most of all it was very real...

we often as leaders and preachers struggle to find relevant ways to repackage and share the message of the gospel to people day after day last summer I had it shared by those I worked with..

I'm so thankful that I got to spend a few weeks in their patch last summer there's a lot that the church can learn from being open honest and real... not projecting a false image but actually saying this is who we are a group a people journeying together hurting together and after a 14hr shift you hurt laughing together teasing the boss.... and being supportive they may not have got what I wanted to do but the day before I came for my interview there was no place else I'd have been than with that team in Benfleet and after the writer of seethroughfaith they were the first to be told I got the post in my new patch...