jonnybaker

ecoutez

this morning on a run along the front in menton, france i was surprised to bump into boris! having been on holiday in the summer every year of my life, this year we couldn't. the big bonus has been that we have taken two weeks out now mid way through term which feels sort of cheeky to do. but we have had a great time. i've never stayed on the mediterranean in france before - the heat and the crowds in the summer sounds like something to avoid. but in late october the temperature was regularly 20, the sun shone most if not all days, we sat out on the balcony for breakfast each day, swam in the sea. of course there were a few autumn showers and it was dark by 6 but a totally brilliant place for a break this time of year and we got there by train in a day from london. tomorrow we head back. it looked like brexit might happen while we were away but we are getting back to an election in december and who knows what will happen next. the world is changing for sure. i have just uploaded an album of photos from menton, nice, monaco and ventimiglia.

street

this last weekend i cycled to paris with a group from amos trust. every year a group cycle over the last may weekend and i think this is now my fourth trip. we clocked up around 280 miles so it was pretty full on (at least for someone like me who doesn't do a lot of cycling!). we stayed in saint denis very near the stade de france. i don't know paris that well but it's clearly a very multicultural quarter - i wondered if it was the equivalent of london's southall? anyway i loved this shot taken on my phone as we wandered to gare saint denis and french africans (i assume) were cooking various skewers over charcoal on shopping trolleys creating smoke in the evening light...

le grand départ

heading to yorkshire later today ready for the start of the tour de france. it seems ages since we stood on the champs d'elysées last year to see chris froome win. having had a national identity crisis a few years back with a lot of success in sport round the olympics we seem back to normal with our overinflated expectations and then losing, at least in football, tennis and cricket. but maybe we can do the treble in the tour which would be extraordinary. can't wait...

not once but twice

it was fantastic to be able to watch the final stage of the 100th tour de france on the champs elysées yesterday. chris froome rode a fantastic tour and totally deserved to win. when we first started watching the tour many years back it was unthinkable that a brit might win the tour and now we have won two in a row with different winners ! quite remarkable... have just got back on an early train and now heading off for a cms pioneer training week on new testament with john drane.

there's a set of a few photos i took here - stage 21 of the tour de france. it was great to see david millar (below) leading out front for a while!

slam coupe du monde!

this week in paris harry baker gets to represent the uk in the world poetry slam finals. jen and i are heading over for a couple of nights to cheer him on - it would be rude not to! should be fun...

quite how you judge between different languages in such a nuanced word dependent art form i have no idea?!

how's your french? - l'église émergente

the wonderful jean hassenforder interviewed me for the french gospel and culture network website temoins on mission, grace, the web, the emerging church in the uk and the wider landscape, and pioneer leadership. and no my french isn't good enough for this so it was translated... anyway it's here - l'église émergente: un itinéraire pionnier

tour de france playlist

ok i confess this is a little sad... but there was one tune i wanted to trace from the tour de france coverage. a minute or two later i found the playlist for the whole series of programmes here. one thing leads to another so i then created a spotify playlist with the tunes that were available (which sadly misses out a few including radiohead, diva and bibio tunes - i also missed out florence as the machine as i can't stand their music!). and if you are also sad you can listen to those tunes here (at least if you are in certain countries). i added in kraftwerk's tour de france tunes at the end for good measure!

loved the tour de france as ever

so another tour de france is over. what am i going to do at 7pm each night instead of watching the highlights?!

if you've not wrapped you head around it it may just look like a bunch of guys riding 3500km round france. but it's so much more. yes there's the overall race for the yellow jersey which simply goes to the rider who makes it in the least overall time. that was an exciting context this year. alberto contador won for the third time (and i suspect could well win another three). to win you need to be a good climber up the most ridiculous mountains - why anyone would even think of climbing them on a bike i have no idea! and you also need t be a good time trialist where time can be gained. the rest you can get away with. i actually miss the team time trial which seems to have been dropped from the tour. andy schleck proved this year that he will be a competitor who will push contador over the next few years. the gap in the end was a controversial 39 seconds, the time andy lost on a stage where he had a mechanical failure and contador didn't wait which would have been the thing to do according to the etiquette of the tour which says you don't attack the yellow jersey when someone has a mechanical failure.

then there's any stage win which is an achievement in itself - some are flat which end up either being won by a breakaway or sprinters. if there is a breakaway it is usually chased down and the sprinters compete for the line. they are basically a different kind of rider - power and strength rather than the lean agility of the climbers. mark cavendish, the manx missile, proved that he is simply the fastest sprinter winning 5 stages. remarkably this was after a bad start where everything seemed to go wrong. he wins when he gets in the zone by several bike lengths which i don't remember any rider being able to do in quite that way. he has now won 15 stages in total, more than any sprinter before and has years ahead of him. but the fascination is also how the teams get the sprinter to the line. each team has nine riders and cav is always at pains to say that whilst he wins the stages it's only because of the efforts of his team. because of wind resistance you need to tuck in the slipstream of riders in front who peel off one by one before the sprinter heads for the line. mark renshaw is cavendish's lead out man. he got thrown out of the tour for head butting a fellow rider whilst sprinting at 70km - no mean feat. i thought it was harsh - his lane was clearly being cut by dean who was putting his elbow across renshaw in highly dangerous fashion. but maybe the third head butt was one too far! that cav could still win stages without his lead out was also amazing.

when we first started watching the tour british cycling was nowhere. now cav is one of many good british riders. will team sky be able to produce someone able to compete for the yellow jersey itself in the next few years? who knows...

there are other contests - points, king of the mountains, team, and young rider.

the scenery is breathtaking across france and the commentary both brilliant and hilarious. i still think it's the single most difficult sporting event there is.

je pense...

je pense..., originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

 

back from france...

this week i headed to france for 4 days to join the church of england missioners conference. every diocese has either a team or a missioner or a part time missioner to catalyse and encourage mission in the churches in their patch. it turms out that the cost of trekking on the eurostar to france costs no more than using a conference centre in the uk which is a trés bon discovery. i've not been before. it was a really good time and not just because it was in france (though admittedly that was a bonus!). the spirit of the network is relaxed, fun and passionate. there are lots of great people. paul weston led some teaching sessions drawing insights from lesslie newbigin's work (which btw if you are interested a lot of his work is available free here - newbigin.net ) which made for some great discussions around mission.

paul bayes and rachel jordan lead the network and do a wonderful job. it may be worth bookmarking start the week , a blog where the network shares news of what is happening in mission in the uk. i was reminded on that of the upcoming research consultation in september which i have been invited to write a paper for about which they say

The first of what we hope might be a biennial opportunity to share research about fresh expressions of church.  The consultation is designed for those who shape policy and practice in ministry and mission at national and local levels across the Christian Church in Britain.

i'm not totally decided on what to write a paper on so do leave any suggestions in the comments but my immediate response to the blurb is to say that those who shape policy and practice are spread across the church (both in institutional roles and at the edges) and it could be argued that it is the movement at the edges and the margins that has been the key factor in shaping what has taken place. but it's welcome elsewhere has multiplied change as policy makers have caught up with the action.

le tour

in life's madness at the moment i haven't yet mentioned the tour de france. but as ever when around we watch itv's hour summary every night of each stage. it's been a pretty exciting year so far with lance armstrong back aged 38 and currently only 2 seconds off the lead - surely he can't win?! mark cavendish equalled the most stage wins ever by a british rider with his fourth stage win this tour and i'm sure he'll win more. he is simply brilliant. let's hope he makes it through the alps next week to win on the champs d'elysée. it's also been great to see bradley wiggins giving it a real go this year and sticking with the elite riders in the mountains. he is currently in 5th. watching the alpe d'huez in the alps last year is still a wonderful family memory though it seems a while back now...

it's only just begun

there has been a lot of discussion and blogging around emerging church recently. is it over? is the term a problem? is it just a phase? i confess to being pretty bemused by the whole discussion.

phyllis tickle in her new book the great emergence says that we are looking at the biggest cultural change for 500 years. it's not just a generational shift, it's much bigger than that. when these kinds of shifts take place it can take 50-100 years to know what we are looking at. and in the meantime it can feel very chaotic and uncertain. i referred recently to the bell curve of change. if anything is over, maybe it is the end of the pioneering phase for some people who are restless and want to do something new (or at least use a different label) and maybe generally there is much wider acceptance of the need to change - i.e. we're in phase two of the curve in some places. but the term emerging church i have always understood to be a description of the church responding to the challenge of the wider cultural changes so the church in that sense is going to be emerging for quite some time yet. it's never been about a particular denomination or style, there's never been anything to join that has owned the name. i think in the uk i genuinely don't know where it's all headed - what will be looking at in 20 years time say?

this last weekend richard and i were at l'église en transformation, a gathering hosted by témoins in france. it was over 5 years since i was last in a témoins gathering and it was encouraging how much the conversation has moved on. there were four presentations and two round table discussions and plenty of open discussion. jean hassenforder is very interested in the church in the uk and changes there and i was invited to give one of the four presentations, which seemed to be well received. one of the big differences is that in the uk the wider church has recognised the challenge and created a culture of permission with fresh expressions and so on (and i think mission agencies such as cms have had a key part to play). whereas getting permission for newness from an institutional perspective is very challenging in france. we also met up with jonathan finley and todd burke both working in multicultural settings with young congregations addressing north african needs. we visited la fonderie, a christian arts collective, hung out with matt, met a bunch of new people including eric zander a very savvy belgian who has his head wrapped around missional thinking and practice.

i'm not sure why but i was reminded of margaret wheatley's paper on the lifecycle of emergence that i referred to a few years back lifecycle of emergence. it's a paper on how networks change the world. and she identifies a fourfold process to that change - name | connect | nourish | illuminate . it will be good to see this process unfold in france though i am not sure who exactly will be the key people in it.

• name - identify/see pioneering missional practice on the margins.
• connect - connect those edge practices together, whether through gathering, connectors, smart social tools etc so that an informal network begins to emerge. obviously there are relationships, networks etc in france but the numbers are very small i think
• nourish - add value to the networks with encouragement, by participating in them, by helping share learning, and maybe some sort of training might be part of that
• illuminate - tell the stories so that the word gets out and the emergence expands

in france the emerging church (or whatever it's going to get called next) is not over. it's only just begun...

there were some cartoons stuck on one of the walls - not sure who by, but this one made me laugh though you'll need to understand a bit of french to get it! there is a set of photos of the day here.

journée de réflexion

off to paris this weekend with richard sudworth to join témoins, a french gospel and culture network, to reflect on mission in a changing culture. i went with a group back in 2003 (scroll down the page to the entry on june 5 - was kind of weird looking at the old blog again!) where i first met jean hassenforder so it will be great to reconnect. richard and i will be chipping into the conversation with a few stories of what is happening in the uk. be good to catch up with matt glock and others again

photos of the alpe d'huez stage of the tour de france

i have added a set of photos of our day watching the alpe d'huez stage of the tour de france. the best way to look at them is in a slideshow, then click on the i in the centre and you'll get the blurb with the photos...

i realise i haven't blogged about mark cavendish - it is amazing to have a brit win four stages of the tour!

back from holiday and seeing sastre climb the alpe d'huez

i hope you enjoyed the break - i'm just back from our family holiday in the french alps. we haven't done a mountain holiday before but had a fantastic time. of course i took a bundle of photos but haven't had time to do anything with them yet. no doubt they will follow...

one of the things we did was to watch the alpe d'huez stage of the tour de france which was an amazing experience. it's one of the huge mountain top finishes in the tour and often where the tour can be won or lost. that proved the case this year with carlos sastre gaining enough of a lead on the cimb to hold on to to win the tour yesterday. i have dug one photo out of him as he came round the corner where we were - about 5k from the finish line (below the barriers where it always looks insane as the crowd are so close to the riders). congrats to him!

right - in to the office and time to read a few hundred e-mails...

tour de france 2008

so the tour de france begins again this weekend with surprise surprise lots of people not competing because of failed drug tests! the excitement for us this year is that we will get to see the famous l'alpe d'huez stage, a huge mountain climb finish as we are on holiday in the alps at that time - can't wait...

croatia again...

well i had a quick visit to croatia this week to visit irena, mihael and ruben who make up mzk working with young people, churches, and young leaders in croatia. having done some training with them earlier in the year i had been invited back to be an outside reflector - they have been doing the work for about 10 years and are taking a pause wondering where to head next. we had a good time - hopefully i was some use... (fortunately being there meant i missed england's hopeless performance in football - looks like we will not be at the euro 2008 finals which is a depressing thought).

it made think that all work and things in life are seasonal, they ebb and flow. it's important to stop and take stock, let go of some things in order to create space for newness. sometimes we are so activist that we don't create space for rest, and letting go and waiting. i came across this article by anne lamott - it relates to easter but captures something important.

it also made me realise that although we can complain about church and the state of things in the uk, actually there is so much creativity, permission to do stuff, experimentation and other people to connect with. whereas in other parts of europe it can feel a lot more isolated. if you pray, pray for these guys. there's also a get together in paris this weekend organised by témoins (which sadly i am not at - though i will be watching a certain rugby match on tv from paris) - l’innovation dans les Eglises. Le courant de l’Eglise émergente. in case your french isn't too good, that's looking at innovation and emerging church stuff.

on the subject of europe and faith, the book that everyone is recommending at cms (now we are having a more european focus) is god's continent by philip jenkins that i noticed richard recommending as well.

i didn't manage to take many photos in croatia but like how these cranes came out almost insect like.

on the subject of photos, joel's friend bhav has been having fun with some long exposure shots of roads and traffic. and  i love this abstract...

and i have added another album (portugal pics) to my member's page on the ealing LIP group site.

how's your french?

back in 2003 a few of us met in paris hosted by matt glock to join in encouraging what we then called 'l'église en devenir' (the emerging church). as part of that gathering we were privileged to hear and meet jean hassenforder who runs témoins, an organisation/movemmet exploringing gospel and culture issues in france. out of the blue i got an e-mail from him this week saying he had written a feature on my blog for the témoins site. it never ceases to surprise me how blogging makes connections round the world. merci jean...

here we go... (2)

i should of course also mention that the tour de france starts this weekend and runs from july 1- july 23. itv4 are providing a daily update with some live coverage on itv3 at weekends. with lance armstrong retired this really should be an interesting year. i know some blog readers are bemused by my interest in the tour de france but i still think it is one of the most amazing sporting events. i confess that i actually have a tour de france blog in my newsreader that feeds me all sorts of trivia though the year that i ignore but it should come into its own now...

Technorati Tags: tour de france

invisible presences

i'm back from nearly three weeks holiday in france. i love france - we stayed down in moliets on the west coast between biarritz and bordeaux. it's a beautiful coast and because it's the atlantic there are always waves rolling in. the combination of sea, sun, surf, and french food and drink is perfect holiday combination. i read some wonderful books which i'll get round to enthusing about at some point no doubt. i have managed not to blog for three weeks which is quite an achievement for me (all the posts that have gone up i wrote in advance in case you wondered which is why i haven't responded to any comments - thanks for them though...)

last year on the way back we stayed in chartres to visit the labyrinth but were disappointed to discover that the chairs are only removed on a friday. well this year we realised as we were driving back that we were passing chartres and had enough time to stop in and visit and it was a friday... so we finally got to walk the labyrinth which was a wonderful experience although it was pretty crowded. the photo here i took with a long exposure time and it produced this sort of shimmering effect where people walked by almost like invisible presences. there is such a sense of history as you walk the path that you are treading where so many pilgrims have walked over the centuries.

back to work tomorrow, greenbelt next weekend to look forward to, so it will be a week before i get back properly into the blogging habit. being away for three weeks you also feel like you've dropped out of the conversation so i have some catching up to do. if you've e-mailed me and i haven't replied (especially some of you coming to greenbelt) now you know why...