Valiant Men
Been reflecting on a 1 Samuel 10:26. Saul has been anointed king and it says in the NIV he went home "accompanied by valiant men whose hearts God had touched".
I deliberately didn't put a picture with this post, because it would have set the tone (probably with a stereotype) about what a "man of valour" would look like.

Different translations render this phrase quite differently, from "young men" to "men" to "brave".
But I think the key is the 2nd part "whose hearts God had touched".

Anyway it got me reflecting personally about my heart. But also about all that "church is too feminine" stuff that you hear recycled around and (in my opinion) the awful "wild at heart" stuff (that I posted about back in 2005). How do we raise up "valiant men" without pandering to sexist, machismo type models?

Challenging Thought
"I still have the calling to minister to those on the margins even if it doesn't fit neatly into my gift mix or personality preferences" (David Anderson Gracsim, p99)

Contemporary Dilemmas
Here's a moral dilemma, that I really don't know the "right" answer to, but it happens often, and happened today:
You pull in to a pay and display car park in a town centre in a suburb of London. Someone appears to offer you their ticket - it's got 1 1/2 hours left on it, it's not one of those new "put your registration in" places, and you only plan on being 30mins maximum.
Is it right to take and use the ticket, thereby saving a couple of £'s or is it wrong as tickets are "not transferable"? What is the right course of action for the Christian (especially youthworker/minister) faced with this tricky moral dilemma?

Called to youth work?
I came across this post from someone thinking about how they ended up in youth work and are they called to it.
It got me thinking about a theory I had a while back. Are people called to youth ministry? Or are they called to ministry/to work with people and they chose to exercise that among young people? So you have people called to be evangelists or pastors and they could be that in a church or in another culture, but they do it among young people.
Or may be not - maybe some people are called to work with young people primarily.

A few years ago I took part in research about youthworkers and calling. Not sure what the results were. But it's an interesting question. Especially with people like me who would say they are called to help churches engage and to build church rather than called to be youthworkers. Of course there is also the issue of longevity in youth work, and the fact that so many seem to move out to other ministries (which is valid).

Ex-Christian?
I was looking for a story to illustrate "disappointment" and google led me to "ex-Christian", a site of "de-conversion" stories.
Some sad stuff there.
It's worth looking at a because there are some valid critiques and lessons to be learned. Clearly most of the stories are from the USA, and are perhaps as much a rejection of a cultural Christianity. And some will always chose to leave.
But we've much to learn about the way of Jesus I think.

Church Leaders
Great post on "Ten propositions on being a minister" by Kim Fabricous.
(ht to Sean for the link)