Here is your big chance. We are hoping to put together a Frequently Asked Questions section on the website and in a welcome pack. The idea is that if we collectively think of the questions people might ask about Conversations and then put the answers together we might help new people know who we are.

So in the comments section below. Ask any question you have about Conversations and the best ones will make into the welcome pack.

Here is an example to stir you. Q: Where does Conversations meet?  A: Conversations main gathering meets upstairs in Revolution Bar, just off Coney Street in York.

Thankyouplease.

Put it on your site. Put it on your facebook. Put it on your ipod/iphone/blackberry etc.

I’ve had this piece of paper in my Bible literally for the last six years. When I was 16 I decided it would be a good idea to write out a list of all the books in the Bible and tick them off once I had read them, I think I thought at the time it would take a year, maybe two. It started out saying 2004 at the top of the page and each year I’ve added another year – feeling guilty every time that I still hadn’t read it all. What sort of Christian was I if I couldn’t even say that I’d read the whole Bible?

Now I’ve read 43 out of 66 books…but I feel like a lot of that really was just so I could tick off another book. I’m not saying that all the times I’ve read my Bible in the last six years have been meaningless reading, because they really haven’t. God has spoken to me, comforted me, challenged me through his word but somehow I got caught up in achieving this thing of reading the whole Bible, I was doing it for the wrong reasons. One of the years I started one of those ‘read the Bible in a year’ things but I got so behind and felt so guilty that I just stopped reading it altogether for a really long time.

I think that the Bible is hard, it’s confusing, it contradicts itself… but it also gives me joy and strength and tells me about Jesus and what he was like. I used to read the Bible and just skip over any bits I didn’t understand but I’ve realised that it’s ok not to understand and to ask questions…

The past nine or ten months I have been processing a lot of stuff to so with my faith, my family, my self-confidence, my future. I feel as if God has stripped me down so far that I wasn’t even sure if I believed in him anymore. He brought me to a place where I had to choose him despite all my doubts and fears and he has been building me back up bit by bit in what I believe is a more honest and more true faith and relationship with him.

The fact that I might not have read my Bible in a few weeks does not define my relationship with Jesus. When I read it I want it to be for the right reasons, I want to engage with it, to ask questions of it, to see what God is saying to me, today and to our world, now!

I threw that piece of paper in the bin last night – to start over – to be guided by the Holy Spirit and not by a list!

Rozy

I try to always ask myself how do I become a ‘better’ Christian?  How do I love Jesus better?  How do I not do the things I don’t want to do and how do I do the things I really want to do? What does loving Jesus look like and how do I do it?  I’m not sure that this is the right question though.  Through the whole bible it talks about what Jesus has done for us.  What he gave up for us.  What he shed for us and what he has given to us.  Maybe this is how God works?  Maybe its not what we can do for God, but what he can do for us.  Maybe its not about doing this or not doing that.   Maybe its not about us forcing ourselves to change, trying to squeeze ourselves into a ’Jesus’ mould.  Maybe it’s about Jesus boiling us up and pouring us into his mould.

Why do we as Christian’s always think its about what we can give to God?  What we can do for God?  How we can bless God?  How we can convert people?  How we can become a bigger church?  How we can change the world?  Isn’t it about what Jesus did on the cross for us.  Isn’t it about what God can do for you?  It’s not about us, it’s about Jesus.  It’s always about Jesus, not us.  So when we want to know how do I become a better follower of Jesus, maybe its not about what we do, but about what he does.  He is the one that changes us, not us.  His grace is the thing that changes us day by day, but we seem to forget that apart from when we want to convert someone.  We talk to people about Jesus doing everything for them so they don’t have to do anything, other than accept him.  Why do we forget this principle when we become a follower of Christ.  Are we now too good?  Do we know a better way?  Or do we just forget?

Jesus does all the changing for us, all we have to do is let him.  It’s what we preach, it’s what we teach, it’s what we say to young kids and it’s what we say to old kids.  It doesn’t change for us though.  We are not special.  Maybe if I want to become a ’better’ Christian I should let Jesus sort me out instead of trying to do it myself.  Maybe I should give him as many opportunities as I can to let him sort me out, but maybe I should let him finish the good work he started in me.  It has to be all about Jesus, and what he does for me, not what I can do for him, because if it isn’t Jesus, my wife, my friends, my church and myself are all going to be let down by the end product.

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