I was imbibing a lovely cup of tea on Mersea Island yesterday whilst browsing through an old personal journal. The journal predated ministerial training and at the time that I wrote my musings I had no idea that one day I would end up as a Baptist Minister. As a woman in an F.I.E.C church at the time, no one had ever suggested it, or most probably even thought about it! As I read these journal ramblings with hindsight however, they remind me precisely why some form of church related ministry was perhaps inevitable and why being a faithful minister was never going to be an easy ride….

I plan to post a few more quotes from old journals over the next week or so. These will primarily be a reminder to myself of the way I sense that God has been leading me over the years and remind me why I do what I do. If they are helpful ‘pondering fuel’ for anyone else, then that’s great too. They are nothing particularly clever or even original, but just thoughts that seemed worth thinking at the time.

So, here are the first three of my musings from just a couple of pages from a journal way back when….

• ‘What could God do if all who occupied leadership positions empowered others as their primary calling rather than simply exercising their own gifts?’ (If I were writing this today, I would write exactly the same, except that I would stress that a leaders primary calling, even before empowering others, is to worship God!’

•  ‘I want to be a permission giver. Permission givers are ambitious for those working around them and are not intimidated by those more able than themselves. What will that require of me?’

• ‘How can I empower emerging leaders and be ambitious for them? Can mentoring play a rôle? What does that look like in my secular context? What might that look like in a church context?