About Me

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Politics, love and can I ever have any friends?


I went to a pretty cheesy church once. It was small and they had question and answer sessions. They had questions like “Where do you feel closest to God” and the answers were things like “sitting on a hill looking at the stars” and things like that. They then asked what the most difficult aspect of being a Christian is. They answered somewhere along the lines of knowing that there are so many people who don’t know Jesus. I answered that because I’m a Christian, I can never have any friends.

Now my argument at the church was a little silly, I was kind of just saying it to be a bit different. I said that if Jesus found all the people closest to him, that he had invested himself into for such a long time, abandoned him in his time of need how can we expect to have anything better than him?

However the problem really is love. I am supposed to love people and this makes things difficult. Every single relationship with non-Christian friends of mine has an aspect where I’m kind of trying to convert them. (Note: bear with me on this one!) This puts a bit of a downer on the relationships and it gets even worse because there is this knowledge that eventually everyone is going to turn on all followers of Jesus and so the people who say they love me are eventually going to hate me.

With my Christian friends it’s basically no better. There will come a day in heaven where we can just “be” with each other but now within the church there is a hierarchy. I find that I’m either “stronger” in faith in which case I’m supposed to think about all my words with them and make sure it is “supporting them in their pursuit of God” (loving them) or I’m “weaker” in my faith in which case they are doing the same for me but only temporarily and only until I’m stronger in which case they’ll drop me.

Politics

Ok, so I’ve started this with pretty over the top far-reaching statements that would probably be quite offensive to plenty of people. Most non-Christians don’t like the idea of being converted and most Christians will probably not like seeing themselves as weaker, especially if they actually are weaker.

Let’s try this from a different angle. Rather than talk about love, let’s talk about politics.

I would love to work with a bunch of people who could just be completely honest with each other. We’d have a similar vision we want to see enacted and just run with it together. However, in work, and it seems all work there is politics preventing this kind of honesty from happening. Especially when individuals needs pop in like the need to eat, or feed a family. One person said that they interact with everyone through a filter.

I think in politics there are two ways of dividing people into two kinds of people. There are people who are politically minded and there are people who are manipulated by those who are politically minded. Alongside that there are people who can see politics everywhere and those where it goes over their head. But if it goes over their heads they will still be in one of the first two categories, just not knowingly so.

I think if you think you’re “just yourself” with someone it’s probably that you are in the second category for both those distinctions and the other person is in the first category (whether they know it or not).

Example

Take it this way. I want to be completely honest with someone. So I think up the words to describe how I feel that most accurately describe the specific feeling I am trying to communicate that differentiates it from all the other feelings that I might be feeling that aren’t quite the same. Take the phrase, to someone you care about, “I’m scared of you”. Now you communicate this knowing that all the words fit with what you believe to be true in such a way that you feel you could stand up in a court of law and say “Yeah those are the words I meant and those are true”.

Thing is they take it badly. You meant it as “I respect you and you intrigue me and so I want to be near you” whereas they took it as “Being around you is unpleasant and I want to be away from you”. The issue is we haven’t thought about how it has been communicated, we only care about saying what is true.

What’s point of saying what is “true” if the statement gets misunderstood by all the listeners who matter? However, If I say something that is not strictly true but leads the listener closer to the truth, isn’t that the kind of thing people want to do when they say “I want to be honest with someone?”. For example I might say “I’m not scared of you, I didn’t mean that, I just really respect you and want to spend time with you”. This is a lie, cause I am scared, but I’m throwing away the words that don’t really help to help the listener get closer to the subtler true truth.

Alone

We have an issue here.

The first one feels like I’m just “being myself” and “being honest” but it leads everyone to a misunderstanding of where I stand. The second has a higher chance of truly connecting with another person but in order to get there I have to constantly put up a filter. “What is it I am trying to say and how can I get the person to understand?”. In that sense, I’m never actually just BEING myself, I’m intentionally trying to lead the person to myself.

However both of these are far away from where I’m supposed to be as a Christian/ person. Both of these are self-centred (I’d like to say narcissistic but I see that word used a lot and I don’t really know what it means) and neither of these involve love.

Instead I should be asking something else… don’t fully know how to articulate it yet but instead of “How can I be myself around them” or “how can I lead them to me” I should be thinking “How should I be treating them” or “How should I love them”. One is focused on them to me, the other is me to them.

This puts up an even bigger barrier. I am not only trying to think how to communicate what I’m trying to communicate but I’m only trying to communicate the things that I feel they need to see communicated based on my love and caring for them. Now the person is going to be even further removed from me.

We can put this more practically.

1) Honest: How can I tell the person the specific thing that they do that winds me up at work truthfully
2) Communicative: How can I help the person see and understand what it is that they are doing (filter A)
3) Loving: How can I help this person who is annoying me, move forwards in their career?

The third is different, the third barely cares about the self, except as a tool to help another.

In Christian terms this third position is easy to articulate. It is “How can I help them pursue God” or “How can I love them” or “How can I serve them”. These are questions behind literally every communication, every sentence, every piece of body language. You’re never yourself you’re always for them.

This is the heart of politics. This is lonely.

Offensive.

I started by suggesting that someone who lives like this will go through life thinking they are essentially better than everyone. Trying to convert non-Christians and “mentor” Christians. But let’s put it differently. Some people might think they don’t like this, that they wouldn’t want to interact with that person.

Imagine you met someone and as you got to know them you found out that you thought they loved you. Not a Kate Nash style love (LINK) where the person knows how much sugar you take in your tea. They were someone who was there for you. Imagine whenever you spent time with this person you would open up your soul to them, telling them everything that was going on in your life. They would pretty much only offer responses that were exactly what you needed, maybe some gentle advice, maybe a “pull yourself together” or maybe just phrases that suggested empathy and understanding. You felt completely sure that if it came to it they would literally take a bullet for you. You knew when you weren’t with them they were thinking about you and what’s best for you. When you were with them they were just so much fun, they just cheered you up. They just got you.

Would it be desirable to meet this person? Would  you like them as your friend? This is someone who is showing loving acts consistently through the way they treat and talk to you. This is the same offensive person above.

Now I don’t think this person is non-existent, I think it’s possible to meet someone like that. But now try to imagine this person from their point of view and what they think of you. Do you think it’s likely that they think the same stuff about you? If every time you meet up you discuss your problems do you think that’s because the person actually has no problems or because they aren’t telling you those things? Do you think the reason why they just cheer you up all the time is because life is just really good for them? Do you think they never get pissed off and angry at everything and just take it out on the first person but always handle their anger well.

I think this person exists, but if you were to meet them and think they were a nice person it’s because they are lying to you. In the words of scrubs, people are bastards, they are bastard coated bastards. This person has days of insecurity where they want to bring down those around to make themselves feel better. They have days of sadness where they just want to wallow. They have days of anger where it seethes out and infects even those that they aren’t angry at because they have days of weakness where they can’t control how their emotions play out. If you can’t see that in someone because you think “they are just one of those happy people” it’s because your eyes are shut.

Love

It seems there is a choice. I can be a friend to people around me. They will like me, look up to me, think I’m nice. Or I can force people to be my friend. They will find it exhausting and irritating but they may continue anyway for some reason. But I can’t just have “friends”, I can’t just have a mutual friendship where that is all we are.

The Last Psychiatrist writes anonymously. The problem with not doing this is that there is a large chance that if anyone is ever going to read this, they are the kind of person that will think “Hey Jamie! I thought I was your friend! Screw you and your birthday party”. Well to that person I can only say one thing…

“Please don’t leave me….”

Now getting that out-of-the-way the problem with friendship I think stems to a problem with love itself. Particularly unconditional love. Everyone inherently demands unconditional love from everyone else but no single person could reasonably ever offer it. I think this is uncontroversial.

In fact the love that we demand is unconditional, unlimited and eternal.

Its unlimited. People sometimes say things like “It’s the thought that counts” or “you only need to try” but that is simply not how we engage with love. What if your dad said something like this to you? They don’t love you anymore but don’t feel too bad because they tried really hard? Or your mum said that she really wanted to love you but just can’t?

None of these things will make you feel any better. We don’t want someone to try to love us we want someone to succeed.

However “unconditional”? Imagine a lover, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife saying that they loved you. And then you asked why? They said it was because of your amazing looks. Well thank you, I also love staring at my naked body in the mirror but whilst that is a compliment it also dooms me to forever worrying about the day I get in a car crash. What about if they loved me because I was intelligent? Again I’m just waiting until the day I accidentally say something stupid. What if it’s because I’m nice? Then the next day is really stressful and I come back home acting like a dick.

The horrible thing is that the more this conditional love gets me. The more I enjoy and desire the love from this person, the more it will destroy me when the conditions inevitably fail. Like the letter to K offering him a promotional in Kafka’s the Trial every little glimpse of love is drawing me deeper and deeper into a trap that will eventually destroy me or just go nowhere.

Finally eternal. God is not against sex before marriage, he’s against break-ups. And so are we as God has put eternity on man’s heart.

But what about the flip side? Well Scroobius Pip says that unconditional love is being in love with the mere idea of loving something. He’s kind of right, the concept is ludicrous. Why would I love someone who is unlovable? Why would I love someone who is rubbish and doesn’t deserve love? I’ve always thought marriage is a little horrible. If I wanted to be with someone for the rest of my life I could just do that. Marriage is not an expression of what is your desire, marriage is a promise to stay with someone even if I don’t want to!? Why would anyone buy that? This attitude is brought to you by the bible.

Imagine this:

My Wife: Jamie do you love me?
Me: with all my heart
Wife: Why is that?
Me: Because I chose to

That might almost be romantic… almost. However it continues

Wife: Is there anything you like about me?
Me: No, in fact the mere idea of you causes me to be physically sick. This pool of vomit we’re sitting in isn’t actually due to your terrible smell but it happens even when you’re not around. All your values and thoughts about the world are disgusting and I don’t know what you look like any-more because I try not to look.

It doesn’t work.

All humans will always love conditionally because it is the only acceptable way to give out our love but all humans will only accept unconditional love because even the slightly transgression from that is horrifying.

Conclusions

Is this view of politics correct? Do we always have to have a filter up with everyone? Is the filter actually a good thing or is it better to be “true”? Could I work with a bunch of like-minded people where there was no politics between us, we were a team of us against the world. Could I ever get married to a person where there was no politics between us, it was just us against the world? Is wanting this just a sign I should grow up? This is just the way the world is I will forever be alone.

God

The psalms that are moany, tend to end with praising God. My next blog post will probably deal with this a little more but I have a suspicion that all this becomes exciting when Jesus is bought in.

  • I don’t think I need that filter when I’m sitting before my creator. I think I can be broken before the one who understands. The fact that God knows me is almost more exciting than the fact that God loves me. I think those are linked and I’ve heard that in Hebrew “know” has sexual connotations.
  • I think the Holy Spirit (The Go-between God) can replace my filter, he can be my filter. Rather than putting forward a filter of my own creation where I work out how I should treat someone I can instead turn to him, who I can communicate with directly and seek after how should I treat this person now?
    • Most of the time where I’ve tried to end this filter and be “honest” with someone I’ve also felt a slightly sense that I’m going against what God wants me to do in that situation.
    • If we go with this, instead of “I’m trying to convert my non-Christian friend” as my agenda and filter its “I’m trying to seek out what God wants me to do here, what God sees with this person”. Here if God is wanting to bring this person closer to him then I might help in that, if not then I might do something else.
  • The church is going crazy for community at the moment. They keep talking about it and going on about how “individualism” is bad. However, I have a feeling like they are going on about community in the wrong way, they are doing community minus God and that falls under all the problems talked about here.
  • Whilst I can never give anything but conditional love, I think there is a sense where love overflows. If you met a girl who had a terrible relationship with their Dad and then something happened where it was hugely improved how would you expect that girl to change? There is something important in being a human who is able to receive unconditional love from somewhere else.

There must be more than this.

The Last Psychiatrist’s latest blog posts almost hits on things similar to this. Maybe I’m just a narcissist and psychotherapy will save me?

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This is not meant for you – My place in the Church


Disclaimer: This post is a post I’ve been quite nervous about posting. I think it comes across as much more ranty then I meant it to be. I was going work on it significantly to make a specific point. Instead I’m tagging everything “Supporting Individuals Pursue God” as a new category. I’m going to just splurg almost all my ideas in lots of little blog posts with the aim to eventually write whatever it is I’m trying to say properly. So lets see where this goes! Also, the preacher who preached this sermon is awesome. The attack I’m writing is definitely not on her, but what she said sparked something.

Recently I attended HTB’s weekend away as part of their leadership course where they train people to lead their pastorates. HTB is a very large church that has 10 services and thousands of people who attend. Pastorates are little mini-churches that HTB puts on that allow people to actually get to know people in the church and happen during the week. They are actually quite big and range from about 20-80 people. I was kind of asked in passing if I’d like to help be part of a “core team” of a new pastorate plant and one thing lead to another that meant I did the leadership course. They are massively looking for new pastorate leaders as many of the pastorates are full whilst more people are going through Alpha with no where to go.

During this course a sermon was preached that got to me. After speaking to the preacher about it she said “This is not meant for you”. I’d like to unpack this.

The Sermon

The sermon was on Hebrews 11. This is quite a famous passage where the author repeats “By faith … something awesome happened”. By faith the world was created and by faith the mouths of lions were shut, etc. It pretty much goes through everything in the old testament and says that this happens by faith.

Now the heart of what I think she was saying was that it is by faith, these things happen not by barter. Its difficult summarising 30 minutes of talking and so I may not have got it exactly correct. Faith is a very difficult concept in the bible. Its talked about very strangely and usually poetically. Lets look at this passage regarding faith which I may come back to:

Luke 17:19-20 “19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not drive it out?” 20 And He *said to them,“Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith [i]the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. 21 [[j]But this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”]

I mean, what on earth is going on here? How on earth can you measure “faith” in degrees of mustard seed sizeness? In fact how can you measure faith in anything that is volume related? Now obviously this is not literal, the point is a mustard seed is small. However, the whole point is that the disciples didn’t have enough faith to cast out this demon? So having a really really small amount of faith is not enough but having a really small amount is fine? Except, although nothing is impossible this kind of demon only goes away with prayer and fasting… not faith?

In my mind there is an intuitive understanding of what faith means. I have faith in my chair to hold me up when I sit on it. Due to this faith I will sit on the chair when I want to be held up. This view of faith has within it “is certainty on the things unseen” yes… I cannot predict the future, I cannot see whether or not the chair will hold me up but it is still based on evidence. Its because the chair has done a good job in the past and because it currently looks great that I have faith in it. However, this is only part of the story of what faith is because you get verses like the one above!

Now… this preacher was saying that we as Christians tend to lack faith. If God says for us to go somewhere then we’ll say “Are you sure? I dunno, will I have enough money? Give me some money first and maybe some political power and then maybe I’ll go”.  This I suppose is apt talking to a bunch of pastorate leaders. They are about to step out into something that is potentially scary and may come to that meeting wanting some assurance that it will be ok. That HTB will support them, that fights won’t break out that they can’t deal with, etc etc. However they can’t get that assurance, they just need to step out in faith. This is a message I have heard a bunch of times in the church…

My problem with it

Maybe the word “problem” is too strong. But there was something that riled me up whilst I was listening to it. It was kind of the fact that I had heard this all before but it was more then that. It was that not only had I heard it all before…. I had been there and done that and got the T-shirt.

I have stepped out in faith. Throughout my life, if I have ever had the inkling that God wants me to move in a certain direction then I’ve done it. Usually I don’t hear from God that well so I do things that a good little Christian would do. I’ve gone out of the street and told people about Jesus including someone who tried to mug me (sort of). I’ve gone to drum and bass nights and asked random people if they wanted prayer. I’ve preached mini-sermons in school assemblies with my peers and then put on evangelistic events where I personally invited everyone with a track in my year and then announced on our school forums that essentially a revival was going to break out in our school (It didn’t). I did a gap year working for the church and did some foreign mission and then when I went to university it was for pub conversations. I did physics with philosophy simply because it would help me witness more as it would provide lots of “ins” into evangelistic conversations. I then started a company that was doomed to failure because I felt God wanted me to do it and then I got up, moved to London and moved into a ridiculously expensive lifestyle and house (relative to Manchester) without having a Job yet because I thought New Wine might say yes to a project and needed to be in London to do it. I have gotten very close to having no money and have been hungry for a bit.

And in the words of Metallica …. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxZ4Z6Zo3Fk (Warning: Rude words behind this link)

Now where I am going with this, is that stepping out in faith like this is pointless without something else. I don’t know what that something else is. It could be listening to what God wants, it could be love, it could be obedience. So bare with me here… I’m probably not going to answer that question now.

Whilst I regularly succeeded at getting into long and interesting conversations about Jesus with strangers doing “Campus Evangelism”, I went out with a crippling fear that got too much for me. What was it a fear of? Failure? I never failed nor did I think I would. Embarrassment?  I used to regularly wear PVC trousers. I don’t know what it was apart from being pathetic. I lead a large number of bible studies and was leading a Christian Union hall group. It went pretty amazingly and again I quit due to emotional exhaustion. Whilst I ended up using my degree to have lots of conversations about Jesus no one became a christian. Revival didn’t break out in my school. I got so close to achieving lots of things and then I’d just get knackered and go no where. I basically achieved nothing throughout university.

There once was a time when I was doing some chemistry coursework. I remember really hating it and saying to God, “please, I want to do something else, send me to do anything, I’ll do foreign mission, I’ll go into the streets of Sutton or give my life up to the church, what do you want me to do?”. The response I got back was “Do your homework”.

See this is my problem. I am Brad Pitt speaking to his dad in Fight Club. I’ve gone and got the job, I’ve done the stepping out in faith bit, and I’m asking “What now?”. In fact if there is anything I can do to show people I’m a good Christian I’ve pretty much done it. Amongst the charismatics I can tell stories of speaking in tongues from a young age or shouting out prayers in parks at night. Amongst the social justicey people I can talk about the tears I’ve shed for palestinians or stream off lots of rhetoric about how to help the homeless. Amongst the conservatives I can talk about all the books I’ve read and impress people that I’ve read the bible.

The church has told me “Do this stuff and we’ll accept you, we’ll call you a good christian” I’ve done those stuff and what do I get?

“This isn’t for you… maybe you’ve got a problem with pride?”

Pride

I’ll divert to this question for a moment. This is a really good get out of Jail free card. I can never do enough to please the church because if I do anything in a way that they will notice they can then just say that I’m proud and need to be more humble. Actually I’ve done humility. I can actually tell you stories about how I’m the humblest of them all. I’ve stacked chairs and I’ve cleaned toilets. Apparently this is what you have to do if you want to start being famous amongst Christians  I’ve also gone to churches, kept my head down and focused on people on the fringes. This has obviously got me no where because that was the purpose…

But I feel like I detect a rat here. There is something that plato really liked about the Spartans and that British people really like. British people love under dogs and they hate proud people. Its really bad to drive a nice car around London, you’ll look foreign. How can the Apostle Paul get away telling people that he wished they were as Holy as him? Surely that is arrogant, surely that is proud? I said that to a christian once. She said “yeah and I really don’t like paul”.

Galatians 6:3-4 “3 If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. 4 Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else,”

The opposite to Pride is not Humility. Its Truth. The kings God hated in the old testament where the people who thought they ruled the world. They didn’t. God showed them. He humbled them. Pride is thinking you are above your status. Truth is knowing what status you are rightly in. Humility is then going further, knowing how great you really are and how much status you deserve from people, deliberately lowering yourself to a lower level. Pride is trying to sit at the head of the table when you’re the youngest in the family. Truth is sitting where you’re supposed to and humility is giving up the head of the table to someone else.

Do I have issues with pride? Yes. Instead of doing my chemistry homework that is “beneath” me I want to be like Paul and go out changing the world. However… I don’t think that is quite the same as what she was talking about. She was saying this in the context of me going up and telling her that all this “faith” stuff she was talking about, well I’ve done it. (Note: Not GOT it, DONE it… or at least look like I’ve done it).

SHE then congratulated ME on my faith. She said that people are not as far as me, that the leaders of the biggest church in the UK haven’t quite got to my level of great faith. That other people would love to have faith like mine. If I believed her on that I can see why she’d think I was proud. But I don’t think that is what I was trying to say. What I was trying to say is that all of this was meaningless… It was like chasing the wind. I was trying to say that these stories of faith are pointless. That if people set down the path of trying to step out in faith like I did they will get no where.

She said that this meeting wasn’t for me.

What is there for me?

There is something else brewing. There is something that God is doing. This thing I think will be for me. I don’t know what it is but I have a hunch and I’m going to pursue it and maybe even write about it. The thing for me is a system that helps me pursue God. Its not something that helps me serve the church. Its not something that makes me a better person through a 10 step program nor something that gives me more theology. Its something that helps me pursue God.

See in HTB there are two things for me:

1) I lead a pastorage and start serving. This will help me rise the ranks of HTB social status and I’ll then start getting access to the big guys who well help me out
2) I get a mentor. An experienced christian who works with me, chats to me and leads me to know God more.

However. 1) God doesn’t want me to. I’m pretty sure of this. I try really hard to serve the church and I know I can do it, I’ve done a great job in the past but every time I try it fails at the moment. Its because God doesn’t want me to lead a pastorage. 2) I am suspicious of this. There is a time and a place for mentoring and its really great and certainly biblical. But it puts a single person massively in control of my life. It also can tempt me to look to my mentor and not God. No whatever this system is it will not look like a single person. It will not be lead by a single priest.

I want to sit in a room with people like me who are ok with stepping out in faith (which is actually really all humans. Stepping out in faith is just what greedy people do who find a treasure in a field. Sell all their possessions to buy the field and dig up the treasure. Faith is for people who like cheating in life and want to win the lottery) and then I want to pursue God in front of them and with them. I think I could do it alone but that is not what God wants. He wants 2 or 3 people to gather in his name. This pursuing God is a corporate event and is only solitary when times are extreme.

A system that supports individuals in their pursuit of God. I am an individual and I want this system.

Where does abaraham fit into this and his faith?… Next blog post

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Who I am – Some personality test results


I’ve done a few personality quiz like things for various reasons recently. I thought it would be fun to document them on this blog. Personally I think the strength finder’s results are most interesting  I don’t think I’ve learnt anything new from these results, and where things are not what I expected I think they are just incorrect.
This is from an older version of  http://www.strengthfinder.com/ and the book Now, discover your strengths. I had to take this as part of an HTB leadership course. Its quite good. The questions are not opposites ( I like people vs I don’t like people) and there are a lot of them which makes me feel that it actually discovers a pattern in my answers rather then merely allowing me to influence the results (eg, I’ve decided I’m extroverted). The purpose of this test is to find the underlying talent themes which the book says you can use to build and pursue your strengths with.
Your Signature Themes

Many years of research conducted by The Gallup Organization suggest that the most effective people are those who understand their strengths and behaviors. These people are best able to develop strategies to meet and exceed the demands of their daily lives, their careers, and their families.

A review of the knowledge and skills you have acquired can provide a basic sense of your abilities, but an awareness and understanding of your natural talents will provide true insight into the core reasons behind your consistent successes.

Your Signature Themes report presents your five most dominant themes of talent, in the rank order revealed by your responses to StrengthsFinder. Of the 34 themes measured, these are your “top five.”

Your Signature Themes are very important in maximizing the talents that lead to your successes. By focusing on your Signature Themes, separately and in combination, you can identify your talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy personal and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.

Ideation

You are fascinated by ideas. What is an idea? An idea is a concept, the best explanation of the most events. You are delighted when you discover beneath the complex surface an elegantly simple concept to explain why things are the way they are. An idea is a connection. Yours is the kind of mind that is always looking for connections, and so you are intrigued when seemingly disparate phenomena can be linked by an obscure connection. An idea is a new perspective on familiar challenges. You revel in taking the world we all know and turning it around so we can view it from a strange but strangely enlightening angle. You love all these ideas because they are profound, because they are novel, because they are clarifying, because they are contrary, because they are bizarre. For all these reasons you derive a jolt of energy whenever a new idea occurs to you. Others may label you creative or original or conceptual or even smart. Perhaps you are all of these. Who can be sure? What you are sure of is that ideas are thrilling. And on most days this is enough.

Strategic

The Strategic theme enables you to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is not a skill that can be taught. It is a distinct way of thinking, a special perspective on the world at large. This perspective allows you to see patterns where others simply see complexity. Mindful of these patterns, you play out alternative scenarios, always asking, “What if this happened? Okay, well what if this happened?” This recurring question helps you see around the next corner. There you can evaluate accurately the potential obstacles. Guided by where you see each path leading, you start to make selections. You discard the paths that lead nowhere. You discard the paths that lead straight into resistance. You discard the paths that lead into a fog of confusion. You cull and make selections until you arrive at the chosen path—your strategy. Armed with your strategy, you strike forward. This is your Strategic theme at work: “What if?” Select. Strike.

Individualization

Your Individualization theme leads you to be intrigued by the unique qualities of each person. You are impatient with generalizations or “types” because you don’t want to obscure what is special and distinct about each person. Instead, you focus on the differences between individuals. You instinctively observe each person’s style, each person’s motivation, how each thinks, and how each builds relationships. You hear the one-of-a-kind stories in each person’s life. This theme explains why you pick your friends just the right birthday gift, why you know that one person prefers praise in public and another detests it, and why you tailor your teaching style to accommodate one person’s need to be shown and another’s desire to “figure it out as I go.” Because you are such a keen observer of other people’s strengths, you can draw out the best in each person. This Individualization theme also helps you build productive teams. While some search around for the perfect team “structure” or “process,” you know instinctively that the secret to great teams is casting by individual strengths so that everyone can do a lot of what they do well.

Command

Command leads you to take charge. Unlike some people, you feel no discomfort with imposing your views on others. On the contrary, once your opinion is formed, you need to share it with others. Once your goal is set, you feel restless until you have aligned others with you. You are not frightened by confrontation; rather, you know that confrontation is the first step toward resolution. Whereas others may avoid facing up to life’s unpleasantness, you feel compelled to present the facts or the truth, no matter how unpleasant it may be. You need things to be clear between people and challenge them to be clear-eyed and honest. You push them to take risks. You may even intimidate them. And while some may resent this, labeling you opinionated, they often willingly hand you the reins. People are drawn toward those who take a stance and ask them to move in a certain direction. Therefore, people will be drawn to you. You have presence. You have Command.

Communication

You like to explain, to describe, to host, to speak in public, and to write. This is your Communication theme at work. Ideas are a dry beginning. Events are static. You feel a need to bring them to life, to energize them, to make them exciting and vivid. And so you turn events into stories and practice telling them. You take the dry idea and enliven it with images and examples and metaphors. You believe that most people have a very short attention span. They are bombarded by information, but very little of it survives. You want your information—whether an idea, an event, a product’s features and benefits, a discovery, or a lesson—to survive. You want to divert their attention toward you and then capture it, lock it in. This is what drives your hunt for the perfect phrase. This is what draws you toward dramatic words and powerful word combinations. This is why people like to listen to you. Your word pictures pique their interest, sharpen their world, and inspire them to act.

Jungian Archetypes or Myers Briggs test. Personally I think this test is a little silly. I don’t think its really backed by research but I think its a really good talking point as everyone is into it. The purpose here was originally to put people in different Jobs. I think this is just a good way of categorising people that can be used as conversation starter. Here is my results from somewhere online.

ENFP

Extravert(22%)  iNtuitive(75%)  iNtuitive  Feeling(38%)  Perceiving(56)%

You have slight preference of Extraversion over Introversion (22%) You have distinctive preference of Intuition over Sensing (75%) You have moderate preference of Feeling over Thinking (38%) You have moderate preference of Perceiving over Judging (56%)

The final one is something we’ve all done in Common Nonsense. Its quite a good test as it has this guy explain everything as you go along. However I felt that I had too strong an ability to influence the results. It feels like this test shows me what I want to say about me more then it does find an underlying personality. (If thats even possible). The purpose of flag page is to discover what you are passionate about (so different to underlying talents). The idea is that if you are doing these things in the flag you’ll be happier. Whilst there is quite a bit more text describing me, I feel they might be reading too much into my answers and I think some things are just not correct.

The Talent Families that Influence James Most

PeopIe Talent

James has a way with people and is able to get them to warm up to him easily. He puts out a vibration that says “I like people!” This talent makes him attractive to others and they want to include him in their lives.  People that have a large blue segment, like James, are rarely lonely.

Task Talents

James’s large green segment indicates that he enjoys getting involved in projects and improving the task at hand. Since he excels in the area of Tasks, he has the ability to be good at any technical work where hands on’ control of the job makes it turn out better.

To get a concise picture of James’s great People and Task Talents, here are some expressions that sum up the essence of each motivation found in Jamess Talents list.

People Talents

– Out to change the world

– Everyone is always welcome

– Loyal & true to a chosen few

– Always willing to hear you out

– Genuine 8 fair always

– Feeling what everyone feels

– The keen observer

– Compassion to go

– Thinking of you

TaskTalents

– Searching for the truth

– Good at almost anything

– Standing out from the pack

– Stand on your own two feet

James’ Home Country

Control Country is James’s Home Country where he substantially voted 138 for the land of confidence and achievement. This is the country where the residents have the ability to lead groups, businesses and teams. James is very sure of himself so he focuses on what needs to be done and does whatever it takes to accomplish the task. He is always interested in the bottom line so he is quick to get to the point of what he is saying. His natural sense for when to take charge of a project makes it possible for him to overcome any obstacles by focusing directly on the objective. Since he accomplishes so much, he wants people to notice and appreciate the things that he does.

James’s Adopted Country

James voted for Peace Country as his Adopted Country with 104 votes, thereby making a statement that Peace Country is like a second home to him. He values good relationships with people in his life who are pleasant to be around. He visits Peace Country whenever he is looking for tranquillity and harmony in his surroundings He gets along with Peace people very well and respects them for who they are just as he wants to be respected.

James’ Top Motivations

Out of 56 positive character motivation choices, James turned down 51 to pick his top 5. For this reason, these 5 motivations, which compel him to live out his daily life, are the key to his happiness. James’s Independence allows him to keep his distance from people who are too needy. Being Independent also enables him to detach himself from those who might prove to be emotionally painful and troublesome, When doing work, he is most productive when he’s working alone. James Is a Deep Thinker who always analyses every situation from all possible angles, This talent for Thinking Deeply drives him to find answers to life questions. He compares issues, behaviour and situations so he can make the best decision. James can’t tolerate a phony and he always chooses genuine people as friends. Being Sincere at Heart causes him to immediately sense who is real and who is not Since he loves being Sincere, he wants the best for everyone, and strives to be fair and honest in everything he does.

When James’s motivations combine, they create o set of different talents which enhance his abilities arid allow him to do great things. James spends a significant amount of time thinking about how he con become more independent ai how to complete a task without help. James is in touch with how people treat him. He spends many hours thinking about people who are close to him and how they make him feel. When people come to James with a problem, he always gives his honest opinion so he can steer them in the right direction.

A minor one but I think my Love Languages are Touch and Quality Time. Couldn’t care less about Acts of Service, Words of affirmation or gifts.

What do you think of these? Think these kinds of quizzes reveal anything useful? Anyone who knows me think these are right?

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What I am to! [update] and church website hosting


Things have totally changed again. I have now applied to do a Masters of Enterprise in Business at the Manchester school of business. The online material is not that great at describing it. It is a research Masters where Masters of Enterprise is the prefix, MEnt (similar to Mphys or Bsc). The degree itself is a generic business degree so the core modules will help me learn things such as marketing, setting up a business and dealing with finance. I then get to pick courses in my “Subject Area” which will be something vaguely IT based that I pick. I have to produce 2 dissertations, one of them focuses on the business side of my idea and the other on the subject side of my idea. I don’t exactly know what this means! However I think it will be something like a report on the marketability of the idea whilst the subject dissertation outlines some area of research into the idea itself.

The hope is then once I have finished this degree I’ll be able to bring back the knowledge into The Tribes Online. We’re working on things to some degree this year but it means when Rob is out of university we can start building things properly! Also I hope to meet lots of interesting people on this course to help me get connected to Entrepreneurs in Manchester. Unfortunately this also means I’m dropping back to work at Heidmar throughout the holidays.

Aegir and our hosting plans

We’ve been playing around with a development server in my house. For the less technically minded readers you may not find this interesting but I think its well cool! I’ve spent about 6 months getting this set up (and failing) due to my lack of understanding how linux works but we’ve finally set up a box with Aegir installed. It is an incredibly cool piece of software that allows us to host loads of drupal sites using one interface. If I want to set up a new church website, instead of going through all the normal drupal settings I just click “create new site” enter a few settings and everything is set up automatically. So here are some things I’m excited about:

  • Our business model will require us to have a huge number of customers (over 300) before we make enough money to sustain us at all, let alone grow. Therefore we need to make sure all our variable costs are as low as possible. We need to make sure that the process of Church is interest => Church site set up and money paid is as small as possible. This will allow us to divert our resources into building the fantastic fixed cost that is the free product.
  • Drupal Gardens is an awesome example of a company doing what we want to do for churches. (However, the creator of Drupal works for this company so its not something we’ll be able to do easily alone! They are giving away free sites during beta so you can get a free one now and try it out. Its very easy).
  • Drush – Aegir works with drush. This allows us to administer drupal sites through a Command Line Interface (CLI). Hopefully it means we won’t need to administer any ftp accounts. All modules and install profiles can be downloaded using drush and using SSH to remotely access the command line.
  • Drupal Projects- If we sign up for a Drupal project on drupal.org we’ll be able to do pretty much all of our development on that website. They offer everything we need, issue queues, groups to discuss ideas, a file repository so people can work on things remotely and submit patches. This means our development process will probably be able to happen entirely online. As a company we’ll discuss most our things on the issue queue and all the code will be submitted to a repository, and then automatically pulled from the repository to our server where our customers will benefit from it.

Why is this cool?

This means we can work with an entirely open development workflow. Yes, we will be a software company aiming to make money but even the bleeding edge stuff we’ll be working on will be downloadable. All our servers that make us money will use that code using tools that are available to everyone, we are literally just pulling an install profile from an online server. Anyone could do this. This means it will be almost as easy for another church to get involved in the development of our software as it is for us to get involved! (also it will be easy to steal everything we do :P).

What is stopping us?

In order for this to work, me andrew and rob need to stop using our mouths. Unfortunately the voice and the brain is a very inefficient collaboration tool. Every conversation I memorise is locked in the minds of the original people who had it and cannot easily be shared. Every time we meet up, skype or talk over the phone we are dis-empowering future collaborators. The thing is, we like talking, its really fun. Recently I found out that Andrew was sad because his olives went mouldy. Things like that are what bring people together and we as a company need also be friends for it to work. But things that make us friends hurt us as a open-source company because they make it harder for others to get involved.

This will just have to be something we work on and try to do well. I do not plan to have this problem solved right away. But in a years time I hope we are part of the way and in 2 years time if we are still deciding software issues over the phone I will have failed.

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Drupal and Vaio P


I think I’m enjoying playing around with the Vaio P. I’ve thought of installing ubuntu and stuff but given up on that. I’m finding firefox with a bunch of plugins to make it look like chrome is working better then chrome.

However unfortunately I’m finding apache can’t quite handle installing drupal on it. I’m using the Acquia Drupal installtion package and then the source code from http://www.usingdrupal.com

I dunno if anyone has some advice on this but my poor vaio is pretty much maxed out at 100% during the install process.

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First Post


Well this is my first post on this new blog so I thought I’d just outline what I’m planning on doing here. I had a blog on blogger a while ago called spawn of the spork and started (with some others) a community at www.thevirtualreality.co.uk so here’s a place to discuss random stuff whilst at uni which will probably focus on theology and technology. I’m not very good at starting these kinds of things so we’ll just have to see what happens with it!

 Also i just want to learn how to use wordpress 😀

Have fun (Sorry that this was a pretty boring first post but I doubt any of you will read it!)