Lectionary Feed

Anyone know of a rss feed or daily email service for daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary?

Blog Reading

I was talking today with a friend about some people who don't normally read blogs reaction to some stuff that another friend wrote on their blog. Brought us to a point in the convo where we wondered whether there was anything around to help some new to reading blogs understand blog etiquette. From my brief looking around there is stuff for people new to writing blogs and much on commenting etiquette but where would you send people to understand the subtleties of blog world and a grid to read through???

6000 kms since Christmas

Just thought I'd write a little on what life has been for me over the last month and a half. Most of you will know that I am Missions Coordinator for Scripture Union Victoria - which means overseeing a range of mostly holiday programs that happen all over Victoria, most of which are in January. My goal for this year was to get to every program/team which I haven't seen in action previously, because actually having been part of the dynamics of the team and seeing where they run programs/where they connect with people makes a huge difference in how I can support and train directors, and help them in training their teams and the many other things involved in directing one of these teams. And I've almost made it! I've had two summers in the job and I've covered everything other than one of the youth/young adult mission teams (Theos) - as this part of my job was just added to me a couple of weeks before Christmas. I feel way more equipped for my role with these teams having been part of their life for a day or so. In each location too I tried to walk with God and have eyes to see what he might have for me specifically to do in that place - led to some ace stuff.
So I went to (in this order) Barwon Heads, Portarlington, Queenscliff, Mallacoota, Inverloch, Portland, Warrnambool, Cowes, McCrae and Tidal River. In some of those places we have more than one team.
After all that I went and spent a week (or so) at a campsite that Scripture Union owns down on the Gippsland lakes. The camps coordinator had had a serious accident a few weeks before that so I was down covering his role that week. It was a great time of understanding a bit more of the issues around our camps and the campsite, very useful since a restructure at work now means that camps are in the team that I head up in Scripture Union Victoria.
And now I've started meeting with directors to debrief their time over summer and talk about/vision together the coming year, as well as meeting with people doing stuff during the year and plan training for the year. My aim is to have met with the directors of each of the 24 teams before I go on holidays mid March!
I'm exhausted - and this weekend having a weekend collapsing at my mum's while she is away, but in myself I'm quite good and got goosebumps as to what God is doing in me ... there's some pretty amazing and deep stuff already happening and my sense is more to come.

Concern - Influence - Focus

Been thinking a bit over the last few days about a leadership / time usage / focus idea that I've heard lots times - not sure where from.
The idea is that there are three concentric circles - on the outside circle of concern, the next one in circle of influence, and the central one being circle of focus.
The circle of concern is all the things you are "concerned" about.
The circle of influence is all the things you are in a position to influence.
The circle of focus is the things you want to fucus on.

Make sense? Quite simple really but you wouldn't think so from how we live!!!
Historically when I have heard this, it's been useful in helping me concentrate my efforts in my circle of influence rather than my circle of concern - very important indeed.
But the reason it came to mind for me at the moment is that in many places in my life my circle of influence is so large I couldn't possibly influence it all and the effect of not being focused in that is that it is easy to go from influencing one thing over to influecing another thing over here - good things to influence, definately within my circle of concern and influence ... but actually distracting from where my circle of focus is being called to be.
So I've been thinking how important it is not to just influence wherever I can, but to choose what am I called to focus on within my circle of influence AND GET ON WITH IT!