Hi I am Susan a lady born in England who is closer to retirement age than she would like to admit. Yes, these days I live in Wales and yes I have always been Susan. Like most ladies here in the UK its the bit after our first name that has changed. In my case twice. Once to be the same as Prince Charming and once to be me after he was no longer in the picture. The second time I actually chose the name and decided to use the maiden names of both my grandmothers. I had two grandmothers so now I have three words in my name. I like it because it sounds normal and yet it is unique.
Who should look around this site further?
Those who want to be saved. Over 30 years ago I asked God what He wanted me to do with my life and a few days later we had a teaching weekend at church and I was introduced to journalling The idea being to listen to God and then write down what we heard. In that first attempt at journalling God described me as the saviour of many people and churches. Understandably I said WHAAAT? How on earth do I do that?
Those who want to build the Kingdom of God
This is a concept that I hav not always found easy. These days I understand it as a place or even a person where the influence of God has grown substantially. It is an organisation or individual that do what God wants and in the process becoming more like God wants it to be. The boundaries of what we understand as the church and the Kingdom of God are occasionaly the same but often are not.
Those who whelp the church
After over 40 years of being around small churches that stubbornly refused to grow and seeing one I had been a member of close, it is pretty obvious that some really do need saving. My question for a long time was God how do I learn to do this?
He started by patiently teaching me about the advantages of starting businesses and helped me realise that, when run according to biblical principles, these were an excellent way of serving the community. What was worse I realised that the church was operating on that basis of a reduced mission. It has limited itself by promoting charity as the best way to help those in need and discouraging the flock from starting or developing businesses.
Another major strand of what He taught me was that getting out there and doing the stuff helped both people and churches. The stuff could be growing food so people did not go hungry. It could be making clothes like the woman in Proverbs 31 did. Rather than collecting things that others had made they were actually making things themselves. In my case I was one of the founders of a craft group for people with profound learning disabilities. I saw how it helped the church and all those invovled in the group. The biggest challenge for me was building my love muscles.
When it dawned on me what a difference it made to the church and the congregation when they were actually doing things in the community I realised that I had finanally found an answer to how do I do save people and churches. It sounds so simple yet there are many things that get in the way.
Two obvious issues are lack of money and our attitude towards money. Then there are various wounds and other things that have left us misshapen and not in line with God\’s best for us. After decades in the church I have only once been taught about journalling and only once been given guidelines for doing bible study. I cannot remember being taught anything about biblical principles related to business in the church.
The problem is that unless you learn that sort of stuff on your entrepreneurial journey you will struggle and possibly fail. All of that in addition to developing the practical skills of working out what to sell and how as well learning how to run a business.
Hold on a moment though some of those who offer to help you learn are not the most explemary of characters. One of my early teachers ended up in jail for a few years due to fraud, after lying on a form submitted to a bank.Not everything that people try and sell is worth buying. A lot of people are not inline wigh Godly values or biblical principles.
How can I help?
It was back in 2008 that I started realising that setting up community groups wasn\’t just about meeting the needs of those in the community that those groups served. Yes it is great being able to serve others and bring some joy and or peace to their lives but there is more to community groups than that. Many of us, probably including you, want to reach back to those who are on the journey we have been on to help them.
It became increasing obvious to me that such groups helped those who set them up. This was partly because it was a good personal development project and partly because it helped them achieve all they were destined to achieve in their life. Done well it added a spring to their step and created a legacy that would outlast them. They were actually growing as people while they they were doing stuff for others.
What really surprised me was the realisation that they brought light and life to the churches that helped their members set up such groups. Once I saw this it became one of the strands of thought woven into the book that is now called Crafting a Healing Journey for People and Places. After over two decades as a church member I could compare and contrast the churches I had been part of when I had lived in different places. Reaching out and serving others did a lot to raise the profile of the church and ultimately help it survive in what can be a hostile environment. On the other hand I also felt the harsh reality of the church\’s resistence to doing things differently. I have had one or two nasty shepherd or even a few sheep dog bites as a result of trying to garner their support. They are so busy dealing with their own issues including the everyday running of the church that they make poor working partners. I have seen and heard enough online to know that I am not the only one who has experienced this.
So you like me have a dream of doing something useful in society. Your own experience has shown you that there is a lot to do and you are frustrated. You go to the church and say help. At best they are unresponsive but at worst their response means that you have to totally rethink what you want to do to meet their expectations and do it their way even when you believe God wants you to do things in a different way.
On the way you look around to see what you can do. Maybe a workshop teaching something useful about the topic you are concerned about. Or maybe a get together that helps you do something helpful. The problem is the person who you ask to run the workshop says that you cannot charge for entry. You still have the room hire and other expenses to cover. The only thing you can do is pay them out of your own pocket but you know that your pocket is not that deep. So you try and apply for funding and you hit a variety of brick walls there. How on earth are you going to find the resources that you need to do what you want to do? Is this really possible and is it worthwhile struggling to keep going?
You look around and you see all the so-called support systems out there and realise that many of them do not fit with your values. If they do then they reflect a culture and even legal system that is not quite the same as that here in the UK. They can\’t help you with decisions like what kind of legal structure you are going to use for your project as they use different ones and set them up for slightly different reaons.
Yes that is my journey of developing community projects. This site is my way of reaching back to those who are on a similar journey..
How can I help?
If you look at the side you can see a number of things that I have done or am working on that you will find helpful. A good place to start is to sign up to one of the Facebook challenges I hold every few weeks. While you are waiting for that you can order one of my books from Amazon. For example there is the Faithful Ladies CAN Transform Society book which is based on Proverbs 31. It is primarily about handling money wisely. I know some of us have read that passage and said erm that standard is a bit too high for me to reach but having a target to aim for can be helpful.