This weekend just gone, I took the new Lab core team up to Mid Wales for a weekend away together. The seven of us stayed in two Yurts at the Yurt Farm, near Tregaron and about 30 mins drive from Aberystwyth.
The weekend was amazing and our accomodation was incredible – I’d really recommend Yurting is you’ve never done it before – they are beautiful and really comfortable. Here are some photos from the weekend:
Have spent the weekend at Greenbelt. Some highlights:
1. Peter Rollins talking about the presence of God in the absense of God.
2. Kester Brewin talking about what Christians can learn from pirates.
3. Rob Bell on growing old and limbering up. And answering some good questions and some mental ones.
4. Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip – amazing.
5. Shlomo beatboxing.
Attached are some blurry iPhone photos…
Over the last couple of weeks, with some help from Cat, I’ve been in the process of redesigning The Lab’s website and updating it with new information for the new academic year, in particular about the Alway project – our work on the estate on the edge of Newport we live in.
My housemate Cat has done a great job of designing the new St Paul’s website which she’s been putting together over the last couple of weeks. St Paul’s is the church I’m part of in Newport city centre, and is closely connected to The Lab.
Go check it out.
With the new year well under way I thought it was about time I threw out a bit of a life update. As I’m writing its a beautiful sunny, Spring-esque day outside the Lab house – an awesome day for my housemate Dan’s birthday. We had a party on Wednesday and are having a bit of a dinner party tonight to celebrate.
As always there’s so much going on at the moment – so many experiments and little projects, as well as developing ones – and that’s what I love about pioneering and working for The Lab: everything’s changing and growing and developing all the time.
So I thought I’d try and through out some quick bullet points of the different things that are going on for me.
This week I wrote up some of my reasons for blogging and talked a little about what this blog is about for me. Here’s my five reasons for blogging. Read the whole page.
- To help me express and develop some of my own ideas. Part of the purpose of my degree course is to teach me to become a reflective practioner - so in blogging I’m able to reflect on and develop ideas for myself from my own experience.
- To connect with similar thinkers around the UK, and from further afield. In blogging, I love to connect with other people who have more experience than me or are interesting in / are thinking about the same things. I love to connect with others on Twitter or other networks – and to get into discussions through the comments on the blog.
- To provide updates for old friends and supporters from home. Blogging here allows me an easy way to provide updates for old friends from my home church and family friends – and to share some of my thinking with them.
- To share ideas with friends, Lab friends and coursemates. Over the last couple of years, especially through Facebook, I’ve found that this blog is a good way to share more developed ideas with friends who I chat to and reflect with day-to-day.
- To encounter God. Blogging is great way of reflecting on God and growing my own relationship with him – and hopefully glorifying him through it.
- From my “Why I blog” page.
Welcome to the new blog – glad you didn’t get lost in the (momentary) transition.
From now on the URL you need in your bookmarks is: jameshenley.co.uk – the old Typepad URL won’t work.
For those of you who are interested, I’ve followed others in switching blogging platform from Typepad to Wordpress. To get maximum flexibility I opted away for the self-hosted option, rather than building a blog with Wordpress.com (which is still a really good option for blogging). The new site is hosted by UKHost4U – who also host The Lab website.
In terms of the design, I’m using the Revolution Charred theme with a few behind-the-scenes modifications. The Social Networking icons in the Pages sidebar and in the Twitter box are from Iconspedia.com.
Moving to Wordpress works out cheaper – and allows me added design flexibility and more flexibility with things like the about page. Let me know what you think about the switch and the new look!
Thought it was time to test out the new re-design. It may evolve a little more still, but I think it's basically how I want it.
Let me know what you think with the "rate this post" widget…
I know people have noticed a lack of my usual deep, critical, reflections on the blog since before the summer. So I thought I should try and explain a little bit why (I think bullet points is the best way to do this, although it seems a bit weird).
So I'm committed to keeping the blog going, but it's just taking a little time to discover a slightly different way of writing. I've just posted the first post on Surprised by Hope – which gives me some structured content to reflect on and so hopefully should get the juices flowing a bit. Oh, and I also have a new design for the blog planned fairly soon.
So hopefully the blogs should be just as deep as they were, but much more creative and constructive, soon enough. It's easy to get stuck in a deconstructive pattern of reflection – especially in the first year of a theology degree – but I think it's time to move onto pastures greener.
The results should be much more innovative, more creative, and more outside-the-box.
If anyone has any ideas for where to start reflecting more positively – or subjects I've blogged about in the past which you'd like me to follow through a bit further (usually reconstruct what's left after my deconstruction) – then please share in the comments below…
Hopefully will get back into a regular rhythm of blogging, but at the moment feeling a little in limbo before the start of the new term. Have a lot floating around in my mind but none of it seems organised or developed enough to blog. Maybe its the holidays and the lack of a regular rhythm of living that’s caused it.
The house is pretty much together. Our cable is now working properly, so we finally have internet and TV which is great. Celebrated last night by renting “Definitely, Maybe” on Filmflex – which I’m ashamed (as a guy) to say was pretty good. We now also have a dining table and kitchen table and lots of chairs for them. Steph, Cat and myself are now settled in well. Sam follows sometime this week or next, and Dan will be in soon after – looking forward to more male company, even though the girls are great.
Currently working through a large amount of quite deep reading before college hits and I lose a lot of the free time I have at the moment. Have worked out that at the current rate I should get through most of them before college starts – but does look like a pretty crazy pile of books.
In terms of the Lab, am beginning to arrange meetings and get stuff sorted for the new term and for our new projects – which are exciting, but need work to get them organised. Need to pull the new, larger leadership team together once everyone is back in Newport and mobilise the troops for the new term, but not until the end of next week or the week after maybe.
With blogging, I’m hoping to slowly get back into a pattern and then maybe try another series blog or something like that – probably around Christ and culture or something similar that’s on my mind at the moment.
Oh, also got my hands on a couple of my Dad’s old 35mm cameras to play around with, which is pretty good fun. Exploring a bit more of my creative side – definitely the influence of all the media and design students in the Lab I get to hang out with.
Welcome to the blog of James Henley. I'm a young church leader / youth worker and student based in Newport, South Wales.
Read more about me.
