I Was Punching in the Numbers...

Yes, its been a while since I've written a blog. Real Life has intervened in the last week and spare time for blogging, or indeed anything apart from collapsing and sleeping has been sadly lacking, as I have descended into a world of number crunching.

Budget time at work, Year End at church, some changes to my working conditions with knock on financial implications have all meant a large amount of time playing with spreadsheets, modelling scenarios, calculating, analysing, understanding and explaining numbers.

Sounds great.. doesn't it!? I'm pretty sure a number of people are looking at that statement thinking I'm off my trolley, but honestly, to me, that is something that is great. I am, at heart, a numbers man. Whilst I like to think I'm okay at the "softer side" of my work - the explaining, communicating, presenting, using side of the finance world, then actually, to me, the numbers themselves have a certain type of beauty, and to me, it is above all else the numbers that talk to me - from the detail of the data, I see the patterns and gain clarity. My 'first love', in terms of my work at least, is the numbers themselves.

The challenge, of course is that there's little point in being able to see patterns, to analyse and understand data if I then cannot explain or communicate that in a way that other people understand, which is why I do need to think very carefully about how to do that all the time... and there are many different ways to do that. Some people need carefully crafted prose, explaining the numbers in an easy to read manner. Others prefer a picture, or a table, or a well written speech.. there are as many different ways to communicate as there people to understand that communicate, because no two of us are the same... which is kind of the key to this blog entry.

Because as Christian Believers, our 'first love', our primary calling, should be to share the good news we have received. We are receipients of God's generous and undeserved Grace, and we are called again and again not to hold on to that Grace in a selfish manner, but to be conduits by which God's love and mercy can flow out to people around us. But to do that, we need to understand the way they think, the way they understand things, the way we can communicate with them. Our challenge, my challenge, is to remember that, although there is one Gospel for us all, there are as many different ways to communicate that as there people to communicate it to, and thats a lot of people - and most of them want something very different to me!

Jesus himself communicated in different ways, at different times to different people. To be effective communicators of the gospel we need to seperate the message from the delivery, and be prepared to change the way we communicate that timeless truth so that it is appropriate and relevant to the people we are communicating with, without compromising the message...

So if you know anyone out there who would like me to discuss the truth of the gospel in full Charity Commission approved SOFA format Accruals accounts, let me know. Otherwise I'll have to think again about my communication strategy!