Our district ministers met for three days this week at the Marianhill Monastery where we were taken through several sessions led by two addiction counsellors. I assumed I already had a decent understanding of the issues around substance abuse, but there was so much to learn about the disease of addiction and the typical recovery journeys of addicts and their families. Both facilitators were themselves in recovery and it was really refreshing to hear their openness about a condition that often still has a stigma attached to it.

I've been reading Will Guidara's excellent book "Unreasonable hospitality" which tells the story of how his restaurant in New York won the title of best restaurant in the world, by focusing not just on the quality of their food, but especially on surprising guests with incredibly thoughtful hospitality. Guidara says that every organisation can learn from their experience, refuse to settle for what is, and choose to delight the people they serve by going above and far beyond expectations.

This last Thursday was the anniversary of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a Moravian community in Germany which launched a non-stop prayer meeting that would continue for one hundred years! If you know your Methodist history you may remember that this same Moravian community, under the leadership of Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf had a profound formative influence on John Wesley and the Methodist movement.