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I started my graduate life in the autumn of 1988, almost 20 years ago, reading theology at the London School of Theology. I was so desperate to leave, and not very happy with my experience overall, but as the years have gone by my memories have become much fonder.
I remember the stresses of being a student, with a wry smile. Having a full time job, commuting, wife, kids, and then being bi-vocational, make me realise, the sheer expanse of time I had then, that I don’t now.
The there was the romance of meeting my now wife Bev, and parallel romance of discovering Vineyard Churches, and the subsequent years of amazing experiences in church plants and of ministry.
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I just signed up for shelfari which also has the mandatory facebook plugin. I love the idea of sharing books visually with others.
But I’ve quickly found that shelfari like librarything does not like to import books from exported files from my library programmes, despite claiming that they will.
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I am fortunate to live 2 minutes away from the Tate Britain and I try to visit from time to time.Last summer they put on an exhibition called ‘The Great Landscapes by John Constable.’ I have to say that I was abso-lutely in awe of his work! As a songwriter I learnt four very valuable lessons as I studied his paintings. I think they apply to many other creative disciplines.
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I just ran 10km in 1 hour and 4 minutes. The last time I ran that far must have been in 1987, 20 years ago, when I was 18 years old. It has taken me long time to get from there to here.
Addiction runs in my family, mostly the violence, alcohol, drugs and smoking kind. Not long before I was a Christian, aged 16, I decided I needed to loose weight. This was mostly for the sole purpose of picking up girls.
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I’m away for a few days enjoying the gales on the beach with my dog and family. So a quiet end to the week here, unless something goes wrong at the nuclear power station we are staying next to.
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God’s EPIC Adventure
$26.99Winn Griffin was in my Doctor of Ministry programme (for his second doctorate), and has been around Vineyard Churches most of his life, having been John Wimber’s ghost writer for most of the books Wimber produced.
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Last Sunday I had the pleasure of going back to my old church community for a dedication of a friend’s bambino. Whilst it was great seeing old friends again I confess that the teaching took me outside of my comfort zone, presenting faith in a way that made feel incomfortable…The talk was on Matthew’s story of Jesus healing the boy with the demon in him who was trying to kill him. You may recall that the story takes place at the foot of a mountain, Jesus has just been transfigured and he comes down to a man asking him to help heal his son because the remaining disciples had been unable too. Jesus of course does it easily.
The more the talk went on the more i struggled with the end of the tale:
“Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, Why couldn’t we drive it out?
He replied, Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
By the end of the talk i was convinced even if i had faith the size of a mountain i would not be able to move a mustard seed – so maybe you can help me out please? Continue reading »
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One key theme I explored with the MA students this past week at George Fox, has been something I have posted about here before, of ‘blue print ecclesiology’.
We experience something about church that isn’t working, so we think, read, talk, discuss, idealise, blog and suggest endlessly what church should be, and give our new dream forms of chuch names, and categorise them, and then get stuck in them ever taking form as a concrete reality.
Anyhow, Brett Jordan (who has a most interesting blog, trust me, visit and you’ll see what I mean), sent me this qoute which I thought captured the essence of what I have been trying to teach, much more succinctly.
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A new friend, Barb Orlowski, is on the Doctor of Ministry program at A.C.T.S. Seminaries in Langley, B.C., Canada. Barb needs some help with her doctoral dissertation research. She is conducting a survey among Christians who have experienced emotional and spiritual distress under authoritarian and controlling church leaders and have recovered from this experience.
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These next three days, I am on site at George Fox Seminary/University teaching a module on ‘missional ecclesiology’ as part of a Master of Arts in Missional Leadership.
The whole course is a hybrid learning programme, where the 20 students have several modules, and they complete discussions and assignments online weekly and termly as well as having intensive classroom session.
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