Calendar for the next month

January

22^nd     Preaching at Dry St Church, Basildon (Part 2 of Good Samaritan, ‘Playing God, Doing God’)

23^rd     Attending LICC day on Colossians

25-46 Christian Resources Exhibition, Exeter – promoting Transforming Governing and speaking on h+

31^st     GO Ministries Advisory Group Meeting

February

1-3      Christians in School Leadership Conference, Cheltenham- helping to host

3-5      Hand to Hand Conference, Eastbourne – promoting Transforming Governing and hosting a session for primary school teachers

6-7      Christian Schools Trust Heads’ & Governors Conference,  Swanwick – speaking at 3 sessions.

11       URC Elders Retreat, Hamshire – speaking.

12       URC Hayling Island – All age service

18       URC Wessex Confernce, Ringwood – speaking on governance

20-21 Profiling and training h+  in Truro and Sidmouth.

Your prayers would be appreciated for these and:

• Ongoing writing of Drama of Scripture course
• Planning for the development of h+ in the future
• Ongoing role as Chair of Governors at Westwood Academy.

Many, many thanks.

Festivities over!

Sitting at my desk on my new and really comfortable chair I am wondering!

• I had expected to be preparing for preaching on Sunday but it seems there was a diary malfunction along the way!
• There are plenty of other preparation tasks to begin working on:
  • a two part teaching series later this month
  • a seminar at the Exeter Christian Resources Exhibition
  • sessions for a conference of Christian School Heads and Governors
• The Drama of Scripture Course to write this month.

But I also am wondering about the future.  My contract (about half my time) with Bible Society to profile and undertake training for the h+ Making Good Sense of the Bible is until the end March and what I am doing these three months is still being planned.  What will happen thereafter?  I am hoping for a new contract!

Transforming Governing – the website and other activities I am involved in needs new funding beyond March..

I need to ‘discover’ another ‘project that transforms’ which will fit with my experience, gifting and passions.  I wonder what God has in store for me!

But before all these things occupy my mind further I need to seek God.  Perhaps you can be part of that too and pray for me.  I would be grateful.

A new office chair is not a euphemism for relaxing into my comfort zone.  Rather it has to be a means of helping me ‘enable projects that transform’.  Having said that, I’d rather leave the chair behind and be out there somewhere preaching, teaching or training!

This has been my, hopefully provocative, theme the Christmas.  A challenge to read and reflect upon the Christmas narrative as if for the first time.  Not easy when our minds, traditions and

celebrations are full of all kinds of ‘add-ons’ to the biblical text.

It kicked off with a pre-Advent service on 24th November looking at THE STORY putting the Advent narrative in the context of the big story in the gospels.  Then on 11th December providing opportunity for people to share some of the things they discovered before exploring the theme of hospitality in the expereince of the Christmas characters

Both sermons and powerpoint slides are available from my ‘Christmas for the first time’ page – see top of page.

Some of this will no doubt surface at the Carol Services I will be speaking at on 18th December and of course in our own family Christmas celebrations.

If I am not in tocuh with you again this year, then I trust you will enjoy something new this Christmas as well as all of your traditional experiences.

Both Nikki and I were privileged to attend the service of celebration to mark the 400^th Anniversary of the King James Bible at Westminster Abbey.  It was an awe-inspiring event in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen.  She passed by us before and after the service (we were just 3 rows back), but the most moving part was singing the National Anthem quite literally to her.

During the service we sang a wonderful hymn written for the occasion, heard Bible readings by the Archbishop of York and a teenager from Birkenhead.  The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a powerful address that I have and will be quoting from in the future!  Here are three things he said:

What is a good translation?  Not one that just allows me to say, when I pick it up, ‘Now I understand’. Of course, if I’m faced with a text in a strange language, I need to be able simply to read it; but a good translation will be an invitation to read again, and to probe, and reflect, and imagine with the text. Rather than letting me say, ‘Now I understand’, it prompts the response, ‘Now the work begins.’

 

In the beginning was the Word’. Before anything, God is a God whose life pours out in the intelligence of love, necessarily and always.  Every created word, even the words we use to speak of this eternal truth, will be struggling breathlessly to keep up with the Word itself, himself. 

 

It’s easy to forget that when the 1611 Bible was first published it was not yet a volume that everyone could be expected to own. Like its Reformed predecessors, Tyndale’s Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Bishops’ Bible—and unlike its Catholic parallel, the Rheims/Douai version—it was meant to be read aloud.  And that means that it was meant to be part of an event, a shared experience.

To read the whole talk click here

To download the order of service click here

Inspired by the service and some study I have recently done it seemed right to focus the Sunday service I was leading and speaking at on THE STORY – preparing for Advent.  Of course, this was all about the KING, the King of Kings.

The early part of the service focussed on the 400^th Anniversary and introduced a set of books the Church was giving to Westwood Academy for their library.   Books of Bible stories and to help learn about the Bible and the worlds in which it was written.

The message traced the story of Jesus, through the typical stages of a story and drawing of course on the Biblical narrative.  The overriding challenge was to come to The Story and especially the Advent narrative as if for the first time.  You can read the sermon, see the PowerPoint slides and find the suggestions made for CHRISTMAS FOR THE FIRST TIME on the special page I have created on this blogsite Click here.  Keep revisiting as new additions may well be added especially as we approach my return visit to Hadleigh Baptist on 13^th December to see what new things have been found through reading with this intention.

I am used to regular deadlines. They go with the territory. Whatever the timeline you have to be ready to speak at the next event.

November 14/15 has been in the diary for sometime. It will be the first of many training days for potential facilitators of h+ Making Good Sense of the Bible programme that I will deliver. Bible Society have 55 booked in!

The pressure has been the  last minute process of enabling the resources to be prepared, designed and printed. The steady work of the last few months has all needed to come together and inevitably last minute delays raised the temperature dramatically.

Last week the PowerPoint presentations for each session could finally be completed. I was supplied the last few pieces of artwork and video clips required, at last. The end result was more than satisfactory. Though and  say it myself the end product is an impressive set of presentations.

But, despite having done this before I have spent three days attempting to package them for use by anyone on any computer. They just would not work. I ran out of ideas and knowledge despite extensive online searching.  At the very last minute some suggestions followed seem to overcome the difficulty at least for playing on a Mac or Windows 7 computer.  So they could be duplicated for the course.  We will look for more solutions to ensure equal compatibility across all platforms in due course.

Meanwhile last minute checking the design of both handbooks has added to the challenge. They are being printed as I writ and delivered to me on Saturday! Deadlines only just met!

The exciting thing is the training next week.  I have been responsible for devising the training programme and will deliver the lions share. It is a fantastic opportunity that should see this course beginning to roll out across the country.  When I step back from the intentsity of the preparation and two days training it will be to begin planning more in 2012.

Please pray for me on Monday and Tuesday especially.

Visit the h+ blog or twitter for updates on the training.

©

I feel like I have had a bath – not once but three times in the past 7 days!  Not what you might imagine, but my way of describing three very special opportunities I have had.

You might recall the song ‘If I were a rich man’ from Fiddler on the Roof.  If not click here to watch and listen.  The relevant line is towards the end:

If I were a rich man I’d have the time I lack

to sit in the synagogue and pray

and maybe have a seat by the Eastern Wall,

And I ‘d discuss the Holy Books

with the learned men seven hours every day,

And that would be the sweetest thing of all.

Well, I am not rich and have not been to a synagogue but I have spent 3 days  (not quite 7 hours long) immersed in the Bible and it was the sweetest thing!

NUMBERS

Last Thursday (13 Oct) I joined around 30 others at LICC (London Institute of Contemporary Christianity) for a study day on the Book of Numbers.  I had just completed reading through the book and this was an ideal opportunity.  The speaker was a theologian whose writings have influenced the H+ programme that I am involved in.  Richard Briggs is from St John’s College, Durham University.

Here are some things I came away with:

1. Being called Numbers (ref to the 3 census that the book includes) is a red herring and it might better be called ‘In the Wilderness’
2. Sometime the route to relevance can be through what appears irrelevant (tough journey)
3. Paul read Numbers – see 1Corinthians 10
4. Moses excelled in humility
5. The people sought to live by sight not by faith
6. The key to TRUST is to rely on GOD Himself (not our experience of God)
7. The calling of people of God is to bless what God is blessing

And so much more!  This is just a flavour.

PAUL

This week I spent two days at Bible Society in Swindon.  On Monday over 300 people gathered to hear Biblical Scholar, Paula Gooder, (Click here for her website) explore the man, ministry and writings of the Apostle Paul.  She continued on Tuesday with the staff covering a range of very helpful subjects.

For now, one thing stood out that links with the 7^th point from the Numbers day:

• The new creation Paul writes about in 2Corinthians 5 is both individual (I am a new creation in Christ) and for the world.
• While the old order still rules, the new creation breaks in, from time to time, in glimmers, suggestions and possibilities.
• It is for us to be the kind of people who bring such moments, who recognise them happening and ‘bless’ or enrich them.
• This is especially true of the priority Paul focuses on: ‘reconciliation’ – in the widest possible and practical sense.

I may well write about some of the other things I learnt here and/or on the H+ Blog so if you are interested please go to and subscribe – Click here.  I’d love you to keep abreast of how this project develops anyway!

A bath?  Yes, I’ve been thoroughly refreshed through spending these three days immersed in the Bible!

This is Discipling from The Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

Thanks to Simon Harris – from his blog – along with other challenging material from Launch the Lifeboats at Burlington Baptist.  Click here to visit the blog for more.

The Education Network, I am reliably informed had one of only two rooms with air conditioned.  We were almost cold!  But the 18 people, a mix of teachers, those in training to be teachers and a few other educators had what I can only describe as a meeting of minds, a stimulating range of conversation and an encouraging day.  As one wrote to me afterwards:

“I found the network session really informative and supportive. I certainly reflected on what was said yesterday, and certainly it would be great if i can integrate my christian beliefs more in teaching etc. I am so pleased at our School that we have six /seven christian teachers who pray together and support each other in what seems like an up hill struggle every day with Management and the Policies (ticking boxes!!)”

The day began with a brilliant talk: A TALE OF TWO CITIES - Integrated Lives in Babylon and Corinth by Mark Meynell (Senior Associate Minister, All Souls).  Every Christian should hear this talk.  I hope it will be downloadable from the All Souls website.

Then the Network began over coffee, a  conversational session led by Hugh Brady of The Independent Schools Christian Alliance, lunch and a session which I led.  You can download the:

• powerpoint for the two sessions click here
• notes from Hugh’s session click here
• handout click here

Yesterday it was great to join the congregation at Burlington Baptist Church in Ipswich once again.  This year they are looking at The Story – covering the whole of the Bible and I’d been asked to speak on ‘The Opposition Year’ – this is one way of looking at the third year of Jesus’ ministry when in response to his clear declarations and intention to go to Jerusalem to die the opposition mounted.

You can download my notes.  Jesus Opposition Years – John 7

You can go to the Burlington website and download an audio file of the sermon and my powerpoint that accompanied it  Click here  (available shortly)

The Week ahead

Monday afternoon – meetings at Evangelical Alliance and later with Rebecca Harris MP

Tues-Friday: Various meetings about Transforming Governing, Christian Resources Exhibition and Westwood Academy along with further work on H+ Making Good Sense of the Bible and beginning to write a course on ‘The Drama of Scripture’.

Saturday – speaking/leading the Education Network track with Hugh Bradby (TISCA)at: