Apr 27
I won’t be watching the Royal Wedding on Friday. That’s mainly because we booked in dinner with friends before we realised the clash, shock horror! But I can’t say I feel ambivalent towards it either. In fact, I’ve been feeling sort of upset about it and not sure why. I’ve decided that my disquiet exists on two levels.
We just got back from a retreat with our college learning community. Rhys Bezzant is hoping to stitch together spiritually sustainable Christian leaders who are prepared for the long haul of a life of adversity. He took us through two studies on Jesus’ letters to the church of Smyrna and the church of Pergamum.
Anglican Church League have yummy mandarines in their logo. They also have Mark Thompson’s useful thoughts on Christian leadership, noting just how subversive it is — something we were getting at earlier.
Nov 23
Marriage is a microcosm of human society. A key aspect of this micro level is headship in marriage.
Oct 30
One of the great things about doing a ministry traineeship for two years before coming to college as I did is that the ‘real’ experience of full-time ministry provides you with plenty of questions! One of my questions that I’ve raised before (here and here) is how to deal with weakness and insufficiency in ministry.
Arthur and I have been having an ongoing conversation with someone at our church about training others for ministry. We’ve all agreed that we need to raise up others for ministry, but we’ve been discussing whether we need to train them as well. What’s the role of the Holy Spirit? How much should they just access the resources they need for themselves? What is the value of investing full time at Ridley or running a Bible study leadership course with new leaders? How much should intentional reflection with a mentor feature in a traineeship? It’s got me thinking about why it is that I place such a high value of training. There are some theological reasons and some pastoral reasons. Read more
