Special Studies Week

We have just finished a great week at college. The idea is that all normal lectures stop and that the college has a week to get together in different, cross year groups and look at issues or engage in creative activities.

The second years spent some time looking at personality indicators: MBTI, Belbin, and Enneagram. Whatever your view of the foundations of these theories it was useful to think through some of the ways that our personalities affect the way in which we engage with each other and with God, especially given the ministerial contexts we are soon to be going into.

Creative things going on included silk painting, song writing, hand bell ringing, guitar workshops, photography, Powerpoint presentations, drama workshops, story telling ...

The whole college community spent Thursday morning hearing from four visiting speakers sharing their experiences in the current debates about human sexuality in the Anglican Communion. It was extremely valuable to hear these different perspectives presented in a open and frank discussion.

I spent a good chunk of my week organising and writing material for WordLive. Scripture Union offered the college the opportunity for us to prepare a week's worth of material for their web based Bible reading notes. If all goes to plan, the material we have prepared this week will go onto the site for a week in November.

A diverse, creative, and stimulating week. Now it's Reading Week, and I have two essays to write before they'll let me out of here.

The time of last things

This week feels like it has been chock full of things that have probably happened for the last time. The last Spirituality, Quiet Hour and Fellowship Group on a Monday morning. Maybe the last game of squash with Paul on Tuesday. The last meal at Jordan and Ben's on Wednesday. The last modules of my course finishing on Thursday and Friday. The last sermon at St Peter's on Sunday night, (an experimental dialogue on the Trinity).

I guess this is what meant when they kept going on about liminal times in Pastoral Care. What's really odd, and adds to the air of unreality is that although a load of things have happened for the last time, Commissioning service isn't for another four weeks. I've got loads left to do. But I've already finished.

Home and dry

Home now from the preaching trip to sunny, very sunny today, Redditch. Preach seemed to go well, with plenty of positive feedback and encouragement. If you're interested, text of sermon is on my sermon blog, here.

I still find preaching to be a really odd experience. I usually love preparing for it, and this time was no exception. In College Fellowship group prayers on Wednesday morning I asked the group to pray for me as I prepared. In the 25 minutes following that meeting I sat there in my private prayer time and all the key ideas for the sermon came to me. It was then just a case of writing them down, polishing them a bit and developing a few of them into a fully worked sermon. It was as close as I ever experience of God giving me stuff to say.

I felt energised as I spoke, and the feedback from the people there, as I was speaking was friendly and welcoming. But since, I've been absolutely bushed. It still seems to take an inordinate length of time to get my energy back having preached. I find this a bit of a paradox. Preaching is something I enjoy, I appear to be good at, I feel energised whilst I'm speaking, but then wiped out when I've finished. To be reflected on further...

Being a Guest Preacher

We're off to visit Liz's Mum and Dad this weekend. Nothing particularly unusual in that, but I'm a bit more nervous than usual. Wallace has invited me to preach for one of the congregations at the church he leads. And it's not on any old Sunday, but Pentecost, the church's birthday. It also happens to be Wallace's birthday. No pressure then :-) Please pray for us, especially if Liz succeeds in persuading me that we ought to go shopping for a new mattress this afternoon!

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

Or at least, that's what Tabitha now wants, since she managed to knock the corner off one of hers this evening. There she was in Chapel, teaching her friend "dig samba" to "Crown Him with Many Crowns". It was just a little stumble and suddenly there's blood all over the place and a chip of enamel staring up at us from the floor. Off to the dentist tomorrow....

God is a Womble

And if I don't manage to work this quote from one of my lectures this week into a sermon that I'm preparing for a fortnight hence, I promise to blog about it instead.

In the meantime, I'm not sure where the time is going. Somehow three weeks of my last 2 modules have gone, it's May, and I'm starting my new job next month. We went over to Stoke on Saturday to drop some stuff off and hang some curtains. The fact that there is now stuff in our new house has bought home to us that we are actually going to be moving.

In two months most of our friends will have been dispersed all over the country, we will be in a new place, starting a new phase of ministry and family life. It's enough to give you goose bumps.

Goose bumps of apprehension, but also goose bumps of excitement, anticipating all the things that God has prepared for us to do, the people we are going to meet along the way, can't wait for the ride to start.