We're back...

So, after a long week trying to keep dry and warm (for the first time ever had real rain at SS!) we got back from Soul Survivor safely. In the end that meant 3 mini-buses, a van and three cars (with three other cars leaving early). The week was really different to every other Soul Survivor for many different reasons, some of which I'll share later. But for now, its safe to say that I've come back from SS ill, and so off to bed I go until such a time as can blog my thoughts when I can think clearly again. Before I do though, thanks to all of you who were praying for us ... we appreciated it and we felt the effects of your prayers ...

One more sleep to go!!!

Off to Soul Survivor in the morning - need to be at EMBC at 6am!!! Apparently according to some of the guys the trick is not to wake up fully. That way you can go back to sleep as soon as your bus starts off. Me, I'm too excited to go back to sleep! Usually I'm too excited to sleep to well the night before at all!!

Not sure of the final numbers of 'us' yet, but reckon maybe 58 or so. Think that equates to three mini-buses in the end, a car (with an extra two coming later) and a van. This year we're splitting into 'Tribes' to look get duties done and make sure people are looked after. Is a great idea, know it will work well.

So, what am I looking forward to and so excited about? Well, love this week because of the oppertunity it is to worship the Triune God and catch a glimpse of God's glory, God's power and God's heart. Every meeting we go to something happens. The Spirit falls and God's glory, grace and power are manifest - in both visible ways and invisible ways. You're left in awe and wonder, sometimes face down, others times dancing in the aisles. In the course of the week you find yourself moved to tears and weeping in repentance as well as laughing with joy and assurance of God's very presence with you. Every year we see young people apprehensive at first either come to know Jesus for the first time, recommit their lives to Him, or explode in worship in a new-found way. While its primarily for the young folks we go with, each year God in all His goodness does as much in leaders as He does with the youth.

I'm looking forward to the seminars. Getting a chance to hear thoughts on things you don't always. Hearing voices who think differently than you and challenge your perceptions, or at times think in similar ways and you realise perhaps your not crazy after all, or the only one hearing God speak this word at this time for this season.

I'm looking forward to the time together. I'm looking forward to the time to catch up with specific friends over coffee (and perhaps cake), some of whom I see all the time here so will be nice to have some 'deeper' chats, some of whom I rarely see because they live so far away so will be nice to spend time with face-to-face as opposed to only on the phone. I'm looking forward to the time we spent together as a YF group. Tents, meals together, games in the afternoon, sitting around chatting ... we care for each other, love each other, encourage each other, pray for each other - and when we come home we build on that and continue to do all that stuff.

Yahey, only one more sleep to go. Tell you what happens when I come back ... I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so excited!!!

One of the joys of college is all the reading ... one of the frustrations of college is all the reading!!! At times it can feel like I'm only reading certain parts of things in order to write an essay, and other times its totally gripping and you're able to run with a thought into several books in a 'proper' fashion. However, summer becomes a valuable time, a time to do all the reading you wanted to do but couldn't; a time to read all those books you passed on the shelves day after day and longed to pick up but had to remind yourself that there really are only 24hours in a day!

Reading one such book at the moment, though it is doubling as research as might be able to use it in a dissertation. Not too far into it yet, but was reading this about preaching today and it really hit me deep. It made me think about my preaching, and even my 'general' ministering, and what kind of preacher and minister I want now to commit to be. The book is Richard Lischer's The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005). Here is what I was reading:

When ministers allow the word of God to be marginalized, they continue to speak, of course, and make generally helpful comments on a variety of issues, but they do so from no centre of authority and with no heart of passion. We do our best to meet people's needs, but without the divine word we can never know enough or be enough, because consumer need is infinite. We are simply there as members of a helping profession ... no seminarian or candidate sets out to minister with such reduced expectations, and not everyone succumbs to this scenario, but ultimately the marginalization of the word of God fractions it into a hundred lesser duties.

pg. 23-24

As a young minister in the making this is an important thing to think through and bear in mind in order to be one of those who does not succumb to that lesser-ness (if that is even a word!). One of my pastors once wisely said that our role is to bring God into situations and spiritually guide in that sense. He was talking in relation to knowing where 'boundaries' may lie in the sense that while you may counsel, you are not a counsellor etc. Yet in relation to what Lischer is talking about it also makes sense. If as pastors part of our 'job' is to bring God into situations and spiritually guide then the Word has to be central to that. When that is lost or becomes misplaced things have gone seriously wrong! While that may seem obvious, I pray that it is something that stays with me as I grow into ministry more.

On a different, yet perhaps related note - this is what I was reading relating to preaching that I thought was also worthy of note:

In the act of preaching something dies and something rises. What dies (or should die) is the preoccupation with the self that plagues so many performers. This death is ironic, since some sense of "self" is stimulated by God's call in the first place and is necessary for public speaking ... Today's preachers are heirs to the twentith century mantra, "Be yourself!" Preaching is "truth through personality", but the two elements in Philips Brooks's famous definition have become so entangled that they are [often] indistinguishable from one another. And whenever there is a conflict between truth and personality, personality always wins [not good] ... What also dies in the act of preaching is the scavenger hunt for novelty that drives many sermons ... What rises is the remarkable synergy of the spoken word and the life of the baptized community, which in the parlance of Isaiah is the gift of a "new thing."

pg. 35-36

Now thats an exciting thought! Especially in relation to my thoughts about preaching as prophetic witness. As Lischer notes

The prophets are uniformly annihilated by a conversation with God, only to reappear as powerful individual performer's of the word on God's behalf.

pg. 35

Now if thats what a death to self and a need to perform for praise leads to in the rising of a sermon that is the synergy of spoken word combined with the Word within the life of the community then perhaps, just perhaps our experiences would be more like that of the prophets ... annihilated regularly but annihilated in a way that leads to life-giving words, though various in nature. Now that really would be preaching experienced as prohetic witness!!!

Today was spent with my head in commentaries. Not a bad day was had. Preaching on 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 on Sunday. What has re-grabbed me as I read the commentaries and saw where my thinking at the moment fits and may not fit so well was the sheer grace of God. Now, you would think this is not a new idea for me. And it's not! However, as we all know there are times when we are either re-struck or struck in a fresh way with something that somehow over time we have begun to take for granted.

'What is stressed in the present passage is the amazing grace of God revealed when he himself took the initiative in Christ to remove the obstacle to reconciliation existing on his part. It is only on this basis that there exists a gospel of reconciliation by which humanity can now be called to be reconciled to God ... The ministry of reconciliation is primarily the proclamation of what God has done.'

God has, in Christ, reconciled us to Himself ... that blows me away. But more than us, God was, in Christ, reconciling the whole world to Himself. The way is open for those who will to walk in (yup, Arminianism strikes again). No wonder Paul could say that now Christ's love compels him!

The sermon is not ready yet ... but my mind is on over-drive. More to follow I'm sure.

On a separate note, while at the library I was having some fun looking through books for dissertation ideas. Am considering doing something on the nature of the prophetic in preaching - something about preaching as prophetic witness or embodiment or something. Anyways, was re-reading the intro to a book about Martin Luther King Jr. as may do a case study of some kind possibly. While re-reading came across some quotes that I just thought were fab:

'During this period [his early years and first pastorate] he also learned to preach - not only to speak but to become an actor for his people and to assume the larger roles of prophet, evangelist, and, last of all, suffering agent of redemption.' pg. 6

'A sermon is a cultic performance of a biblical text among people who identify themselves as Christians.' pg. 8

'Perhaps King's greatest spiritual gift was faithfulness to his vocation to preach the Word of God in all circumstances, including personal danger and declining popularity ... King never produced a social blueprint for America, but, because he was a preacher, he never quit trying to shape a "congregation" of people that would be capable of redeeming the moral and political character of the nation.' pg. 12

The Preacher King: Martin Luther King Jr. And The Word That Moved America
Richard Lischer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Who am I really?

Was away at camp all last week (brilliant!) and so have spent tonight filling out forms that should have been in last week. Among them are personality-typing tests. As I'm filling them out wondering what it is I'm actually saying about myself, I'm finding that I'm consistently inconsistent, or so it appears. Is that good? Is that 'normal'? I don't know!