The Last Week...

I'm hopeful that this will be the last week of law teaching for me! There's a bunch of stuff to do but I'm well poised having worked out exactly where the various trainees are at...then its just the marking to do...but I do that on my schedule so thats OK by me...

Yesterday was good - staff meeting was productive laying out the next few weeks with Melissa having some extra time to give post-exams - Melissa and Jacob are very sacrificial and good friends - Kristen thought she was in heaven when she discovered that they were heading to Burger King after Sunday night's gathering! So we sat around eating garbage but enjoying some downtime together.

Sunday was one of those days you look back on and ask: "how did that go so well?" Sunday morning I was preaching at ECW while Richard was away. I also ended up having to hold the music together when my guitarist pulled out with a family commitment. I actually had a good time preaching on radical community. I started with a chemistry lesson drawing an analogy with the electron stealing antics of free radicals and how this can lead to the destruction of a living cell. My chemistry teacher would have been amazed! I hated chemistry. And finished with the self-giving activity of antioxidants - which actually donate electrons - community restored. For once I didn't steal the idea.

Not so in the evening where I leaned heavily on one John Ortberg in bringing part 2 in the "Walking on the Moon" series: "To Boldly Go"...discovering how God leads us. It went well mostly - I felt some of the personal illustrations worked really well. I had a bit of fun at the end finishing with: "After all the safest place to be is in the centre of God's will" and then leaving the platform - only to return with the rejoinder that such a statement is actually a load of crap and borrowing Erwin McManus observation: How is it that Christians buy into the idea of Christianity as a "safe" faith when its central metaphor, the Cross, is an instrument of death. I think that sealed the message quite nicely(!) With this message I was trying to challenge the idea that seeking guidance from God is all about knowing the right next step - so that we can "boldly go" - rather, we should be people that are "boldly being" - people who are being shaped by the process of learning to hear God. What was very cool was some of the things God has been doing in my own life that really helped this be a message of sharing some of my own shaping in trying to follow God.

By the way, if Wade Hatfield stumbles upon this - I'll need your email to send you the "gutter bitch" material from last week's message.

Well, better change gears! Time to become lawyer-boy again.

Jonesbarrister