And the times they are a-changing

There came a time when it had been so long since I last blogged that it became easy to ignore this blog. But as a friend kindly pointed out, the point of having a blog is to blog about things. So after nearly 5 months of silence, I'm back!

So what has happened since my last blog? I have continued to get to know a bunch of wonderful people at Regent college; I recovered from appendectomy; I completed one third of the modules I need in order to 'convocate' from Regent college; I contracted a bacterial infection in my gut (the side effects of which have still to clear up) resulting in me canceling a trip to New Zealand; I have seen grizzly bears, bald eagles, seals, sea lions and otters; I visited Vancouver Island and failed to spot any whales on a whale watching tour. And I have discovered that I really like semicolons, not just for blogging but in assignments too.

What have I studied? Across some 210 hours of lectures: An overview of both the Old and New Testaments, pastoral care, an overview of the relationship between Christianity and culture since the reformation, Ethics of the Christian life, evangelism in the post-Christian world, and Christian ethics in relation to Hollywood movie industry.

How much have I read? Somewhere in the region of 7000 pages of theological material, which is probably more than the previous 3 years put together. A sobering thought.

How much have I written? Somewhere around 45000 words. And to think that once upon a time the idea of writing a thesis was intimidating!

It is impossible to explain the impact that all this has had on me, but I'll try anyway:

• My studies have reshaped my understanding of how discipleship is a whole-of-life life-long process that is community based and that the gospel has truly universal implications and intentions; though I thought I grasped this before being here has helped me see (in a good way) that the more I learn and grow the more there is yet to understand, and that we need each other to keep us on the right track. I hope I am learning to be more gracious towards both myself and others.
  
• My health struggles have challenged me to grapple with how my confidence is in God and His grace rather than my ability to control my situation.
• Being part of the Regent community has helped me realize anew how wonderful it is to be part of the body of Christ and learn some new things about what it means to be a part of that body.
  

What is to come? I am studying four more courses: introduction to biblical languages, an overview of the relationship between Christianity and culture pre the reformation, introduction to Christian counseling and, perhaps most daunting of all an advanced class on the missional church (where each person in the class has to give a 20 minute lecture presenting a 6500 word paper on an issue of their choice in relation to the missional church). So in total that's another 5000 or so pages of reading and 28000 words of writing.

I am working part time at the college assisting with the orientation of students who come to Regent across the 09/10 academic year. It's a huge privilege to be able welcome in the new students and help the get their heads around Regent and life in Vancouver. Because it is a paid job it will cover a chunk of my tuition fees, which is handy.

Oh and what has changed? The layout of this blog and I have a beard.

Insiginificant appendage

This is just a quick post to bring the non-facebook people up to date with my world. March 9th was an interesting day. In the space of a few hours I went from having abdominal pain, to appendicitis, to some unknown abdominal issue, concluding with having my appendix removed at around 1am Tuesday morning by keyhole surgery. As a side note I am the only male I know of who has had a ultrasound of his abdomen; And I must say it was a weird (and painful because the had to poke my appendix quite hard) experience. The gel stuff is particularly weird! But I am glad that it got to the bottom of what was wrong with me.

The surgery went very smoothly and I was released from hospital on Tuesday afternoon. The Vancouver wing of the Rees-Thomas family very kindly took me into their home for a few days whilst I recovered. This being my first real surgical experience I had no idea what to expect and I probably won't know what to expect if I have surgery again! It has been such a bizarre mixture of ups and downs and I am not yet fully recovered. I'll spare you the intimate details and will settle for five words to sum up the recovery process thus far: gas, discomfort, frustration, gratitude, sleep.

Everything seems to be functioning normally and I slept through the night for the first time last night and am now back in my apartment with my room mate. I am under orders to take it easy for another week, which I will do my best to do as I try and catch up on all the study I have not done!

I want to say a big thank you for all the visits, texts, emails, facebookings and care that I have received over the last week. They have kept this time from being a miserable experience in what is a relatively new country and turned it into a time were I have been amazingly blessed (if a bit physically sore). Can't really express what it has been like or how grateful I am to you, but again, thank you.

Quick Update

I'm here, I have a place to live and have started classes! It's barely been ten days but feels like a month. But I am tremendously thankful to God for his sovereignty and grace, and to those of you who have been praying for me and sent messages ahead to people who you knew here to ask them to say hi to me. Thank you! As I walked home this evening my feet were barely on the ground (to quote Coldplay)!

I am sharing a basement flat 15 minutes from campus with another new Regent student who also had no where to live. We had never met before but he is a New Zealander and knows some of the same people as me and went to school with one of my flat mates in Wellington. Small world huh!

Orientation week was very helpful if a little overwhelming. There are roughly 35 or so us new students. The first week of classes has gone well but it is a very different experience to undergraduate study. I have some twenty or so hours of reading to do per week! I barely did 20 hours a month when studying computer science! Some of what we are studying is more difficult to relate to than I expected (at some point in the future ask me what Copernicus really thought about the cosmos, but also ask me about the Pastoral care class which was a wonderful combination of doctrinal study, class interaction and a sermon on Romans) but it is all really good stuff and I have had my character and convictions stretched already.

The Regent community is brilliant! It has been great getting to know such a great bunch of people over coffee, lunch and tutorials (although my memory for names is truly shocking!).

This evening I went to find out about small groups at the church I am planning to attend and not only did I meet some more great Regent people but to my surprise I met one of the Inter-Varsity Canada staff (the equivalent of TSCF or UCCF here in Canada). I've have been invited to spend some time with the Inter-varsity groups while I am here which is great! I had planned to make contact with them some time over the next few weeks but to bump into them at a new-comers meeting at a church blew me away!

Yay!

P.s. I still love and miss all you people in NZ and the UK!

Twas the night before Christmas (depending where abouts on the globe you are)

So I have left New Zealand for the time being (hence the change of blog title). I am currently in the UK before heading on to Canada to study at Regent college.

My last few weeks in Wellington were a mixture of chaos, fun/fellowship and sadness:

Chaos: It is fair to say that my packing up and moving on took a little longer than I hoped and I didn't quite finish it. I am very thankful for all the folk who helped me move stuff, who have agreed to store stuff for me and for my flatmates who cleared up the mess I left behind and moved the stuff I left behind. Without all these peoples help I would never have come close to getting it all sorted out. So thank you ever so much. The actual departure didn't go very smoothly either. I got to the airport to be told that there was no flexibility over excess baggage and I would be charged $100 per kilo over my allowance! So I ended up repacking my cases on the floor of the airport and leaving a whole case behind!

Fun/Fellowship: It was great to be able to spend time with friends over dinner, BBQs, coffee and conversation. It was particularly nice to have a group of friends came to send me off and keep me company at the airport. It was so encouraging to read through cards that various folk sent me as I prepared to leave and I am very grateful for all their kinds thoughts and words.

Sadness: Saying goodbye is hard. I am sad to have left behind friends and the place that has become my new home. We've done a lot of work in the book of Acts this year and I have been struck by the relational nature of mission. They are nearly always traveling and working together in twos and threes or more. I will miss the merry band of missionaries/friends that I have left in New Zealand and really look forward to being back with them all in 2010.

Now I am enjoying catching up with friends and family back here in England. It was great to be able to surprise my family and arrive back three days earlier than expected, their faces when I turned up were priceless. I do have to confess to getting more than a little frustrated with the glorified car park that is the M25 motorway. Having flown half way round the world in 24 hours it was very frustrating to barely move one mile in one hour!

For the next few weeks it's family time and I am really looking forward to it. It has already been a joy to catch up with a fair few people.

On a down note I have run into some visa issues over transiting through the USA on the way to Canada. The instructions on the website in NZ were mis-leading (in fairness who would fly through the USA to Canada from New Zealand? so I guess there is less reason to cover it in detail). I got to the Uk and was submitting my application for a visa to transit through USA only to find that I did not qualify if my destination was Canada and I was not a permanent resident of Canada. For some completely unknown reason the US immigration service want to interview you if you are transiting through the USA and staying in Canada for more than ninety days, regardless if how long you will be in the USA for. If I had my student visa it would not be a problem but all I have is a letter of invitation which will grant me a visa when enter the country. If the US embassy are not convinced that I will get a student visa when I enter Canada then I will have to forfeit my existing flights (a loss of 500 pounds) and rebook a direct flight to Vancouver (at the cost of 1000 pounds) or risk being sent back to the UK by US immigration and having a permanent mark on my immigration record. Apparently it is down to the discretion of the immigration officer as to whether they say yes or no; so prayers would be appreciated!

The only other thing to say is happy Christmas! Take a look at this video which I think gives a helpful reminder as to the true story. May this Christmas be a blessed time for you and yours.

From staffworker to student...

So last week was TSCF student leaders conference. We met together at Palm Grove Christian holiday camp for a week in the book of Acts, for fellowship and fun. It was tiring but has reminded me how much I love what we do and what a privilege it is to be involved in. Some particular highlights were a student making a decision to follow Christ (I love that this can happen at a Christian leadership conference!), students getting stuck into the book Acts, and getting their heads around what it means to be multicultural mission teams on campus. Nigel Pollock's talks will be available here soon (I promise that it will be done within the next to weeks!).

The week was particularly significant for me as it marks my last formal student involvement in New Zealand till 2010. In three weeks I will be heading off to study at Regent college in Vancouver for the whole of 2009. You can read more about it here. I am really excited (and a little daunted too, having looked at how much I have to study next year!) to be able to study full time at a bible college but yet at the same time I am sad to be leaving New Zealand and life here. Happily I will be returning in 2010 as a full time regional staffworker!

There is much still to be done before I leave in terms of handing over my office roles to other people and saying lots of goodbyes (be it more see you in a year and bit rather than goodbye) so I'd appreciate your prayers that it would all go smoothly. Thanks!

The Shack

When I was in Regent in June there was a lot of talk about a new book called The Shack. Much has been spoken, written and said about this book but I thought I'd add my two pence worth anyway.

To be honest I fail to understand why people are getting so hot and bothered about it. It is a story, a real page turning story; it is not a theological text book. People are only going to get in trouble if they start reading the bible in light of the shack rather than reading the shack in light of the bible. I wonder if C.S. Lewis got as much flack over the Chronicles of Narnia as William Young has over the shack? Because in my head the two books are comparable in that the authors are using fiction to help us understand something of God's character as revealed in the Bible and history.

I can understand why the some people are uncomfortable with the way the author represents God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, but in my thinking the author has picked representations that will rattle his readers the most. And that should lead us to ask why are we so rattled? I do not think that the author is not saying that God is black female who likes to cook, rather that if God so chose He could chose to communicate to us in any form that He sees fit. Why does that bother people so much?

What made me uncomfortable was what the author chose not to say about God. There is no mention of Jesus returning to judge the world. Now I recognise that in my own argument that the shack is not a theological text book so the author is never going to cover everything. But when talking about sin and its results it is Christ return that we should look to for setting the record straight once and for all. His return will bring about the renewal of creation, the end of all hurt pain, and that God will wipe every tear from every eye. This is our certain hope. But it will also bring eternal punishment for those whose sins are not covered by Christ death on the cross.

That being said there is much in the book that I found very helpful. Here are some of my favourite quotes:

"You try and make sense of the world in which you live based upon very small and incomplete picture of reality... you see pain and death as ultimate evils and God as the ultimate betrayer (because He lets it happen)... you don't think that I (God) am good" p126

"Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exists, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colours" p185

"Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe and powerful. Through your little fortress of lies you try to run your life and manipulate others. But the fortress needs walls, so you build some. These are the justifications for your lies." p187

"Do you realise that your imagination of the future, which is almost always dictated by fear of some kind, rarely, if ever, pictures me (Jesus) there with you?" p142

It is the last quote that challenges me most. As a I prepare for another move I sometimes feel fearful. And when I do it is nearly always because I have made no room for God in my imaginings of the future.

So pick up a copy of the shack, it is well worth a look.

South Bound Snow Boarding

So I went down to Christchurch to visit my friends (and colleague) Tim and Lizzy. Tim and I had planned to go snowboarding/skiing but on the first day it was too windy for my plane to land (and to windy for the slopes to be open too) so my flight was delayed for a few hours so we went sight seeing instead.

The second day was a bit more successful and we managed to get in about 4 hours before the weather got too windy again and the slopes were shut. Spring conditions are way more complex than winter as parts of the slope were just ice which is much more scary to ride on but hey, you live and learn. I also realised that chair lifts and wind are not a good combination. We were sat swinging in the air on a chair lift because it was too windy for the chairs to me moving. Swinging in the air about 20 feet above ice is not my idea of fun but it was an unexpected opportunity to try and get over my dumb fear of heights (sorry Tim!).

On the way back we stopped for some pictures with the surrounding scenery:


Tim and Lizzy have also moved house which has enabled Tim to expand his gardening skills (sorry to hear about the tomato plants Tim).