What happens next...

I’m wrapping up this amazing six months in Ireland, saying good-bye to new friends and colleagues, and thinking about what happens next… Well actually, what happens immediately next is that I go to India to teach for the month of September (more below), but what I really want to talk to you about is what happens next after that.

I get back to the US just in time for our EPC Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic meeting in Charlotte, NC, Sept 29-30. Then home in Virginia on October 1, to stay until March 2018 when, God willing, I'll return to Ireland for the next steps in my role as international theological education specialist with Serge, in partnership with EPC World Outreach. Three big goals for my time in the US this fall and winter:

1. Become a grandmother for the first time! This little grandbaby is due January 15. You can imagine how excited I am about welcoming the next generation to the family!
2. Tell you what I’ve seen of the struggling churches in post-Catholic, spiritually-seeking Ireland as well as the needs I’m learning about for training emerging leaders alongside Serge’s church-planting efforts in other parts of the world.
3. Discover who God has tapped to be my ‘senders’ for the next phase of ministry. Because that’s how missionaries do it. You send, we go. “And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” (Rom 10:15). I’m currently at 70% of the ongoing funding that it will take to send me back overseas to walk through the doors to ministry that God's been opening. (No, the EPC doesn’t fund our missionaries from a central budget. Darn.) 

Here are some of the ministry invitations and opportunities I have for 2018:

• Mentor and supervise graduate students (young Irish pastors and other church leaders struggling in isolated ministry contexts) at Irish Bible Institute in Dublin
• Teach ‘how to interpret the Bible’ at Hope Africa University in Bujumbura, Burundi, alongside Serge’s medical work there
• Help teach the Presbyterian Church of Ireland’s official training course for lay preachers
• Teach ‘how to interpret the Bible’ at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS) in Bangalore, India
• Teach and mentor Irish and American college students in ‘Encounter’, Serge’s intensive summer spiritual formation and mission program
• Be part of a new initiative at Fuller Theological Seminary supporting African Christian scholars
• Participate in the triennial consultation of the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE, related to the World Evangelical Alliance) 

There’s more, but those are the ‘big rocks’ I know about so far. I’m eager – salivating, really – to getting going with this work. But I can’t go until I’m sent.

Will you help send me back to Ireland and international theological education – God willing, by March 2018? Here are some ways you can help:

1. If God prompts you, you or your church can become a financial partner. Click here to give through Serge or here to give through EPC World Outreach. One-time gifts are great, and monthly or yearly pledges are even better because that’s how Serge and EPC WO know there’s enough ongoing support to let me go.
2. If you’re willing, you – and maybe also your church – can commit to pray regularly for me, particularly from October 2017 through February 2018, that God will provide everything it takes to send me back overseas by March 2018.
3. You can invite me to your church or a Bible study or home group this October, November or December to talk about what God’s doing in Ireland and in theological education in other parts of the globe, so that we can help people connect with God’s work worldwide. Then they can pray for me. Really, it makes a difference.
4. You can introduce me to other people you think might be interested in this ministry. Right now I’m filling in my mid-Atlantic travel schedule for October through December. I’d love to come visit you and your people!

So that’s what happens starting in October. But first I’m turning my thoughts toward India and my annual teaching trip to the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS). This coming week I’ll be at two academic biblical studies conferences in Dublin, making connections in my theological education specialist role. Then Sunday 3 September I fly to Bangalore. As much as I'll miss Ireland, I can’t wait to rejoin the lively community at SAIACS, with thoughtful colleagues who live out SAIACS’s strategic role among South Asia's tiny Christian minority, and with eager and able students from India, Nepal, and beyond who are reaching out to their Hindu and Muslim neighbors.

Next month, the update from India…

So proud of our Irish and American Encounter students for their open hearts, hard work in ministry, 

and acts of service all summer.

 

At the end of July we went to an actual castle (think Downton-Abbey-meets-Hogwarts, but on the inside more well-worn-income-challenged-Christian-camp) for the final debrief with our American students...

 

  

 

 

 

 

...and one last group hug before they flew home. 

 

FAMILY NEWS: Lots going on! Caroline & Will moved to Rwanda this month to teach at Kigali International Community School (KICS) for the next three years.

 

Linnea & William are settling into their new life in Richmond, VA, and looking forward to welcoming baby Walker in January. My cup runneth over!