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Hello from Dublin! Where I’m surviving the heat wave and drought, thank you very much. We’ve had two straight weeks of sizzling temperatures in the high 70’s and even some low 80's. According to Met Éireann, the Irish Meterological Service, “A heatwave occurs where there are 5 consecutive days or more with maximum temperature over 25 degrees Celsius [78°F].” Seriously. I am not making this up. Heat advisories are in effect, there are mandatory water restrictions, and the whole country has flocked to the seacoast to cool off. Fortunately I only need to walk about ten minutes from my apartment to the nearest little beach. The first time, I couldn’t make myself go more than hip-deep into the 57°F Irish Sea. There's a reason so few of those people in the photo above are in that water! But the second time I plunged in and discovered that it's not too horrible once you get used to it. I’m certainly enjoying the long sunny days, though. It gets dark about 10:30pm and brightens up again around 4:30am.
Besides the weather, the other big news is that we have 21 university student interns in Encounter this summer, the short-term discipleship and outreach project that’s an annual partnership between Serge Ireland and Christian Unions Ireland (the Irish equivalent of InterVarsity). We’re delighted to have more Irish interns than Americans this year, by a slim margin of 11 to 10. A number of pastors and ministry leaders throughout Ireland are Encounter alumni, so it’s exciting to imagine how the Lord might use these Irish interns in the future.
The Encounter students arrived in Dublin on June 7 for a weekend of cross-cultural orientation. We’re actually dealing with three countries here – the United States, mostly Protestant Northern Ireland (part of the UK), and the ‘post-Catholic’ Republic of Ireland (where I live) – so there are plenty of cultural boundaries for everyone in this group to cross. I was asked to do five hours of intercultural training for them the first day, bringing back a flood of memories from my long-ago years with InterVarsity’s short-term mission programs in the US and Kenya.
Then we all moved to a YWCA center in Greystones, a small harbor town about a hour south of Dublin, for two weeks of intensive discipleship training and individual spiritual mentoring deeply rooting our identities in God’s gracious adoption of us as his ‘sons’ (Gal 4:4-7). Last year I was a mentor for two of the interns, but this year I was asked to lead the daily Bible study in Galatians and give one of the discipleship talks. Those of you who know me well know that teaching the Bible is my happy place! So I thoroughly enjoyed studying Galatians each day with these eager young people. I’m so grateful to God for that opportunity – and to all of you who partner with me so that I can be here doing it.
For the following two weeks the Encounter interns were out in teams of 4-6 serving churches and local ministries across Ireland. They helped with youth groups and ‘holiday Bible clubs’ (VBS) for kids, served meals to the homeless, helped stock food pantries, and painted and cleaned. Last Friday they all came trooping back to Greystones for a weekend of debriefing, telling their stories, and joyful togetherness and worship. Then lots of tears saying goodbye to our Irish interns Monday morning as they went home to summer jobs and other responsibilities. The Americans had a few days this week of rest and renewal, then today they headed out in new teams for another two weeks of service in various locales. They’ll end with a final debrief weekend on the north coast of Ireland July 27-31, but I won’t get to join them this year because of other travel I’m doing (see below…).
In addition to Encounter I’ve been busy with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s Accredited Preachers Course I’m helping to teach. Look at the distribution of Presbyterian churches across Ireland and you’ll see why it’s so exciting that for the first time ever this course is being held in the Republic of Ireland rather than in Northern Ireland. I feel privileged to help train lay preachers for these far-flung churches in the Republic – considered the least evangelized English-speaking country in the world. And I’m mentoring another woman lay leader who wasn’t quite ready for the Accredited Preachers Course. I am simply in awe of what God is doing in Liz, and of her wide-open enthusiasm for his Word as we work through an overview of the Bible together.
I finished teaching my spring online course for Fuller Theological Seminary in June and am now part way through my summer course, on ‘Missiological Hermeneutics’. Which is just a fancy way of saying ‘reading through the whole Bible with a focus on the overarching storyline of God’s mission.’ Hopefully the students come away with a bigger and more comprehensive understanding of the mission of God to rescue and restore his fallen creation. It’s a lot to take in. But once you grasp that big story of who God is and what he’s up to, it changes everything.
And meanwhile this beautiful weather has been a gift from God for me, as I’m currently in the middle of the least pressurized four weeks I’ve had for the last two or three years. All the effort of getting connected with Serge and EPC World Outreach, developing this new Theological Education Specialist role, raising missionary support, getting ready to come to Ireland (including last year’s six-month stay), putting my house in Virginia on the market to sell, then moving to Dublin, finding and setting up a new apartment, prepping for Encounter and my Fuller courses and the PCI Accredited Preachers Course, has left me… well, tired! It’s absolutely lovely to have a few weeks where I can slow down, catch my breath, hang some pictures on the wall, go bike riding, and curl up on the sofa with a library book. It also gives me time to reflect on how grateful I am to the Lord for bringing me to this place and to this ministry, and for allowing me to be a small part of what he’s doing in Ireland and beyond. Thank you, thank you, thank you, partners and praying friends!
But about ten days from now my schedule picks up again and it will be go-go-go until the end of September. Here’s the itinerary:
- 24-30 July - EPC World Outreach ‘Family Gathering’ (Greece)
- 5-14 August - Serge All-Africa Retreat, to plan for future theological education projects (Kenya)
- 24-28 August - Fellowship of European Evangelical Theologians conference (Prague, Czech Rep)
- 1-26 September – Teach biblical hermeneutics at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS, Bangalore, India)
