London Calling

Greetings from London! As I write I’m sitting in a room with a bunch of Serge UK interns who just arrived for the summer and All Souls Langham Place apprentices who are finishing up a year of ministry training. This group of young leaders has come together for an intensive week of spiritual formation using Serge’s ‘Sonship’ material. As our workbook explains, “It’s a course about grace, love, and transformation. It’s a course about embracing the truths of the gospel so deeply that you’re released from the bondages of self-effort, self-righteousness, and self-focus, and released to the freedom of love, forgiveness and mission. It’s about gaining a greater understanding of one of the central biblical images of the Christian life – that of our adoption in Christ – and letting the reality of that adoption inform our being in a way that transforms our lives.” That’s a lot to absorb, but we’ve been working through various pieces of it over five days in large group lectures and table discussions, over lunch and during tea breaks, and in one-to-one mentoring sessions.

This morning’s speaker just made a great statement about Galatians 5:16, “Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” He said he used to read it the other way around: ‘Not gratifying the desires of the flesh means I'm living by the Spirit.’ In other words, ‘If I try really hard not to sin, the Holy Spirit will stay with me.’ Which of course doesn’t work because we never fully manage not to sin, so that approach just leads to self-created condemnation and defeat. He suggested that instead we correlate Gal 5:16 with Paul’s very similar statement in Rom 8:15-16, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” In other words it’s about turning our eyes away from ourselves and our own sinful desires to focus our attention on what the Spirit is doing in us and in the world around us. We get to 'keep in step' as God’s Spirit changes us and through us touches others. That’s the sort of thing we’re talking about this week.

Since Serge Ireland isn’t hosting our usual internship program this summer two of my teammates from Dublin and I were invited to ‘pop across’ to serve as extra hands for this Serge UK training event. My part has been to give four of the lectures, write daily devotional materials on Galatians, and mentor one of the All Souls apprentices through the week. They gave me a young woman from Kenya to mentor, a special treat for me! Each afternoon we pick a coffee shop and sit together for an hour or so over a latte (hers) and chai (mine) to talk about how the Lord is stirring her heart in response to the teaching on ‘sonship’ and grace. I love my job.

But it’s London, so yes, it’s been raining. It has rained rather steadily and at times unusually hard this week, and my umbrella drips onto my shoes as I try to fold it up and squash it under my arm whenever I get on a bus or the Tube. Fortunately, before the dreary weather settled in I had a glorious rain-free weekend revisiting a bunch of my favorite spots from years ago when we lived in Cambridge and I did my PhD studies here in London. I’ve also gotten to tick a few more things off my London bucket list – cycling in Hyde Park, a canal boat tour, Camden Town Market, Kensington Palace, a trip to the theatre, and crossing the Thames on the Millennium footbridge!

This weekend I’ll have a quick turnaround at home in Dublin before I fly to Virginia on Sunday to meet my new little granddaughter Annelise, who was born a week ago Monday. (See pics below!) Then about ten days from now I’m back to Ireland through the end of July – a blissful long stretch in one spot, during which I hope to rest a bit and catch up with some study and writing. The first week of August I’ll be in Myanmar teaching hermeneutics to MTh students at the Myanmar Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (MEGST). This is my first visit to Southeast Asia – not quite sure what this course will involve and still trying to coordinate logistics, so I definitely appreciate your prayers for that! And then to South Asia for the month of September, where I’ve been so many times before and love being with the friends there. The other big news is that our new Theologians Without Borders website is now up and running! Click here to take a look.

As always, in all of this thank you so much for your encouragement, prayer, and faithful support. So grateful to God to have you with me on the journey!

'Sonship' Week in London

Hanging out this week with a great group of Serge interns and All Souls Langham Place apprentices. Good questions, thoughtful discussions, lots of reflection and growth happening as grace grabs hold of us. 

 

 

 

And yes, I did manage to have some fun! Cycling in Hyde Park on a surprisingly sunny Sunday afternoon.

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."
(Samuel Johnson, 1777)