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! 

 

'Encounter'

Greetings from a YWCA in Greystones, Ireland... where I’m enjoying the quiet after watching a chattering gaggle of our students ramble off to the harbor beach a few moments ago to enjoy the rare warmth and sunshine. A blazing 78°F predicted in Greystones today, way beyond the usual. We’re all celebrating.

We’re here for ‘Encounter’. It’s the summer mission and discipleship program for Irish and American university students that Serge co-sponsors with Christian Unions Ireland, the Irish version of InterVarsity. We have 9 American and 8 Irish student interns for the summer, 4 other American young adults who serve as 2-year apprentices with Serge, a variegated crew of Serge and CUI staff, and a few other visitors mixed in.

Right now we’re in the middle of two weeks of intensive teaching and reflection on our identity in Christ, grounded in Serge’s ‘Sonship’ curriculum and a detailed study of Galatians. Then the interns and apprentices will head out in small teams to serve Irish churches for two weeks. That’s a big deal because most of our Irish students are actually from the Protestant Bible belt of Northern Ireland, which is a whole ’nother country. They’ve had very little experience of Catholic Ireland here in the Republic and this will be a significant cross-cultural challenge for many of them. We’ll come back together July 7-10 to debrief and say good-bye to our Irish participants before the American interns and apprentices go out again for two more weeks of team outreach. Then one final end-of-program debrief before the Americans go home on August 2. It’s quite an intense – and hopefully transformational – summer for these young adults.

And what’s my part? I led some of the initial cross-cultural training sessions – déjà vu all over again since in many ways this is similar to InterVarsity’s summer missions program we used to direct in Kenya back in the 1980’s. (In fact, I’m feeling practically ancient because one of the Serge staff visiting from America is the daughter of a couple who were InterVarsity staff with me on the Kenya program before she was even born. I am so old.) During this segment I’m leading one of the small groups through a manuscript study of Galatians – again shades of InterVarsity over the years – and I’ve been assigned to mentor two of the young women interns through the spiritual formation material. And mostly I’m here to learn in more depth how Serge does ministry in Ireland, because Encounter is a big piece of it.

But I confess I’m secretly relieved that I don’t have to go out with the student teams… Instead, this marks the watershed between the two parts of my six-month stay in Ireland. The first three months were focused on settling in, getting to know Ireland and Irish people, and meeting folks working in various church ministries and theological education. The second half started last Monday when I gave up my seaside apartment in Dun Laoghaire, became homeless (I don’t know, does ‘vagabond’ sound better??) and launched out on what I think is going to be a three-month whirlwind of ministry connections and building relationships for my role as theological education specialist within Serge:

• 8-24 June: Encounter training
• 30 June - 7 July: Academic biblical studies conferences, Tyndale House, Cambridge, UK
• 7-10 July: Encounter debrief
• 22-29 July: Serge Ireland ‘Prayer Summit’ – see here for more
• 29 Jul - 2 Aug: Encounter final debrief
• 6-11 Aug: Society of Biblical Literature International meeting, Berlin, Germany
• 12-21 Aug: Vacation in Germany/Prague/France (I’ll already be there and I’m homeless anyway, so I might as well enjoy it!)
• 28-30 Aug: ‘Textual Scholarship on the Bible’ conference, Dublin
• 31 Aug - 2 Sept: British New Testament Conference, Dublin

Any gaps in there are filled up with finding places to land either in retreat centers or housesitting or crashing with friends, along with teaching my summer online course for Fuller Theological Seminary on ‘The Bible, Hermeneutics and Christian Mission.’ Then Sept 3 I fly to Bangalore, India, to teach for a month at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS).

Yeah, it sounds a bit crazy even to me. I’ve found it works best if I mostly think about what I’m doing now and not too much about whatever I’m going to be doing next. But I’m very grateful for this crazy, amazing, overwhelming, significant ministry that God has allowed me to be part of – and for the many of you who make it happen through your prayer and giving. “This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord's people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God” (2 Cor 9:12). Thank you so much!

 

Vacating my Dublin apartment... So there's the bag to go to my team leaders' house until I leave for India in September, the bags to store at the church until I get back in 2018, the bag to go to the US with a colleague next week, and the bag to haul around with me for the rest of the summer. And my carry-on/computer bag.

What are the odds that I managed to get all the right things in all the right bags...?



They're here! American university students arrive in Dublin for Encounter



Encounter training in full swing... with a little relaxation at the pub next door thrown in

 

 

Love these people. My Serge 'Metro Dublin' team: Team leaders Tom & Vicki Gilliam (2nd & 3rd from left) and 2-year 'apprentices' Kristen, Jes, Katie, and Amy.