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)

Going 'glocal'

Greetings from Richmond, Virginia! I'm here on baby watch with daughter Caroline till son-in-law Will arrives on May 21 at the end of their school term in Kigali, Rwanda, where they both teach. Caroline’s due date is June 9 but she had to fly internationally before 35 weeks. Now we’re hoping the doctor can hold off inducing delivery due to Caroline’s sometimes elevated BP before Will gets here from Rwanda!

Somebody coined the word ‘glocal’, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “reflecting or characterized by both local and global considerations.” I can’t think of a better illustration of the glocalization of world missions today – and perhaps my international theological education specialist role in particular – than Caroline and me flying from where we do ministry on two different continents to a third one (home!) for the small-but-momentous event of the birth of this one tiny baby in God’s big world. While I’m here I’m engaged in the local details of helping plan for my granddaughter’s birth, playing with my other daughter's 15-month-old (and his parents, of course...), and enjoying some face-to-face time with supporting churches and individual partners in the Richmond area. At the same time I'm immersed in the global dimensions of my regular ministry responsibilities – teaching my online course for Fuller Theological Seminary, which this term includes students in Hong Kong, Germany, and Australia as well as all over the United States; submitting final grades for the class I taught in Burundi in February; prepping for courses I’ll travel to teach in London (June), Myanmar (August), and South Asia (September); developing orientation materials for Theologians Without Borders; and just generally keeping my hand in various projects back home in Dublin and beyond. My office is wherever my laptop computer is.

Working ‘glocally’ involves two other words that have come to mean a lot to me over the last couple of years. One is hypermobility. I’ve joined that group of people who travel for work a lot. Yes, there are some exciting, Instagram-able aspects to it. And I’m not gonna lie, I loved the sunny warmth of Bujumbura in February rather than the cold dark of Dublin. But it also means continual disruption, isolation, disorientation, jetlag, and even lowered immunity to germs. Which I proved beyond all doubt in March when I came down with a nasty virus – flu?? – in the Boston airport on a Friday evening, leading to three nights in airport hotels until I stopped throwing up and could get on a plane to drag myself home to Ireland. True story. (Which is why you didn't hear from me last month. Long recovery from that one.)

To balance that hypermobility, I’ve come to depend on connection – with the friends and family God gives me who keep me grounded and in-the-moment wherever I am. Especially, I’m so grateful for the body of Christ in the various places I travel. My church and home group in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, as well as the one I attend in Bangalore, India, each year. Being able to drop into a lovely missions dinner, women’s Bible study, and weekly ‘parish group’ at Third Presbyterian in Richmond this month. Serge buddies in Ireland and in the various places I connect with Serge’s outreach, like Burundi and London. In Ephesians 2:19-20 Paul writes, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” What I’ve discovered is that Christ’s church is ‘glocal’!

I guess that makes sense, because the Bible shows us that God’s mission is ‘glocal,’ too. He’s involved at every level from healing and reconciling us to himself in our localized and personalized experiences of brokenness and sin, to transforming communities throughout the world, and ultimately restoring all creation. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away... And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new’” (Rev 21:1-5). In spite of dislocation and jet lag I’m grateful for the small but unique part that I, like each of you, get to play in God’s ‘glocal’ project. And I'm truly grateful for the many of you who pray and give to make my share in God's work possible. Thank you!

Global ministry, local life = 'glocal'!

Teaching my course in Burundi in February, 
hosting Irish church friends and Serge teammates for Easter lunch at home in Dún Laoghaire, 
being welcomed into a lovely 'parish group' at a partner church, 
and blowing bubbles with my grandson in Virginia.