The Advanced Diploma Equipping for Mission
Reading or speaking the Bible? – Scott Newling
Words are the lifeblood of relationships. When a person speaks to another, the speaker reveals something of themselves to the hearer; when the hearers listens, they come to know the speaker better. Of course, that depends in part on the truthfulness of the speaker and the attentiveness of the listener, but we get the point: words communicate and bring into relationship.
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Gifted beyond measure
At the primary school our kids attended, there was a class for gifted children. It was called the ‘opportunity class’. To get into the opportunity class, the kids had to do a test. They couldn’t study for the test; it was designed to measure raw giftedness rather than knowledge or exam technique. Well… that was the official line. In reality, everyone had worked out how to rig it: if you wanted your kid to stand a chance against the other kids, you had to pay for private tutoring. So it was not really a class for ‘gifted children’, it was a class for ‘children with some talent who also have ambitious parents’. Now the teachers at the school were fantastic; they loved teaching the children and put great effort into teaching all of their classes, gifted and otherwise. But privately, I’m pretty sure many of the teachers were a little bit jaded about the whole ‘opportunity class’ selection process.
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Paul Barnett on Queen’s Birthday Honours List
No second-class Christians (Ephesians 2:19)
I once visited a church and sat next to an alcoholic called Phil.[1] I know Phil was an alcoholic because he told me quite soon after church finished. The whole gathering had been lively and emotional, with professional music and young happy faces on the stage. After it was over, Phil struck up a conversation with me. Phil told me he’d been coming to church for years, and he had been tremendously helped by their program for alcoholics. I was really encouraged by Phil’s simple yet significant ministry towards me. He welcomed me, and he took the time to talk to me. He told me about his faith in Jesus, and he told me what Jesus had done for him through the church. But then, Phil said something that made me feel very sad. He said, “Of course, I’m not a great Christian—like those people at the front of church. They have their lives together. I’m just an alcoholic.” We kept talking for a while after that (in fact, I shared with him something similar to what I’m writing about here) and we prayed with each other. I left church that day with both joy and sadness. I was joyful because of what Jesus had done in Phil’s life. But I was sad because of how Phil felt about his own Christian status.
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