Curate’s Chronicles

Today was our commissioning service here at Wycliffe Hall - which means it’s all over! Three years, countless essays, far too many hours online, exhilerating conversations, etc etc etc. Time to move on.

And we move on Wednesday, to Stone in Staffordshire. I won’t be near broadband until July, probably, so don’t expect much here. But from July I hope to be posting regularly.

Coming up (hopefully):
- A series on preaching (and why Tim Keller is great)
- Life as a curate
- The joy (and maybe some woes) of Ubuntu Linux
- Why Jesus is the only Vicar
- A 365-day walk through the Law of Moses
- Why evangelicals need to do some work on their anthropology
and, as they say, much much more!

The Ugley Vicar has a discerning post on problems within the conservative evangelical world, especially British Anglican evangelicalism. Go read it! We must be the first to repent of our shortcomings, which are many. It’s easy to imagine that the reason others don’t like us is because they hate the gospel, when in fact we’re being proud, or combative, or just plain rude.

I think one problem is that conservative evangelicalism tends to define itself by what it’s not: we’re not liberal, we’re not anglo-catholic, we’re not charismatic, and we’re not those liberals-in-disguise open evangelicals (a tongue in cheek comment, BTW!). So if we’re not all those wrong people, we must de facto be right. By definition, we are the true preservers of the gospel. So we’re not particularly good at listening to our critics.

NB I first encountered John Richardson (the Ugley Vicar) on a Cornhill ‘London Week’ which aims to give students a week’s insight into church leadership. His first comment was ‘there is no such thing as a full-time Bible teaching ministry - after all, Paul wasn’t one!’ - which seemed to worry a few but was very refreshing!

The Bachelor of Theology results are in, and I’ve got enough points to get a 2.1 overall, assuming my last essay doesn’t fail (and nothing ever fails on the BTh).

God taught me (rather painfully) in my first year not to base my identity on my exam results, so I can honestly say: thank you Lord!

As for the last essay, it was printed and bound last Friday night so simply awaits being handed in to examiners in time for the end of September. So my Wycliffe work is now finally all over!

Every month the good folks at Christian Audio have a free audio book to download. This month they are offering The Best of Jonathan Edwards’ Sermons - simply add it to your cart, then during checkout use JUN2007 as a coupon code.

“The Jonathan Edwards trilogy includes three of the most important sermons ever preached on American soil. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is maybe the most important and well-known sermon of his, but also included is A Divine and Supernatural Light describing and illuminating what Edwards describes as a supernatural light imparted by God. His farewell sermon was given in June of 1750 and is a commendation to those who are in the Lord’s service, a plea to maintain unity, avoid dissension and false doctrine, and a call to devote themselves to prayer.”