Faith and new birth

"Christian faith isn't just a conviction, a feeling and a decision. It invades life so deeply that we have to talk about dying and being born again, which is what corresponds to the death and resurrection of Christ"

Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life, p26

Posted from James's Posterous

Abi makes it onto BBC's Same Smile

My niece, Abi, has now made the big time, appearing on CBeebies Same Smile

Posted via web from James's Posterous

CMS in Africa

 We had a chat with Steve Burgess of CMS recently.  Steve helps place people in Africa and this was an opportunity for him to find out about us, what our background and experience was, and what we see ourselves wanting to do. 

He also gave us some information on what he would be thinking in terms of placements and some ideas that were currently being considered within CMS.  He has been speaking recently about a Diocese in Kenya about opportunities, so East Africa may be possible.

It helped that his background is in engineering, so I think that could be useful in understanding what the limitations and issues are when we are planning to go out for a longer period.

He was fairly open to our thoughts on working "regionally" and our concerns with going to the many countries where there is a large christian/ mission presence, and gave us some helpful suggestions and points for thought.  But there are still many questions as we proceed.

Posted via email from James's Posterous

Paying Attention

Helen tells me that I need to engage more in active listening, then I won’t come away from conversations having missed crucial bits.

At least I think that’s what she said.

The point being that, while we have been invited to the next stage, I got the details of what happens at this stage wrong.

The second stage is, apparently, another formal interview. This time there will be: a formal interview together; separate interviews; a chat with Regional Managers to talk through the opportunities; a chat with the Church Relations Team to talk through finance side of things; and a chat with the Learning Advisor who will give us an idea of what learning preparation (e.g. language training) will be needed.

If we make it through that, then we will go on the weekend, where we will get to know others who have been selected and also to understand and meet the CMS teams.

I have no idea how I missed all that, but there you go.

CMS (Part 2)

Bex, from CMS, phoned us back on Friday night to give us the update on our meeting with her last Tuesday.

She was very positive about this first step and is keen to take us on to the next stage.  So we are now aiming towards the CMS selection weekend in November, which will be much more focussed, will give us the chance to speak to some of the Regional Directors and, from there, get a feel for how we could be involved in the work of CMS.

There’s a few things we need to complete before then so we are quite happy with  aiming for this date.  It also allows us some time to re-focus on our return to Africa (or thereabouts).

Updates and updating

Just a quick update.  We had a meeting last night with CMS which was part of a process for getting to know them, and them us.

Very interesting and challenging conversation, with a number of thoughts that were raised.  Some questions triggered the need for some more careful thought and action, on our part, and one of the things that was mentioned was how we bring people on the journey of mission with us.

Anyway, we started using this blog when we were in Namibia (successfully or unsuccessfully; that remains to be seen) and it is an interesting and useful way of letting people know what we were doing (and even see some of the things we up to) and keeping people informed.

Now that we are trying again to make sense of the journey we are on and thinking about what we will be doing next (and where), I thought it might be time to resurrect the old blog and try to start the broader update process.

I make no guarantees. The posting here was sporadic and fairly random, but I will try and use it as a means of sharing some thoughts and updates in our ongoing process.

More thoughts anon.