Missionary Blogs

One of the great privileges of my upbringing was that it took place in an open Christian home.  We always had visiting preachers and missionaries staying.  I can remember thinking it was so amazing that the people who were staying for the weekend lived and worked in countries I had read about in National Geographic or had seen on maps.

In our day and age, you can keep up with many missionaries via their blogs.  These are the source of regular inspiration for me.  They are also a great way to keep informed in terms of prayerful support.

Les Davey de France: Alan Davey is a friend and a great guy.  He works as a missionary in Bordeaux, France.  His blog is always interesting and full of theological, cultural, linguistic and missiological insights.

Missionary Gas: David and Olwyn Ford are Free Church missionaries in Colombia.  Again, their blog is great.

Under the Acacias: Keith Smith is a missionary in Burkina Faso.  He works with the Fulani people.  He keeps his blog regularly updated with interesting stuff.

Manuel Reaño: Manuel is also a Free Church missionary in Colombia.  Interesting South American perspective. 

If I was Bill Gates…

If I had access to the same resources as Bill Gates, I would almost certainly do what he has done here: hire Napoleon Dynamite himself to do a spoof remake with me.

If, like me, you think Napoleon Dynamite is one of the funniest, most subtly brilliant films of all time, you will absolutely love this.  Once I get some substantial free time, I think I’ll write a blog post about the actual film Napoleon Dynamite.  It is fascinating on all kinds of levels.

 

Piper: “Don’t waste your pulpit”

Also if there was an award for the best thing on a blog anywhere, it would go to Iain MacKinnon for coming up with this picture of Gordon Matheson, the Jedi Rev.  S math a rinn thu, Iain!  Bravo.

Back from the Netherlands

I am now back from the Netherlands, where I have been spending time doing some Bavinck-related research at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.  Getting direct access to Bavinck’s handwritten material was amazing.  I even came across notes he had written for an address at a Sunday School party!

It was incredibly useful to spend time with Dutch Bavinck scholars and ask them lots of questions.  Having the opportunity to actually speak Dutch was great fun too.

The picture above is of a statue in Den Haag.  If I remember correctly, the base of the statue had some kind of Dutch rhyme written on it.

Dutch cheese (kaas) is very good. 

Everyone cycles everywhere.  With hindsight, I should have taken my rollerblades - this country is flat!

The excellent Mauritshaus art gallery and the Dutch Prime Minister’s office in Den Haag.

Even the trains are double Dutch in a double decker style.

Romains selon Stuart Olyott (en francais)

Sur le website ici, il y a maintenant beaucoup de sermons par Stuart Olyott (prechant en francais) sur Romains.  Ils sont vraiment, vraiment excellent!

Devant 1982 a 1991, Stuart a ete un pasteur reformee en Suisse.  Il parle francais tres couramment.

Clique ici pour les sermons sur Romains.

(Desole pour les accents!)

Scottishness and success…

The current debacle surrounding Rangers and the Scottish Premier League highlights a typically Scottish thing.  For non-football fans, Rangers have had a remarkable run in the UEFA Cup, beating some top European sides, and have reached the UEFA Cup Final where they will face the Russian team Zenit St. Petersburg.

Due to various games being called off earlier in the season (due the exceptionally wet winter constantly waterlogging Fir Park, where both Motherwell and Gretna play their home games), the SPL have rescheduled Rangers’ games so they had a game (against Hibs) on Sunday, then against Motherwell tonight, then against Dundee United on Saturday, then the UEFA Cup Final next Wednesday.  After that, they have to play four games (including a domestic cup final) within a week.

Rangers have appealed to the SPL for the season to be extended, in order for their congested schedule to be less tightly packed.  The SPL said no.  Then Rangers asked for the game this weekend to be moved back, specifically to give them a greater chance at winning the UEFA Cup (which would be a massive boon for Scottish football generally).  Again, the SPL said no.

Zenit St. Petersburg, on the other hand, received quite different treatment from the Russian League.  The four games they had scheduled before the UEFA Cup Final have all been postponed until after the final, in order to give their team the maximum time to prepare, and to ensure no key players are injured before the Final.

Why did the Russian League act so differently to the SPL?  I’m sure there are various reasons, but the one I want to write about is this: in Scotland, we have a love/hate relationship with other people’s success. 

Generally speaking, we have little expectation that Scots will succeed.  For example, last year this story was on the BBC.  A girl from Glasgow who did well in her exams received a letter from Harvard.  Harvard were not offering her a place but rather they were encouraging her to apply.  This girl has obviously done very well and I congratulate her for that.  I hope she continues to work hard and realises her dream of studying at Harvard.  However, it was so profoundly depressing regarding the intellectual state of Scotland that when one Scottish schoolgirl getting gets a letter from (and not a place at) Harvard, it makes the national news.  How little expectation do we have that ordinary Scots will succeed?  If it is national news that one of our schoolgirls get a letter from an Ivy League University, does that make  us the Thick Man of Europe? 

Anyway, we have little expectation that our people will succeed.  However, when a bright, talented Scot or Scottish team is making great progress towards success, we pat him on the back and tell him how well he is doing.  However, should he actually attain that success and stand out in any way, we think, “Who does he think he is?  He is getting to big for their boots.”  With great relish, we tear him right back down to the ground - his crime; achieving that for which we previously praised him.

Within the Scottish psyche Rangers have committed the unforgivable sin - they have become internationally successful.  Sadly, you also see this attitude in the Scottish church.

Woe betide the Scot who succeeds at anything!

Organic preaching?

Just now I am writing about Bavinck’s theology of organic inspiration.  Richard Gaffin’s excellent God’s Word in Servant-Form: Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck on the Doctrine of Scripture has been a brilliant help.

Gaffin summarises Bavinck as follows:

Bavinck is opposed to an isolated, atomistic approach to the words of Scripture that would find in each a divine message detached from the context and the focus of Scripture in all its parts on Christ.  He does not, however, reject plenary, verbal inspiration as such.  Far from it, he in fact intends to say that the Spirit’s inscripturating activity, with the strictest authorial effect, extends to the last detail of the text.

Bavinck has a great theological description of Christ as the ‘organic centre’ of all divine revelation: all revelation before Christ points towards him, all revelation after Christ radiates forward from him.

My question is this: if you believe in organic inspiration (a la Bavinck), what does that look like in your preaching?  I suspect it probably means you won’t preach sermons that, while they may be exegetically based, take an ‘atomistic, detached’ approach to the text.  By that, I mean that if your text does not explicitly mention Jesus, neither will you.

The thing is, when I first started studying homiletics, exegesis etc, I found a lot of people who said I had two choices: (1) always preach the text, which means not always preaching Christ; and (2) always preach Christ, but you are not always being exegetically responsible.  I tended to choose the latter, as preaching Christ is always better than preaching anything else.

The beautiful thing I have found with organic inspiration is that it gives you a theologically robust Biblical model whereby you can preach sermons that are simultaneously exegetical/expository and utterly Christ-centred.

It is a real shame that (as far as I am aware) only one of Bavinck’s sermons was ever published.  If I was a betting man, I would bet that his preaching was amazingly expository and richly Christ-centred.  His written theological works certainly are full of Jesus.

Sunday night’s sermon

Follow the link below to hear Sunday night’s sermon (which I preached in Dowanvale Free Church in Glasgow).

Matthew 12.38-45: A Heated Debate

Twin Lakes Fellowship

The talks from the recent Twin Lakes Fellowship are online courtesy of Mining Grace.  I’ve just listened to David Meredith’s talk on evangelism - superb.  Who else comes out with stuff like, “…and that’s why John’s Gospel is like…Shrek”?

I look forward to hearing Carl Trueman on the Heidelberg Catechism as well.

NB. I’ve just listened to Carl on the Heidelberg Catechism.  Stunning.

Looking through Luke

Over the course of 2008 in St Columba’s, Derek and I are preaching through the life and message of Jesus by preaching through the entire Gospel of Luke.  See the congregational website for further details and audio sermons.