It is always a bit sad to say goodbye to a team of consultants I have been training, sometimes for several years. It was like this today in Sydney seeing nine new team members complete their training and farewelling others I have worked with for 6 years. Thanks for the cake and parting gift. It is good to reflect on the capacity that is now in place largely due to the commitment and advocacy of the original Tamar group and many survivors of Clergy misconduct who have worked for education, awareness and new levels of care for everyone impacted these events.
Preaching Series on Revelation at Sheffield Bible Chapel
I am currently preaching two Sundays at my home church in Sheffield on an introduction to the book of Revelation. I began yesterday with an interactive quiz which I adapted from a Belief.net website, talked about some basic principles of interpreting apocalyptic literature and finished with a reflection on Chapters 4 and 5 – the song of creator and the new song of the worthy one. You might enjoy trying the quiz for yourself.
I found running the entire text of Revelation through wordle.com a fascinating exercise. The result is on slide 20. You can see clearly the book is about God, the earth, is written in metaphors (see the size of the word ‘like’), messages are delivered by angels and the book uses numbers i.e ‘seven’.
Pathway to Life Church Devonport – The Passover
Thanks to my long time friends at Pathway to Life for the invitation to speak this morning on the subject of a Christian Understanding of the Passover.
The Impress Presentation file is on a Scribd file below:
Central Region ADF Chaplains Seminar–Adelaide
The Chaplains of the ADF serve in a complex and challenging environment. Along with pastoral responsibilities for service personnel and their families, they provide counsel and support to the unit command on matters to with the ethics of engagement, relating to local civilian populations and on unit morale. It was a privilege to work with the Central Region Chaplains this week in Adelaide on pastoral transactions around moral injury and repair, leadership practices and processes for systemic health.
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Salvation Army NW Cluster – Enabling Gifts of Grace
Our March NW Cluster meeting spent some time reflecting on the nature of Spiritual Gifts and how to assist Corps members identify and use these in the church and community. We looked at the Biblical basis for gifts and discussed how these might have looked and worked in the early Christian communities Paul in particular was writing about. We then examined several of the New Testament lists of gifts and discussed whether this was a complete catalogue or a kind of sample list of the phenomena Paul was talking about. Finally we spent some time on the body life metaphor and a discussion about the place of love in relation to the gifts. A presentation and some notes are linked below.
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