Evening with good friends
Out with friends in york
3rd in the Premiership
Looks good doesn’t it? We hold a Champions League position at the moment as well 
What’s Your Theological Worldview?
Some friends from my course emailed me the link to this quiz. Some of the questions are a bit leading but it is interesting to do. Have a go….
http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=7095N
My result was :
| You scored as a Neo orthodox |
| You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God’s most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. |
I’ve just taken the test again and got this result:
| You scored as a Emergent/Postmodern | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don’t think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Maybe the fact that I fluctuate is evidence of being emergent……… ie haven’t a clue what I think! |
Ice cream
We are just on our way back from hull after seeing mum and dad. We stopped off at beverley westwood for a picnic and then had burgess’ ice cream (which was always a special treat when i was a kid). Joel is away on a residential this week and is having a great time. It is strange having 2 kids again… Pip and i went to see mamma mia! yesterday. It was great fun.
New Photos from July 08
I’ve uploaded a few new photos. Some are of family and some are from a recent trip I had with my friend Carl. We had a go at taking some arty photos - needless to say his are the best!
I’ve finished my Essay!
I have emerged from the caravan clutching the final draft! Don’t tell anyone, but I actually enjoyed writing it in the end
The way things are…..
I am currently sitting in our caravan on our driveway. It is my ‘hideaway’ where I go to avoid children so I can do some work. I broke up for the summer last week (I know I know….part timer, ****** private system etc etc…….just deal with it ok?) I haven’t let myself get into holiday mode yet as I still have a 4000 word essay to write and I know I will never get it done if I start hanging around in my pyjamas and watching daytime tv. Apart from this essay, I have now completed the first year of my 3 year theology degree. It has gone very quickly and I’m sure that the other 2 will be just the same. It has also made me think a lot more about what I will be doing at the end of the 3 years. Ideally I will do vicaring stuff for 2-3 days a week and continue to teach part time for the rest of the week. I’m not sure what the vicaring stuff will look like though. There are a few opportunities but it is difficult to know what to persue. What I do know is that I need to hold on to the reason I originally felt it was right to put forward for ordination which was to be involved in pioneering new forms of church, the same message but expressed differently to the standard Anglican way. I always remember back to ‘Village 87′ which was a Rob Frost mission that I went on back in 1987 (surprisingly). I remember sitting at the kitchen table listening to the rest of the team talk about their faith and about God and realising that I had never experienced what they had and also that I loved the fact that this conversation could happen in such an informal way… around a kitchen table. It may seem obvious now but it was quite revelation to me at the time having been brought up in ‘regular’ church. Since then I have always wanted to help create environments like this; informal places where people can relax and hear about God without all the unnecessary stuff that we often tend to add in churches. I need to say at this point that this doesn’t mean I am against tradition and ritual and all that stuff, I just think we need to look again at the reasons why we do it and ask whether it helps people to hear about God or hinders them from hearing about him. In the church that I help to lead at the moment, G2, we try to create an informal environment in which people can relax and engage at the level they are comfortable with. Of course we don’t always hit the mark, but the intention is there and we have seen it grow over the few years it has been going. Its exciting to be a part of because it is helping people to engage with the message of God which they so often never get to in our churches because all the politics and ‘churchy’ stuff gets to them first. Anyway, I realise that I always need to come back to this original desire to help enable church that is like this.
I went to my friend Christian’s ordination yesterday at York Minster.
It was a long service but I found it really moving, probably because I am thinking a lot at the moment about all this sort of stuff. It was great to see Christian ‘get done’ - he even made wearing robes look good, which is saying something
Anyway, I can’t put off starting my essay any longer -I still have loads to blog about but it will have to come later……
Long Overdue Post!
It’s 7am on Saturday morning, the kids are watching tv or playing on the Wii and here I am finally writing a post! I seem to go through stages of writing regularly and then having long periods of absence. To be fair to me I have been very busy, but the probable truth is just that I couldn’t be bothered……….
This week I head off to Paris with our Year 6. Its a trip I have been running for 4 years now to a Chateau run by a group called PGL. It is a great place to visit for both the kids and the staff as it is so well run and it actually feels like a bit of a break when we are there. Obviously we don’t tell the rest of the staff that, they think we are working hard :) The only down side is that it means leaving Pippa and the kids for a week which on top of all my vicar training weekends is a bit much. Still, when I get back I’ve only got 1 week left untl my summer holidays…the perks of a private school job!
We had a great time last week for our half term. We started it off by going to my parents’ static caravan in Scarborough for a weekend with our friends Luke & Hannah. The kids stayed in York with some other friends, Kate & Simon, who are real saints considering that they already have 3 kids of their own and they looked after ours at the same time. They hired a bouncy castle for the weekend which was a stroke of genius…. Of course that first weekend was the one when Hull City became a Premiership club. I watched the game with Luke in a hotel in Scarborough…..good times! On the Sunday we went for a walk on the beach and threw a frisby around. I got so involved in chasing after the frisby that I totally missied the fact that there was a great ‘lake’ left on the beach in front of me and ended up crashing into it, submerged, fully clothed, successfully ruining my mobile phone, my watch and the contents of my wallet. Still you had to laugh……. well Luke did anyway. Fortunately it was a nice day and I dried off after a couple of hours.
We then spent another few days at the carcvan with the kids and Mum & Dad which was noiser but still great fun. Dan came over as well and we had a good day explring the Sea Life Centre together.
Towards the end of the week we pulled our tourer caravan to a site near Harrogate to camp with some other friends. It was only our second time camping and it was a lot beter experience that our first. Being with other people and having nicer weather makes a big difference.
Well, I’ve got to get up now - I have a school open day today - one of the down sides of working in a private school 