Job Advert: Principal of South Wales Baptist College

As advertised in the latest edition of the Baptist Times:

South Wales Baptist College Cardiff

Seeks to appoint a Principal

Applications are invited from persons with suitable experience and academic qualifications to lead this well-established College in its work of ministerial formation, as from September 2011.

The College prepares candidates mainly from the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Baptist Union of Wales, and engages with churches in seeking to facilitate the mission of Christ in and beyond South Wales. Facility in the Welsh language would be an asset but is not a requirement.

SWBC is a constituent member of Cardiff University's School of Religious and Theological Studies.

Details of the application process and further information can be found on the College website www.swbc.org.uk

Closing date for receipt of applications: 21 June 2010. Interviews 21 July 2010.

"Persecute me - I'm after the Brownie points"

Ian Thomas has picked up this very interesting Times Online column article by Frank Skinner, entitled

'Persecute me – I’m after the Brownie points: We Christians thrive as a minority. A bit of strict us-and-them keeps up the quality'

The church that I am a part of are in the process of the consultation the association offers. On Saturday we had a day together that marked the midway point in this and we concluded together that an area in church life that we need to give serious attention to is that of Evangelism. We need to see people coming to their own faith in Jesus Christ and that is going to be largely down to the personal witness of each of us that part of our church. I was at a the Ignite Youth event last night and it was so exciting to see teenagers make a decision to follow Jesus at that event. It is always a huge joy to see anyone discover the reality of a personal relationship with Jesus, something that all of us as Christian ministers surely desire to see. Some of us made a promise at our Ordination and Induction to do the work of an evangelist. The normal form of words these days are that we promise “to lead and enable God’s people in their mission to the world, seeking God’s kingdom, proclaiming the gospel in word and deed and seeking to make Christ known in every way”. People need to know that they need to be saved! Enabling people to discover for themselves ‘life in all its fullness’ (John 10:10) is both our duty and our exciting privilege. Let’s go do it!

I got some wheels on Friday – and got stopped by the police last night! You can guess what I was thinking, ‘O don’t tell me this car’s been stolen’! It hadn’t been but clearly they had run a check on the car whilst following me and informed me that I was driving without tax and insurance! Fortunately I was able to prove my innocence to this accusation. I am aware however that if their computer was clever enough to see all the road traffic and highway code laws I had fractured over the years I wouldn’t have been able to prove complete innocence. I’ve been reading Job where, it could be said, Job does a reasonable job of defending himself against his friends but has no chance of defending himself against God. Would I get any grace from my road traffic friends? Unlikely but from God I have known huge amounts of grace and am hopeful for yet a whole lot more. So I just took a little time out to thank God for his mercies and again I realize I have more to be thankful for than I thought!

unbalanced!

I found over the last week or so that I had allowed myself to get a bit unbalanced! It’s a common thing I guess, things happen and we allow them to affect us a little more than we should. For me it was a number of things including my car dying and broadband not working. Silly isn’t but we so often allow this to happen. Quite often it’s financial, more often it’s relational. We allow ourselves to feel offended far too often. The more we dwell on the problem facing us or the hurt we have experienced the bigger these things get. Soon we have lost proportion, our ability to make decisions is affected and relationships further fractured. Jesus tells us not to worry about the stuff of life but to seek his kingdom and righteousness (Mt 6:33). I‘m sure our relationships are implicit in this but he also tells us to love even our enemies (Mt 5:44) and Paul helpfully calls us to consider others better than ourselves (Phil 2:3) and urges us to accept one another in the way that Jesus accepts us (Rom 15:7). All to helpfully enable us to keep a balanced Christ like view on things. Why not pause and check out where anxiety is running unduly high or grudges are beginning to take a hold and offer them to the Lord seeking his peace to reign in your hearts (Col 3:15). It may be a very simple thing but I encourage you to just stop and do it.

Surprise!

Time to grab your sun tan lotions and head off to the beach! You wish! Though I am one of those crazy people that will go for a boxing day swim in the sea. Don’t worry I haven’t gone completely mad, I am still aware its Christmas time. Last week I reminded you of the need to tell the story and be open to the Holy Spirit to bring a freshness into the Christmas Good News. One thing that strikes me about the whole Good News, the whole Gospel is that it is full of the unexpected. Who would have expected God’s Son to come as a poor, illegitimate refugee? Who would have expected the Messiah’s message would have been one of love? Who would have expected that he would have revealed a way into a relationship with the Father by Grace? Who would have believed his preference for the poor and marginalized, his value on women and children? Who would have expected the company he kept or would have second guessed who it would be he would most criticize?

It’s all too easy for us with the benefit of the New Testament and over 2,000 years distance to think we would have been more ready for his coming. And if the truth be known, he still catches us unawares again and again. His spirit blows where he wills and I for one would say that he continues to surprise me but I am so glad he does. Sometimes following the Lord feels like a rollercoaster, but that’s the thrill of it!

I do pray you will be surprised by him this Christmas. I don’t know what next year will bring. For some it will be an amazing year of fruitfulness, for others a year of heartache but I know he will be with you all in equal measure and whatever surprises are there for us, they will be opportunities to discover the Grace of God and the Joy of serving the Master.

In Christ I desire for you a Blessed Christmas and a Joyous New Year.

It's Christmas time, and time is running out

It’s hard for me to think about Christmas time without thinking of a Sketch I did as a teenager that seems imbedded in my mind. I played the Vicar and the particular line that has come back to haunt me is – “This year I’m going to preach a meaningful Christmas sermon, I will not have Darth Vader or Tinky Winky, La La or Po in the pulpit, nor will I ruin my sermon notes with one of those dolls that wets themselves! I will think through everything carefully beforehand, and preach on the relevance of the birth of Christ to the modern world. If only I had time!”

I have a narrator’s part in a production this year, but won’t be preaching and so I don’t even have to face the temptation of going to the file of old material after hours of trying to come up with something original. And so my thoughts are with you because I do know the agony of trying to get it just right each Christmas. Of tying to present the Christmas message in a new and relevant and fresh way.

How do you say anything new? Anything that will so impact your congregation in such a way that will stop them in their tracks and cause them to think WOW! I never thought of it like that! and will have such an effect on them that they live their lives in a whole new way as a result of hearing you.

But it’s about you or me, it’s about Jesus. The Christmas story about Jesus is just so amazing that we want people to see it that way too!

The trouble is it’s near enough impossible to say anything new. It’s all been said! How do you improve on 2,000 years of storytelling? It’s newness depends on its freshness, and it’s freshness depends on openness – an openness on our part to hear God speak.

My advice for what it’s worth – just tell the story - and invest the time you could spend in coming up with something new in prayer for that openness of spirit that will allow God’s Spirit to bring Jesus into lives in a fresh way!