10.18.08

India

Posted in ekklesia, learning, life happens, mission at 7:41 pm by len

My wife flies to Hong Kong then on to India tomorrow. This as part of a “prayer and awareness” team from a local church here. After weeks of preparation, planning, and prayer two teams from two Mennonite Brethren churches will meet in Delhi on Monday and then begin their travel and ministry. (There are more MBs in India than in all North America).
It’s been a busy last few days of pulling final pieces together. She gathered quite a few donations of various kinds including slightly outdated antibiotics and medical supplies to leave in clinics there. It also looks like her costs will be covered; a concern for us because we don’t have savings we can draw on for this kind of thing.

Meanwhile, I’ve finished a couple of busy weeks of work that I will tie up by Wednesday or so, and then it’s back to my dissertation work. I have completed chapters 1 and 2, and the third chapter will be my theological arguments. If all goes well, the application I submitted to the Research Ethics Board will be approved as is and I can move ahead with that piece.

* *
Fresh and Re:Fresh

Marg Buchanan has completed the final layout for Fresh and Re:Fresh. I completed a final edit a few weeks ago. David Fitch contributed a strong first chapter. He writes that enduring missional leaders are not ones who,

“lead their communities as a feature Bible teacher who dictates the a.’s and b’s of Biblical doctrine. Rather they are interpreters of what God is doing communally through the teaching and preaching of Scripture. They read Scripture in community and preach looking for what God is calling us to in the neighborhoods. It used to be that every church planter would be this high-towered charismatic gifted preacher [but not anymore]. This kind of leader often does not come from our (all too often) modernist seminaries. They are grown in a community who gathers to worship the Triune God so as to discern Him at work in our midst.”

Alan Roxburgh wrote the Afterword. If all goes well the book itself will go to print in a few weeks. I don’t think there have been any other projects like this for quite some time, with a focus on church planting in Canada, and this is certainly the first that examines the practices of people on the ground in this new missional location.The cover artwork is by David Wierzbicki.

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