James Henley

The Sacrificial God - Guest blog on Sunday Papers

http://www.sundaypapers.org.uk/?p=428

Richard Passmore, one of my CYM tutors, asked me to do put some thoughts down as a guest post on his blog, Sunday Papers, after an interesting discussion about universalism over lunch.

It's quite edgy stuff, but I'm convinced that they are important questions that we need to be asking as the people of God ;-)

The post is here. You can join the discussion with your own thoughts by adding a comment on Richard's site.

5 hours later

Sat trying to get my brain back into neutral after today's day of lectures. Not that the five hours of biblical studies weren't good. They were amazing. Just really need to detune my brainwaves so I can relax and get to sleep okay (didn't sleep too well last night - my brain was moving too fast).

Maybe writing about my day will help debrief my mind.

Continued looking at biblical interpretation today - mainly criticism: historical criticism, form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, textual criticism and hermeneutics. It all sounds pretty complicated but when you actually understand what the different forms of criticism mean you realise it's just a load of posh words for some pretty simple processes.

Then Chris, our theology lecturer, gave us an outline of the bible in about forty minutes to an hour - outlining the main themes, background and giving us a basic biblical timeline to build on with the rest of the module which is basically a detailed look through biblical history - grouped by historical significance rather than book-by-book, which makes it easier to get to grips with the culture and background of the bible.

Then in the hour or so we made it through pre-history, the patriarchs, the exodus and the judges in more detail, drawing out important themes and tracing the story of the people of God. Looking forward to starting with Saul, David and then Soloman next time.

Phew, feeling less hyper-brainilated now... obviously the writing thing worked.

Looking forward to the same again tomorrow but with Youth Work Principles.

Oh, said I didn't sleep very well last night - well I'm pretty much there with the whole Luke 9 thing from Saturday, but left my notebook at the college so will have a go at organising my notes for the blog sometime when I get back from Bristol. That passage really caught my inspiration...

We hang our lives upon Your mercy

Oh, just wanted to quickly link to the "liturgy" I used last Thursday lunchtime for the CYM guys in Bristol. It was a really good time of just existing together in God's presence, made even more special I thought by the feeling of community as everyone contributed and prayed and brought something… I'm sure a wise man once said something about that in some book or letter or something… ;-)

So anyway here it is: http://www.btinternet.com/~smallritual/section8/mercy.html - the words are by a guy called Steve Collins and they're just amazing. I split it into three sections, using the first two verses to start, the next couple in the middle somewhere to start a time of prayer, and then the last couple to finish.

CYM Community Week (or been there, done that, got the hoodie)

Returned yesterday from the CYM community (read induction) week at Oxford Brookes, with my brand new patented CYM hoodie – which is beautiful by the way ;-).

The week was amazing – got to meet all the guys starting the course this year across the country and got to know the guys from Bristol I'm going to be studying with really well over the course of the week. Also met the face of Careforce from last year, Ceri, who's starting the course at the Oxford centre. Had our first lectures, which were mostly introductions to different parts of the course, although we had a gruelling three-and-a-half, maybe four hours of "Safeguarding" – which the new buzz word for Child Protection. Still I guess that stuff's useful to know before we start, even if it was a little hard-going.

Just put up some stuff in the new "reflect" section on the Lab site – reflecting on some of what we thought about last Sunday – check it out at thelabnewport.org and click reflect on the right-hand side.

Going to pop in at Newport Uni tomorrow to chat to some of the new students coming in, help them out with bags, and stuff with the CU and Justin (we're representing the chaplaincy I think). And then we're doing "big" worship at the Lab tomorrow night and talking some more about what we're going to be up to this Autumn.

J.

[PS – if you're from Bristol CYM: I feel so guilty about that new alarm clock sat on the side, but it just looks so good… ;-)]