Off We Go Again

It has been a busy week. Studies for the second semester started in earnest on Tuesday. A large chunk of Monday was spent planning my time up to the end of May. (Rolls-Royce, my employer, taught me to have a 3 month horizon for planning.) The modules I have are

• The Christian Ministry (looking at preaching and various knotty pastoral issues)
• Redemption
• Greek Texts
• Hebrew Grammar
• Placement (Church plant project in nearby Ashbourne)

Planning was necessary since it all went badly wrong last semester. I had planned but then ignored the plan. This is a problem I am finding with working at home out of a secular office environment – it’s too easy to take half-hour ‘holidays’ to do something else and make excuses for not achieving. I’m also aware that the impact of uncontrolled study can have on family life, so it needs to be kept in check.

So Tuesday was a module on The Christian Ministry and some revision of Hebrew. Wednesday: More Hebrew, a module on Redemption.

Thursday was interesting, since we began the placement. This should run to the end of April, 2 days per week. We are a team of five men. We are starting from scratch. We spent the morning batting around ideas, defining our goal. In the afternoon we went into Ashbourne just to get a feel for the town, find out about existing churches. Thursday is market day in the town centre so it was reasonably busy.

The 6 churches looked pretty moribund. Judging by noticeboards, bookstalls, etc. We plan to visit them on the next two Sundays to find out for real. Meanwhile we will look at how we can bring the gospel to a needy town.

Today I need to prepare for Sunday’s sermon at Woodlands.