Lots more juice for the mind-grapes this weekend!
I’ve been having a great time over the last few weeks providing clergy cover for St Mark’s parish in Newtownards, the gleamingly-shiny church you can see to your left. So from one day to the next I’m changing between the red T-shirt of my Walking Tour Guide uniform and the clerical shirt of my “I’m a minister, honest!” uniform – I’m multi-tasking! (although, as Susan would quickly point out, not simultaneously – I’m not a woman.)
I’m telling you this because I’ve been using the long drives (I’m in a Micra after all) between the TQ and Newtownards for a long-overdue catch-up with some of the podcasts that have been piling up week-by-week on my phone. I’ve probably mentioned on this blog before – I think the church has been very slow to take advantage of the huge, huge resource offered by the intoxicating selection of top-drawer teaching and preaching which is available, for free, to download onto your phone/MP3 player and listen to at your leisure. In the stone-age days BT (Before T’internet), the best preaching you heard was a luck-of-the-draw matter of who was speaking at your local church, and people would church-hop at a rate of knots with the complaint that they “weren’t getting anything from the teaching”. Always a bit of a daft reason, I thought, and now utterly irrelevant, because if the sermon you might hear on a Sunday doesn’t hit home, there’s absolutely no excuse not to take responsibility for finding something richer during the week.
Just to mention a few names at random of the people I was listening to today, John Ortberg and Rob Bell podcast their sermons on an almost-weekly basis. These guys live and breathe for preaching – they are tremendously gifted communicators, and are both resourced by their (massive) churches to plunge loads of time and energy into crafting their talks to perfection. Ortberg is, in m’humble opinion, the absolute world-class expert at relating Bible passages to real-life stories and situations (and is also laugh-out-loud funny – which does mean that you look like a bit of a lunatic, driving along on your own in the car cackling like a maniac). 
Rob Bell (who got the big thumbs-up from Dock Book Group a few months ago) is superb at applying his huge wealth of knowledge about Biblical context and language in an accessible way, making the passages really come alive. After a day in their ‘company’ driving back-and-forth to Newtownards, I feel like my mind is overflowing with good stuff – stories, insights, new perspectives, truths. And they are just two examples – I’m sure many of you out there have other suggestions of podcasters worth following (feel free to post them as comments on this blog).
And to round-off a thoroughly great day, another beautiful Dock Walk this afternoon. (Because it’s important to connect with this stuff in community, not alone in your car in a little isolated bubble.) (Although again, as Dock Walkers we use brilliant resources which are available for free on t’internet – the endlessly creative and inspiring Wordlive daily Bible-reading website). The sun shone, the rain fell (simultaneously – so at least the NI weather can multi-task), and a fabulous bunch of people walked and talked and came up with all sorts of new windows on the endlessly-fascinating story of the Good Samaritan. Who is my neighbour? Who is “the other” in our day? Are we glad to receive help when it is given? What did the ‘expert’ who first heard the story do with it when Jesus had finished speaking? What do we do with it today?
We also, as you can see to your right, got to use the FIRST EVER pedestrian crossing in the TQ for the first time; there were no cars coming, but that did not deter us…)
So the end result of it all is that I’m here on a Sunday night tapping away, feeling like I’ve had a 7-course banquet of brain-food over the past day. And it’s a great feeling – our minds receive and process so much junk food that it’s good to intentionally seek out some quality meat. (or quality tofu or something if you’re a veggie – sorry Sally). So, I’ll finish the day with a challenge to all of you: have you sought out some good stuff to load into your phone, or MP3 player, or laptop – or have you got books beside the bed or CDs in the stereo which will feed your soul? The good stuff is out there. Check it out.
(And just to mention one more name: Bill Hybels and the Willow Creek material have been a huge influence on Dock World – check out this video of Bill announcing to this year’s Global Leadership Summit that Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO, has had to pull out of a planned appearance at the Summit. Now I’m not posting this to get caught up in the why’s-and-wherefore’s of the moral issues that Bill addresses here – don’t get hung up on that. Just watch this as an example of great communication and leadership. Bill takes the announcement of a very disappointing piece of bad news and, in 7 minutes, manages to turn it into a powerful, clear expression of his values and a powerfully Christian response to a difficult situation. That’s great leadership!)
