A week of delights, and it's only Wednesday...

Sunday 19th May - delighted to be at wonderful Wesley's Chapel for the Testimony service of Methodist ordinands from the London District, including Rev Imran Malik. Go Imran!!

Monday 20th May - delighted to take a completed PhD text for printing and binding - a mere 94,000 words. The viva (defence before external examiners) not until August though. Lots of time to reflect on what might have been added - or subtracted. But you have to stop sometime...

Tuesday 21st May - delighted to meet up with Hannah, Harad and Michael at the stunningly creative TBI Media and be an interview guest at their kind invitation. 

Wednesday 22nd May - delighted to spend a day prepping for Fiji at Interhealth and then Methodist Church House with Nurse Jo, Dr  Clare, Steve, Simon, Ernest, George, Dave, Samir, Syntiche and Jane: each one - separately but comfortingly united in purpose - offering words of wisdom about preparing for ministry in Fiji. Grateful to them all! (Now where did I put those notes...)

There was resurrection - really!

As my last post was in Holy Week it just goes to prove that additions to this blog won't be numerous until I start preparing properly for mission service in Fiji! That's its purpose really. But I look forward to meeting Julia Edwards from the Pacific Conference of Churches during the coming week for some briefing. Her news can be read here. Also flagging up the Methodists for World Mission Conference at the end of the month that I plan to be at for the Saturday. All details here.

For more frequent snippets while finishing off the PhD I tend to post @RevValOgden where there's a celebratory picture of my goddaughter Lydia receiving her Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award at St James's Palace last week. The reason this is 

relevant to a blog in preparation for Fiji is Lydia's enthusiastic endorsement of my appointment there. 'Well I'M visiting!!' 

All welcome.... 

Blessings!

Holy Week 2014

Sunny greetings from Spurgeon's College South London, in Holy Week 2014. I'll be blogging from time to time while continuing on a 'permission to study' year based here. The first submission of a PhD thesis on the inspiring mission and ministry of the Revd Dr Colin Morris has been done and its many words are being read by wise and learned people during this month so they can offer much needed feedback before final submission mid-May. Praise God for wise and learned people! I'm also going through the whole text minutely with a red pen, wincing and tutting, as you do. We strive for perfection but....

After final submission I'll start preparing for service as a Methodist Mission Partner again - read about World Church relationships here - but this time at Pacific Theological College  (PTC) in Suva, the capital of Fiji. My first appointment in ministry 1993-98 was with the wonderful United Church of Zambia, and I've since served in Circuit ministry at Wolverhampton and Dorking, and as tutor in global mission education at the Selly Oak Colleges, and then the Queen's Foundation in Birmingham. PTC has invited me to become Director of its Theological Education by Extension programme, so I look forward to learning much more about that and preparing as best I can.

But in the present moment, it's Holy Week with its pain, poignancy and all the anticipation of resurrection joy to come. The window shown here is from Spurgeon's College. I pass it on the staircase frequently and the College crest and motto never fail to inspire. 

Et teneo et teneor 

I both hold and am held.