Well I’m back from NWA! I’m not sure it was quite the holiday I needed – didn’t get much sleep, and the 8 hour journey doesn’t help, but at least it was sunny. Anway… I suspect I shall produce some concluding thoughts in the near future post Word Alive.

Also, I’ve started looking into the process of Ordination in the Church of England, so before anything official happens I need to do some reading on Christian leadership, on Anglicanism and on some issues, particularly on Infant Baptism… so it seems my blog would be a good place to record stuff that I learn from this.

At the end of the month, we’ll be gearing up for Bible by the Beach – I’ll be blogging all about what goes on and probably posting some videos about what’s happening.

So… you don’t really care about this, but I figure if I write down the stuff which I propose to blog about then I might actually get off my bum and do it.

So last night I went to All Souls, Langham Place in London for the launch event for the Discipleship Explored course DVD… on the train up I happened to bump in to the chaplain at my Uni (well I’ve graduated now), Hi Gavin, if you happen to be reading! We chatted for the whole hour of the train journey about whether you can be an Anglican but not Protestant… so I got a history lesson of the Reformation, and we had some good debates about the inerrancy of Scripture and sacramental theology… he’s a clever man but he did says that ‘legally’ I won the debate with my trump card – The 39 Articles! Anyway, that’s an aside… but another aside I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of people I’d only known virtually; fellow blogger Dan Green and Emily from GBC – Hi Emily!

So why was I here?? Well I’m sure most people reading have heard of Christianity Explored… I’m sure that most, but probably a few less have heard of it’s follow up course, Discipleship Explored which has been around for a few years. The great thing about the DVD is that it makes it much easier to run a course!

Here’s a trailer for the DVD, giving you a flavour…

The DVD takes you through the book of Philippians in 8 sessions    . Each session is about 10 minutes long; the passage is read by a guy with a cool Scottish accent, then a key verse is picked out. The key verse along with the rest of the passage is explained, common questions about the Christian life are answered, the presenter Barry Cooper does a great job of clearly explaining stuff and getting us to the point. These sessions aren’t really a substitute for a talk or Bible study but they’re a great launching block into the passage, and a great way to start a group and get people thinking.

Here’s another little video. Rico Tice interviewing Barry Cooper about the Discipleship Explored DVD… great question and answer is the one to the first question “Why Philippians?”… sorry about the angle of filming, couldn’t be bothered to move:

Coming soon… a couple of short video interviews, one with Barry Cooper, and one with Rico Tice.

For more information and to order resources visit the Good Book Company… the Discipleship Explored DVD is available for just £30.

Tim Chilvers is associate minister at Christ Church Surbiton. Like me, he’s from an Anglican church, like me, he went to the Brighton New Frontiers conference, and like me he’s just been interviewed about his experiences of the conference by David Capener.

Good interview. Sounds like we both had a similar overwhelmingly positive experience there (with a few little niggles).

So it seems my post reporting on Jim Packer’s comments while speaking at Holy Trinity Eastbourne have caused a little bit of a stir in the virtual and real-life press. Few people were interested with Packer’s insightful analysis of Liberalism, or his thoughts on the future of the Anglican church, but on one sentence – “I would say with great respect Archbishop, I believe that the way of wisdom is for you to resign.”

The story has been mentioned by Martin Beckford in the Telegraph, Ruth Gledhill in The Times and on the Church Times Blog. It’s also been discussed on Peter Kirk’s blog. Now personally I don’t think it’s a huge story by any means, but it just goes to show how the media has changed, I can blog something which otherwise would go unheard outside its original audience, isn’t technology good?!

You can listen to Dr. Packer’s talk yourself, and the question time.

How he’s been enjoying GAFCON and why he won’t be going to Lambeth…

Video on SydneyAnglicans

There’s loads of other videos there, little snippets from the conference including Vaughan Roberts.