DISPATCHES FROM CHURCH LAND: “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places”

I recently returned from a two week lecturing tour in the USA. Amidst all that is going on politically in the US and in the UK / Europe, I found it really encouraging to be amidst two flourishing churches and two wonderful Christian institutions of Higher Education. In his exquisite poem “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” Gerard Manley Hopkins writes “for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his”. Amidst all that is going on in our societies and the tsunami of ethical issues facing us, it is important that we tell of these ten thousand ways in which Christ continues to play in his creation. 

When their building for the church was refurbished, the interior was intentionally designed to also function as an art gallery. I have the privilege of being associated with CI as their Writer-in-Residence. Apart from preaching at both morning services (listen here), I also spoke at a Café Veritas event hosted in a local theatre on “Signposts from a Divided World: Where is God in Contemporary Culture?”, drawing on the past years’ discussion in the KLICE research Institute. Some 200 people attended this event. Aubrey works closely with all orthodox ministers in Harrisonburg, and it was a real delight to address some 20 local pastors on the topic of Spiritual Formation. These pastors support each other and work actively together for the glory of God and the well being of the city. CI has outgrown its present building which it is selling to another church, while it prepares to move into a larger one.

Rev. Robby Holt, also a former student, is Senior Pastor of North Shore Fellowship, a vibrant PCA church in Chattanooga. I repeated my Café Veritas talk at “Theology on Tap,” a joint endeavour between North Shore and other churches (listen here).

The PCA has a Seminary – Covenant Seminary in St. Louis – and Covenant College on Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga. A former hotel, Covenant College’s campus is extraordinary. I gave the annual Kuyper Lectures, addressing the topic of Jesus and Prayer - listen here and here. It was wonderful to get time with faculty and engage with students. After that I flew across the country to California for a dialogue with the major Old Testament scholar Dr. Dan Block, hosted by California Baptist University, which has over 11 000 students. In the morning – for students – and in the afternoon – for the Far West Regional Meeting of ETS, Dan and I each presented a paper on reading the Old Testament followed by a Q & A. Dr Jeff Mooney was my host and it was wonderful to meet students, delegates, and colleagues. As I argued in my recent Ethics in Conversation, institutions like CBU and Covenant College are a jewel in the crown of the USA, and there is much we can learn from them in the UK and Europe.

Finally I spent a day in San Diego with my friends Bob and Paige Vanovsky. Paige and I are working on a popular book tentatively entitled The 30-Minute Bible. In the previous Sibylline Leaves I recommended Edith Egar’s The Choice, and I was delighted to hear that Paige and her friends had recently hosted an event with Edith.

I cannot begin to describe the many encounters over these two weeks and the inspiring stories I heard of the myriad ways in which Christ plays in our days. There are many signs of the vitality of the church in the USA and our hope is that KLICE can connect with our brothers and sisters in the US, and be of service to them while learning from them.

Authors I met:

I met many scholars and authors during my trip. Some gave me copies of their books. Here are a few:

Dr Kelly Kapic is one of our major Evangelical theologians and author of A Little Book for New Theologians: Why and How to Study Theology (IVP Academic, 2012); with Justin Borger, The God Who Gives: How the Trinity Shapes the Christian Story (Zondervan, 2010, 2018); Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering (IVP Academic, 2017). Kelly is a major authority on the theology of John Owen.

I have known of Dr Brian Fikkert for many years and so it was great to get to know him at Covenant College. Brian teaches economics and is also President of the Chalmers Center. With Kelly Kapic Brian has recently published Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty isn’t the American Dream (Moody, 2019).

Don Petcher teaches physics at Covenant College. He co-authored Science and Grace: God’s Reign in the Natural Sciences (Crossway, 2006).

Rev. Dr Craig Bartholomew

Recommended:

Creative contemporary liturgy is a wonderful gift. Robby Holt was making regular use of Douglas Kaine McKelvey, Every Moment Holy (Nashville, TN: Rabbit Room Press, 2017) when I was with him and he kindly gave me a copy of the book. It is a delight, containing liturgies for every aspect of life including two for changing nappies/ diapers. This is a book we will make regular use of at KLICE.

News from the KLICE community:

• Richard Bauckham participated in a colloquium in Edinburgh, 9-11 April, on "Varieties of Theism in Antiquity," and contributed a paper on "Confessing the Cosmic Christ (1 Cor 8:6 and Col 1:15-20)."
• Sue Halliday has contributed to an article entitled 'Temporal Dynamism in Country-of-Origin Effect: The Malleability of Italians’ Perceptions Regarding the British Sixties', which will appear in May in the International Marketing Review - an 'internationally excellent' peer-reviewed journal.
• Richard Gunton wrote a blog post entitled 'The secret society of Christian postgrads', about the various initiatives supporting Christian postgraduate students in the UK - see here. He was also involved with the 'Catalysing Postgraduate Ministry' conference in Oxford; for a report on the day see here. 
• Trevor Cooling will be speaking on 'Worldview: A Past Relic or the Future for Thinking about Christian Education?' at the Postgraduate Research Conference in Christian Education on Saturday 6 July at Canterbury Christchurch University.

The name “Sibylline Leaves” has various connotations; we derive it from a description of the writings of J.G.Hamann (1730-88), one of the greatest but least known Christian thinkers. Hamann recognized the significance of the challenges presented in his day by the Enlightenment, and sought to produce a corpus of writings responding accordingly. Our hope is that our “leaves” will contribute towards understanding and responding to the challenges of our own day.