Back to Dovedale - for a visit

This morning I went back to my own church, Dovedale Baptist, as a visitor, which was strange.
I went because my son Josh was leading worship and preaching, which he did very well and made his Dad very proud.

Tomorrow I'm getting back to studying and writing.

Lectures and more lectures

It's like being a student again, except that when I was a student I didn't go to as many lectures as I've been reading today.

It's been fascinating to see how Hugh Stowell Brown drew up to 8,000 people on a Sunday afternoon to hear a lecture. Just a talk. No Powerpoint, no dancing girls, not even a worship band. Times were different in 1854, but still he must have had something special.

I've written over half of the chapter on Hugh's public lectures, but I had hoped to finish it today.

More lectures to be digested

I've spent today doing some reading and research, and not a lot of writing about Hugh Stowell Brown's lectures in the Concert Hall in Liverpool.

I've been discovering about the hall, about the background to his talks and the Caine family. Nathaniel Caine started the lecture series and his son was William Caine, who married Hugh's daughter, and his sister was Hugh's second wife. It's getting rather complicated!

I'm also trying to keep in touch with the other part of my sabbatical, the workplace ministry, but I'm not getting so far on that at the moment.

Anyway, I hope to be more productive tomorrow.

Lectures to working men

As well as some other reading, I've been reading Hugh Stowell Brown's lectures that he gave on Sunday afternoons to thousands of people in the long-gone Concert Room on Lord Nelson Street. He spoke on all sorts of topics with snappy titles, but all of them were applying a Christian world-view to current events and practical living.

More than 60 of his lectures survive in published form, and the titles of a few more. I'm writing a chapter in the biography on the lectures, but to say anything much about the content of all those lectures is a daunting task.

Sunday at Grace Family Church

Yesterday I went to Grace Family Church on Aigburth Road. It was a lively service led by Pastor Diana Stacey. Their worship band were impressive, with a older man on electric guitar who was excellent, and a very good young woman playing a rhythmic bass line.

I was recognised and welcomed to go to the front. I shared greetings from Dovedale and talked briefly about my work.

I felt God speak to me about four things:

1) John 10 - "the thief comes to steal and destroy, but I have come that you might have life". I was led to think about all that steals our time and our energies.

2) The line in the Psalms "Open up you gates, that the King of Glory may come in" (I'll have to look up the reference). It struck me that it's about the gates of a city, and made me pray for Liverpool, that its "gates" may be open to the King of Glory. And it is happening - there are so mnay people in significant places in this city who follow Jesus or are at least "men of peace" open to God.

3)I was challenged about working among men - and encouraging the working men in Dovedale. Maybe a series of men's breakfasts?

4) Pastor Di shared something Billy Graham said recently, "God has given us an open door, and He has given us the tools and the technology to touch the whole world if you and I mean business." This impressed me. We need to be touching the world, and we can do that through technology and through our determination. But do we, do I, really mean business?

This last point also underlined what God said to me at the CMC conference about being people using the tools at our fingertips - using the web, using video and podcasts to reach people.

Hugh's big break

Another writng day.

Today I have been writing about Hugh Stowell Brown's break with his Anglican upbringing and how he became a Baptist. As usual, there was a girl involved. Even then the most popular church youth groups for the boys were the ones with the best looking girls. Okay, maybe not, but Hugh did meet his future wife at Stony Stratford Baptist Church and then he decided it was the church for him!

I've realised how Hugh's early life had so mnay twists ansd turns. Three false starts in education and training, a painful time of unemployment, and then two of his brothers and his father die in the same couple of weeks. You'll have to read the book to find out how it all ends.

Another good writing day

Monday was a good writing day. I finished the chapter on Hugh Stowell Brown's years as a "working man" and decided I need a separate chapter on his call to ministry, including the death of his father. I think what I wrote yesterday is developing a style for the book. I'm feeling more positive about the biography now.

The other part of my sabbatical studies is about ministry, specifically about how to be a minister at work and how Baptist ministers might work part of their time pastoring a church and part of their time in a secular workplace, but see all of it as "ministry". I've been developing some ideas on this theme, about trained ministers being missionaries to workplaces, not as chaplains but by working there. I really need someone to talk all this through with, and I might see if I can spend some time at the ministry department at the Baptist Union in Didcot.