Pressing projects!

In a couple of months we are off to a new appointment – Rayleigh in Essex. This appointment will be very different from Dartford in far too many ways to mention. However Rayleigh’s status as a middle-class, largely white Anglo Saxon market town might make ministry more – rather than less – demanding.

In addition, in a couple of months, I will be starting an MA in theology. It is my earnest intention that this study will not eat into my mission time and my plan is to try and fit it into the early morning and late evening periods of the day.

All of this means that the pressure on me to finish off current projects is increasing. I have an unfinished book on holiness outstanding and I’ve also been working on contemporising the text of ‘Heathen England’. I am seriously contemplating taking a week’s leave and locking myself away somewhere like Sunbury Court and getting both projects out of the way. This might well be the answer as I always work better to deadlines – especially tight ones!

I firmly believe that my inability to complete the book on holiness is partly demonic. I do not claim to be a gifted writer but I do acknowledge that God uses me in this way and that the results of what I write (under his influence) can have a profound impact on those who read them. I think that this book, written for today’s generation but passing on truths not really properly preached or understood for 100 years or more, could have a significant effect on The Salvation Army. Does that sound a little pompous or arrogant? Maybe, but I assure you that I take no credit for this (currently drawn out) project. I believe that the words are Gods and the holiness they address is needed by today’s church in order to become truly effective.

Holiness – the surrender of all that is sinful and doubtful and the entire consecration of oneself to God – is out of fashion at the moment. Worldliness – considered a sin by the church for 1900 years and then suddenly made legitimate – rattles around our ankles like a heavy ball and chain. A holy church, an unworldly church is a liberated church and one that can reach its maximum effectiveness for Christ and his kingdom. An unholy church will quite simply not ‘see Christ’ – not in its mission, not in its leaders, not in its congregations – for ‘without holiness none shall see the Lord!’

Grace and peace, A