3fifteen

Blog moved...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:43:00 +0000

In preparation for next year, I have moved to www.timsandell.wordpress.com. I'm hoping this means it should be slightly easier for friends and supporters to keep up with what's going on in Athens.

I won't be posting on here anymore, so please update your Google Reader and bookmarks accordingly.

Tim

Getting to Athens

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Next year I will be working in Athens, hence why I'm currently learning Greek.

As we're in a recession, I thought I'd check out the cheapest routes to get there. By foot, Google Maps says it will take me just over 14 days to get there, but they seem to imply I'll have to take some lessons from Jesus at for the sea stage of the journey...

Here it is, the cheapest route from Manchester to Athens.

View Larger Map

Happy independence day Greece!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:43:00 +0000

Καλήμερα σας!

I was spending the morning learning Greek, when I realised today is Greece's Independence Day! How exciting!

Independence day celebrates the Greek declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire on March 25th 1821. It signalled the start of their war of independence which they eventually won.

Apparently*, it was then that Ελευθερία ή θάνατος became Greece's motto. It literally means freedom or death, and was their rallying cry as the country rose up to fight against oppression and tyranny. The nine stripes on the modern Greek flag are representative of the nine syllables of the motto.

This is all lot more interesting than the vocab I've been learning this morning. Even thought the sense of satisfaction of completing another list on BYKI is pretty good, when the most exciting word you've learnt is "airport" (το αεροδρόμιο), most other things are way more interesting.

Here is a picture to celebrate:

*from what Wikipedia tells me...

Sweet relief

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:01:00 +0000

Today I had a parcel delivered that's about four years late. It should have been delivered to me in Lesotho (I was there during my gap year) but it must have got lost somewhere en route.

Anyway, it contained a pack of fruit pastilles and some postcards from my family when they were on holiday. I strongly advise against eating three year old fruit pastilles and I'm lucky to have any teeth remaining after the first chew.

It's a great little surprise and this little time capsule from the year 2005 reminded me just how much I enjoyed getting parcels out in Lesotho.

This is what I where I was on March 12th 2005. Good times.

There should be some mission week and Relay updates coming sometime early next week, and you never know, I might even get round to putting up some of the posts that I promised months ago...

Dawkins to launch Secularist societies in university campuses

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:54:00 +0000

Apparently Richard Dawkin is launching a campaign to start secularist societies in every UK university. UCCF have stated that it "will excite CU members, who are keen to share their faith and raise the spiritual temperature amongst students."

Read the full press release.

Salford goes FREE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:14:00 +0000

This is a slightly belated update on the happenings of Salford Christian Union's events week.

Salford CU held three events during the week:

Tuesday night was the JazzCake event with talk on "Free to all". Salford University's favourite jazz and cheesecake night returned for the third time and about 60 students attended. Tim Hanson talked on how the good news of Jesus Christ is free to everyone. We looked at two facts from the Bible, firstly that human beings matter and secondly that we have all sinned - they've fallen short of the standard that God expects from us. He then showed us that there is a wonderful third fact in the Bible - that in Jesus, we have a solution to the problem. It was a great evening with about 45 non believers present, and many had great conversations afterwards.

Thursday night was the Grub Crawl. We went to three different locations to eat each course in our meal, and Tim did a talk on "FREE but at a price". We learnt that the price of the solution to the problem that was discussed on Tuesday night was the death of Jesus Christ, God's son. We saw that on the cross, the sins of many were put onto Jesus and Jesus righteousness was given to them in return. In essence it's a giant swap - Jesus was punished in their place and they recieve Jesus' obedience to God - and it's free to anyone who believes and trusts in Jesus. Six people attended.

Friday night was a talk on "FREE but costly". Ten people were there as Tim showed us that even though the benefits of the swap that occured on the cross is free to anyone who believes, living in the light of it is costly. Jesus sayst that the believer will repent and believer - that the new way of life is to be lived with God treated as God. This is the opposite of sin: sin is essentially living with ourselves as the most important person rather than God as the msot important person.

Each day CU members met for prayer, which I found really encouraging. It's great to see students really expressing reliance on God during mission weeks rather than drifting into the wordly way of thinking that more work makes things better. As it's God who does the work of saving unbelievers, it makes sense to ask him to work during evangelism!

All in all, it has been a wonderful two weeks of mission in Salford University. In those two weeks about 1100 gospels were given out and at least a couple of hundred students heard the good news about Jesus explained by students, friends of the CU and Tim. During this mission I have seen CU members who have become more confident in evangelism and have been encouraged by the openness of non believing students at Salford to talk about the good news of Jesus.

As is the way with most university missions these days, this mission was much more about sowing seeds rather than about seeing many people come to believe in Jesus. We're in the same situation as described by Jesus in the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:26-29:

And he said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."

We won't know when these people who have heard the good news and received gospels will begin to believe in Jesus, but the seeds have been sown and there will be an effect at some stage in the future.

There will be an update on the Manchester Mega Mission Week coming early next week.

FREE, New Leaders Training and Daniel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:17:00 +0000

It's about a week since I last posted on here. Time for a bit of an update!

Last week was University of Salford Christian Union's gospel distribution week. Here's a few numbers for what happened:

5 days of gospel distribution
Nearly all CU members heavily involved in it
15 hours of having a stall in the foyer of the main building on campus
100s of good, gospel focussed conversations
1000 gospels distributed
1 in 20 students in Salford University now have a FREE gospel

It was a fantastic week and the CU members are really pleased (and pleasantly surprised!) with how it went. It was really encouraging seeing CU members step out of their comfort zones and doing questionnaires and handing out gospels. Great work guys!

This past weekend was the annual New Leaders Training conference. At this time of year, all the CUs in the country change leadership, so UCCF gets all the new CU exec members together in their regions for some training. This year we held our New Leaders Training in Leyland and Justin Mote joined us to teach us from the book of Daniel. The Staff and Relay workers pitched in to help train everyone for their new roles.

It was a brilliant weekend with fantastic teaching. Daniel is a wonderful book and is incredibly relevant for students today - its the story of four young Jewish men as they live with the challenge of living and speaking for God in an alien culture that's hostile to their faith.

One thing that encouraged me was seeing the new CU leaders became more and more excited about the gospel through the weekend. Being on exec is not about serving men or the CU, it's about serving the Lord, and the only way to motivate yourself to do that without being legalistic is in joyful response to the wonderful gospel.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24

This week Salford CU has their events week, so please pray for us that we'd be confident in sharing the gospel and that God would show Salford students that the gospel is true!

Engaging...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:58:00 +0000

Lately, there's been some helpful blogging on how as Christians we can begin to engage with culture.

Peter Dray writes on how we can engage with popular music, whilst Dear Freedom writes on engaging with movies. Both are really useful and well worth a read.

When preparation is preaching to yourself

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 17:47:00 +0000

Today I was privileged to be able to go back to my old university CU, University of Manchester Christian Union, to do a seminar looking at God's role and our role in evangelism. I'm going to post my notes in three parts over the coming week, looking first at Our role, then at God's Role and finally at some great truths we can hold onto as Mission Weeks approach.

But before I start posting, I thought I'd say that preparing for it was wonderful.

It was great to have an excuse to spend time re-reading JI Packer's brilliant Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, which I think might be one of the most influential books I've read so far as a Christian. It's one of those books that are available via Amazon's market place at a few quid, so buy it if you haven't read it and are involved in evangelism in some way!

And it was also a timely kick up the butt to remember that evangelism is not about me. It's God who gives belief (Ephesians 2:8), who gives repentance (Acts 11:18) and who rescues us (Colossians 1:13). We don't do any of that, all we do is tell people the gospel (Matthew 28:18ff). God saves. We do not.

It was a timely reminder because for the next three weeks I will be in some way or another involved with a CU mission week in Greater Manchester.

Next week is the Distribution week at Salford Uni CU, where they are aiming to hand out a couple of thousand FREE gospels (Mark's Gospel in trendy covers!) to students in Salford. During the day we'll be spending three hours chatting to students around campus, whilst in the evenings we will be knocking on doors in halls of residence.

The following week is Salford CU's Events week, where they will be holding three evening events during which Tim Hanson will explain the gospel to students. The events are a JazzCake (jazz and cheese cake, a bizarre combination which Salford students seem to love!) evening with a talk, a Grub Crawl with a talk, and a talk over tea and coffee. You might notice that CUs love providing food! I've yet to find an atheist society that is as keen to feed their fellow students!

The following week is Week 1 of the Manchester Mega Mission (University of Manchester CU, Man Met Uni CU, Royal Northern College of Music CU) during which I will be a CU guest, supporting the work of University of Manchester CU as they try and reach students with the gospel. I will be seconded to a few hall groups to support them in their evangelism in their halls of residence, as well as doing first contact evangelism on streets around the unis and talking to people at events.

So, it's good to remember that in these weeks that when I become progressively more exhausted (which I will!), God still remains strong and, as it's him that saves, I can remain confident that he will be at work convincing students of the truth of the gospel as I tell it the them.

There were some other amazing things that God really taught me as I worked through the prep, but you're going to have to wait for me to upload the talk for them...

Zephaniah - Symptoms and Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:31:00 +0000

This is part of a series of posts on Zephaniah. The following is a brief summary of part of one of Mo's talks on Zephaniah at Relay 2.

At the start of the Josiah’s reign Judah had several problems. They’d lost the Book of the Law, but that in itself was only a symptom. In what would have been a moment of comedy had it not been so serious, they rediscovered the Book of the Law and officially started doing the things they should have been doing all along. But that only sorted out a symptom. They still had problems.

Their main problem was that they thought there were other gods worth worshipping besides Yahweh. They looked at the pagan nations around them and noticed that those guys seemed to be getting everything Judah wanted, and so started worshipping their gods to get those things.

Their other problem was that they thought the main problem wasn’t a problem. They didn’t take it seriously because they thought life felt normal.

Zephaniah is God’s answer to these two problems.

They’re problems we have too. We also look at the people around us and want to be the same as them. We worship the same things they do – sex, money and power. And the other problem we have is that, just like Judah, we don’t see that there’s anything wrong with this first problem. It feels normal to us.

At Relay 2 we studied Zephaniah in our Fellowship Groups. In the coming few weeks, as I work through my notes from the conference, I’ll be blogging some of my thoughts and some of the things that really struck me from our studies on Zephaniah.

I should say up front that most of what I type on Zephaniah is going to be recycled from the talks that Mo gave us and from the studies that other people in my Fellowship group led, so my thanks and all the credit goes to them!

Mo has posted some helpful thoughts on Zephaniah here.

Wintry update

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:57:00 +0000

You would have thought that in the North we would get more snow than the South. Wrong! They woke up to over a foot of very Narnia-esque snow back home in Guildford on Monday morning.

In Manchester we had a smaller, yet still exciting, offering. Whilst it's not quite as pretty as the Surrey countryside, I think it's quite nice in a Moss Side kind of way!

Relay 2 Karaoke Fun #1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:30:00 +0000

The North East's contribution to the Karaoke fun.

"I can be your Relay Worker, but I'm not your CU slave!
I do more than go for coffee, every day's a Relay rave"

53 years ago today...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:41:00 +0000

53 years ago to the day, Jim Elliot (one of my missionary heroes) and his four missionary friends were martyred whilst trying to reach the Waodani people in the Ecuadorian jungle with the gospel.

I read Through Gates of Splendour, a biography about Jim Elliot, a year or two ago and it has been really influential in my growth as a Christian. One thing that's really struck me was that they were no different to you or me. They were just normal Christians who were obedient to God and took the Great Commission seriously.

Here's a brief video explaining the story of how the Waodani people were reached.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Less Than Two Weeks...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:49:00 +0000

I'm hoping to get round to writing some fresh blog fare sometime soon. And because Christmas is less than two weeks away, I'm hoping that this will keep you all happy in the meantime...

(HT:Gaz Leaney)

A reasonably exciting day

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:44:00 +0000

Today at Bolton CU we had a bit of a discussion about God's word and evangelism.

We read 1 Peter 1:23-25 and saw that it is the living and abiding word of God that causes us to be born again. We found out that this word of God is living and imperishable, and that it was the good news that was preached to us!

We also looked at Romans 10:11-17 and saw that for people to be saved from God's judgement they need to call on the name of the Lord - to trust and believe and seek mercy from him - and to do that we saw that people need to hear the good news being preached to them: faith comes from hearing, and hearing comes through the word of Christ!

There are around 11,000 non believers at the University of Bolton and these guys need to hear the good news and they need to receive God's word. Imagine my excitement as this tiny CU (7 students meeting in a small room) began to think for themselves about how they can go about getting God's word into students' hands!

They're now in the process of discussing how they can put on their first evangelistic event in years and how they can practically go about distributing as many FREE gospels as possible to their fellow students.

They've also decided to get a weekly prayer meeting going - as one student pointed out, without God involved, it's all pretty pointless! There are some really exciting ideas in the pipeline for how we can get these FREE gospels into peoples hands (watch this space!) and most CU members are thinking of personally handing out FREE gospels to their friends.

And, as if all that wasn't exciting enough, on her way out of the room where we meet one of the CU members got chatting to a random student and handed out our first FREE gospel: God's living and abiding word that brings rebirth is now in the hands of one more student in Bolton University.

So, if you're in the mood for praying, we'd appreciate prayers for...

the student who recieved a FREE gospel earlier today.
Bolton CU as they begin to think about ideas for how to distribute these FREE gospels.
God to work through this CU and to encourage them as they begin to do evangelism.

Relay Bloggers 08/09

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Due to the wonders of the Facebook application Blog Networks, I've just discovered a few more Relay Workers who are blogging their way through the year! So, to celebrate, here are the other Relay bloggers that I am aware of.

Bescot42 - Andy Jinks (Liverpool)
The Cornerstone - Craig Taylor (Newcastle)
Dear Freedom - Ed Rogers (Newcastle)
The Grace Race - Gethin Jones (Bangor)
Living Stones - Cat Hare (Exeter)
The Race - Mo McCracken (Relay coordinator)
Spider's Scribblepad - Peter Williams (?)
Threelay - myself (Manchester), Jez Poyner (Manchester), Craig Taylor (Newcastle)

If you're aware of anyone else, let me know and I'll add them to the list.

Good Commentaries on the Cheap

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:27:00 +0000

Amazon are selling New International Commentaries very cheaply at the moment. Amongst others, they are selling Galatians by Ronald Y.K. Fung at£2.50 (down from £19.99!) and Genesis by Victor P. Hamilton, 2 volumes each at £1.99 (each down from £24.99!) Bargain-alicious.

I don't imagine they will last long at these prices. Thanks to Zac Wyse for pointing this out!

UPDATE: Amazon made a mistake, and all orders have been cancelled.

Really Relay?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:55:00 +0000

Judging by the many half completed draft blog posts I've written on what I've been doing so far in my Relay year, I think this post is long over due!

The other day I was on the bus heading up to the station to travel out to one of my universities and was not in a particularly good mood. I think I was pretty tired and didn't really feel as if I could be bothered to go to the CU event that was going on... But half way there it suddenly struck me just how fortunate I am to be doing Relay. I couldn't help but smile and think that I was, in my opinion, the luckiest person on that bus.

Get this: I get to spend my time studying the Bible for myself and meeting up to study it with Christian students. I get to spend time discussing the gospel with students who don't believe. As well as that, I get to look at the Bible with other older, more mature Christians, all of whom are much wiser and godly than I am at the moment. On the side, I'm learning a language in preparation for years 2 and 3 of Relay Homestart where I will hopefully be working with a certain IFES movement in Europe. On Fridays, I get to spend a whole day looking at Systematic Theology and the Great Commission.

In my opinion, this is a flipping awesome way to spend your time. So, in an attempt to celebrate the first two months on Relay (1/5th of the way in) these are five highlights so far...

1. Relay 1. Seriously, this is the best Christian conference I've been to. It can be summarised in that beforehand I thought I got grace, afterwards I realised that beforehand I really didn't! I'd still not say I've completely got it, but from what I know, it's more amazing than I ever dreamt. I'm not going to say too much more at the moment, because I'll post on it in the near future.

2. Glad You Asked. After a slow start, we now have a few students who attend - some don't believe and some do. What a privilege it is to be able to discuss spiritual truths with them and see them come to a deeper understanding of the Good News as they look at things for themselves.

3. Studying the Trinity. Mindblowingly amazing stuff. God is so incomprehensible, but that only deepens the awe at who he is. I blogged some of my thoughts on the Trinity over at threelay. Take a look!

4. Meeting up with students to look at the Bible. I'm currently meeting up with 4 students at different times and we're looking at Mark and Romans. What a privilege it is to point people to Christ in the Bible and see them realise just how awesome he is! It's also great because I get to study these great wonderful books and it actually counts as work!

5. Studying Hebrews. I've never looked at this book before, and it's also blowing my mind! I'm also really fortunate that I get to meet up with two absolute legends, Zac (legendary Staff Worker) and Judith (legendary Relay Worker) to look at it. We're really getting into it and, just like a fine wine, we're savouring it: 5 weeks of studying it and we're only in chapter 2.

Note: It should also be said that this also has absolutely nothing to do with persuading any final year students about doing Relay next year ;)

Understanding the Trinity

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:22:00 +0000

I've just posted an abridged version of my first study response on understanding the Trinity over at threelay. Take a look and feel free to comment :)

Free - what it's all about

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:24:00 +0000

UMCU vid

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:59:00 +0000

My old CU, the University of Manchester Christian Union have been asking students on campus what they would ask God and who they think Jesus is.

They've also got a rather swish new website!

What is a CU?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:46:00 +0000

A Call To Spiritual Reformation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:12:00 +0000

I don't often read books that I can truthfully say have transformed the way I do things, but this is one of those books. Before, I thought I "got" prayer but after reading this I realise I didn't - it has transformed the way I think about and do prayer.

In eleven chapters, Don Carson takes us through Paul's prayers in his letters in the New Testament, showing us Paul's view of God, his view of prayer and how he prays before looking at lessons we can take and apply to our prayer lives.

One chapter I found particularly interesting and challenging was on how prayer relates to God's sovereignty and to our human responsibility.

If God is completely sovereign, do our prayers do anything? Put another way, if things are going to happen because God has decided they should, then surely they would happen without our prayers? How do we reconcile this with the fact that the Bible tells us we are to pray for things and that God answers these prayers?

I'm still thinking this through so don't hunt me down for any heresies below! But, I think the way that Carson explains it is as follows (this is from memory so it might not be accurate!)

If we pray for something, our prayers have already been ordained by God to happen at a certain time in order that they might bring about a certain result that he has already decided will happen.
If we don't pray for something, God has already decided that we wouldn't pray, and that result that might have been brought about had we prayed had already been ordained by God not to happen.
Therefore our prayer or lack of prayer from a human point of view brings about the result or lack of result - we are responsible for praying and to some extent whether or not something happens.
But, from God's point of view, as he is sovereign he has decided whether or not we should pray. He also decides whether or not to answer the prayer - he's not a machine! So the responsibility is 100% his for whether or not things happen in relation to prayers made or not made.

This is something that I have only just started thinking about in any depth, so I'd love to hear thoughts and I'm sure will come up again in a while when God's sovereignty is covered in my Relay study.

Either way, whether I've heresied above or not, please read this book. It's by Don Carson, and it's sound (but please don't take my word for it - always be Berean and check against the Bible!) and it will probably change the way you view prayer!

Call to Spiritual Reformation by Don Carson is available at IVP books, and has a much better cover than before. It will cost you about £10.

Just another blog in the blogosphere

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:01:00 +0000

Craig, Jez and I have just started threelay, a blog where we're writing about theology we've covered in our Relay study programme. Might be worth bookmarking/following/subscribing to!

Some Interesting Discussions on Evangelism

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:02:00 +0000

There's some interesting blog posts on evangelism out there at the moment. They're all well worth a look...

Dave Bish explains how DISCO is the reason he doesn't do evangelism...

Hugh Bourne is thinking about how we need to engage with different student mindsets in our evangelism on campus... He's started by thinking about how we engage with students who are really success driven.

Mark Driscoll talks with Philip Jensen about Sydney and, amongst other things, how we're going to get young men into the church. He's talking specifically about Sydney, but I think some of it still applies to us here in the UK... (be warned this is a 25 min video!)

Gaz Leaney wonders how to teach the Bible effectively to people that struggle with reading...