Sunday 21st March, 2010
It was great linking up with a long time good friend, Ken, from Northern Ireland. Rendezvousing at Stansted Airport, we made our way across the English Channel, through France, Belgium and Holland, to stay the night with two folks who’ve become good friends in recent years, Floor and Ada. Renowned for their hospitality, the meal which greeted our arrival surpassed all expectations. After a good night’s rest, the car loaded, we made the long journey across Germany, through snow laden mountains and into the Czech Republic and our destination for the week, the International Baptist Theology Seminary in Prague. Too late for anything but a double portion of chips laced with the most amazing garlic sauce (which I was careful to avoid lest making a distinctly odorous first impression for our hosts!), we retired thankful for journeying mercies, the Honda that reached new speeds on the wonderful German autobahns, good conversation and the fruits of Ada’s thoughtful food hamper.
Travelling broadens the mind, gives greater understanding and appreciation of the diversity of the cultures that make up our changing contemporary world but God also uses the experience of journeying to do some interior work. The journey to places, the people, the experiences and encounters all awaken things within us and become entry points for spiritual growth and development.
It is good to be back in Prague. Our partnership with the seminary is aided by a Community team coming to Prague for a week each year. Both perspective communities are undergoing challenges and opportunities associated with change and this week we look forward to exploring how our partnership with the staff and students of the seminary may be broadened and deepened. It’s great to link up with Joshua, my youngest son, who has flown in from Trinity Dublin where he’s now doing his PhD following his Masters here at the seminary. He is on familiar ground and is at ease leading the worship at the Sunday morning service and we, (Ken, Jean, Floor and I) are back among friends in a place that is very special. The redemptive history of IBTS tells the story of how buildings once used for evil acts; e.g. in the hands of Nazi’s and later the Communists, people were interrogated, no doubt tortured and later in the scientific laboratories untold means and methods were devised to perpetrate further the darkness of oppressive regimes. Now the buildings, beautiful, light, surrounded by birdsong and woodland, is the home of the seminary, where men and women from all over Western and particularly Eastern Europe, most of whom young, come to train as ministers and servants of Christ. One of the reasons why I love this place is not only because of the significant work for the Kingdom that is being accomplished here but because it reminds me of a breadth and diversity within the Baptist family that is heartening to experience.
I value the place because it is a residential community, a seminary that has not lost the immense value of training in a community setting. I am convinced that training people for ministry and mission by distance learning, non-residential means and an absence of communal living is a retrograde step and an inadequate preparation for service and particularly leadership in the church. This is much more than an academic institution; it’s a place of encounter, hospitality, a sharing of lives and serving of one another. In essence a community. Their fragility, like ours, economically, renders its life and future as vulnerable but it is so important to stand with these our brothers and sisters in Christ and support a community that not only educates the mind but prepares the life for the work of the kingdom throughout the world.
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