Archives For change

The stress test

18 November, 2015 — 6 Comments

It’s been an interesting few months since my last blog post where I said I was getting married and my Dad was dying. I’ve had some of the biggest lows and highs I’ve ever experienced. On 16 July 2015 my father died, two days later Geraldine and I got married.

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There has been so much change in my life over the last few months. Dickens sums it up well: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” 1 Through it all I feel I have a better understanding of myself and of stress. In this post I introduce a test I have found helpful in the assessment of life and stress. (Soon I will write again about communication, church, and society.)

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Notes:

  1. A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (1859).

I’ve been made redundant

16 October, 2014 — 17 Comments

This is not my usual kind of blog post. Here is some news and reflection about my own personal situation right now: Sunday 21 December 2014 will be my last day as Assistant Minister at Oxford Terrace Baptist Church in Christchurch New Zealand.

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My position being made redundant was no surprise, and I have been a willing participant in the process the church went though over a ten-month period. It was decided that on financial grounds, the church is currently over-staffed, and in the end the church members concluded they could no longer sustain an Assistant Minister. Continue Reading…

I read an article last week in which I saw parallels with the church context so thought I would write about the same topic. The article by Olga Kahzan in The Atlantic is titled: “The Easiest Possible Way to Increase Female Speakers at Conferences.” The quick summary is: having just one woman on the organizing committee for a conference greatly increases the likelihood of women appearing at the front of the room.

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The contribution of women is a topic that concerns me because I am part of a Christian ‘movement’ that struggles with this: the New Zealand Baptist Church. This also appears to be a widespread problem for the church in general. Three points come to mind and I outline them below. Continue Reading…