We have started two "house groups" in the past three weeks: one that meets in our home on Thursday nights and another one hosted on Friday evenings by a young couple in the village of Abercynon (pronounced abber-KUN-nun), about three miles north of Pontypridd. When I first arrived in Wales, Abercynon was one of the communities that had been identified as desperately needing a Gospel witness. A mission team from America went door to door in the summer of 2005, handing out invitations for a "Discovering God" course to be offered there, but we were disappointed in not receiving a single response from the community. Continue reading
Amazed in Abercynon!
6
It was embarrassing when we realized just how much stuff we had collected over twenty-eight years of marriage. Like most people, we had a few precious family treasures, like old photographs, letters, and creative artwork by our four children at various ages; however, many items should have been given to charity a long time ago. Unfortunately, I was raised as a “pack rat” by two parents who experienced the Great Depression: my mother grew up on a Mississippi dairy farm and my father spent his early years in poverty due to an alcoholic father who drank or gambled most of what he earned. 
Having spent years in the secular business world, I have often heard the following exchange between colleagues: “How’s business?” For some, it’s simply a business-like greeting, especially among competitors who wouldn’t dare reveal how things are really going; but imagine how the phrase takes on the nature of a serious inquiry from an investor who has placed millions of his hard-earned dollars in someone’s hands. He wants a genuine response and, since the person he’s asking is accountable to him, he wants an accurate accounting of the business. If the company is supposed to be making widgets, he wants to hear about the company’s effectiveness in taking raw materials and converting them into high-quality widgets that are making a profit.
This morning I ran across an intriguing statement written by a British colleague in ministry. He writes, “the theology that matters is not the theology we profess but the theology we practice.” It really made me stop and think. Most of us already know more than we actually put into practice, so one of my New Year’s resolutions will be to read less theology and live a more theologically-aware life. This will require a painful adjustment to my lifestyle. Yes, the dreaded “C” word (“change”) must become a reality if I want to transition “what I know” into “what I do.”
