Wow, I guess I was important

I left my job at the sporting goods store I had been at in early August. Less than two months later they were in administration (ie. Bankruptcy)

My skills as stock unpacker were obviously what was holding the company together.

It was kind of funny actually, I intended to only be at the job for a month or so until I got a 'real job'. That real job was nearly three years in the coming, and I didn't start getting as many hours as I needed until the week that JJB went under.
God certainly seemed to want me there, and I hope that while I was there I fulfilled his purposes.

Life, Recently

A lot has happened in the last month or two, but with limited internet connection we've not documented it very well.

We moved house! We're now living in Coxheath (a village next door to Loose); which makes my cycle commute to church a lot better.

Inga and Simon (new parents to Elsa Simone, dontcha know?) bought the house we're living in. We're participating in a communal living experiment. So far all is well. It's only a two-bed house, but Erica, Clive and I have the third floor all to ourselves.

Communal living cuts our costs quite a bit and for the first time in a while we're ending up with money leftover at the end of the month.

Part of this financial positiveness is because I'm working more hours at the prison. I'm enjoying it and my bosses are giving me more responsibility.

Erica's graphic work trickles in, but is always just enough. If you need a website, promotional material, logos or anything else, just let us know. She'll cut you a deal.

The three of us have been sick with viruses for the past few weeks. Poor Clive is doing his best to stay up beat but has been pretty miserable. Hopefully soon we'll all be healthy at the same time.

Erica's parents are here in the UK for two weeks. They've come over to see the new baby (grandkid number 5) and to help out a bit.

Lastly, I'm still plugging away at my ordination process. I have a day-long panel on December 1st that will determine whether I continue on the process. I'll know the outcome within a week of the panel.

That's it.

We'll get some new pictures up soon.

This One Goes to Eleven!

The BBC has a device called iPlayer on their website that allows you to watch shows, clips, and films after they have aired. The max volume on the iPlayer isn't ten. It's eleven.

TGIF! (Thank God It's Freecycle!)

Apparently I was in the right place at the right time.

I was sitting on the computer on Thursday and a batch of Freecycle e-mails popped up. I noticed that someone was giving away a bike and decided to try for it since the one I had been using was stolen a few months back. 

I e-mailed the guy and he said I was the first one to contact him so I could have it. He told me that it had been in his garage (the Brits pronounce garage like this by the way) and that all that was wrong with it was that both tyres were flat. It turns out that nothing was wrong with the back tyre (used the included pump to find that out). I had to replace the inner tube on the front tyre, but luckily had an extra tube from Erica's bike that fit.

It is a seven speed, comes with a pump that fits in between the frame, and he left the saddle bags that he had on the back which will be very useful for items that I can't fit in my messenger bag.

p.s. The picture above isn't actually my bike. I was too lazy to go take a picture and someone had sold one on a classifieds site over here and I found the picture there. Same bike though, even down to the colour.

And did those feet in ancient time...? Nope

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the Holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England’s green and pleasant land.

And Did Those Feet in Ancient time is a poem by William Blake that was set to music by Hubert Parry. Jerusalem (as it is commonly called) is a patriotic song that has almost reached the level of God Save the Queen (King) as England's national anthem. In fact many English prefer it to GStQ. It seems to me that one of the reasons for this preference is that Jerusalem excludes those other parts of Great Britian that the English aren't so fond of (see: Scotland, N. Ireland, Wales, etc)

I find the song itself to be a fantastically mesmorising tune, full of gravitas. But then there's the unfortunate inclusion of the words to the song.

Blake's words were inspired by the apocraphyl story that Jesus, accompanied by Joseph of Arimathia (his uncle as the story goes) visited England in the years between the story of Jesus visiting the temple at the age of twelve and then starting his ministry at the age of thirty. This story, like the stories of Jesus visiting the Buddha and Jesus visiting the Native Americans (ala Mormanism) are complete rubbish, but it seems to be one of those things that people like to believe and towns like Glastonbury have taken advantage for tourism and religous purposes.

So in short, 'was Jerusalem builded here'? Nope. But if you have different lyrics to fit this powerful tune I'm all ears.

Quotation Inspiration

I had the chance to preach at our church back at the end of July and as I was preparing, I ran into a familiar problem. I needed to find illustrations, quips and quotes that would help my audience grasp my concepts.

I have these resources, but my problem is accessing them; trying to remember who said that one thing about that one topic, etc.

I came up with a solution that I hope will work. It's a blog and I've called it Quotation Inspiration. I'll let my second post explain it for you here.


If this resource would be valuable to you, I'd invite you to visit often. Or stop by if you like reading the odd quote on various Christian themes. I have some quotes backlogged that still need to go up and I'll be adding new ones as I come across them. I also have a few friends who are contributing and I'd welcome other contributors.

Update

Life has been moving along and we thought we'd share how it has been.

Clive will be 15 months tomorrow. He's progressing strongly on the walking front and is incredibly good at causing mischief. He loves keys and anything electronic. His fascination with the washing machine continues and whenever we can't find something we check there first.

While he is walking, talking hasn't really happened yet. He's got 'mamama' and 'dadada' figured out, but the rest of the time he thinks he's speaking english, but isn't. Both Erica and I were late talkers (Erica probably because she was a triplet, and me probably because I was dumb (intelligence-wise that is)) so we aren't too fussed about it.

Erica had been quite busy with freelance work having picked up a few new clients and still doing work for the church. Things have slowed a bit, so you could pray that work continues to come in.

We went camping for a week in July in Dorset which is on the southern coast of England. The area was beautiful and the rain held off for the most part. Here's the pictures in case you missed them.

After almost three years of working at a minimum wage retail job, I've taken a position at HMP (Her Majesty's Prison) Maidstone. I'll be working in the library overseeing the two inmates who run the library, and checking books that inmates would like to get from other libraries for content. I interviewed for the job back in April, but due to various background checks (including writing to the FBI) I just started last week. The nice part about the job is that I think I'll enjoy it more than JJB and it pays 50% more. I won't get as many hours, but that will leave time for me to care for Clive while Erica does freelance work.

I had the opportunity to preach at both of All Saints' morning services on July 29th. We were working our way through the first half of Romans and I preached on 8:17-30. I felt a bit rusty, but enjoyed the experience. Critique for yourself here.

The Olympics are in full swing and Team GB (as they insist on being called) are doing very well. We, along with Erica's sister Inga and her husband Simon will be headed to Cardiff (It's in Wales, 150 miles from London, but whatever) on Saturday to watch the bronze medal football soccer match between Japan and South Korea.

Speaking of Inga and Simon, they just bought a house and have asked us if we would like to be subletters, cotenents, lodgers. We've put in the notice with our landlords that we'll be leaving the place we're at and will hopefully be moving house (as they say over here) in early September. The house is in Coxheath (home of the world custard pie championships), which is the village right next to Loose (where our church is). This will mean a much shorter commute for me on my bike to work and it's still the same distance from the prison. It will also be a help to Inga and Simon to cut down their mortgage.

Lastly, my ordination process moves on. It's been confirmed that I'll be a part of the local Bishop's Advisory Panel (or BAP, but not to be confused with a bap) on December 1st. The BAP is a one day selection process that is my next hurdle in going for ordination. Please pray that I'll have the time and energy to put work into prepping for it. My advisor tells me that she is feeling pretty positive about it, but as you know with Erica and Zac nothing is ever straight forward.

That's us for now. We miss all of you back in the states. We probably won't be back in the U.S. of A. until July 2013, but if you have some leftover pence (the proper plural of penny dontcha know?) and are looking to get away, we'll gladly take you in.

Euro2012

I'm a sucker for international competitions. (Which is probably why I watched Eurovision this year) I just really like the idea of countries personified and competing against each other.

This summer's competition is Euro2012; the biggest soccer/football competition aside from the World Cup. It is held every four years just as the world cup, but on the alternate even years (2012, 16, 20 where as the WC is 2010, 14, 18, etc).

The tournament features 16 European sides, 14 had to compete to quality while 2 sides had automatic bids (Poland and Ukraine the co-hosts of the tournament).

The competition has been wittled down to two sides, the defending European and World champions Spain who beat its Iberian rival Portugal on Wednesday night to reach the final, and Italy; who after eeking out a penalty-shootout win over England in the quarterfinals, beat Germany Thursday night.

Some of the highlights of the tournament?

Greece and Germany meeting in the quarterfinals in a match that was widely referred to as the 'debt derby' (for those speaking American English, derby is pronounced darby, and is synonymous with the word 'rivalry'). The Germans won handily.

England going out of the tournament on a game decided on penalty kicks. (They've only won 1 match decided on penalty kicks of 8 they've played in.)

Mario Balotelli (pictured above) establishing himself as a true force to be reckoned with scoring both goals in Italy's upset of Germany. Balotelli is the mix of all the bad reputations that athlete's get, petulant, arrogant, lewd, rich, but he's the petulant, arrogant, lewd, rich guy you want on your side and not on your opponent's.


By the way, the final match just ended. Spain repeats as Euro champs (a first) with a 4-0 victory over Italy.

Oh My Omar

I have an Omar Vizquel Cleveland Indians t-shirt jersey (basically this, but blue) that I picked up at a thrift store (charity shop) probably four years ago now. I figured that he was probably about to retire and when he did I'd start wearing it around in honour of one of baseball's best defensive shortstops. We'll Omar is still going and while he does, the Indians have another fantastic fielding SS in the form of Asdrubal Cabrera. He made the play above (not sure if you can see it direct from the blog) a few nights ago and I immediately thought of Omar.

(Sorry about the bad quality. Plus skip to :35 to see the good stuff).

QE II

Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee (60 years on the throne dontcha know?) with an extra long weekend.

It was a pretty big deal. She's only the second English monarch to reign for 60+ years. Her great-great-grandmum Victoria reigned for 63 years and 7 months.

In honour of the Queen I have composed a song to the tune of 'God Save the Queen' or 'My Country Tis of Thee' whichever you prefer.


God save the good queen Liz.
She's the best in the biz.
God save the queen.

She's reigned for a long time.
I'll celebrate with rhyme.
Now, I've run out of lines.
God save the queen!

I want to ride 'my' bicycle!

View Larger Map

There's the journey I make via bike two days a week. 12.9 miles round trip. The other three days I only go from point A-B-A or A-C-A; both of those are 8 miles. It has been great fun. I had been given a 30+ year old road bike that I was babying and was about to paint, but sadly, two weeks ago now, it got stolen from beside our house. I'm the dummy who didn't lock it up, I just didn't imagine anyone would take it, if you saw it you'd believe me. (In fact, I keep thinking that I'll find it in our front yard one morning with a note saying that they changed their mind).

Anyone, I am loved, so I currently have a loaner hybrid-ish bike, that is doing just fine, but doesn't quite have the indie/hipster, roll up your pant leg and show off your socks appeal. (speaking of which, that's why I love English football (or soccer) socks)

and now...for your viewing pleasure

Feeling Hungry?

Two-Hundred and fifty years ago, an English nobleman asked for beef served between slices of bread so that he could continue playing cards without stopping to eat. Thus the sandwitch sandwhich was born.


Sandwhich the town is a very pretty town on the Kentish coast and one of the Cinque Ports (Although it is now nearly two miles from the sea).


P.S. The picture to the right isn't photoshopped.

The Ordination Process

As I mentioned in our last post, we decided after about six months of living in England that we needed to commit to worshiping and serving in the Church of England and the best way to do that long term was for  Zac to pursue ordination within the CoE.

I spoke to Steve the Priest-in-Charge (A title I love, theologically speaking--perhaps I'll elaborate in a further post) at All Saints' about ordination and he encouraged me to check it out, but warned me that my age and possibly my nationality might be factors going against me.

At the beginning of November I met with the Diocesan Director of Ordinands (Get ready for long (occasionally pompous) titles to start showing up in my blog posts) of the Canterbury diocese as a very first step in the process. He was a nice gentleman by the name of Clive (I mentioned that I named my son after him, I figured it might help) and after praying about it for a few days gave me the go ahead to start the process.

If all goes to plan, here is how the process will play out.

For a period of nine months to a year I will meet with an Assistant Diocesan Director of Ordinands to pray, read, and discuss ordination. There are nine criteria which the CoE uses to help consider a candidate for ordination. They are:

Vocation: basically, you should feel called to the ministry and be able to articulate that calling.

Ministry within the CoE: You should be able to explain why ministering in the CoE is different from other denominations.

Spirituality: You should have an active prayer life, be studying scripture, and attending church regularly.

Personality and Character: You should be self-aware of your strengths and weaknesses and be a person of integrity.

Relationships: You should be able to build and maintain healthy relationships with others.

Leadership and Collaboration: You should be able to offer leadership within and without the church, and be able to identify and nurture the gifts of others.

Faith: Similar to Spirituality, but more related to living out the spiritual disciplines.

Mission and Evangelism: You should be able to articulate Christ's message in various contexts, and in an attractive way.

Quality of Mind: You should have the necessary intellectual capacity to cope with the intellectual demands of ministry and have a commitment to lifelong learning.

Once my ADDO feels that I have a good grasp on these criteria, I will face two examinations. The first will be a one-day local panel who will question me about these criteria and other matters. If approved I would move onto a Bishops' Advisory Panel which is a three-day national panel that will ask the same types of questions but to a much greater level of depth.

Ideally I will have sucessfully completed all of this by the spring/summer of 2013, will be ordained as a deacon, and can start to apply for university programs. Because I will be under the age of thirty, the CoE will pay for three years of further education. The UK has a bunch of great theological colleges and I would love to end up one of them whether it be Wycliffe Hall, Cranmer Hall, Ridley Hall, or Oakhill.

Following further theological training I would appoint to a curacy (basically a position as an assistant minister) for four years.

Following my curacy I would then be then be ordained as a priest and would then be able to take on a role as head of a local church.

The downside to all of this is that at any point in the process, it can be decided that I am not currently suited for ordination and the process stops. If this happens, I would be required to wait two years before restarting the process.

Even though the process is long I am enjoying it. I have met with my Assistant DDO twice now and am doing my best to not get bogged down with the process and to press myself to get the work done.

So that's where I am at, and that's the direction we're heading, (until told otherwise).

Proto-ordination

The short story is that we came to England so that Erica could pursue her master's degree and we could have an adventure. Mixed in with that though was a thought that perhaps God was calling us to the British Isles long term so that we might live for the sake of the salvation of those living in the UK.

This idea first presented itself while we were still considering coming to the UK, before Erica and I were even married. Erica is much more adventurous than I am, and I was still struggling with the idea of living cross culturally. I spoke to Peter (a British professor at Moody, who along with his wife Kelli did our pre-marital counseling) and he encouraged me to really consider England as his opinion was that the state of the church was pretty dire, and that I might fit into English culture well. (Peter, you might not remember this conversation, but I thank you for it.)

As I mentioned I was not anticipating living cross culturally. I had imagined spending the rest of my life within 50 miles of where I was born, and my biggest criterion for living cross culturally was that they spoke English (or kind of spoke English) Erica was enthused to study abroad however, and Peter's opinion stuck in my head so we decided to come over, she would study and that I would look for a ministry job.

No jobs opened up for me in the area of Erica's school, so we decided we should just settle down, allow Erica to study, and that I would get a 'real' job. Along with this, we had to find a church home. Our original default church was a CoE church, and they had a great heart, but sadly not a great mind. They tended to be heavy on emotion and Erica and I never really felt that we fit in well. It remained our default church as we church-hopped (In theory I hate the practice of church-hopping, and our general philosophy is to attend the church nearest to us, but for reasons that require a long-winded explanation we didn't do that). We visited United Reformed churches (a mix of Presbyterian and Congregationalist theology), free churches, a multi-national church plant, and smaller CoE congregations, and for a variety of reasons none of them worked out. We had just about resigned ourselves to the fact that we'd stay at our default church because it was the strongest of the weak, and because we had invested a reasonable amount of time in it, when I suggested that we make one last church visit, All Saints', Loose. On one occasion at a smaller CoE church we heard a guest preacher who was one of the clergy at All Saints' and I had been impressed with his sermon. Erica told me it was the last church we were going to try (at this point we were six months into our stay), and if it was a dud we'd stick with our default church.

Now that we've been at All Saints' for almost two years, am leading a home group, and on the PCC (Parochial Church Council--akin to elders? congregational board?) I'll spare you the details, but we were blown away by the care of the church and it's vision for reaching the area. It's not a perfect church, but the parts I don't care for are personal preferences and not theological issues, so we serve alongside those whom we love.

At this point though I still didn't feel very Anglican or committed to the CoE, but I was intrigued by it. I had never been a part of the 'established' church, (In fact my view of the established church was that they were nearly always the bad guys) and the idea of the corporate worship service being reinforced by a liturgy had been growing on me since graduating from Moody. I also started to realize that at least at All Saints', not-yet Christians would just show up to a service, especially christenings (infant baptisms), weddings, and funerals. It was like it was in their blood.

I'm not sure when this fascination started turning into commitment, but I am pretty sure what sealed it for me was reading Jonathan Fletcher's pamphlet, Why the Church of England? published by Reform There's a fair bit where Reform and I differ in general, but Fletcher's piece really spoke to me. Take a minute to read it, it's only about a page long. His three reasons for sticking with the CoE in it's present state are, 'because of the clear doctrinal basis on which it was founded', ie. The 39 Articles, and the Book of Common Prayer, 'it's glorious liturgy', the BCP and it's emphasis worship being 'intelligible, congregational, biblical, and edifying', and lastly 'historically the CoE has great strategic influence, ie It's the best boat to fish from. As I said before people will regularly wander into their local CoE (because of the building's beauty, because they want to have a child christened, because it is where their parents were married--somewhere within them the CoE is still a part of them) while they will not walk into another church because it might be 'happy clappy', or cultish, or worse yet, foreign.

After reading Fletcher we decided that at least while we were able to live in England, we would commit to being a part of the CoE. Initially that meant being at All Saints', Loose, but what would it mean when our time at All Saints' was finished?

One possibility; ordination

A Workin' Mama

Erica and myself, (but especially Erica) have been quite busy as of late. She has been in the process of revamping our church's website. It is all up now, and you should check it out at www.allsaintsloose.org.uk (In case you are wondering Loose (rhymes with booze) is the name of the village, and All Saints' is the 'sainted name'? of the church, (hence the possessive apostrophe). It is the church of all the saints as opposed to the church of one saint (such as St. Mary's Church)(I like parentheses).

This is the second church website Erica has done. The first being Firestone Baptist in Akron, Ohio.
If you have any graphic design needs, (religious or not)(digital or not)(<--See I told you), she's the lady for you.

Goal!

I realize that I put this up on Facebook as well, but I wanted to elaborate a bit.

Tim Howard is the goalkeeper for Everton (A Liverpool based club) in the English Premier League (Think Major League level). Tim is one of a handful of Americans playing in the EPL and is the first string goalie for the U.S. Men's Soccer Team.

On Wednesday night Tim did something rather extrordinary. He scored a goal. In doing so he joined an exclusive club; becoming only the fourth goalie to score a goal in the EPL.

If American Football players can whoop and holler just for making a tackle, what kind of celebration could you expect for a historic and unlikely goal?

None.

As you can see in the video, Howard accepts the congrats of his teammates, but then just goes on with the match.

In fact, Howard felt bad about the goal. In reference to Bolton's keeper, Adam Bogdan (who incidently was playing in only his second game of the season, for a last place team), Howard said this,

“It's not a nice feeling for a keeper. It's really awful actually. For the back four (defenders) and the goalkeepers at both ends, there was an awful wind swirling. You could see everybody was mistiming balls. I think the wind is the hardest condition to play in. Snow, rain, sun doesn't matter, but the wind really does play tricks on you.”

“I let (Bogdan) know that I was feeling for him,” Howard said. “It's not a nice place to be. I've been there before, a long, long time ago, and that was why I didn't celebrate.”

For a play that will be on highlights for a long time, that is a classy stance.

It is Howard's talent, and his attitude that made me consider supporting Everton when we first came over to England. In the grand scheme of things, Liverpool is just too far away, and I am happy to be supporting Fulham and their attempt to climb into the top ten as the EPL pauses for the January transfer window.