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