American Thanksgiving!

Hi folks,

We are now in the Thanksgiving season here in the USA. I have decided it is about food (especially turkey and pumpkin pie)and family - probably in that order! Just the other day a local said to me, "Do you have Thanksgiving in New Zealand?" to which I replied, "Nope, the Mayflower never made it that far south!" Already we have had three Thanksgiving dinners and there is more to come. Great hospitality and certainly a very special event in this culture.

Since I last did a posting my D.Min studies at Asbury have been progressing well. The month of October was exceedingly busy with two intensive classes taught; Biblical Interpretation with Dr Joel Green and Strategic Church Leadership with Dr Russell West. These each involved a full week of lectures together with about 4000 pages of reading and numerous book reviews and assignments. It has been all very stimulating and at times really stretching especially some of the newer developments of reclaiming the whole of the Bible as Christian Scripture. In Biblical Interpretation we also did overnight "close readings of the text" and it still surprises me just how much you can get from a scriptural text when you search deeply and especially when you read in the context of the book or letter and in relation to other similar scriptural teaching or stories.

In Strategic Leadership we even had an aviation movie shown - "Twelve O'Clock High" which is a 1949 movie about an American bombing wing and the goings on in the change of leadership. I enjoyed that! Just today I have finished the final assignment for this same class - a 25 page report on how the local Free Methodist Church we attend here in Wilmore can move from being a locally mission focussed Church to being more regionally focussed. The extensive research, reading and surveys was especially relevant for me as East City Wesleyan in Auckland needs to embrace exactly the same challenge.

We've also had Jane's Mum and Dad visiting from New Zealand which was a great time. The Kiwi accent was welcome and their visit coincided with the school's Fall Break with the children having a week off school. Doug and Ruth arrived by train at Ashland, a couple of hours away, and it was fun meeting them on the platform - a long way from Kiwiland! They had travelled in the UK and Canada and had a great time meeting lots of friends and families and seeing special sights. We managed to make a good number of trips out and about including to the Mammoth Cave National Park, Berea Arts & Crafts and Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace. We were most grateful that another of the Asbury Beeson pastors, Mitch Reece from Kansas, very kindly lent his his big Ford seven seater with a 350 V8. It was a big comfortable machine to drive and great having the seven of us in one vehicle. We were sad to say farewell to Doug and Ruth but so grateful they had made the long trip to see us.

Two weeks ago our Beeson pastor class packed our bags for our first trip out of state. We flew to Chicago and then right across America to San Diego. I had a wonderful view of the Grand Canyon on a clear day - breathtaking. Our class visited Skyline Wesleyan Church and met with some of the staff there, including Senior Pastor Jim Garlow. It was a sobering time hearing of their huge property challenges and difficulties experienced. But they are a determined people and Jim is not one to give up. It was good to meet him again as he and Carol and children were in New Zealand about three years ago and Jim gave an amazing address on Church history related matters. Please pray for Carol who is seriously ill.

We also had a special visit with Ken Blanchard who is a well-known management expert and Christian commentator. He told us he lost his house to the recent massive fires in the San Diego area, as so many have. However the main reason for our Californian visit was to attend the National Outreach Convention, along with over 2000 others! This was a show case of resources for evangelism with very fine speakers and amazing workshops. I went to ones on; The nuts and bolts of establishing a community ministry, the three main obstacles to Church growth and how to develop a successful hospitality ministry in the Church. The "Outreach" magazine (www.outreachmagazine.com)is impressive and I grabbed a range of back copies and will subscribe when back home. It has a myriad of helpful news and practical advice on reaching out to "pre-believers".

This past week has been assignment writing although last Saturday I had a fun day off when Craig and Tammy Dunn from Indianapolis visited (Craig is the Wesleyan Investment Foundation CEO). While the temps were cool the day was clear with blue skies and we looked all over the seminary campus and also that of the adjacent college. The beautiful yellow leaves were falling from the gingko trees and the children were having so much fun playing in the carpet of colour.

For Thanksgiving we will be welcoming Tanya and Jonathan Nace and Aaron Fussner who are driving down from Indianapolis. The Naces served in New Zealand for five months (Papakura) in 2005 and Tanya is now working at the Global Partners (Wesleyan World Mission) office. They are Canadian and don't know anything about Thanksgiving either so we are relying upon Aaron (an "American Kiwi")to advise us. Actually I need to say that Jane is doing a superb job preparing turkey, beans, mashed potato, sweet potato and pumpkin pie - the local women are most impressed! As I am sure we will be on Thursday too.

Blessings to all our friends and family and especially to our ECW Church family back home.

Richard