Stott on 1 Corinthians

Mr Pye has blogged a useful summary of John Stott's "Calling Christian Leaders" which covers 1 Cor 1-4 here.

1 Corinthians 4:1-21: A Gospel of Power (5)

Sermon notes: Sunday Evening 31 August 2003 (posted 20 September 2008 as I trawl my sermon notes box for 1 Corinthians notes in advance of the new term starting).

Dominant issue is power in the church. Problems in Corinth - failure to live with the cross at the centre.

A) Genuine Christian ministry is apostolic in its authority, vv1-7, 14-21
The underlying issue is that the Corinthian church is in danger of parting ways with the Apostle Paul - v3 - judging Paul, v6 gone beyond what he has written to them, v7 they think that they are v. special, boasting of selves v18 arrogant.
v1 apostles - servants of Christ and stewards of mysteries of God.
cf. ch. £ the Apostles inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Responsibility of Christian ministers is to follow in line of apostles' teaching - not adding, not taking away.

B) Genuine Christian ministry is apostolic in its nature, vv8-13
The ministry that looks weak and foolish = God's ministry.
We live in the overlap of ages (between the First and Second Coming).
v8 - mocking - if they had this, they would be in heaven and he would be there with them.


Isaiah 53:3 - v3 he was despised and rejected by men ... Apostles treated like Christ.
Philippians 2:6-8 - did not count equality with God something to be grasped ... humbled to the point of death.

Church in Corinth wanted to leave the Cross out of the message and out of lifestyle.

W.K.O.F.W.J.B

Just a note to remind me of a (an?) hilarious sketch to illustrate group dynamics at CF. What kind of fish would Jesus be? Indeed.

Flapjacks

Thanks to The Sister for passing this recipe on. Perhaps, once my broken cooker is fixed, I will be able to try this one out myself.

1. 2 x 250g blocks of butter
2. 1 x small (454g) tin of golden syrup
3. 1 x sugar bowl/cup of sugar
4. 300g plain flour
5. 600g oats

6. large baking tray with at least 1" deep sides
7. Oven pre-heated to 200 degrees centigrade.

place 1, 2 and 3 into a large saucepan and boil until all melted,
combined and caramelised. remove from heat. pout in 4 & 5 to the
liquid mix and stir. pour into lined and prepared 6 and level.
place in 7 for 9-10 mins until light golden brown. remove from oven.
score into slices. allow to cool in tin for approx 10 mins. cut down
along scored lines. invert onto cooling rack, use second cooling rack
to then make flapjack right way up again and separate out the pieces
and allow to cool, checking the quality control slice(s).

1 Corinthians - old Central Focus notes

I've just found some old notes on 1 Corinthians on the Central Focus resources page here.

1 Corinthians 4

Sermon notes from a friend's son's baptism at the barge in November 2007

Introduction
How should we cope within a world which regards us as the scum of the earth?

Contrasting judgements - God or man (vv1-5)
v4a - not aware of anything against myself
BUT
v4b - the Lord who judges me.

Paul comits himself to the judgement of God, not the Corinthians. Corinthians were judging by worldly values.
Look to the right judgement.

Contrasting expectations - kings or scum? (vv6-13)
Root of the Corinthian problem - pride
Paul's experience was very difference.
Corinthians had an overrealised eschatology - thinking that we have them now.
v8 - repetition - alerady.


Contrasting examples - Paul or someone else? (vv14-21)
- imitating Paul's leadership
n.b. he doesn't say imitate Christ. Imitate in his leadership - warm, tender, intimate, tender words of love
- imitating Paul's life
Genuine Christian ministry - not glamorous - instead, blood, sweat, toil and tears. May not be liked, but will be saved.

Conclusion
Are we imitating Paul?
- the power of the cross

Hunter's Chicken

What I cooked for Saturday dinner (shortly before the brand-new cooker died - grr!) for The Husband, Sister-In-Law The Younger and me.

Serves 4

Recipe is taken from Nigella Express and tweaked here and there.

Ingredients:
Olive oil
Garlic to taste
Pancetta (c. 75g - or a whole packet, if more)
Red onions
Bunch of rosemary
3 chicken breasts
1/2 tsp celery salt
125ml white wine
400g (tin) of chopped tomatoes
2 bay leaves
400g (tin) of cannellini beans.
2/3 peppers - red/yellow will work best

Method:
1. Fry off the chopped garlic, onions, rosemary and pancetta for a couple of minutes (adding one at a time - probably in the order stated above)
2. Add the chicken, stir well, sprinkle with celery salt
3. Pour in the wine, and let it come to a bubble.
4. Add the tomatoes and bay leaves.
5. Replace lid, simmer for 20 minutes.
6. c. 5-10 mins before serving, add the sliced peppers.
7. Drain the beans and add to the pan just at the end of the 20 minutes (in 5.) - when they have warmed through - Serve!

This was accompanied by some rather lovely focaccia (with a garlic and pesto centre) made by Sister-In-Law-The-Younger.

Yum!

Chilli Con Carne

My chilli recipe - adapted from Mary Berry's 'Complete Cook Book'.

Serves 4
Ingredients:
250g (or a tin) of red kidney beans in water
2 tbsp olive oil
450g (or a pack) of beef mince (steak mince is best)
2 onions, chopped
2 fresh red chillies
Garlic to taste (recipe says one clove crushed, I would probably use c. 1/4 - 1/2 bulb as The Husband's family are *very* keen on garlic)
1 tbsp plain flour (or, at a push, any flour)
500ml of beef stock (made from Oxo) + another beef Oxo cube to crumble in
2 tbsp of tomato puree

Method:
1. Put olive oil in pan, throw in chopped garlic, and chopped chillies. Cook off for a few minutes to let the garlic/chilli infuse into the oil.
2. Add the meat. Brown off. Add the onions.
3. Add the flour, stir in and cook for a minute.
4. Add the stock, and then the tomato puree. Stir.
5. Crumble in the additional stock cube. Stir.
6. Add the beans. Stir.
7. Bring to the boil.
8. Turn the hob down to c. 3 or 4 (assuming it goes up to 6) and leave, covered with a lid, for c. 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
9. Eat.

This works very well (The Husband thinks that it is better, even) if it is cooked, put in the fridge overnight, and then reheated through (e.g. in the slow cooker when at church, as we did this morning - even if parking restrictions meant that we didn't actually make it to the service).

Hocus-Pocus ... the return

Gosh - it's been quite a long time since I blogged. It has been quite a busy time for the husband and me, but at least it seems to be calming down slightly now.
So, my attention turns to prep for the year ahead in the mid-week Bible study I go to. This year - 1 Corinthians. A cursory reading throws up lots of very interesting points to look into in more detail, and plenty of 'wrestling with the text' will have to be undertaken.
For my use (even if no-one else finds it useful), I'm going to post some useful links to sites/blogs re: 1 Corinthians (thanks to Mete Pyers for starting me off with some useful links re: cessationism etc.).
This year is going to be fun!

Kittens

This week the husband and I have been kitten-sitting for his sister. They are very sweet, and we will miss them a lot, but the flat simply isn't big enough to have cats full-time. Here is a picture

Leeds Castle

A lovely afternoon out at Leeds Castle (thankfully in Kent, rather than Leeds). £15/head, with validity of the ticket for the full year means that we can go back again and again.
Yesterday we walked through the grounds (passing a white peacock - stunning) and then had an ice cream, and pottered round the aviary where there were lots of parrots and macaws.
Things to which to look forward:

• Falconry displays (the husband is particularly keen on this)
• Maze and Grotto
• The Castle itself.

So - plenty to do over the next few visits.

America's Got Talent

Relaxing at home on a Friday evening, the husband and I idly switch to ITV2 and find 'America's Got Talent'. Now, we have on occasion found 'Britain's Got Talent' quite amusing, resurrecting as it does the old-fashioned variety/talent show, so we thought it would be interesting to see what they do in the States.
The interesting thing about AGT is who the hosts are....
Instead of Simon Cowell, we have ... David Hasselhoff (squee!), instead of Amanda Holden, we have Sharon Osborne, and yes, Piers Morgan crops up again. (How, how, how did PM become famous in the States? Most odd).
The piece de resistance however, is the behind the scenes presenter. No Ant and Dec fo AGT ... it's none other than .... Jerry Springer. Is this a move up? a move down?
Odd. Just odd.

Lamb shanks

We had very nice lamb shanks for Sunday lunch today - recipe as follows (taken from the BBC Good Food website, and tweaked):

Lamb shanks (1 per person - the quantities below were for 4 people)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
rosemary
3 bay leaves
1 garlic bulb (this is due to the family being v.pro-garlic - the original recipe I looked at suggested 4 cloves)
2 tbsp plain flour
1 tbsp tomato puree
350ml white wine
500ml lamb stock
and an extra stock cube.

The original recipe also had the lamb cooked at 200C for c. 2 hours. As our oven is half broken (so we use just the grill/top oven, and the hob), we had to tweak that as well as we needed the oven to cook roast potato wedges for the meal...

So....

• Put the olive oil into a stew pan, add the lamb shanks, cook at 200C for 10 mins
• Add chopped carrot and onion, cook for a further 10 mins
• Add the garlic, rosemary and bay leaves, cook for a further 3-5 mins
• Remove lamb from the pan, set aside, transfer pan to hob
• Add white wine, lamb stock (could probably use both cubes at this point - i used one, and then put one in later on), flour (remember to mix in well) and tomato puree (n.b. this amount does make it quite tomato-ey - I may cut back slightly in future.
• Simmer for a while
• Add the lamb back, put lid on stew pot, continue to cook for c. 90-120 mins (the liquid should be simmering, rather than boiling - we cooked this at c. 3/4 (on a scale of 1-6) on the hob.
• Turn the shanks halfway through - this helps you to see when it is falling off the bone.

This was lovely - the lamb fell off the bone, and fell apart on our plates. We served with roast potato wedges, sweet potato mash, baby corn and mange tout. Followed by white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake ramekins.

And... I'm back

Thanks to a handy hint from my sister-in-law... whose musings on food, incidentally are available at http://www.teaflavouredgourmet.blogspot.com ... (and mighty fine they are too)... I'm back here, having worked out how to access this blog with my new email address.

Posts which were made over at http://www.tea-and-ribena.blogspot.com as follows:

Well - before I work out how to link back to http://www.dlc79.blogspot.com/, I shall post some recipes first, just to make sure that I don't lose them.

Kedgeree

Firstly, kedgeree. This is really T's mother's recipe, but I won't remember it unless I write it down, and I'm likely to lose the piece of paper (the study is not sorted since T and I married some six weeks ago. But we do have two goldfish - so hey!).
Cook ½ pint Basmati rice as follows – rinse in several changes of cool water, then drain in a sieve. Melt a knob of butter in a heavy-based saucepan and turn the rice around in it for a couple of minutes.
When the rice is well coated, add ¾ teas salt and ¾ pint water. Bring to the boil, then cover and reduce to a very low simmer for 20 mins, without removing the lid. Then it is ready to serve. You can turn the heat off and leave it in the pan for a little while if you are not quite ready for it.
Meanwhile, put about 350 g smoked white fish in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 10 mins, until the fish is just tender all the way through.
Remove fish to a plate. Skin and bone the fish and flake roughly.
Hard boil 3 eggs. Cool quickly and then peel.
Cut 2 eggs into quarters lengthways and chop the remaining egg.
Chop 1 medium onion and fry in a little butter and oil.
Add 2 heaped teas curry paste (I usually mix 2 different sorts of paste, perhaps 1 teas of ‘Garam Masala’ and 1 teas ‘Rogan Josh’ or ‘Madras’) to the onion.
Add a heaped teas flour, mix in and cook for a minute.
Then gradually add some milk, until you have a sauce that is the texture of double cream.
Add the flaked fish and the chopped egg.
Serve on top of the rice and decorate with the quartered eggs.

Family life

As you are short when one is young and the older you get the taller & bigger you get... (quoth my brother, aged 4) Drain (our brother-in-law, 6'4") must be very old....

Travel

After a mammoth drive (ending in rescue by the in-laws after the Land of Nod beckoned just a little too strongly somewhere after Donnington), T and I spent a lovely weekend away with his parents' church. The venue: The Jonas Centre in North Yorkshire. Beautiful area, nice cosy cabins, and a caravan pitch for those who bring their accommodation with them. T's sister S came down on Sunday afternoon, and we had a nice time catching up as a family, culminating in a bit of store cupboard magic, where T and S (predominantly S, he tells me) created what we shall henceforth call: S's Store-cupboard Smoked Sausage Surprise Spectacular.... described as best I can below: * Fry off smoked sausage (Mattesons?) with butter and olive oil (slice the sausage). * Dip Camembert in egg and breadcrumbs, and fry off. * Boil asparagus * Combine on a plate. Lovely. Lovely. Lovely.

Flapjacks

4oz brown sugar 6oz butter 6oz porridge oats 1 dessertspoon of golden syrup. 150C for 40 minutes.

Moving on.... to Tea and Ribena

Not in any permanent, or life-changing sense of course. Just moving URL for this blog. New posts will be made at www.tea-and-ribena.blogspot.com (no prizes for guessing the inspiration there), as the login for this blog is my now old email address - which makes it all a bit of a faff. So - see you over at Tea and Ribena?
Very soon it should be looking normal....

Tunisia

Just found the itinerary from our Tunisia trip in June 2006 - before recycling, I shall post.

Gatwick - Tunis airport, and then via (slightly) air-conditioned coach down to Monastir to the Hotel Cristal (just 100m from El Karaia Beach!... hmmm)

Feeble and I went on the following trips:

* Three days into the desert -
Monastir - El Jem (Roman coliseum in better condition than in Rome, Feeble said)
El Jem - Gabes Oasis (don't remember this bit) and onto Matmata to visit a Troglodyte home (a Berber lady called Fatima lived there, and happily took small dinar for showing us round. A grandchild (or similar) had a chameleon on a string, and there was a cable snaking out of the home onto the surface to receive satellite TV. Ho hum!
Matmata - Douz for a camel ride dressed as a Bedouin. It was quite hot there (50C) - camel ride was interesting but a little long.
From Douz, the next day, we travelled across the dry salt lake at Chott El Jerid to Tozeur, and then stayed at Nefta in a lovely hotel. We went for a horse and carriage ride through the oasis (very sorry looking horse). There was a brief visit to a date/palm tree farm, where we bought dates, smoked palm leaves and watched small children scamper up the trees to harvest the dates.
The final day saw us visit mountain oases in Chebika, Temerza and Mides (4x4 ride across the sand dunes - hurrah!). Then on to Sbeilta, visiting a Roman site which was quite complet. Then we stopped in Kairouan on the way back. There is a very big mosque there.
We also visited Sousse and wandered around the souk.
We also went to Tunis and Carthage. In Tunis we visited the Bardo museum (which is the equivalent to the British Museum) - lots of Roman mosaics. Carthage ruins are fewer than we expected (or perhaps we ought not to have expected anything at all), but we could see from the view out to sea that it was a site of strategic importance. The Antonine Baths are the best ruins - someone has done a scale replica which is on display there (interestingly enough, the man who made it was from Cheltenham).
We also visied Sidi Bou Siad - beautiful little white and blue village on the hilltops overlooking the Gulf of Tunis.

Useful wedding information

I thought that it would be useful to post links / info which I gathered as we organised the wedding. I'll try and structure in a reasonably sensible order.
So....

Legal stuff
If you are getting married in the Church of England, you need to get your banns read in both the parish where you will be married, and the parish(es) in which bride and groom are resident. In a village - straightforward - the local church (almost certainly). In the city - less so. A useful website is ACNY - which stands for 'A Church Near You'. Basically, you enter your postcode, refine the location using a map, and then this shows you your local parish church.

The UK Deed Poll Service provides a useful outline of a woman's rights on marriage in case you are interested in doing something more than just taking your husband's surname. It appears that you can 'mesh' the two surnames .... the mind boggles....

Clothes
Debenhams do a nice line in evening wear, which works well for bridesmaids.
I got my dress from Heavenly Bodies Bridal based in Catford and run by a very nice lady called Patricia.

Winston and Laurie

Last day of 'honeymoon-at-home' today. The IKEA furniture is almost assembled. The flat is still quite untidy but we're getting there. We decided to venture out to the cinema and chose 'Fool's Gold' which was actually quite good (given the lead was Matthew McConaughey, it could have just been irritating) - well written, nice digs at popular culture - but featuring Ray Winstone with an awful American (we assume) accent.
Given that the subject of the film was treasure hunting in the Bahamas (and around)- it seems reasonable that Ray Winston couldn't just be Ray Winstone (which was basically what he had been hired for, in much the same way as Al Pacino 'does' Al Pacino in every film etc.) - but the accent was quite distracting.
However, from Winston to Laurie - home to watch a few episodes of House (featuring a very good US accent from Hugh Laurie)while continuing to sort out the living room.

New word: Emotionale

Not sure if this one already exists, but it emerged in discussion recently:

Emotionale - which I defined as an equivalent to rationale.

Theory being thus:

If having a rationale is a product of approaching something rationally, is the product of approaching something emotionally. Emotionale just seemed to fit.

I suppose one would use it in situations when you just 'feel' something, and can't quite pin it down or explain it.

Thoughts?

What do you get if .....

You combine the populations of Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Carlisle, Chester, Derby, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, Swansea.

or ....

multiply by five the number of UK casualties in the two World Wars?

......

Horrifyingly (is that a word?) - the number of babies aborted in the UK since the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act.

If you're not happy with that... - please think about signing the petition online here.

Some more stats from www.aliveandkicking.org:
The Tragic Loss of Life
UK law permits abortion of healthy babies up to 24 weeks. Babies suspected of having a disability can be aborted up to birth.
6,652,243 babies have lost their lives since the Abortion Act 1967. (1)
More than 10% of the entire UK population.
More than the combined populations of Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Carlisle, Chester, Derby, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northampton, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, Swansea.
5 times the UK casualties in two World Wars
More than 200,000 babies are aborted in Britain each year.
Yearly abortion figures have tripled since 1967 and continue to rise.
More than 600 babies are aborted every day.
More than 3000 a year are killed after 20 weeks.
Disabled babies can be aborted up to birth.
475 babies were aborted in 2006 for having Downs Syndrome. (1)
1. Statistical Bulletin, Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2006 and Scottish Health Statistics, ISD Scotland.

Weekend update

All go this weekend.
A trip to the dentist, then off to pick up my dress (officially referred to as 'the pink ra-ra skirt' to shield its true design from interested parties etc.) - leaving my beloved to clean the kitchen and go to ASDA (unprompted, i'm just one of the most blessed women in the world). Then, quick bite of lunch, and off to Covent Garden to go to Moss Bros to buy him a morning suit (given that after our wedding, we have a further three to attend before the end of July, it's very definitely an investment). Moss Bros Covent Garden is most definitely a gentleman's outfitters - the kind of place where the salesmen (which seems to be too dirty a word...) can pick out your size at a glance.
Then home, for slow-cooked pork belly with celery and leeks, and garlic potato wedges. All courtesy of His Nibs.
Lovely.

And today, I managed to put my contact lenses in in under 10 minutes, so perhaps there is hope of me wearing contacts for the wedding....

T-27 (that's my boy)

T-37 and counting

All getting quite close now. Had two days of not being stressed about the wedding this week, which was lovely. Largely brought about by most of the spreadsheet having been coloured in green (rather than red or amber) and by the dress being even prettier than I remember, and fitting perfectly - no alterations needed. Hurrah!

There are three 'k's in Habakkuk!

At home with the lurgy at the moment. Felt better this morning when I woke than yesterday, so hope that the tide is turning. Usually when I'm ill, I'm still fit to do minor household admin tasks - not so with this virus.
Generally feel OK if I am lying down. However, this morning's improvement has meant that I have decided to try a bit of pootling about on t'internet to sort stuff for the wedding. This includes putting the Order of Service together .... which meant that when I was searching on Biblegateway.com for Habbakuk 3 .... I wasn't finding anything. Anyhow - a more challenging target has come to light: being able to say my vows without sobbing after every other word. Really don't want to be a crying bride. Not good. Even if you go down the route of dyeing your eyelashes rather than using mascara....
Ho hum! 46 days to go....

Long time, no blog

This planning-a-wedding malarkey does take up quite a lot of time. Anyhow - time for a quick recap of the weekend, and then I will backfill some of the weeks gone by (for the record).

This weekend:

Saturday - up early, but still overslept, tidying the flat for the two viewings which were booked in (no offers, sadly), and off to France to buy wine for the wedding. Very impressed - we left at 8.15am or thereabouts, were down at Folkestone at 9.25am, and crossed at 10.50am. Cite Europe is right next to the Tunnel, so didn't have to go too far (good, as I'm not that good at driving on the right). Moules frites for lunch (my French is far too rusty) and then to Tesco Vin Plus (where I had checked via email that we could take advantage of the feb - sept 10% for wedding purchases even though the offer doesn't officially start until 7 feb). Two shopping trolleys full of wine, cava and champagne, and a quick phone call to the bank (to confirm that my card hadn't in fact been stolen) later, and we were heading back to London. We arrived almost 2 hours before our crossing time but were able to cross immediately, as they brought our booking forward.
A swift crossing meant that we were back for just gone 4.30 (in time to watch the rugby). Perhaps not such a good thing after all.... Lesley (Vainokolo) was great ... as were Wales (oh dear, oh dear, oh dear).
Dad and Joe arrived at about 8.30pm, having been on (as Joe put it) a-train-and-a-bus-and-a-train-and-an-underground-train-and-a train - very excitable. Chinese, persuasion of Joe that sleeping in a sleeping bag might be quite fun, and to bed. Dad didn't get too much sleep as he was sharing a room with Joe. He gave up at about 6am and got up to read his book. Joe was sedated with a Tractor Tom DVD (well done Tim) and then we had proper breakfast (well done Tim again). Off to church, Dad having noticed that my headlight bulb had blown, and parking noted that my tyre was going flat. Joe off to Sunday school during church (what did you learn about Joe? 'Don't know' - at least his answer is consistent with his answer about school) and a quick look at St. Andrews for purposes of reception planning afterwards, and then Dad changed my tyre, we drove to Halfords to get a new bulb and then set off for Paddington.
We left Stepney at 13.23, and were anticipating a 22min drive to Paddington. That was before the burst water main at Edgware Road. Suffice to say that it was just gone 4 before I got back home. Then had a quick bite to eat, packed three days worth of clothes into my shoulder bag (most impressed) and off to the station to head off to Birmingham for work. 9pm - arrive at hotel. Big bed. Great.

At last, at last!

My laptop is back, courtesy of my future-father-in-law, motherboard replaced, and am now able to access the Internet properly again. Hurrah!

80 days to go....