This blog is called Revising Reform because for a while, I was 'revising' Reform literature.
Reading their literature caused me to think through further the biblical portrayal of the atonement, what we mean by the inerrancy of the scriptures and what it was I understood by the term evangelical.
As I sensed a call to ministry, I enrolled at St John's theological college as an independent student to study the scriptures and test out that call.
I was introduced to a balance of scholarship on particular theological integrities: but more importantly in the context of my calling, one that reads the scriptures as supporting women leading and preaching in God's church. (This is not REFORM's position).
(I found 'headship' arguments less convincing and began to think differently to those who interpret Kephale to mean authority rather than source.) I discovered it all seemed to boil down to one little word in the original language!
I became an ordinand for a further two years at the same theological college and began to study for a Masters degree in theology which would stretch on into a future curacy.
What this blog aims to do
This blog has accompanied me in the journey from first sensing the call of God on my life, into ordained ministry as a curate.
Inspired by the various theological integrities on an increasing range of issues, I try to keep up to date with synod developments, theological opinions and forums. I began reading theologians on both sides of the women issue debate such as Gilbert Bilezikian & Tom Wright on the one hand and Wayne Grudem & John Piper on the other but my reading has widened. There are fault lines everywhere, over sexual ethics and more particularly Catholic and Evangelical interpretations of the faith. I am increasingly realising that charismatic expressions of the faith are less common than the scriptures might lead one to conclude.
What all this means for me?
I live in the tension and the ambivalence of this church as it wrestles like I do, sure and yet tentative, certain in Christ but humble in everything else, as it seeks to understand God's will for his people.
As an ordained person in a very wide and generous church, I still feel close affiliation with my more evangelical bothers and sisters.
Faith is very simply about the centrality of the scriptures, attesting to the life and work of Jesus Christ, a life into which we are invited through the power of the Holy Spirit.
I am committed to an Indabaesque attitude to faith (Indaba being a Zulu word connoting talking across difference) but believe that there is no integrity to such a process when the key foundations are missing: - the centrality of the scriptures, the atoning work of Jesus Christ and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
Like Reform and other movements for Anglican orthodoxy, I hope too that the Church of England rediscovers its first love and that it commits itself again to biblical preaching and the transformation of the nation one person at a time through repentance, faith and a Spirit-filled life.
...your place here
You will never find great expanses of my life on view here but if you read between the lines, it's all there. This has become my 'Hyde Park' corner, my place where I can retreat and yet advance, do battle and at the same time peaceably become reconciled. I read, I think, I do theology and then I hope someone somewhere might say....yes, I have thought those thoughts too, that matters to me as well, I have an opinion on that...and then if they share it with me, I have an opportunity to grow.
Looking into the heart of God, the beat is loud and the interior has no limits, it calls you to a bleeding and sometimes painful-throb but it is also to a place of infinite life.
Journey with me if you dare!
I also have a caricature who speaks over here and looks a bit like this... on a good day. She doesn't always accurately represent me.
