Lent Day 13

Been listening to some teaching today on how true worship humanises us, overagainst the dehumanising idolatry that we are surrounded with and all take part in to some extent, worship and addiction by Don Williams. I guess the Vineyard church is not really known for it's preaching, but this guy is awesome. Actually Vineyard do have a commitment to good, biblical teaching. Last year at the pastors conference we had Gordon Fee, who is one of my favourite New Testament scholars, speaking on Philippians, and this year we had someone called Simon Ponsonby (fantastic name) from St. Aldate's in Oxford on Colossians. When I hear great bible teaching like these guys do, something inside me just wells up, and on the one hand I think 'Wow, I would love to be able to teach like that', and on the other hand I think I will never be able to, but I think it's a desire that God's put in me. This is quite wierd 'cos I think I'm quite an introvert, and speaking in front of people always scares me to death.
Now, I know we are a much more visual culture, and I know we need to explore more interactive, discussive, less 'monologue' style ways of learning, but I also think that there will always be a place for preaching and teaching and I'd like to be able to do it well. So I'm looking forward to the upcoming Vineyard preaching conference at Trent Vineyard Nottingham.