As I mentioned in my previous post I’m heading out to the revival in Lakeland, Florida, in what is only 12 hours now. Since I booked the ticket all has been a bit hectic. I’ve had to cram six weeks of preparation into 3 days. Still as I blog now my hold bag is packed, as is my hand luggage. My phone and iPod are charged and have been synchronised. I have my glow in the dark bible and a good book (reccommended by Austin Wade). A shiny Vodafone Pre Pay SIM card is sitting in my iPhone for two reasons. The first is that I really don’t want to add extra costs to my poor T-Mobile contract. The second well I’m trying out Vodafone again 8 years after I was first with them.
Many people have been both a little surprised that I’m going and also wondered why I’m going. So here is a quick answer that:
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts at the HTB interview the subject of ordination came up after weighing it up for far too long I finally spoke to ACC’s senior elder/pastor David Thatcher about completeing some formal Theology training. He was amazingly supportive and suggested that I do two things. The first being that I start heading along to a small group (either one run by Joe Gisbey or Matt Ford) while the second is do some research into the differnt theology courses courses on offer. I just feel that Lakeland has got God in it right from the start, aside from the amazing ministry we’re going to get once we arrive, it’s a chance to spend some time with people who are much more grown up in the faith than me.
From the other perspective I really want to bring what’s going on in Lakeland back to Ignite. We’ve been teaching from the book of Acts and our weekend away that starts in seven days time is concentrating totally on the Holy Spirit. The last time this was tried, when we were called “Slam” and before Jon had started regular blogging, (yes, that’s how old we’re talking here! And I did have a quick search) was amazing young people started to prophecy over each other. In short it was amazing weekend. God is already touching some of the young people and I just want to see more. As Jez Wong and I were saying the other day we’d love to see God effect the older people in the Church through the young people.
So, there are my thoughts. Plan A, as I wrote the other day, is to be blogging from Florida, but obviously I can’t guarantee this. If you’re all interested here are the airports that are going to be visited:
