On January 12, 2016, the Rev. Dr. Ken Bailey gave a lecture entitled “The Bible: Quaint Relic or Bright Light – A Middle Eastern View”, and he brought several gifts with him for the Trinity Library. This, a 500-year-old wooden water wheel from Saudi Arabia that was built without glues or metal, and was constructed using only two tools ”“ a saw and a chisel.

You can watch his lecture below:

Dr. Kenneth Bailey is a Presbyterian author and lecturer in Middle Eastern New Testament Studies at Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA. He is Canon Theologian of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh and Research Professor Emeritus of New Testament at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.

Just as it is starting to turn the tide against Isil, Iraq is running out of money.

Behind the front lines of the Iraqi desert, where the Nineveh provincial police are training to retake their homes in and around Mosul, they are short of one thing: weapons.

“We have been regrouped here since the fall of Mosul,” said Major Ayman, standing over his line of men in blue uniforms. “We have been waiting here for five months but we have no weapons.”

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The Diocese of South Carolina is considering affiliating with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

The Diocese’s Affiliation Task Force recommended the association during the 225th annual Diocesan Convention in Bluffton this weekend. Affiliation would require the Diocese to approve affiliation in two future conventions. More than 350 clergy and delegates representing 53 churches across the southern and coastal part of the state gathered for the convention.

Before affiliation the Task Force will host meetings throughout the Diocese to brief clergy and church members about the benefits of affiliation and ask questions about the possible move.

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O God, who by the cross and passion of thy Son Jesus Christ didst save and deliver mankind: Grant that by steadfast faith in the merits of that holy sacrifice we may find help and salvation, and may triumph in the power of his victory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever!

–Psalm 118:1

With 140,000 people working and 40,000 living in London’s Canary Wharf, how are they going to hear the gospel?

..As the mission was launched with Christians in January, Rico challenged those gathered on the Barge to truly believe the gospel of Jesus saves people from hell for heaven through the cross. He quoted Lindsay Brown from IFES saying that Christians would only be motivated in evangelism if they believed the gospel was both true and wonderful.

Rico said: ”˜If I open the Bible and teach it, God will speak through it. The power is in the Bible as the Spirit takes the word of God and transforms people’s hearts’. He highlighted that fear of being marginalised and rejected or being so busy at work and not having time to talk to others were some of the key reasons why Christians fail to share their faith
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Using statistics from the website www.TakingJesus.org, Rico said that 67% of non-Christians said they liked their Christian friends and of these 20% would describe themselves as being spiritually hungry. Finishing off, he said that Christians do not often pass on the message of the gospel because ”˜good things become god things’. He said God sent his Son into the world that people might come to know him and so God sends his people out for the same reason. He encouraged Christians to get involved in these events and pray that their non-Christian friends come and hear the good news.

Read it all and you can listen to Rico Tice’s talk here

..What exactly is history but the accounts, reminiscences, and stories of human beings? Any sweeping historiography that reads historical processes in a way that diminishes the men and women who lived them””who, indeed, caused them””must be rejected as inadequate. Downton Abbey succeeds by reminding us of the human face of the past.

Perhaps no work is more heavily invested in making sense of history than the Bible itself. We understand our own sacred Scripture as historiographical in nature””the biblical writers do indeed give us inspired accounts of historical events, often including an interpretive matrix through which to read them. The Bible tells one grand, cosmic, redemptive Story. It also tells countless individual strands of narrative, the “Bible stories” so many of us may have learned as kids in Sunday school. But even for the Christian reader, who acknowledges that Scripture is historical in nature, we can be tempted to remove the human element from our reading. We can see God’s providential work as simply a grand powerful force, his truth as a set of doctrinal regulations, his people as characters with no more dimension than Hamlet or Harry Potter. But these were real events that happened to real people, who spoke and ate and breathed and did all the things we do. God might have chosen to view history, in a sense, abstractly, supervening all events and processes from his throne in heaven. Yet, in the person of the Son, he chose to enter it and, in so doing, to consecrate it..

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When Craig Ellis was growing up, he picked up the sort of adventure book meant for a boy looking to serve God. The book, “Shadow of the Almighty,” told the story of Jim Elliot, a young American evangelist killed while doing mission work in Ecuador.

The narrative of this Christian martyr did for Mr. Ellis what a superhero comic might have done for his peers: It got him pondering purpose, struggle and sacrifice. The book also provided a model for how a Christian should spread the news of salvation while working in treacherous territory, at great personal risk.

Very little in “Shadow of the Almighty,” however, prepared Mr. Ellis for where he stood on a recent Tuesday, in a room with industrial carpet and a dropped ceiling at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where people lined up on Sunday morning are more likely awaiting a table for brunch than taking communion.

Mr. Ellis, 39, welcomed the dozen men and women seated before him. “This is a space,” he said, “for people who consider themselves non-Christian and are coming in from the outside.”..

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A Baltimore police officer, Eric Gaines, shared the photo on Facebook when he noticed the boy praying on the pavement. In a caption, Gaines wrote: “I watched as this young kid was walking past, stopped and walked over to this sleeping homeless man; touched him and began praying over him… This was an amazing sight! I pray this kid becomes a leader amongst his peers, and continues on this path!! Not all Baltimore youth are lost!! I HAD to post this!!”

A week later, the post has gone viral, with over 35,000 shares.

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