In the Months to Come | SL 3.8 (July 2022)
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On a recent Sunday afternoon walk overlooking Durham.
Work & Ministry Update
My overwhelming sense is that the year is moving past us and we are standing still, but also that we're poised on the edge of an incredible amount of activity. It's high time I catch you all up on what we're doing and where we're going. This will be a different newsletter than normal, I'm just going to bullet point our plans for the rest of the year and leave you with some photos and prayer requests. Please do pray with us—a lot is happening. We are ecstatic about the prospect of being done with the PhD and resuming a full-time teaching schedule. We are deeply thankful for you all and look forward to seeing many of you soon. (For the cliff notes, just read the bold.)
- By August 31 I will submit my PhD dissertation one way or another. It is starting to feel like it is truly coming together. Chapters 2–5 are in a semi-finished state. Over the next few weeks I'll revise chapter 1 (intro) and chapter 6 (conclusion), and then I'll have a solid draft. After that I just have to edit the whole thing in conversation with my supervisors, cut about 10–15,000 words, write the front matter, and finish the bibliography and I am done.
- After I finish the PhD, Meghan and I are planning to stay in Durham for the short term. Durham is an excellent base of operations for teaching overseas and being involved in academics. But more than that, it is where our girls now feel at home and we don't want to move them until we have a sense for where God would have us settle indefinitely.
- From August 13–20 I'll be in the environs of Monrovia, Liberia with Training Leaders International and a team of student-teachers from William Tennent School of Theology. We'll be teaching the Gospel of Mark for some 80–90 pastors. We'll helping the pastors learn how to interpret the Gospels and how to preach and teach from the life of Christ well. This is the culmination of a long-planned partnership—I get to take a team of students I have been teaching at William Tennent School of Theology with me to train pastors for the global church with TLI. Amazing!
- From September 1–30 the Kirks will be in Daytona Beach, Florida! That's right, for the first time in three years all five of us are coming home. We are very much looking forward to seeing family, but I will also be preaching (at least once) at Christ Community Church and we hope to reconnect with many of you while we are in town.
- While Meghan and the girls are in Florida, I will fly down to Santiago in the Dominican Republic from September 10–17 to help launch a new TLI training site for Haitian pastors who are expatriated there. One of those expatriates is my friend and colleague, Pastor Jean Garry Auguste (formerly of Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti). Because of the extremely volatile political situation and chronic health problems facing his wife and son, they moved to Santiago about a year ago. He quickly got involved in theological education there and now TLI is joining him to train pastors for the massive Haitian diaspora in that city. We'll be teaching a course called "Understanding God, Scripture, and Ourselves," which is a kind of introduction to theological studies.
- Between October 23 and November 5, I'll be in Woodland Park, CO teaching a course on the Torah for a new cohort of students at William Tennent School of Theology. This is Tennent's third cohort of students and by a twist of providence, Dyonah Thomas, TLI's national partner in Liberia, is one of our students. I love teaching for Tennent and am looking forward to revising and repeating my course on the Torah.
- From November 19–22 I'll be back in Denver (!) presenting papers at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. This will be fun. It will be my first time attending not as a student but as a newly-minted PhD. I've organized a session on humor in the wisdom books of the Hebrew Bible with my colleague, Dr. Katherine Southwood of Oxford University, where I am delivering a response paper and I'm also presenting a paper on the numerical saying in ancient West Semitic literature.
- Finally, December 3–10, I'll return to the Dominican Republic for course 2 with Pastor Garry and the Haitian pastors there. This course is called "Knowing the Bible's Story" and it's an introduction to biblical theology that lays the foundation for the courses on exegesis and exposition to come.
- After that, I think I'll take a break for Christmas.
Thank you. Your prayers and support empower everything we do.
Pastor Garry and TLI staff member, Brian Wiseman, in the Dominican Republic on a recent scouting trip for a new training site.
Some Things to Look At
In one of my favorite articles I have read in a long time, Tomiwa Owolade explains that "The Future of Anglicanism is African." I love this article because I think it is edgy, thought-provoking, and largely true. It also explains why Training Leaders International exists. One of TLI's newer initiatives is targeted at training ex-pat pastors from under-resourced communities in major Western cities. Plus, this article gives you a fascinating look at modern Britain.
This article by Jonathan Haidt has been making the rounds: "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life has Been Uniquely Stupid." Haidt is one of my favorite public intellectuals and in this article he makes a strong case for the deeply corrosive power of social media in all areas of American life. It isn't that social media has no value, but it has no redeeming value that justifies us staying on there any longer. Just get off. You will immediately become a happier and better person (You probably think this is hyperbole, but this is not hyperbole!). Here's a great interview that expands on the case Haitd makes in the article.
I can never quite decide how much I like Florence + the Machine, but there's something there that I keep coming back to. This video is just lovely and, I think, even moving. I mean, you gotta love the set up—a song about anxiety where Florence plays herself and the great Bill Nighy plays... her anxiety! Plus there's a christology bridge and the video is shot in Ukraine and dedicated to those noble, long-suffering people. Godspeed, I say.
Finally, and on more of a somewhat lighter note, in "Truly Humbled to be the Author of this Article," David Brooks nails it with a send-up of people who ghost the word "proud" with the word "humble" and try to turn a corrosive vice into a laudable virtue. Sadly, I am one of them. I would like to apologize now for all the times in this newsletter that I have claimed to be humble when I was really proud. I will stop henceforth.
... and this article really does capture much of the American ex-pat in England experience. It's a short, fun read if you're interested. Now, if we can just get Barry Cooper to write the inverse article!
Every May we try to visit the bluebell forests around Durham—incredible.
Several weeks back, I made it to the Literary and Philosophical Society in central Newcastle for a day of studying in England's largest private library outside of London. Felt like stepping into the 19th century—kind of an incredible place.
On this very morning, Rue had "sports day" at nursery school and we all went to watch her compete (and dominate!) in sack races, egg runs, etc.. Here are the girls afterwards.
Pray With Us
- It is coming together, but the dissertation is far from done and there are still opportunities for various kinds of curve balls from children getting sick to supervisors demanding revisions. Please pray that I can revise the intro and conclusion in the next two weeks, that I would be able to meet with my supervisors in a productive and timely manner, and that I would then have the time and energy to finish all revisions by August 31.
- We currently have a visa renewal app in with the UK Home Office and we cannot leave the country till we get an answer. This could compromise my teaching trip to Liberia—please pray that bureaucracy would work quickly and we would get an answer before August 13 so I can travel and teach.
- Please continue to pray for Meghan's and my energy and the girls' health. We have continued to wrestle over the last few weeks with some fairly intense childhood illnesses and it has really knocked us out. As I look at traveling more and trying to finish the dissertation we are praying for health.
