Four weeks have passed since I arrived. The time has flown! I miss my beautiful wife, but our regular conversations help to alleviate that. She is having a very interesting time back home, even if she seldom writes anything here.
Today was the first day I’ve forgotten to take a morning photo. We were all tired this morning, and I didn’t even think of taking a photo until we were on the way to the restaurant where we ate breakfast. I took the photo on the left just after midday, which explains why it is so sunny.
Greg and Lorrie Strand came to visit us yesterday, and stayed overnight. They are a great couple, with a very interesting story. The parallels between their lives and Mike and Chris’s lives were surprising, and it was good to hear how the Lord is leading them and working through them.
Before today, I had only seen Josiah do one or two dance moves. Today, I saw a video of his dance company performing several pieces. He is an amazing dancer; he makes moves look easy which I would not even attempt! Sarah is just as gifted, but in illustration. Her picture of an owl is drawn, not a photo!
Day: September 7, 2005
Who is your covering?: denominations and orthodoxy
Much of Frank Viola’s book is concerned with taking particular teachings related to the question ‘Who is your covering?’ and presenting an argument against those teachings. In his section on denominational covering, he makes the point that “When a denominational headquarters is infected by false teaching, every church connected with it falls into that same falsehood and the heresy becomes widespread”, contrasting this with what he claims is the intended “autonomous nature of every church“. I’m not convinced that his argument is entirely correct; individual pastors do not automatically accept new teaching or policies from the denominational headquarters, and supposedly autonomous house churches are linked by relationship, which is also a potential method for heresy to spread. However, I do believe that a looser relational link is more likely to resist heresy than a hierarchical structure.
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Much to read
I’ve got a lot to read! I’m still working on ‘Who is your covering?’, haven’t touched ‘Getting things done’ since the second week here – that’s a book I need to work through at home – and picked up three hot books at the conference:
- George Barna’s ‘Revolution‘
- Felicity Dale’s ‘An army of ordinary people‘ and
- Michael Frost’s and Alan Hirsch’s ‘The shaping of things to come‘.
It looks like I have my work cut out for the next few weeks!