SPIN LIKE THE WIND-the blog of Nigel James.

ESSENTIAL

As a bit of light relief between Christmas and the New Year I've been doing some writing. At the moment I'm tackling some theological questions for the Essential project. It's co-ordinated by the Evangelical Alliance UK and is aimed at engaging young people with Biblical truth.
I'm attempting to write concise answers to:
How could Jesus have been fully man and fully God?
What will heaven be like?
What is meant by the Trinity?
What is the role of the Holy Spirit?
How can a loving God send people to hell?

Along with lots more answers, they'll be posted on www.essential-truth.org in a few weeks.

IT'S CHRISTMAS.. OR IS IT?

I'm in my study pondering another Christmas season. It's certainly changed since I was a young boy.
Political correctness gone mad means that now we rarely see Christmas cards with a Christian theme, politicians campaign for taking traditional Christian language and imagery out of Christmas and generally speaking people seem to have lost 'the fear of the Lord'. Just recently I heard that a cathedral choir in the North East of England had recorded a version of the Alleluia chorus but had changed the words to 'Alan Shearer' the retired Newcastle United footballer! It was a pleasant surprise, however, to go to Bethan's school Christmas concert and hear so many songs that focused on Jesus. I used to be a bit cynical about school singing religious songs, thinking it was slightly hypocritical. Now I'm grateful- another school had Spiderman as the centrepiece of the nativity story!
This week has seen the Christmas dinners kick in- earlier we had the Ignite staff dinner and then last night was the City Temple leaders Christmas dinner. It was at Ana Bela's Bistro in Pontcanna, Cardiff and a very enjoyable night it was!
I've been looking at 'Ways you can miss out on Christmas' as my speaking theme this Christmas and it has caused me to make sure I'm finding time to wonder anew at Immanuel- God with us.

ACADEMY GRADUATION

Last night saw the Graduation ceremony for the latest intake on the Ignite Leadership Academy. 12 young people received their Leadership Diplomas from local Vale of Glamorgan MP John Smith. The event is one of the highlights of the Ignite year, and John Smith rightly commented that with so much bad news around about young people, the Leadership Academy was a shining light. Here are the graduates with John Smith MP:
I hosted the evening, and as well as John Smith MP there were contributions from Rob Burns, Jonathan Booth, and two of the students themselves. One of them was Zach Kaufman from Fort Wayne, Indiana, who is on the Ignite Cymru schools team. Zach heads off home for Christmas and we will see him again when he returns at the end of February. Zach is just one of an outstanding bunch on this year's academy. They met every Tuedsay night for 12 weeks, under the tutelage of Gary, Rob Burns or myself, and were given input by us as well as church leaders from around Cardiff.There was a residential weekend early in the course as well One of my favourite little pastimes in Ignite is to keep track of previous Leadership Academy graduates and to see how they are contributing to the body of Christ. We have graduated over 80 students over the last 4 years, and it will be exciting to see what God has in store for the latest graduates. I pray that God will go with them and bless them, and that they will be a blessing.

IGNITE INDIA CHURCHES

Over the last year or so, Ignite have helped to fund the building of 2 churches in Southern India. During the next year we hope to help build another 4 churches. Here is a video from my trip back in September- it shows the 2 current churches in action!

DISCIPLINING THE EGO

Gordon MacDonald tells this story:
A young man, freshly graduated from one of England's finest universities, came to live in the community led by Gandhi. Soon after his arrival he was assigned to clean latrines as his daily contribution to the community's life. He protested the assignment to Gandhi, saying, 'Don't you see who I am? I have great things to do." Gandhi replied, "I know you can do great things; what I don't know is if you can do little things."

THE NATIONS SING.

Every so often at City Temple here in Cardiff there is a worship service that reminds me of the variety and diversity of the body of Christ. Tonight was one of those times, when as a Christmas celebration we had contributions from Eritreans, French speaking Africans from Congo and the Cameroon, other African songs from Zimbabweans and Nigerians, traditional carols in Welsh, and there was even time to sneak in my 'Christmas in India' video from Rajahmundry, filmed last year. Then on the way home, Gill and I listened to 'Christmas Offerings' by Third Day and especially the song 'Merry Christmas'. It's a song about a child being away from her family at Christmas time, made all the more poignant by the fact it was written by Brad about the Chinese girl he and his wife have been trying to adopt for nearly 2 years. This is the second Christmas that they have hoped she would have been with them. Listen to the album if you can, and remember the story behind this song.

A RESILIENT LIFE

I've been reading this book by Gordon MacDonald recently, it's linked in the books section on this site, and needless to say it has demanded a large slice of reflection and self-analysis. Quoting Thomas Merton, with echoes of Richard Foster's 'Celebration of Discipline', MacDonald contends that "We are most free when we are under discipline"
He tells the story of a friend of his who liked coffee immensely but disciplined himself to not always have a cup when offered. He was learning self-mastery so that by doing so on a seemingly small thing he would be able to say a more serious no to things of greater importance. In other words, the road to self-mastery begins with what we do with our body.
Admitting that it is not always the case, MacDonald indicates that Christians with ill-disciplined eating habits, and poor habits of rest and exercise, also struggle to be disciplined in other areas such as finance, personal devotions, sexual temptation, and so on.
I've a feeling that a major life move is not too far ahead of me, and reading this book only confirms the need for this move and for the freedom and liberty of a more disciplined life.

ASHES DISASTER

Good job I'm a Christian otherwise I'd be near to despair this week after England's shock defeat to Australia in Adelaide. I've been staying up late to watch live on TV and waking up early to listen on the radio. England had the better of the game for 3 and a half days out of the first four, broke loads of records on the way, then collapsed on day five to an abject defeat breaking more records but this time of the unwanted sort. They scored the highest ever number of runs in a declared first innings in a match that was lost. None of this will mean much to non-cricket lovers, but for England fans this one really hurts. We're 2 down in a 5 match series and only once in 130 years of cricket has any team ever come back from that deficit in Australia. Pietersen scored 158, Collingwood 206 and Hoggard took 7 wickets in an innings, and they all ended up on the losing side. I could go on, but it's all too painful... it reminds me too much of the dark old days of England cricket when a spineless defeat against Australia was a regular occurence. How bad is it? Well some of the Aussie team are claiming it's their greatest ever victory and numerous English journalists are labelling the game England's worst ever defeat. Ouch.

ADVENT ARRIVES

Christmas and Easter are two great, great times to be a preacher! I love speaking at these times and this Christmas will be no exception. Today, after playing golf with Gary Smith and Carl Brettle (I used my new clubs! Verdict?- the new clubs are going to be good, but I'll need to practice a bit more with them) and then watching the Ashes cricket highlights showing Paul Collingwood and Kevin Pietersen smashing the Aussie bowlers all over Adelaide, I put the finishing touches to a talk I'll use more than once in the next few weeks. My theme for this Christmas- starting on the Ignite website today and then tomorrow evening at Kingham Hill School, is MISSING OUT ON CHRISTMAS. Simply put, it examines how some contemporaries of the Nativity story missed out on the real message of Jesus, and how we are in danger of missing out for the same reasons:
The Innkeeper - too busy with other stuff
King Herod- afraid and jealous of a new King
The priests and scribes- couldn't be bothered to go to Bethlehem
The people of Nazareth-thought they knew it all, and overlooked Jesus
The Romans- worshipping idols
The people of Jerusalem- too religious and caught up in their religious practice