A walk along the Thames after being sick for a week

Joanie and Holly got sick on Monday, July 13. By Thursday it was time for us to get out of the house and move our bones. Joanie knew a place near Shepperton with a walk along the Thames River.

We saw large boats moored next to huge mansions. Rustic wood houses sat alongside glass minimalist homes. I saw Katie running along the river in time to photograph her against the summer sky.

When we got back to the car and drove out to go home we realized we had stopped our walk a curve too soon. Around the bend was a bridge over the locks, a refreshment stand, and several nautical shops. Adventure! I guess we save that for exploring next time.

Living What I Teach (or What I Did On My Summer Vacation)

Back in March I got an email from my pastor Wayne Taylor in Seattle. He was going to take a trip to do outreach in Germany and Austria during July. Before he returned to Seattle he wanted to meet with as many Calvary Fellowship missionaries as possible. So he set up a retreat at a YMCA hostel in Southern Germany from 14-16 July. We would fly in to Salzburg, Austria and go to the hostel just across the border in Germany. Later on I was asked to contribute to the teaching. Retreats are times for encouragement and strengthening, so I mulled it over and prepared a message about the encouraging things I have learned while experiencing difficult setbacks and puzzling situations I couldn't do anything about.

The day to fly came. At 2:30 Monday morning we got up to drive to Stansted Airport. Holly threw up in the bathroom. She did not want to go on the trip. Joanie and I now had to decide: was this because Holly's system did not like it at 2:30, or was this more serious? While we waited, I got the car out and stood ready to load the bags. Holly threw up again. We reviewed our options. I could go alone or go with Katie. I had just been to the York Conference alone because the girls had been sick. I didn't want to leave Joanie with the girls for another week. While we waited the time grew near when we would not reach Stansted in time. We decided that we wouldn't go. We went back to sleep at 4 am.

Later that day Joanie came down with the same illness Holly had. It turned out that it had been transmitted at a women's brunch on Saturday. Three other women had also contracted the same illness at the same time.

Since my house had become a disease vector I decided to close down the prayer meeting and the midweek Bible study so nobody else got sick.

That made it a vacation at home. We've always wondered what it would be like to have a vacation at home. You don't travel, so in theory when it's over you aren't tired from driving so far. Well, what was it like? A little boring, when the family is sick.

In the end I did what I have learned the hard way: submit to the will of God. Give thanks for all things always, says Ephesians 5:20. So I gave thanks that Joanie and Holly got sick and that we couldn't go to the retreat and I couldn't teach. That isn't a denial of reality. Giving thanks in a situation like this means that God will work all these things out for good, I just don't know how He will do it yet.

Monday night a woman who lives in my home state of Washington called me. Her 84-year old mother was visiting England with a grandson. Last Thursday (July 9), while in Westminster Abbey, she collapsed and found she could no longer walk. She was sent to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, awaiting treatment. The woman asked me to visit her mother.

When I got there, this lady thought I was an angel sent by God. She has been going nuts, with only herself for company. She couldn't take five days of being cooped up with herself. She wanted to hear me talk, and made me tell all about myself. Because of her hearing aid she made me speak up LOUD. So the whole ward and probably all the nurses on the floor learned that I'm a missionary, how I came to receive Jesus, and how I used to play in a Christian rock band, as well as the rest of my life story. Pretty insane.

If we had gone to Germany that woman would not have reached me, I wouldn't have visited her mother and shared the Lord with her. Joanie would have had to care for Holly while sick herself.

My message at the retreat would have been about the encouraging things I have learned while experiencing difficult setbacks and puzzling situations I couldn't do anything about. More encouraging than having all things work out for me is God making all things work out for good.

The Pen Is the Scalpel of the Mind

In order to study the Bible you need a set of tools to take it apart and analyze it. Here's another great tool: your pen.

A great way to begin observing a text is to write it out. Take a sheet of paper and write the scriptures out on one half of the page. You pick the side depending on if you are right- or left-handed. Since I'm a lefty I use the right side. I write each verse as a paragraph. Then I use the left side of the page to make observations.

Sounds like a lot of work? Maybe so. What I find is that I notice things as I write that I wouldn't if I merely printed out the text.

For example, as I write I'll notice if I write the same word over and over. Repetition is one way to emphasize an idea. You want to notice emphasis because that's what's important to conveying the message. You don't emphasize unimportant things. If a word is repeated seven times in eleven verses, you would be justified in thinking it indicates a major concept. Try writing out Romans 4 and see if you can find which word is repeated most (apart from words like "the", "and", and so on). Do it with Romans 7. Hint: the word emphasized there is a pronoun. Find the emphasized words and you find the major ideas.

Another discovery you will make is unfamiliar words. If you are writing and don't know what a word means, you can mark it to look up later. You now have a list of words to quickly investigate in your dictionary (you did get a dictionary, didn't you?).

Questions will occur to you as you write. Write them down to answer later. Questions are valuable. If you ask the right question, you will get the right answer. Sometimes I get the answer as I write the question. That will spark a line of inquiry that will prove valuable in understanding a scripture.

As you get insights, write them down. You are clarifying your thoughts. You can be objective with them. You can evaluate them. You might have a moving experience as you think, but you might look at those thoughts on paper and think, "That's ridiculous!" Then you can eliminate the flaws and refine your good ideas.

Commit everything to writing. If you get into trouble for time, you can still grab your preparation sheets and use them to teach. It ain't pretty, but it gets the job done.

Run out of space? Get another sheet of paper. Waste a whole forest if that's what it takes. Nine to twelve pages is not unusual for my preparation. I use waste paper from the photocopier so I don't feel bad about using lots of paper. That's why God made trees: so I could study the Bible.

I used to use a mechanical pencil (so I wouldn't have to sharpen it so often) but now I use a pen just because it won't smear, it's more legible, and I can write even longer.

Can you do this with a computer? I study with one, but I wouldn't make observations with it. That's partly the fault of my typing limitations. But I really like making notes in the margins and circling words and generally freely dissecting a text.

Over the years I've read men who suggest there is no substitute for the action of writing with one's own hand. One writer worried that keyboardists are losing touch with the text, that they suffer by not physically grappling with it. I've also beheld the spectacle of men bringing their laptops into the pulpit. I understand the demands of a teaching ministry and certainly have compassion on my brethren, but a laptop in the pulpit generally advertises that something is wrong. Does it help your case to broadcast that you are in trouble? No finger pointing here. I just want everyone to think about their methods and ways.

Charles Spurgeon, in his Lectures To My Students, ch. 10, quotes M. Bautain: "The pen is the scalpel which dissects the thoughts, and never, except when you write down what you behold internally, can you succeed in clearly discerning all that is contained in a conception, or in obtaining its well-marked scope. You then understand yourself, and make others understand you."

To make others understand you, you must think. The hardest thing is to begin thinking. The second hardest is to think clearly. When you write you almost jump-start the process. You do have to keep your eyes open, but it's a great tool to make your brain get involved.

Conquering Typing

In 1989, anticipating buying a computer, I taught myself to type. On a typewriter, even. But the computer didn't happen when I thought it would and I didn't keep the typing up. When I eventually got the computer I was reduced to typing with two fingers and a thumb till this year.

In desperation I bought a dictation program so I could get more done. But the dictating was as much work as learning to type. So now, after twenty years of hunt-and-pecking, I found a website that taught typing, and I made myself do the lessons.

I am not good at this yet. But I am getting work done and I have renewed hope that I'll get better.

And then I got the email for the update to the dictation program. For fifty dollars I can get 99% accuracy right out of the box. Or, for continuing to invest a lot of work I can type on any machine and not be limited to the one I have the dictation program on.

This time I think I'll keep up with the typing.

I can do my weekly prayer requests. I can do this blog and my emails. I can write my next book (Maintaining The Missionary Lifeline).

It's a small victory. It may not mean much to you, but that's where I'm at right now. My pastor says rejoice over everything you can because sometimes that's all you have to rejoice in. He's right.

I trust God to make this an ongoing blog and be a help to those of you who want to keep up with what we are doing.

If you would like our weekly updates, you can register at missioncalvary.com, and they will send you them automatically when I post them.

God bless you this week.

Your Friend, The Dictionary

Bible teachers communicate ideas. We don't make these ideas up. They are already there in Scripture. Those ideas are packaged in words. If we are going to accurately dig out the message of scripture and accurately deliver that message, we need to know what we are reading and saying.

That's where Your Friend, The Dictionary, comes in. You can take any word in Scripture or your Strong's concordance or Greek/ Hebrew lexicon and look it up so you know what it means. If a definition doesn't satisfy, you can look up the words used in the definition. Look long enough and you might find a synonym listing. This will be a group of words that mean a similar thing. A good dictionary will have a summary sentence describing what the words have in common. Then it will give each word's unique shade of meaning, where it is distinguished from the others.

That practically hands you the tools you need to grasp a Biblical idea. Once you grasp it, it's yours. You can hand it to someone else. That is teaching - causing someone to learn something. But you can't give it to someone if you haven't grasped it yourself. A dictionary helps you to grasp the idea.

When it's time to organize your teaching the dictionary comes in handy, too. A teacher needs to be clear in how ideas are expressed. If you can't find the right word, use a thesaurus. Then check the definition with the dictionary.

Now, you might think this is a lot of work. Of course it is. This is why God made Your Other Friend, The Computer. With a computer-based dictionary you can click on definitions much faster than you can flip pages. You won't be distracted with other entries while looking for a word because you go right to the word. You can afford to look up even words that you already know, in case there is a definition that unlocks a concept for you.

What dictionary is best? The more words, the better. The more exhaustive, the better. If you need a word and the dictionary doesn't have it, you're stuck. These considerations apply to computer-based dictionaries as well.

The one I use most is Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. I have a Third Edition Unabridged that I also use, but not as often. The Collegiate runs only under Classic (the previous Macintosh operating system under System X) and has fewer words, but it has synonyms with both a summary sentence and the individual shades of meaning. For some reason, the Unabridged (which does run under System X) only has the differences of meaning, but not the summary sentences. I find those summaries so useful I end up using the Unabridged much less though it has more definitions. I wrote to Merriam-Webster asking for the summaries to be added to the next edition. Why don't you write them, too?

The other issue with choosing dictoionary software is the user interface. Here the beggars cannot be the choosers. We have to take whatever wretched interface the designers give us. This is my main problem with computer dictionaries. My feeling is one should be able to navigate the whole dictionary from the keyboard instead of having to use a mouse to access a feature. Who uses a dictionary? Writers. What do writers use? Keyboards. If writers werer artists, maybe they would use a mouse, but it's ridiculous to have to use a mouse and interrupt the flow of keyboard work. If the designers would make a simple, powerful interface, I bet they would see more sales of their product. People really need a dictionary. More would buy one they could easily use.

That's my rant for this blog.

For accuracy and clarity you need help. Why not get Your Friend, The Dictionary?

Why Study and Teach?

It is said of Martin Luther that when he died a scrap of paper was found in his pocket with Latin and German written on it. The Latin said: "No one can understand the Bible who has not walked with it for one hundred years." In German was written: "This is true. We are all beggars."

If it's that daunting, why do it?

For me, it is a necessity. The first time I heard the Bible taught in a verse-by-verse way (expositionally), I was astounded.

Up to that point I had been brought up in a church. I was baptized when I was about seven. Later I went to the confirmation class and was accepted as a member of the church. I memorized Scripture and wrote pages on the questions we were required to answer. At the end of it I still was aware that I did not know God. Nor did I know anyone who I thought DID know Him. I may have accepted Jesus 20 or 30 times, wondering when I would ever connect with God. Was it even possible?

A friend invited me to a home Bible study. I wrestled with the invitation for a week. The day came and I was still torn. Should I GO? Or should I NOT go? I went around and around with it. I put on loud music so I could better think, as was our custom in those days. In the midst of the noise and confusion I received an impression, almost as though I heard a voice, but it wasn't audible. It was simply the impression: "Go." That ended the conflict. I called my friend, picked her up, drove to the place, sat down in the living room. A guy with long hair and a beard played a guitar, we sang songs. What a bunch of Mickey Mouse. Already I regretted saying yes.

Then the guy began teaching. He was in the Epistle to the Romans. He began at chapter 12 with the first two verses. He emphasized the word "therefore" and said it referred to the teaching Paul had given from chapter one. He proceeded to give a recap of chapters 1-11. Then he showed how the exhortation from verses 1-2 applied the teaching of chapters 1-11.

I sat on the sofa and felt like the top of my head had come off. I was utterly convinced there was a God, that Jesus was real, and that THAT GUY KNEW GOD. I said, "This is home. I'm not leaving this place till I know God like that guy knows God."

What happened that night has repeated itself many, many times in my life since. But that time was special, because it was the first time that the word of God came to me in power. That's what I love. That's what I expect every time I sit to hear the word taught. I am irritated when it doesn't happen, because I know that it CAN happen, and either that person isn't really teaching in the power of the Spirit, or my ears are dull. I have mourned when I teach badly and the word doesn't come to the listeners in power. When the word comes in power people come to KNOW GOD.

The whole world is dying for lack of this word. Hosea 4: 6 says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." God's solution is: "He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions," (Psalm 107:20).

My experience is that studying and teaching demand more character, understanding and ability than a human being has. It demands God's insight and enabling and severe mercy as He builds character in me. If only others can experience that word of God coming to them in power, I count it a high privilege to submit to God, and spend and be spent on their behalf.

What this blog is about

This is going to be a place where you can find out how Rob, Joanie, Holly, and Katie Dingman are doing as we live in England, working for Jesus at Calvary Chapel Twickenham. Lord willing I can keep this updated so it's a useful means of communication.

This blog is not just about us. It's also about the work we are here to do.

Our work here in London is teaching the word of God, and teaching others to do the same. England needs many more Bible teachers who can accurately teach the word with power. So while I love pastoring and teaching, I also love to raise up more people who can study the Bible for themselves, draw out the message, and teach it effectively.

So if that's what you would like to hear more about, I invite you to subscribe to the RSS feed. I hope you will use this to pray for us and the work here. Thanks for reading.