Bournagain

I am just beginning to emerge from a dial-up Internet-imposed blog fast – in case you were wondering whether this blog was ever going to get up and running again. We have been staying with my parents, and time was too precious to waste waiting for the Internet to do it’s thing. But in this case, no news is good news! Our New Zealand odyssey is well over halfway though, and we are beginning to set our sights on France again.

New Zealand is a fascinating country in that, although relatively small and geographically isolated (to some of our French friends, we might as well say we’re from Mars), it is like a microcosm of what is happening in the wider world, globalisation being what it is. This is particularly true in the church – wherever we go we meet with people who are at once passionate for the church, and extremely frustrated with it, longing for a simpler, more authentic expression of a church that is a visible reflection of God’s kingdom in society. That’s very vague, but I can’t very well catch you up on all the conversations of the last month.

This weekend we are with dear friends in Lower Hutt (“Lower” in the sense of being on the Hutt river downstream from “Upper Hutt” – named after one Mr Hutt I suppose – we are not staying in some kind of inferior cabin!), and we will be sharing at Lower Hutt Baptist tomorrow – the church where my journey in God started 22 years ago. I’ll be talking on Mary and Martha – again!! Can’t get away from that story. Will do a blog post on it one of these days.

Check out Flickr for some new photos. Now that my “blog fast” is broken, there should be some more regular offering from now on…