Month: May 2020

David Dunn-Wilson – A Saintly and Missional Professor.

Rev Professor David Dunn-Wilson’s immense positivity and spirituality was contagious. David was an outstanding gift to the Church, the academia and the ecumenical movement. He was a church leader, theologian, and ecumenist. He gave generously and passionately to the missional life-giving, liberative and transformative mission agenda of the community of faith. He gave of himself as far as he was able both at home and abroad. David’s thinking was always missional, authentic, stimulating and exciting. He fuelled a sense of energy and renewal that stirred our heads as his students at Cliff College. Paul Gould in one of his...

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GEORGE’S ‘ORATION OF ILLUSION’: UNHEARD CRY OF RACISM VIRUS PANDEMIC, “PLEASE, I CAN’T BREATHE.”

It has been a long time I struggled to sleep. Since I watched the horror video of the police officers who murdered a middle-aged black man, George Floyd in Minneapolis, a city in Minnesota, I am still wondering whether we are in an animal kingdom. May be better still, a ‘shithole’ country. Is it part of the police training manual or a colonial heritage to kneel ‘on a man’s neck, compressing his airways and brain blood and oxygen supply, hand-cuffed, face down, held down’? Is being black a death sentence especially in a so called civilised world? No. Using...

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Witnessing Salvation beyond Pandemic: Understanding the Eternal Principles.

The readings from Acts of the Apostles and Gospel from John 17 to celebrate Ascension Sunday and Wesley’s Day calls the church and its leadership to renewal of witnessing. The holy day, Ascension Day is celebrated across all branches of Christianity on the sixth Thursday after Easter, which falls exactly 40 days after Easter Sunday. The Day commemorates Jesus Christ’s ascent into heaven 40 days after the resurrection. At Mount of Olives, before Jesus was taken up to heaven, he promised the disciples that they would soon receive the Holy Spirit. This is ‘the distinctive baptism of Jesus’ for...

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WESLEY’S “OPTIMISM OF GRACE”: PRECEDENT IN PANDEMIC.

An “Optimism of grace” is about John Wesley’s doctrine of the Christian life based on his evangelical conversion, his personal experience of God’s Redemption At Christ Expense on May 24, 1738. The phrase “Optimism of grace” coined by Gordon Rupp, an English Methodist as a defining mantra of holiness theology opposes the Enlightenment “Optimism of nature”  that ‘denied the fact of sin … repudiated the need for grace and of redemption.’[1] For John Wesley, a profound optimism of grave is about salvation of soul, spirit, and body. Wesley said, “By salvation I mean not barely … deliverance from hell,...

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“ALL CHANGE – ALL CHANGE”: THE POST-PANDEMIC ‘NEW NORMAL.’

And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts – Rev 9:20-21 The collective and extended fight against COVID-19 calls for people and the church in particular to change to ‘new lifestyle’ that will draw people to God more and to...

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