John will be on study leave from the School of Ministry until mid-December. From mid September he and Jenny will be based at Westminster College, Cambridge, one of the training centres for the United Reformed Church in the UK.
On the way over John will be visiting the Centre for the Study of Asian Christianity at Trinity College in Singapore discussing Archives for Mission and plans for consultations in Budapest in 2008 and Edinburgh in 2010. He will have 10 days at Seminari Theology Malaysia where he will be teaching a course on History and Mission in Southeast Asian Christianity, be leading a one-day library and archives workshop, and giving a seminar on Presbyterian Polity. He stays with friends in the south of Thailand before going to the 3rd European Missiology Conference in Paris, 23-28 August and spending a couple of weeks trying to do something about his French at the Alliance Française.
Jenny and John meet up at Heathrow on the 10th of September, have a week with daughter Rachel, son in law Grant, and the grandsons in Oxford before going to Cambridge where John will be working on leadership materials for training elders and a text book for his courses on Presbyterianism. We hope to sometime get back up to Scotland where we lived from 1975 to 1978, and also track down some of Jenny's ancestral sites in Ireland. Jenny returns via Melbourne and John via Dallas Texas.
We have both had significant adventures with our health in the last few years, and would value prayer for that, for the planning of archives ministry and for teaching courses in Malaysia, that they will inspire and equip people to catch a vision for this task. The Southeast Asian Christianity course in particular is extremely full on and John is concerned how he will manage it right through the day for 4 days on end from 16 to 19 August. Pray for us both settling into a new environment in Cambridge, for productive research, and for writing material that will be relevant and helpful, not to mention a good spiritual home in our absence from Leith!
Archives are about life and identity as Christians in different times and places, and are needed for developing resources which enable people to tell their own stories and empower the church in mission. The story of Christianity in Southeast Asia is one of "Faith without borders" (see the website http://roxborogh.com/sea ) but it is also one which needs more local scholarship. The missiology conference in Paris (in English, French and Spanish!) will help address the mission of the church in secularised and multi-religious Europe and is something I believe we can continue to learn from.
Remember also the School of Ministry and students in their field placements, doing clinical pastoral education, and awaiting news about first parishes. While we are away General Assembly will be meeting and decisions made which are likely to greatly affect the operation of the School of Ministry. We need confidence in God and in one another as these issues are processed.
John
