Christmas Newsletter

Finally, our family newsletter outline the higlights from September to December.

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Rosson-Newsletter.html?soid=1101898662382&aid=JO-w-awpGZI

Summer Newsletter Now Available

Well, the long-awaited (uh, overdue) family newspaper is now online.

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Rosson-Family-Newsletter.html?soid=1101898662382&aid=aBmpQ9YMtso

Check out my @constantcontact newsletter

Check out the @constantcontact newsletter from Moscow

National Assembly and Credentialing Service

Over the Easter weekend, I traveled to Serbia where I was the main speaker for their national convention. Also in attendance were the pastors and members from Macedonia, Bosnia, and Croatia. (In earlier times, this would have been the national meeting of Yugoslavia. Even after the civil war and the disintegration of their former homeland, the ministers and members from these countries still convene yearly.) During the convention, the we had about 150 pastors and delegates.

This year, the convention was held in Karanovac - the "Bethlehem" of the Church of God in this region. The theme text of the weekend was Mark 4:26-29 and the gathering of the harvest. I spoke twice on Friday (including a Good Friday service) and during Saturday's credentialing service. Altogether eight ministers were celebrating the day (four ordained ministers, two licensed ministers, and two exhorters). After traveling 300 km on Saturday afternoon, I spoke on Easter Sunday morning in Sr. Mitrovia at the church led by Serbian Overseer Miroslav Radovanovic. (Miroslav and his wife, Blaza, were former students of mine there.)

'News from Eurasian Theological Seminary Moscow'

'News from Eurasian Theological Seminary Moscow'

Impressions from Leadership Conference in Hungary

We have just concluded the leadership conference for our denomination in Central and Eastern Europe. The meeting was held October 7-11, in Hajduszoboszlo, Hungary which is only 30 km from the university town of Debrecen.

This year's conference had three major highlights.

• Our guest speaker was Dr. Fred Garmon, president of "People for Care and Learning". As I have noted in earlier blog posts, Fred and I were in our doctoral program together at Regent. And we have enjoyed each other's friendship over the years. Fred taught on leadership develop - which is his area of specialty - and did a great job.
• Farewell and celebration of the ministry of Dieter and Hildegard Knospe who will retire at the upcoming General Assembly. Besides gifts for the Knospe's, various representatives from our field area spoke words of appreciation on behalf of the entire audience.
• 10-year anniversary of the Church of God in Hungary. Actually the Church of God in Hungary goes all the way back to the 1920s and '30s. However, with the help of the Nazi regime and the war, and the communist government that followed, this initial COG denomination disintegrated. In 1999, a new start began with missionary Csaba Tenkeley and today we have 25 congregations.

This year's conference had its usual share of representatives from Germany, Austia, Norway, Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia (including Siberia, too), Ukraine, and Hungary (of course).

August News

We are currently in the United States for vacation and business. I hope to share more later.

In the meantime, we have posted our quarterly newsletter and it can seen at http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs072/1101898662382/archive/1102675738242.html

The Reason for God

Due to my busy schedule in May / June, my reading has taken a back seat until the last couple of weeks. To end my reading fast, I pick up Tim Keller's The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. (Here is a link to the book's website.) Dr. Keller leads the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He planted this church some 15 years ago and the congregation averages over 5000 each week. His strength is communicating the gospel to a multi-cultural, postmodern society -- and this is the purpose of his book.

At this junction, I would like to draw the opinion of Mark Meynall and his review of the book. (I admit it. I'm too lazy to reinvent the wheel.) He makes four points:

• It is very readable - in fact it is basically a précis of countless conversations Keller has had with various archetypal Manhattan sceptics. The standard format is "X asked me this… and Y asked me that …"; "and this is how I answered them…". So it is not exposition as such (a small point is that the book could have benefited from more explicit biblical material), but it is fair to say that it is thoroughly 'bibline'!**
• The format is not accidental - because the aim of this book is to tackle all the big ones that people ask - or rather, all the big ones that sophisticated New Yorkers ask. So it may be that these are not necessarily the questions your friends are asking. So for example, the American political context (with its caricatures of 'liberal left' and 'religious/evangelical right') is such that it is necessary to say more about how the gospel transcends these boundaries - in our more secular European settings, the presenting issues are slightly different. But i would think that there are few questions out there that have not been addressed in some shape or form by this book.
• It is full of thought-provoking angles and arguments, and helps to put things on the front foot by exposing the flaws in current thinking.
• Keller has read deeply and widely - and it shows. By that I don't mean that he does this in a showy way - it is all very constructive and handled with a very light touch. So it is not like reading one of those doorstops in which there seems to be footnote for every line or Notes pages taking up more space than the main book. The point is that Keller is constantly tapping into popular culture and secular thinking in order to engage. I am convinced that this is both fundamentally necessary for us all as we seek to communicate to our culture and provides a very strong model. I think this is particularly powerful in his articulation of the problem of sin (a more unpalatable or culturally incorrect subject one could perhaps not find these days!).

Keller's book is a great read and shows us that it is very possible to reach today's postmodern generation.