Spiritual life and pastoral ministry have been a twin focus for much of my forty years as a Christian. From the time I was awakened to active spiritual life as a first year university student in 1969 I've been aware of the possibility of a personal relationship with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. And I've been equally aware of how such a relationship is the basis of any ministry activity in which I might engage in the name of the Lord Jesus. Marrying these two things - spiritual life and practical ministry - has been an absorbing concern through the years since then.
When I had opportunity for a six month sabbatical in the USA in 2007, the Board of Grace Theological College asked if I would explore the possibility of doing a Doctor of Ministry degree through Birmingham Theological Seminary. I duly enrolled for such a degree, presenting a thesis proposal under the title "The Spiritual Roots of Effective Ministry". In the months that have followed there has scarcely been a day when I have not thought and reflected on this great theme. Getting these reflections on paper, however, has been another thing. I have lost count of how many abortive attempts I have made to do so.
I'm hoping that this blog format will allow me to do this more effectively than traditional "thesis writing". Part of the difficulty I've encountered up until this point has been trying to write on a deeply reflective subject in an academic way. Every attempt to polish and tighten my prose stifles the flow of thought and creativity so essential to the task. What I sense the need to do is to reflect on ideas one at a time, and short blog entries promise to be a way of doing that. Eventually I hope to gather them all together and organize them into the book form that the degree requires.
Meanwhile, the exercise of writing and reflecting on one thought at a time will be a way of clarifying what I've come to believe on how spiritual life is to be integrated with practical ministry.
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