Many Partings

A conference like this involving so many dear friends from around the world inevitably ends with "many partings." About fifty will be staying on with us for the tour of the ruins of the seven cities that Christ addressed in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation. For others, today is farewell. Again we sang "We are one body". Tears sprang to my eyes with the first line--400+ brothers and sisters in Christ from 70 countries. We ended up holding hands as we sang.

David Baer of Overseas Council (Steve's old employer in Indianapolis) had the last session, summarizing what we have learned. He ended with the words to the old hymn, "Tell Me the Old, Old Story" by A. Katherine Hankey, penned in 1866.

Tell me the old, old story
Of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and His glory,
Of Jesus and His love.
Tell me the story simply,
As to a little child,
For I am weak and weary,
And helpless and defiled.

Tell me the story slowly,
That I may take it in,
That wonderful redemption,
God’s remedy for sin.
Tell me the story often,
For I forget so soon;
The early dew of morning
Has passed away at noon.

Tell me the story softly,
With earnest tones and grave;
Remember I’m the sinner
Whom Jesus came to save.
Tell me the story always,
If you would really be,
In any time of trouble,
A comforter to me.

Tell me the same old story
When you have cause to fear
That this world’s empty glory
Is costing me too dear.
Yes, and when that world’s glory
Is dawning on my soul,
Tell me the old, old story:
Christ Jesus makes thee whole

Fitting as we scatter to our various lives, so easily caught up in church politics and administrative challenges. This old, old story is the point: Jesus and his love.

After lunch (and several conversations) I returned to the beach for a nap. Only I read so long that the sun disappeared behind the mountain when I had just begun to drift off. Still a beautiful spot.

Steve was honored a couple times in the closing session for his contributions. Proud to be married to this guy.

Lunch for me has usually been a salad and a piece of meat from the grill outside. They don't cut their chicken the same way we do. A couple times the piece I chose turned out to be part of the back. Hard to eat politely. This one was breast meat. We LOVE that bread, chock full of sunflower seeds. The egg, I stole from breakfast to cut up on my salad. They always have eggs at breakfast. Never at lunch.

Discipline for me has consisted of one inch square of baklava per day and take the stairs. :-)
Confession: some days I ate two.  So good.
The other sweets were good, but resistible--once I had tasted them, that is.

Training Academic Writers Not to Be So Academic

Monday I gave my first workshop on Effective Writing and Editing for Publication at ICETE C15. About forty people. A nice size for participation and dividing into small groups to discuss literature needs regionally.  One of the things that drives me nuts in academic writing is: This is what I am going to tell you. Now I am telling you. This is what I have told you. Now I will tell you this. Here I am telling you. This is what I have told you. In parts one and two I told you this and that. Now in part three I will tell you ...  Yeah, yeah. I think you get what I mean. Lots of smiles. My writers knew exactly what I meant. I tried to get them to focus thier ideas and consider the appropriate audience that most needs to hear about that idea. What language will be most effective for communicating that idea to the target audience? And by the way, the point of writing is to CO-MUN-I-CATE, NOT to sound important. Short effective words in simple understandable sentences.

Tuesday I taught the same workshop again. Lots of people are running out of energy. None of the workshops was full. We had about fifteen, but a couple who want to stay in contact. I even have an invitation to teach in Korea next time we are there. Both times I forgot to get someone to take a picture. Sorry not to have any illustrative material here.

One of these evenings we had dinner with one of the top leaders in South Asia. I was so proud when he said a major turning point for him was when Overseas Council asked him to make a presentation at one of the institutes. Afterwards, Steve Hardy said, "That was brilliant. You need to get it published." It became his first published paper. Wouldn't have happened, but Steve Hardy (and some others) believed in him.

River Cruise

Delightful worship time in the morning. I was especially touched by this large group from all over the world singing "We are One Body, One Body in Christ." We ARE a modern group. The preacher asked us to open our apps to the Bible passage. I only saw one person with a print Bible.

There is a lot more to meetings like these that sitting in sessions--for instance, all those conversations over coffee and wonderful Turkish snacks.

And then conversations on relaxing outings. After lunch some of us took off for a river cruise. An alternative was to visit the ruins of Perge, but since we will being seeing plenty of ruins on our five days of touring the seven churchs of Revelation, we decided a river cruise would provide more variety. If we had realized that the river was almost two hours away by bus, I probably would have chosen a nap on the beach instead, but the trip was pleasant enough. We got to see the mountains that we missed on our way here because of darkness. We laughed that we had no idea where we were (somewhere east of Antalya city) or the name of the river, but here we are getting on the boat.

Antalya Province has LOTS of  tourists in summer. A lot of these river boats have pirate themes, especially Pirates of the Caribbean.

Did I mention that there are a LOT of boats?

Wherever we were, we ended up at the Mediterranean Sea.

Popular with the local fishermen.  Fisherwomen?

I'm sure we will have more time to see Turkish culture, but here is a shot of a local mosque. Notice also the solar hot water heaters on the roofs of buildings.

We came home to a delightful cultural evening when the different regions presented their own "cultures". This included more sharing together with humor as well as priase to God. Makes you look forward to heaven.

ICETE Begins

Sigh. No more afternoon naps on the beach. I spent much of my time today punching out, alphabetizing, folding and setting up these place markers.

The main conference started this evening. When the board was introduced, guess who was the only one not wearing a suit coat. To be fair, he got pulled in from the registration table.

We are more than four hundred theological educators instead of the three hundred we (and the hotel) were planning for. We have taken up all the available rooms and spilled over to another hotel. I missed when Steffani Ferrenzi (old friend from Overseas Council days) read off the countries represented. Suffice it to say that it was embarrassing to have boring old United States on my nametag. Half the US people have interesting names that shout that they weren’t born there instead of good old Anglo-Saxon names. (Steve’s ancestors may not have been Anglo-Saxon, but their name got changed at Ellis Island so that’s what is on my nametag—even here in Turkey surrounded by—the WORLD.)

As our friends and colleagues arrive, dinner table conversations take on such topics as the learning curve of Ukrainian churches faced with opportunities like refugees and military camps on their doorsteps—things their theological education did not prepare them for. Or teaching Iranian Christians in the diaspora.

I am figuring out the food. A lot of it is vegetables. I mostly go for mine raw as there is wonderful salad material. Today I had a tomato stuffed with something. Not sure if it was meat or rice.  At lunch I had squash stuffed with something that reminded me of chutney. The grill is always going outside at lunch. I’ve taken to eating salad and a piece of meat. Today I was greedy and took two pieces of what looked like a Brazilian bife. It wasn’t. It was liver. But marinated, grilled and topped with barbecue sauce, it wasn’t half bad. I’m not sure I could get Steve to eat it though.

It's been a long day. Again in the interest of fairness, this was during the worship, not during Chris Wright's talk on mission, monotheism and maturity as the biblical outcomes of theological education. Worship was led by a team from the local church in Antalya. It has grown to more than a hundred people, struggling back from nothing thirty years ago, after being the dominant religion almost two thousand years ago.