CRCM-UWO

If you’re interested in meeting Sudanese Refugees in London, walking alongside them as they transition to a new way of life, and guiding them in their Christian discipleship, a one day conference is being offered here in London that you may want to consider. Please check out this flyer and pray if God is leading you to attend.

Our weekly Connection community dinner kicks off another year this evening from 5.30 to 7.00pm! We’ll be enjoying a tasty Taco Soup together, getting to know each other, and reflecting on life on campus. You don’t want to miss it! This is your place to connect. UCC 256.

This year’s Career Fair is looking like it’s going to be wonderful. The keynote speaker’s got a video that is pretty motivational. Check it out!

In addition, I’ve been asked to lead a panel discussion around finding work as a person of faith. Here’s the blurb on it:

Working in Faith: A Panel Discussion on Employment in the Faith-Based Sector

The panelists are: Dr. Henrietta Hunse (Christian Reformed World Relief Committee – Canada), Rev. Greg Janke (Director of Admissions, Calvin Theological Seminary), Michael Van Pelt (President, the Work Research Foundation), Rabbi Mordechai Silberberg (Jewish Chaplain to UWO and director of Chabad House – Western).

For further information on the week’s events, check out the website.

A Pearl and A Leaven:
Herman Bavinck for the Twenty-First Century: September 18-20, 2008

The double image from Christ’s parables of the pearl and the leaven, was one of Herman Bavinck’s favorites and aptly captures the depth, grand scope, and nuance of his theological vision. The gospel of the kingdom is a pearl of great price, a treasure beyond compare for which we must be willing sacrifice everything. The Lord who gave his all for it asks that his disciples also give their all.

It is also a leaven, an invisible change agent that leaves nothing it touches unaltered. Leaven, like salt, is not a dramatic or triumphalist metaphor. Rather it points to the sure and primarily inward renewal of the person and the social bonds that join a people together.

This conference proceeds from a conviction that Bavinck’s theology and its practical application to church and society provides us today with valuable insight and wisdom for theology and Christian discipleship. Bavinck’s commitment to the truth of Scripture, his profound piety, his catholic vision of Christian discipleship and openness to what is good in the modern world, remain constructive standards for Christian vocation today. In addition, he lived in turbulent times, a time of great industrial change and social dislocation, a time of war-all which contributed to an apocalyptic environment in which optimism and pessimism competed for the allegiance of western peoples. In short, a time not unlike our own.

The conference will consider Bavinck’s times, his theology, his contribution to the ecclesiastical, social, cultural and political life of his day, and its relevance for Christian vocation in the 21st century.

We also gather at this conference to celebrate the Centenary of Bavinck’s 1908 Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary, The Philosophy of Revelation; the completion of the English translation project of Bavinck’s four-Volume Reformed Dogmatics (Baker); and the publication of the English translation, Herman Bavinck, Essays on Religion, Science and Society (Baker).