les Davey de France

Firstly for the inauguration of the renovated Maison de la Bible, Bordeaux. Then for the arrival of our friend, Chris, from Mold who is visiting to do some DIY at the church in Cenon. Then for the baptism service for four Chinese students that took place at Cenon. The hour advanced, the rains came and Chris had not eaten since before leaving English soil at Liverpool, so we didn't wait for the actual baptisms in the dark courtyard, but charged through the torrential rains on tram and bus to Pessac !

Nous savons qu'il y a aussi des études bibliques à la Défense en semaine dirigées par nos collègues en région Parisienne :

So we've found that there's several ex-pat groups in Bordeaux, more than we thought, and people choose which one to go to based on various factors. This morning we shambled off to Pain et Compagnie for the ICB Book Group. The group had been pre-warned to read "The Uncommon Reader" by Alan Bennett. Well both Pat and I have read it Some Time Ago so we didn't feel TOTALLY unprepared. The discussion was lively, good-humored and entertaining. At one point I said "it's like a sack of cats" and the lady next to me laughed. "You have that expression in your country ?" "Oh yes", she said, but she agreed that it was indeed like a sack of cats, albeit good-natured and non-agressive ones. Will we go again ? Well they do two. One on Tuesdays in folks' homes with pot-luck lunch following. One on Fridays in Bordeaux in a café somewhere. Since Pat ain't free on Tuesdays and since it's a good way of networking we'll probably l...

I really don't want to review this book, but I received a copy in Kindle format free in return for an honest review. So here goes. OK - for me this book is a three-star book. I'll tell you why. The author's thesis is that a sequence of apostate men have dismantled the Christian heritage in the west, leading to the collapse of the traditional structures of society that we see today : marriage, family and church... He nicknames these apostate men the nephilim and presents a list of them for us. There's a lot of things I liked about this book : 1) It's pretty comprehensive. He deals with : Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Emerson, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Dewey, Sartre, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Twain, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Sinatra, Lennon and many more. 2) His basic observation is essentially right. This book reads like Francis Schaeffer on steroids - if you identify with Schaeffer's analysis of the decline of the West, then this book will...

Years ago John Macarthur's books on the Charismatic Movement were straight-talking and strong ! While I agreed with the substance of what he said, I used to find the manner strident and hard. That was then, this is now. Since the reformed resurgence, Sovereign Grace, Piper, Driscoll, Dever, deYoung et al we have realised (?) that the charismatic issue is a non-issue and should not even be discussed. In some conferences  there'll be times of improvised songs, rounds of applause and stuff, in others there won't. Hey, some of us are funky and some are not. Some of us got rhythm and some ain't. What of it ? But I was always thinking, "yeah, but there's this like, great big animal in the room and he has a trunk and stuff and everyone is pretending it's not there..." Well maybe John Macarthur and I have more in common than I thought. His new book, "Strange Fire" comes out soon, and MAY put the cat among the pigeons... Or maybe we'll...

CNEF committee in the morning, good and pleasant, (command the blessing) ! Todd and Terri in the early evening, again good and pleasant, full of ideas, most probably won't work, but who knows... Today networking with the book group, then get in that garden, boy, and strim. Strim, strim, stri-i-i-im....

We have the committee meeting of CNEF33 this morning, then this afternoon Pat and I are meeting up with some of the folk planting the new church in Mérginac. The CNEF33 meeting is at Eysines, perfectly reachable by bus, but you do have to change several times and it takes a long time, so I have reserved a Autocool car - first time in months ! While I was at it I reserved the cars for getting people to and from the airport next week. Exciting !