I just wanted to give a quick update on what I’ve been doing this week. Todd’s preaching, and I’ve mostly stayed away from the office, but I’ve been working hard.
Some of you are aware of that I had hoped to go to England this week to do research for a group of stories I’m writing. The stories are going to be used to accent the sermon series during the Christmas season (The ‘I Ams’ of Christmas, from the Gospel of John). They are also the beginning of the book that I’ve hoped to write for a long time. The content is well-fictionalized accounts of real people and events from twenty years of ministry that help us see the presence of God among us. I’ve fictionalized these things into a setting I love, England at the beginning of World War Two, and to a little town west of London that has a two hundred year old Free Church. The research has been fascinating – and distracting. It’s a lot of fun to dig back into the details of living in those days, to recognize both the similarities to our own day, and the differences, and to think about the state of mind and hardships of life for a group of people headed into their second world war in two generations.
Here’s a fairly random selection of links I’ve visited:
Pembroke College, Oxford
St. Thomas’ Hospital, London
1911 UK Census
English Nicknames
Daily Menus for 1930’s Britain
I have, also, despite the heavy background work, succeeded in drafting the first two of the stories themselves. I hope you’ll enjoy them when I start sharing them at Christmas time.
