Dear friends,
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes at WYSOCS just now, as those who came to the AGM event last month heard. Day-to-day business here at Oastler Barn involves a lot of deliberation among David, Ruth and myself as WYSOCS’ materials are honed, plans and activities are debated, management systems are improved and emails are addressed; my two days a week (soon to be just one) are easily filled! Mark, meanwhile, works hard from home a quarter of a mile away from us; we long for a day when WYSOCS staff may be employed full-time on one site, enjoying the blessings of community that are so important to us all.
This newsletter contains plenty of hyperlinks to our website – I hope you have time to follow at least some of them.
1) RealityBites blog and speaking engagements
2) LifeMatters resources
3) Web site improvements
4) ThinkingSpace for postgrads
1) We now have a blog for RealityBites, where you can read stories and commentary from Mark and occasional guests. This is part of the RealityBites site – just go to http://www.realitybites.org.uk/blog. Please post comments if anything stimulates (or provokes!) you, recommend it to your friends, and of course we’ll be grateful for other bloggers linking to it. Mark’s aiming for it to be “snappy, fun and story-sensitive”. (The term “blog”, for those who don’t know, comes from elision of “web log”!)
2) Some new resources are available at www.wysocs.org.uk/lifematters.php . Roy Clouser’s talks on Christian philosophy from earlier this year can be downloaded on the Recordings page, and there’s a brief summary of Alan Storkey’s talks on militarism on the Recent Events page. We’ve also heard that Duncan Roper’s book on Colonial Settlement, Indigenous People and the Gospel has been accepted for publication by Otago University Press. If you’d like a foretaste, we still have some copies of the 60-page booklet that he prepared for our lectures back in May - see the Recent Events page to find out more.
3) Some other improvements to both web sites (www.RealityBites.org.uk and www.Wysocs.org.uk) should make them easier to navigate – please let me know if you have any problems. There’s also some new material showing what makes WYSOCS unique – see the expanded About section.
4) At the AGM I presented our plans to engage in support for Christian postgraduate students in the U.K. My own position on the committee of the national Christian postgraduate conference and involvement with the Leeds postgrads’ fellowship helped bring to WYSOCS’ attention how rarely Christian students are encouraged to pursue their academic work in the full context of their deepest convictions. Meanwhile we lament the apparent decline of Christian influence in such areas as politics, media, business, science, and increasingly law – all fields that employ postgraduates. We’ve now talked with a number of people who share some of our concerns and hope shortly to be seeking funds for a postgrads’ worker. The thought is that this ministry would help bring life-transforming ideas about God’s callings to new and younger audiences, as the Thinking Space gap year began to do. Watch this space – or better, get in touch if you have ideas. If you’re a postgrad reading this and I don’t already know you, I’d like to hear from you now!
With best wishes,
Richard.
