The Christian subculture we live in can often produce it’s minor celebrities. Great teachers, authors, and speakers. Leaders of other churches or our own.

While it is good to respect these people, learn from them and appreciate the gifts that God has given them, we must be careful not to put them on a pedestal.

How often do we talk about who’s book we have read, talk we have listened to, who we have met? How often do we talk about Jesus?

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Galatians 6:14)

Online sermons from Mike Kendall at St Neots Evangelical Church

SNEC is the church I grew up in. Mike’s preaching is humble, engaging and thoroughly biblical. Well worth a listen.

SNEC Sermon library

I have set myself the goal of reading 30 books during 2008 (see my previous post). This is where I am keeping a list of books I have read or want to read during the year. Hopefully this will be an eclectic list of titles.

Books I have read:

1. The inncocent man - John Grisham
2. Experiencing the spirit - Graham Beynon

Books I want to read:

• A call to spiritual reformation - D. A. Carson
• The cross of Christ - John Stott
• The pursuit of holiness - Jerry Bridges
• Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
• According to plan - Graeme Goldsworthy
• Experiencing the Spirit - Graham Beynon
• Integrity - Jonathon Lamb
• How to read the Bible for all it’s worth - Gordon D. Fee
• Cross Examined - Mark Meynell

One thing that I struggle with on a regular basis is reading the Bible daily and I guess I’m not alone in that struggle. Reading the Bible and praying shouldn’t be something we squeeze in to our days, it should be a priority. Anything that helps people to engage with the Bible regularily has to be a good idea.

There is a new free service developed by Scripture Union called WordLive that is designed to help people to engage with the Bible in a variety of ways. The website offers a daily Bible passage and options to explore it through Bible studies, music, video and podcasts. As well as the website and the podcasts there are RSS feeds, daily emails and a specially formatted version of the site for mobile phones.

The variety of ways to access WordLive makes it flexible appealing to those of us who spend plenty of time on a computer.The service is in it’s infancy (it launched on 1st January 2008) and there is room for improvement in things like the flexibility of the email options, but I am sure that these things will develop as the service matures.

I read a lot. I read magazines, I read news and blogs on my phone, I read all sorts of things on the internet, I enjoy taking in information. All this is reading, but almost always in short bursts. I’ll read a page on a website then follow a link to something else and move on. I’ll flick through a photography magazine and read articles that grab my attention and skip over others.

Books require a different kind of reading, reading with greater stamina, reading with more commitment. I almost always enjoy reading books, but I’m not as well or widely read as I would like to be.

In an attempt to read more and partly inspired by this blog post and talking to my step father in law about his book group, I am going to set myself a target of reading 30 books this year. It’s not a huge number, but it is a number I think I can realistically hit.

I want to read Christian books to help me understand the Bible better and help me get to know Jesus better and be more like him. I want to read fiction books, both new and classic. I want to read stuff that I wouldn’t naturally pick up and I want to read the Bible more, a lot more.

So my target is 30 books in the ten months left this year. I will try to keep a record of the books I read and want to read as well as posting reviews of some of them.

The 6th of February saw me become father to Abigail Louise Dolan. Amidst all the busyness and lack of sleep that a baby brings I have been thinking a bit about the responsibilities of being a parent.

It has struck me several time over the past couple of weeks, just how dependent a new born baby is on its parents. Food, clothing, changing nappies, stimulation, protecting the head as the neck muscles develop. A baby relies totally on others. As she grows up Abi will be progressively able to do all these things herself and my role as a father will change. Out will go nappy changing and in will come support with school work, pocket money, etc.

While all these and many more responsibilities await me, none is my greatest responsibility towards Abi. The greatest priviledge and responsibility of being Abi’s father is to bring her up “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4).

Please pray for me (and Kate) that we will, with God’s help, fulfil this responsibility and that one day we can rejoice with all the angels in heaven when she falls at the feet of Jesus in repentance and faith of her own.

There are more photos of Abi online and most of them don’t have me in them.

Last weekend in between being ill and photographing a wedding Kate and I visited some friends, Chris and Louise Bland. Louise has recently started a new job working for a Christian charity called Compassion who arrange sponsorship for children around the world.

Compassion is an evangelical organisation that matches sponsors with children in 24 countries who are living in poverty to provide them with education, healthcare, social and emational care, vocational training and spiritual care. They only work with local churches to ensure that every child that is sponsored has a chance to hear and respond to the gospel. Every child is given their own Bible amd has Christian role models.

In explaining what Compassion is their website states:

In all we do we focus on three core values. We are:

• Christ centred
  We put Christ at the centre of all we do. Our desire is to show the love of Christ to those in greatest need.
• Child focused
  We aim to help children develop economically, physically, socially and spiritually. This enables them to become adults who can make an impact on the world around them.
• Church based
  We partner with local churches, and can facilitate local Christians to teach, train and mentor children.

Sponsoring a child costs