Gareth Bezett

Arminianism is not a theology that I had come across until recently. I suspect that it wasn't part of my Reformation studies becuase it was something that grew out of Calvinism and so possibly belongs to the Modern period (or perhaps I wasn't paying attention). I'll let you Google it rather than try to summarise it, but it is doctrine of salvation.

Anyhoo, I suspect that I far more Arminianist than Calvinist. So today, if anyone asks, I think I will call myself an Arminianist Orthodox Evangelical Catholic Christian.

Yes, I am still alive.

I preached at the 8 and 9 am services at St Mary's, Karori this morning. This was my first ever atempt at any sort of planned public speaking without notes. I have had feed back that my previous preaching efforts relied a little too much on note reading so I decided to do away with them completely.

I got to choose my reading from Acts 6, so I went with v1-7 as an excuse to diverge off into some more church history, asking the question "can we see God at work in the history of the Church?" I looked at some examples including the choosing of the seven from the reading and pointed out some ways in which these very human-looking situations could actually reflect God at work.

Sadly, none of my material was anywhere near controversial, so I'm not expecting any formal complaints this time. I'll try harder in the future.