Paul and Silas in Philippi

This week the Rev Richard Harris sits down with Rev Ken Shakespeare to chat this weeks reading- Acts 16:16-34

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello everyone, we're back to TUC Talks. Fabulous name. Um, and we're discussing this week the Bible passage Acts 16, 16 to 34, although I'll probably just push on to the end of that chapter, so probably to 40. Um, and so this is the Sunday, the last Sunday in April we're talking about, and today I have the privilege of having Ken Shakespeare as my guest. G'day, Ken. Good morning, Richard. Ah, it is excellent to have you join in the conversation. Thank you. Sorry, I should say the Reverend Ken Shakespeare, going all formal here. Um, so just everyone to remind you of the Bible passage this week. This is our second reading in the book of Acts, and it's it's Saul uh Saul who's now being called Paul and he's in Philippi, and it's a I find this a weird passage, and I'll explain why. Because so Saul and Saul and um Paul and Silas have been roaming around, and this woman has been following them for quite some time. It doesn't tell us how long, does it, Ken? No, no, no. No, it could be it could be a few days, could be a week, and just basically she has been following and calling out who Paul and Silas are and how they follow God and how they're there to help people get saved. And Paul eventually gets frustrated because it tells us in the passage that it's a spirit, that she's possessed by some spirit, and so he casts this out. That causes her owners to get a bit miffed because she has she's no longer of value to them. And so Paul and Silas are beaten, put in prison, and then after they're beaten and put in prison, they are then um they are singing and praying through the night, and there's an earthquake, their chains are released, and then the jail guard comes in, about to kill himself, they say, Don't do that, um, because everyone's still here, and so he doesn't, and then he takes them back to his place, um fixes up their wounds, and then his household are baptized. And the reason I do want to add a couple of little bits at the end, if you go to the end of the chapter, then the next morning the town officials go, oh, and now release them, and Paul and Silas go, we're not going anywhere until they come and apologise, because we're Roman citizens and they didn't give us a trial. So they come and they grovel to Paul and Silas to leave. Paul and Silas go back and sort of meet with the church that's in Philippi, and then they head off. And that is the story.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Um, Ken, tell me what did you think of this Bible passage? Well, this passage for me took me back to my Papua New Guinea missionary days. I thought it might.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

I was going to be asking you a couple of questions about that.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

And um, it brought back many memories, so that I'm going to be sharing some of those memories this morning as well as part of the story. Yeah. Um for me, chapter the chapter 16, verse 16, has an enormous amount of wealth in it for me. One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl. It highlights for me, first of all, the importance of prayer. Because wherever we went up there, we had to be covered with an understanding that people were praying for us wherever we went. Because there was a lot of witchcraft, a lot of evil spirit worship, and um a lot of fear in respect to that kind of uh uh importance to them anyway, to many many of the people, because much of my work was done out in the villages. And a lot of them, of course, were still pagan and uh had to be, as Paul and Silas sought to do, had to come to faith in Christ. So when I was thinking about this this prayer in in the story of Lydia just before the the passage we're looking at, they it's re uh Luke refers to it as a a place of prayer, and in this particular passage it's the place of prayer. So obviously it was a very important place. I was assuming it was the local synagogue. Well, it could have been, it could have been, but at least it's a specific place when the use with the youth the place of prayer. Yeah. And and of course, Paul and Silas uh wanted to be covered by whatever power the God would give to them. And and so I'm sure Lydia and her family knew Christians, they would have also met with uh Paul and Silas and Luke, Dr. Luke, in this particular area. So w when the idea of prayer came up, I was thinking of a story. We lived for many years on a on a lonely, isolated mission station, and Christian men from Melbourne came up and installed a small hydro system for us.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Oh, so you're on sort of a little lake or a little river?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

We we were up on a mountain and the river went uh uh down around the mountainside, and we cut cut a channel along to a ri a receiving pond, and then the water ran down a special pipe into the powerhouse down about 300 feet is feet down.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Oh wow, so you set up a little hydroscheme.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

A little hydro scheme, yes. And this particular night uh the the the power went off. We had enormous rain because sometimes we would get eight inches in a night. Yeah. And so I lit the Tilly lamp, went down the mountainside along the channel uh to where the water was all piled up piled up, cleaned all the rubbish away, and the water started to run again. Now I walked, this is back, this is really in the dark of night. So then I walked back along the channel, and to cross the channel, there were three uh logs, small logs across, and so I just crossed across there, and there was an almighty and blow me down over uh 30 meters of channel cut away from the mountainside and slid right down the 300 feet down to the river below.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Now three weeks later, we received a letter from a lady in Melbourne, and she said three we uh uh she said tonight, uh last night, I was awakened to pray for you. Well, I don't know why I should have done that, but I I felt God was asking me to pray for your safety. Did anything happen on that particular night? Yeah. So I was able to write back to her and tell her that that particular story of how I was saved from being washed washed right down the river and killed. Yeah, you know, that that kind of power of prayer came to me as as no doubt Paul and Silas would have appreciated the importance of prayer.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah, so for Paul and Silas, they were heading that like I hadn't actually picked up that they were heading to a place of prayer. And and you mentioned Lydia, because like Lydia was the lead of more or less the sort of leader of that church at Philippi, wasn't she? Or at least it was meeting at her house and all that.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

So yeah. And and at the end of the story that in they go back to her place. They go back to her place and she accommodates them for several days before they go on. Yeah. So uh that that's one of the stories that came to my mind.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

So Ken, the the the thing for me in this passage, when I first read it, I it talked about the girl being possessed by a demon, and and Paul and Silas did nothing for the first number of times that the it was only until she annoyed them that they did something. Have you had you were saying in Papua New Guinea that this was probably more a thing that was a part of the world around you than here in Australia? Because we really we are a bit foreign to the idea of someone demon-possessed like this in some kind of way. What what's your experience of that?

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Well, I I checked the the original text, and Dr. Luke, in his uh ability to be clinical, yeah, states that she was possessed by a spirit of a python. That's in the actual Greek. Oh, okay. And so that helped me to understand why she cried out like she did, you see, because when you think of the the of the python, it's a constrictor. And and it can squeeze people to to die or into an unconscious state. And so um using that that illustration, there was the um we know that this woman had an ability to tell tell fortune tell uh tales. She was a fortune teller of some kind. But with with the with the python, the um there was restriction, there was um destruction, there was a an overriding ability to try and thwart whatever was going on.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Oh, so within that descriptor, is there a sort of an understanding that she was constricting and obstructing Paul and Silas's ministry?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

That's exactly why she cried out. Because you see, people who want to share their faith, they don't go out and blare what they want to say. They they do it in a quiet way through through their living and through what they have to say. And and I'm sure Paul and Silas had been doing that or wanted to do that in a quiet manner to share the share the gospel and to invite people to come to faith. And she's constricting that. She's constricting, she's in a sense trying to destroy or kill the power of these men in bringing people to faith. Oh wow, there is benefit in me trying to learn Greek. I should do it at some stage. Well, you see, it's not in the it's not shown in the English version. No, it's not. But but I appreciate this um the the the the truth that comes through from what um what Luke has to say because he brings out another another meaning meaning altogether. Yeah. Being a doctor.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

There's a whole new dimension. Like for me, one of my frustrations was if this was a demon possession of some kind, why on earth did Paul and Silas do nothing until then? But that gives us a lead, doesn't it? That they they may not have actually felt that constriction or noticed that constriction.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

When that's true, when when we're sharing our faith, we're focused. We are really focused. We're not aware of what's going on around us, we are concentrating on what we're saying, yeah, so that whatever we say can be most meaningful to the person hearing it. Yes. So for for me, I can understand why they didn't take any notice of her in the first place, and this took this went over a number of days, is crying out. Yeah. Because Paul and Silas were so focused, but then it began to irritate them. And Paul, of course, in the scriptures it says he was annoyed. Um coming back to the the what the girl was doing, it the python constricts and it squeezes out the life and it restricts and affects, so it has a negative uh negative effect. And so what he did was he he um uh cast out the the spirit. He did it didn't say where the spirit went to, but he cast it out so that she would be free, but he of course suffered the consequences. Uh there was something else I was going to say. Also, this is this is a kind of subject or topic that we don't hear very much about uh in the churches, but also in the in the community of demon possession. But this girl would have been born a natural birth. She grew up or ordinarily, but she may have been brought up in a home where the mother could have been a fortune teller. Now, some fortune tellers have that gift. I I I must not deny that, but some some fortune tellers are operating with the power of some kind of spirit within them. And there has to be grounds for that to happen, for that spirit to move into another person. And somewhere in that young person's life, she this girl was a teenager, somewhere in her life, she was affected by um dabbling in in evil spirit worship. The same as we talk about today, people can be affected by being involved in Ouija boards, in tarot cards, in seances, but we don't hear that anymore. But lots of kids especially do things for fun. But then down the track they become affected. And this is the kind of influence that the evil spirit has on people who dabble in those things. So that I was reminded of one verse that's in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 17 abstain from all appearances of evil. And for me, it's no wonder people feel some some guilt when they dabble with this kind of thing just for fun. But the scripture says to us, don't be involved in anything like that. Keep away from it.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah. So for her, like, because in our like in my life and in my world, I don't I don't see that as clearly as I think they see this kind of stuff in in this era and in this time. It sounds like in PNG it was probably more prevalent and clear in some kind of thing. But like because in our world today, we it's not I'm not saying Evo doesn't exist, but it doesn't we don't see it with the same kind of clarity that they see it in this story, do we?

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Well you see to me, I interpreting the python, it's a snake or a form of a snake. Yeah. And of course, Satan is referred to as a snake. Yes. And and and it has that connotation s right right through through this. That's why the um the uh apostle Paul did what he did to clear the way so that he could um speak more clearly and more appropriately to the people around him. And of course, but it didn't work for him for for a while because of the way he was he was treated.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Yeah, because this woman, if in that interpretation, this woman is being constrictive, she's constricting the mystery that Paul and Silas have, she's preventing them from living it out. I I I did find it fascinating for me that play one of a couple of the commentaries actually ask the question what happened to the girl once this is cast out. Because in a sense, w while she has this uh this uh this possession, this this skill, she is useful to her slave owner. But once that goes, in a sense her value to the slave owner dissipates. Which is a really interesting one. I you know what happens to her in the story. One of my hopes is that the the church in Philippi was made up of Jews and Greeks and slaves and free. There was a whole variety of people. One of my hopes is that from this moment she actually develops a faith herself and becomes a part of that church community because that would have been a community that could have supported her. Because her value to her slave owner has diminished greatly, and that puts her in jeopardy.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

I I agree, and I think that that was what I was thinking that because this girl had been cleansed from and freed from this evil power within her, we we can, I think, trust people like Luke and others with him to have uh gone to this girl and cared for her. And I agree that she most probably did become part of the Christian community in Philippi. Yeah because she could see life through a different set of eyes, yes, and she was able to be because she was free, she had a different behavior. Yeah, and I'm sure, I'm sure those people, and Lydia too, would have picked her up and I'm sure included her in that community.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

That would be my hope.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

So to me, good came out of it, even though she set out with the evil within her, the evil set out to destroy and restrict and affect Paul's ministry.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

For me, yeah, for me, the other thing that I find fascinating in this is like when they go into prison, you're talking about how the power of prayer and the importance of prayer, and I actually think that there's another marker here, isn't there? Because when Paul and Silas go into prison, one of the things that they do is they spend time in prayer and worship in in the prison scenario, they're in their dire time of need, they're not sort of lamenting that they're trapped in a prison, but they are praying and worshiping.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Well, it was a challenge to me because if I was flogged across the back with with a bamboo cane or something like that, I would be painting. Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't be a happy camper. And possibly wanting to say, why do you I God are you treating me like this? You know, the the reaction.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

But it it's a wonderful illustration of how these men were so turned on and so committed to to their faith in God and to their ministry of wanting to save souls, that the the pain was might have been there, but their songs and their prayers uh were illuminating to the point that everybody in the jail could hear.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

And I don't know, the scriptures also say the jailer must have, while he must have been asleep, he woke up when this earthquake took place. Yeah. And uh that's that's something also that uh uh we experience up in up in Papua New King. Oh, yeah, in Medang, uh I think it was in 1976 now, there was an earthquake of 7.2 earthquake magnitude. And because most of Medang is on the seashore, it's flat, it wrecked every town tank in in the whole of the area of uh the CBD. All the water tanks. Every water tank was wrecked because the trembling, the water backwards and forwards, the sloshing caused the tanks to smash. As a matter of fact, that power was so strong that the on the uh Madang wharf at the time there was one-inch plate, uh steel thickness plates running right along the the edge of the wharf. When when people went to see that later, it was turned up. It was all turned up because of the power of the earthquake causing the shaking.

unknown 21:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

And I couldn't help but think when when I realized this um this uh earthquake had affected the jail, if we look at Afghanistan and some of those outlying villages and that and what we've seen on television of how earthquakes have affected those buildings, it's stone plus I don't know what they put in between to keep the stones together. The enormous r uh shaking would have caused those shackles that probably were embedded in the wood frame of the doors to come out, and possibly that's what happened there, that the shackles. were still on their ankles, but they were released from the wall. Yeah. It was so powerful.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Yeah, because it we almost turned it into a yeah, we almost turned it into a bit mystical, like sort of, you know, the the the metal chains just fell off. But really, you're right, they were probably just released from the wall. The power of an earthquake, it's a pretty powerful force, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Yes, and no wonder no wonder the jailer rushed in and I'm sure the first thing he did was to undo the the shackles and their feet, their ankles and if if they were around their uh wrists and so forth to undo them and to release them.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

One of the things that one of the commentaries that I was reading brought up they said we don't know for sure but fairly likely when the when they asked that these people be beaten and then imprisoned it may have actually been the jailer that had to do the beating like you know it was fairly likely that the jailer was the one that enforced the punishment. So here is the person that has beaten them now after they have been released from the prison from this earthquake he's the one that's tending their wounds. It does show them like if that's the case and it's a big if but if that is the case there's a lot of grace in these two isn't there to actually tend the wound of the person that has hurt them.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Well that that comes to mind now the word rush I think the the jailer rushed in so that if he did do the beating he wanted to rush in as quickly as he could to sort of get their forgiveness your way either that or he was probably prepared to try and trap them in there but yeah get their forgiveness is probably a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yeah yeah it's because and what as I mentioned on Sunday my understanding of Roman law was the jailer would take on this the punishment of anyone that escaped.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Yes so that's why he actually withdrew his sword and was about to kill himself because he knew the punishment would be far worse than than the suicide that he was about to commit and and I think that that helps us to understand why Paul cried out in a loud voice cried out to the jailer do yourself no harm we're we're all here to because Paul also being a Roman citizen he knew the Roman law.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah so uh I heard one of the people at eight o'clock who came came to me at the end of the service because I said I don't know why Paul was a Roman citizen. You know he was a Jewish person but there's a clue apparently that he's Paul of Tarshish and apparently Tarshish was a township that supported Rome as they did as they were a conquering force coming through they actually harboured Rome and supported Rome and because of their support for Rome all the all the residents of Tarshish were given Roman citizenship. And so that's how Paul becomes a Roman citizen because he's in this township that actually allowed like supported Rome in a way on the way through.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Yes and we don't know what consequences were dished out to the jailer for what he did with Paul and Silas after the the earthquake but taking them into his home and and in the scriptures it speaks about and his household they they all would have been it's the same word for all his household as as the mother and father in in the original and so the whole family were mature enough to come to faith yeah and to all be baptized in the same river that Lydia was baptized in.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah yeah and from my understanding when they talk about household we're talking about the slaves in the household because let's face it a Roman officer who was in charge of a jail he would have had slaves so the slaves of his household are converted and there there would have been children there most likely they would have been converted like that that household became the whole family or the whole people within that household yes yeah so and and that's a fairly powerful move. It's an unusual way for a a revival to start yeah it is it is I loved and and I think one of the I as I mentioned in the sermon I think one of the clues to why Paul and Silas didn't run is because they were a Roman citizen and they were demanding they were going to demand justice. And I actually think that for me is is a really it shows a lot about Paul like he it shows some real positive stuff but he must have been a stubborn brute of a man mustn't he like to think to himself I'm gonna stay here until they apologise and and then when they finally do when he finally does leave after they beg him to leave the town he just goes back to Lydia's place and meets with the people there and then he will go on his own terms.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yes it shows that Paul knew his rights absolutely knew he wasn't going to walk away from what was what was an out uh an absolutely callous thing to do to to to build them up but anyway he knew his rights and he was going to stand firm and I actually think that that also helps me think about how I live as a Christian that I do what is right and I think Paul and Silas do it they do what is right regardless of the consequences so they will free this slave girl regardless of the fact that they know that it's going to upset people so they release this slave girl from the spirit regardless of whether it upsets people or not they go to prison and beaten and they will stay in that prison because it is right that they get the release from the town officials they they will do what they perceive to be God's way regardless of the consequences again and again. And that brings to my mind a story we we uh created a Christian endeavor uh group on the mission station yeah and each each night we would have missy or or devotion for the those who worked on the mission station like the nurses and the cargo boys and so on. And one particular night Christian endeavor was being conducted by the person who was my translator up there they called him my turn him talk and he was conducting this particular Christian endeavor service and one of the nurses she kept on putting her hands to her waist and pushing her waist pushing into her skin in her waist and that was a that was observed by some in Christ in the Christian endeavor group but when she came outside suddenly she was shot up in the air and came down onto the dirt and started to grovel in the dirt and so some of them what they did was some of the men picked her up and took her down to our our home I was on patrol at the time so Coralie was there and the first thing Coralie asked them to do was get your hands off take your hands off this lady because she was being attacked physically by the evil one through what was being said by the leader because whatever the scripture verses that were being read had had some effect on her now she was prayed over and finally she was put into the Compium hospital and she was there for for a long time she was visited by pastors from every day but one of the senior pastors did what you were saying he knew his his rights as a Christian leader and he he sat with this girl uh and he said to her tell me was there anything or is there anything in your life that you can think of that could have caused this spirit's attack and she she thought for a while and she said yes there is she had finished her nursing day changed into her normal clothes which was just a little uh lap lap around her waist and it she was walk walked up through our mission station on her way home when my turn talk interpreter was finishing with me and he lived up in that same area and it so happened that the two of them walked up the hill from our mission station to their home places of residence and that was a tamboo it was a taboo to be actually walking to and the tamboo was broken and she admitted that or confessed that to the the the dear old senior pastor and the moment she confessed it she was freed so oftentimes this kind of possession can be affected when there is ground where there's a reason for um for that kind of experience to be to be to happen. So I I just thought of that story. Yeah yeah interesting so it it sort of all rul revolves around the fact that there were lots of these kinds of people in Paul and Silas's day yeah and they had to be treated in in different but similar ways can your experience in Papua New Guinea must open up readings like this in a very different way to the way it would to someone like me because my experience of the world is quite different to yours.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Like so when you read this you read the spiritual realm in a different way to the way that I read the spiritual realm. I'm a person of that logic and Western logic and western ration and so when I read it I actually ask questions of Western logic and western ration where you enter the story in a in a different way I was about to say a deeper way but a different way to the way that I enter this story which I find fascinating today.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

We realized that it it was a ministry of a total difference to what we'd been used to in the church. Yeah but and we began to write prayer letters to the people who had sent us letters and I think before within 10 years we'd sent we would send out 500 letters every three months and I would put in prayer points please pray for this this this this this and so in a sense from a distance we were covered by prayer. Yeah and when I would go on patrol and we would come near a place where uh the uh senior leaders would be involved in initiations which were not not Christian the pastors who were with me would gradually come up closer and closer and closer to me because they knew the the evil that was there would could not affect me. And so it showed a different sort of appreciation of prayer and of presence and and a need to be aware that God is is protecting.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Yeah see I have a strong belief in the power of prayer I firmly believe that prayer is real and that prayer works and that God speaks to us in prayer and God protects us in prayer but your experience of it is a different a different form of understanding a di a deeper or more profound understanding of genuinely what that power of prayer does.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

And also this kind of story says to me that it shows to me the importance of confessing now I'm sure Paul would have said sorry to even to the girl. Yeah and I'm sure he would have said sorry to Silas and to Dr. Luke but it it highlights for me Richard that even though he got annoyed and got angry we have to see Paul as a human being he's got a he he he is human and and because he's human he's got to be given permission to to to louse it up. Yeah to make mistakes exactly I'm I'm very confident because you know we we we clergy even we're held on such a high pedestal that we can't sometimes can't come down from it because of the the the belief that we're so impregnated with God that we can't do anything wrong. Yeah and so for Paul he he did the wrong thing but I'm sure he made a confession because of his his faith in God and because of the closeness of God to him. Yeah and to me this story uh about the lass the nurse shows to me the importance of of continual confessing to the Lord the things that we've done wrong so that we can be released and clean. And it's good that you have this time of confession in the service every every morning and even communion isn't time of confessing. Because up where we worked the the communion was um the table of sorry yes o R I God me sorry too much sin belong me. I'm so sorry for what I've done wrong and then they feel free to uh to take communion our very first week it was a Monday Thursday we arrived at the mission station after language school and we then walked the next day up over 8,000 feet mountain to a little village about 8,000 feet up and all these people were seated on the on their on the ground women on the left men on the right and then they started to stand up one after the other and whatever they said I didn't understand at the time but they were making confession of the wrong that they'd committed before they took communion a a beautiful picture of the of the table of sorry wow well I know we've got off the table off off the table got off the topic a little bit but all this comes out of this particular story. Yeah because the the the that's what the jailer did he made a confession. Yeah he's he was sorry and and and the moment we confess of course we can be cleansed and healed.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah because for the jailer he actually he more or less apologized he tendered the wounds of them and in doing that he asked what must I do to be saved and and then came to faith I would I would like to believe like you that the governor that came and said apologized made the apology to to to um Paul Silas that he and his entourage would have also been so affected along with the jailer the the Roman jailer that they would have also been part of the original community of faith yeah one would hope wouldn't you yeah because look Paul by his actions he does share his faith in what he does and what he says every step of the way and I think it highlights too for me the importance of being being trained.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

And on Sunday you mentioned just how well equipped he was to be able to take up this post that God had prepared for him. Yeah God trained him very well I mean brings back all the training we had to do before we could go overseas and so forth but for Paul he was the he was God's anointed to do the work he did. And he was prepared to for absolutely and he took he took some of the men with him like um Silas and Timothy and and Luke and Luke by the looks of it yeah and others. Yeah it's interesting though that Luke hides behind Paul and let's lets Paul even take the credit. Yeah so um I was interested that when they were freed and um and their wounds were were uh what uh treated that they went back to the jailer's house and there was a meal a celebration meal yes so it's a it's a time of celebration even though we were still painting yeah he was probably still a bit hurt yeah Ken we might need to start to draw to an end but is there any more that you wanted to draw out from that passage? Um the importance that there are different ways of people coming to faith. Yeah some come to faith suddenly out of out of an experience and that's what happened to me and I'll I won't tell that story today but there are others who come to faith over a period of time. Yes uh there are others who have grown up with their faithful parents and and simply taken it on board not their parents' faith but they've taken faith on because of the example the Christian example and it's so important what you say uh uh at the baptism uh asking the couple will you will you uh commit yourselves to a Christian home and bring up your children in the name of Jesus and and teach them the ways of Christ and bring them into the into the church yeah so that I that that's what that's to me to me very important. Yeah yeah there is a book uh one of the uh fellows that I had lunch with on Sunday was telling me a a book called Meeting Paul for the first time by Marcus Borg. Oh Borg yeah Borg is a very good theologian. So people who are listening to this may want to get that book and consider reading it.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Yeah because uh Paul is a very contentious character some people really get annoyed with him like you know I get frustrated by him sometimes but I can yeah Marcus Borg would be very interesting to hear his reflection.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

Yes but thank you for the opportunity to talk with you this morning.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

Oh no thank you um now in the life of our church there's there's the church camp this weekend coming and beyond that there's nothing major that we need to be mentioning at the moment we're sort of well we're we're shaping up for a few things but yeah there's nothing major to be mentioning um Ken I really appreciate and thank you for drawing us into the story in a very different way your experiences in Papua New Guinea have drawn us into this story quite differently to the way that we would have done it if we'd have read it as an academic exercise so thank you so so much. Pleasure thank you um well everyone hopefully you have a fantastic week and we'll continue our conversation with TUC Talks next week. Thanks for listening