Atlanta and home…

Just spent 5 days in Atlanta on Wycliffe business along with Richard Turnbull.

The main purpose was to renew friendships with Episcopalians and Presbyterians over here.  We had a good morning with Ravi Zacharias whose RZIM partners with our Wycliffe Apologetics school (www.rzim.org)

We spent an interseting day with Bob Luckman who is a businessman who has coordinated major projects to revive urban areas in Atlanta.  He persuades businesses to invest in a layered housing scheme in an attempt to regenerate the city centres with a socially and economically diverse group of people living alongside each other.  In addition to regenerating Urban centres he has encouraged Churches to give money and plant in these areas, employ community chaplains and build businesses.  It is a great model and very encouraging to see.

We met Michael Yousef, leader of a large independent Anglican Church in Atlanta (www.leadingtheway.org) He trained at Moore Theological College in Sydney, having been brought up in the Middle East.  He is clearly having an effective ministry in Atlanta and beyond with a particular passion to reach those from a Muslim background.

We had a dinner on the 25th floor of a private club in Atlanta overlooking the rather splendid skyline.  The main purpose of these occassions is to gain some friends across Episcopal and a broader evangelical spectrum, and perhaps in due course to encourage some of those friends to give money to our capital project at Wycliffe.

This morning I attended two Christchurches Independent Anglican (under the oversight of Archbishop Greg Venables http://christchurchatl.org/; and PCA (led by Paul Gardner founder of FWS (www.fows.org and friend from England http://christchurchatlanta.org).

A bit of a whirlwind tour, but well worth it.  As the world seems to get smaller, the friendships across the water become all the more valuable!