Buzzing!
Buzzing!
All Nations is a buzzing place. Not because we keep bees—which we do!—but also we have so many visitors passing through and stopping for a chat. Mission leaders, church leaders, entrepreneurs, missionaries and local Christians. Even the fire service comes by from time to time! All this enriches our lives and keeps us grounded in the ministry and mission of the church both here in the UK and wider in the world.
On Monday this week, we had a visit from Michael Beasley, the Suffragan Bishop of Hertford. He was Director of Mission, in Oxford for the Anglican Church. It was great to chat and explore ways of serving one another.
On Tuesday, we hosted hosting John and Anne Coles: They are former heads of New Wine. They have stepped 
back from leadership and are reflecting on the need for churches to re-capture the missionary vision that we live and breathe here at All Nations. We want to continue to develop our links with local churches as well as agencies.
On Wednesday, the place was heaving. UCB Radio were broadcasting Paul Hammond’s show LIVE from All Nations. Actually to be more precise, they were broadcasting from the Principal’s office! The Principal was interviewed about the vision of All Nations; Paul Davies spoke about the history of the college, four students talked about their vision for mission; Sam spoke about the programmes and former
student Alan Tower was interviewed about Friends International and their work amongst international students. If you have never listened to Christian Radio, UCB are great. Their content is topical, their sound quality second to none and certainly Paul’s show is very engaging. We thoroughly recommend tuning in! Check us out on their show. We were thrilled to receive this opportunity as Paul’s show regularly gets around 97,000 listeners!
Later on in the early afternoon of that same Wednesday, 35 agen
cies arrived to set up their stands for our annual “Missions Fair”. This gives our students a chance to engage with them and perhaps find more of God’s will for them. It also gives the agencies a chance to recruit new mission partners and it is fascinating for those of us here to be informed of how things are going with these agencies here and around the world.
This year we decided to try something new. On the same 
evening of the Missions Fair, for the first time ever, we hosted a number of Church leaders from the area for a meal. This was to give them a chance to engage with students. After that, local church members from around the area were also invited to visit the missions fair so that they could get an idea of what is on offer, and to help them realise their own call.
As if that all wasn’t enough; this week also saw one of our MA Arts intensive begin: “Worship, Music and Liturgy”. As it says on our website, the module “develops theological and artistic themes from the Art, Culture and Local Identity module in the areas of worship, music and liturgy, and adds to the study of contextualization the impact of global forces on cultures, arts and religion.” Ian Collinge from WEC as well as our own Jill Ford and Warren Beattie are teaching.
I think that the rest of the week may be less of a buzz and more of a zzzzzzz (no chance!)
