The Staves - Winter trees

WYSOCS - Open day Sept 2012

WYSOCS provides opportunities for learning from a Christian perspective in all aspects of life, it seeks to engage with and transform culture from a distinctively Christian worldview.

Saturday was an open day to provide a taste of what WYSOCS does.

Cal Bailey, a trustee of WYSOCS, opened the day by opening up the scriptures. As a businessman he was embarrassed by some of his fellow business folk. Capitalism has become distorted and become 'my gain at any cost'. It has been sold as a story of freedom but has become a story of slavery. In contrast Deuteronomy 6: 1-9 appears to be a story of slavery and yet brings great freedom. He posed a vital question: What is God's required behaviour for business?

WYSOCS has three main strands: RealityBites, LifeMatters and the newly launched Faith-in-Scholarship.

As part of LifeMatters a number of successful day events have been held. these include: Creation Regained with Al Wolters and Harry van Dyke, The Story of Richard Oastler (David Hanson), Healthy bioethics (James Rusthoven), three talks by scientists (Richard Gunton, Anthony Smith and Gareth Jones), Religious roots for secular law (Nicholas Aroney). A Reformationals' colloquim (July 2012) was also organised.

Mark Roques was winging his way to the Antipodes and couldn't make the day - instead we were treated to a clip of him doing his stuff at a recent Youth Workers event. This clip gives a flavour of what RealityBites is about - an attempt to communicate in a non-cliched way, to inspire and envision youth workers, teachers and students with the transforming gospel.



David Hanson then provided us with a short refresher on (some) reformational basics. This was a much shortened version of a series of talks he had given at Leeds and Sheffield. He remined us of the need to listen to the whole breadth of the word of God. All of creation is a spiritual reality and all of creation is a material reality .... all the way down.

During the refreshment break we were treated by some piano music by the multi-talented Anthony Smith.

The newest facet of WYSOCS is Faith-in-Scholarship. A new project to support postgraduates. This is headed up by Richard Dunning. Here, with his permission, are the
slides from his presentation:

WYSOCS Open day Faith-in-Scholarship from Steve Bishop

I then gave a brief introduction to the All of life redeemed website, highlighting the subject and journal resources there.

Richard Gunton concluded by showing the results for a recent survey of WYSOCS supporters.

You can still take part in the survey here.

The morning finished with a really excellent lunch.

Music for a Sunday morning - Benedikt Jahnel Trio

Workflowy - an excellent organiser

I have recently signed up to workflowy - it is an excellent, easy to use organiser/ to do list.
It is browser based so there's nothing to download and so can be use on multiple machines.

Use this link to sign up and you'll get 250 extra items per month (and get more for me too!).

Here a short vid to show how easy it is.

Work defined remix

The Staves

Is work a paycheck or a calling?

Howard Butt of http://www.thehighcalling.org shares a story about three people who have very different perspectives on their work.