Sunday Lunch: Tanindon and the Mission of Church

Last evening, a housemate met a student at supper who’d heard intimate details about the food we had at Sunday lunch that had concluded barely 3 hours before. We’re famous! said the housemate.

Not quite the point of these Sunday lunches though – which are meant to (1) welcome newcomers to the church family; (2) provide the opportunity for members of the church family to talk about the sermon that morning, speak truth to one another, build up and encourage each other in Christ.

What is the church? And what is God’s mission for the church? Was chatting about this over lunch with a Tutor last week (who afterward complained of a brain-ache :-(). Briefly (and inconclusively, awaiting further investigation):

What is church?
The Bible talks about it being, on the most fundamental level, the totality of people (“saints” – see, eg. Ephesians 4:12) who have trusted and will trust in Jesus as the Christ – past, present, and future. One becomes a member of this universal church by believing that the blood of Jesus paid for their sin against God.

In characterising the church, Scripture speaks of it as, inter alia:

• the household of God (Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 4:17);
• a holy temple in the Lord and a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22); God’s temple where God’s Spirit dwells (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 2 Corinthians 6:16); a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5);
• the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27; Romans 12:5; Ephesians 4:12);
• the bride of Christ on the Last Day (Ephesians 5:22; Revelation 19:6-8);
• a kingdom and priests to God (Revelation 5:10).

What is God’s mission for the church?
What a great goodness the church has enjoyed and continues to enjoy! A close loving relationship with the Creator and Sustainer and his providential care and concern for her. She is chosen and precious to him. She now knows true peace, hope, and unity. And because of this relationship, she is called to:

• be (and surely it would be shocking to think otherwise) holy and set apart for God (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 2 Corinthians 6:16);
• hold fast to her confidence in God and boast in her hope in him (Hebrews 3:6);
• to build up members of this body in Christ and to love each other and encourage each other to persevere in trusting in God.

We then discussed the contemporary push for a missional church and the lack of explicit instructions for evangelism (the so-called Great Commission seeming to be directed primarily to the 11 apostles), and whether modern evangelicals had their balance right in light of Scripture and also this age. A discussion to be continued…

A clear implication though is that Sunday lunches, being for the good of the members of Christ’s body, don’t have to be fancy affairs – although it might be slightly less distractingly ugly and more conducive to conversations if I didn’t serve food out of plastic containers and mixing bowls (which is all we had in the kitchen).

Meringues: 4 egg whites + 180g caster sugar + vanilla essence x 180 degrees celsius x 1 hour-ish, then left over night in the oven. Because there was no table space.

In other news, a kind friend acquired the (+65)PlusSixFive Supper Club Cookbook and another kind friend muled it over to London (having remarked on the irony of a London Supper Club book having to be brought over from Singapore to London) together with a bag of Papa Palheta’s Terra Firma – double yay! Ideas for more Sunday lunches to come perhaps!

Open House London 2013 and Homecooked Tonkotsu Ramen

Open House 2013 in London. Had to weigh, painfully, my curiosity about the innards of various buildings around the city, and the opportunities to serve Christ at our own church building. Ended up covering all shifts over the weekend for the joy of meeting visitors and cleaning the loos.

It hadn’t occurred to me how strange our church building and our church body must be to outsiders. Not official replies but my best attempts at answering visitors:

“Where is the altar?”
There isn’t an altar in this church. The beliefs of the church (that is the people of God gathered together in community) are reflected in the architecture of the building. What happens at an altar? An altar is where a sacrifice occurs. But the Bible tells us that no more sacrifice is necessary. Yes God is angry at humankind because they sinned. Sin is reflected in the bad things that we do to each other, but ultimately, the worst thing that we do is to refuse to acknowledge God as God.

God’s anger at us is righteous, because we as creatures deliberately decide not to worship the Creator. And if we have offended the most powerful person in the universe, there is no way of being saved except if God himself will forgive us. But how can he be righteous and just in punishing us for this offence, and yet merciful in forgiving us?

The answer is that he sent his son to take the punishment for us. That was the sacrifice that was made once and for all, so that sins will be forgiven. There is therefore, no weekly sacrifice on any altar in the building, because there is no re-sacrifice after that event in history when Jesus died on the cross for us.

“Why are there no pews?” or “Why has this church been refurbished in this way?”
The open space and moveable chairs enable us to use this space to suit the needs of the church. The architecture of the building reflects the beliefs of the people who use it.

We believe that Christians should meet together to encourage each other under the word of God. So we arrange chairs for Sunday meetings so that they face the pulpit, where the word of God will be taught. We ensure that this space is well-lit and also place a Bible on each chair so that as people hear the person on the pulpit speak, they can check that what he says is what God is saying in the Bible.

During the week, people come here after school or work to read the Bible together and encourage each other to live with Jesus as master over our lives. So we set up chairs around tables where we can study God’s word together and so understand the truth about our world and about our God better.

“I would like to give you some money.”
Thank you, but please do not give us any money. We are very happy to have you visit us. And God says it is the duty of the church family to support the work of the church and to feed the vicars.

“My church at home is dying. What is the secret to your success? Is it that young charismatic vicar over there?”
[Discussed this briefly with a curate who, having given the sermon at the morning meeting, was sitting in the church office, surrounded by yellow Danger! Large Hole in Ground! Risk of Falling! signs. He asked if we needed to uglify said “young charismatic vicar”.]
Haha, no. In God’s grace, he has given us good faithful men who have preached only what the Bible says, and not something they have made up. They have not swayed from the straight word of God in Scripture; they have not tried to speak to win the crowds; they have not been ashamed of speaking against the things that God is against. They have not taught what the congregation wanted to hear but what God wanted to say in his word. And God promised that his word does not return empty, and also that his sheep will hear his voice and follow.

Quite famished by Monday from not having eaten much over the weekend, what with the incessant chatting with people and identifying tombs and monuments and the like. A proper bowl of ramen would set me right.

And it did. And it sorted out a housemate who was down in the dumps as well. The one from The Continent however, found its savoury-sweetness quite unfamiliar.

Honey and Stout Pork Belly (recipe from Junya Yamasaki of Koya)

ingredients
pork belly
braising sauce mix:
water 500ml
stout 300ml
honey 150ml
ginger
onions

instructions
1. Cut belly pork into big brick size, or buy the bricks of pork belly. Sear them all around in hot frying pan.

2. Boil them with medium strong heat in water for about 1.5 hours (this is to render the fat and leave only collagen in belly). Let them cool down till the room temperature in the boiled water and keep in the fridge. The water will be set like jelly and the belly meat will be kept in it easily for a week if it is properly refrigerated.

3. Take the amount of belly blocks as you want to cook from it. In Koya, we cook quite a lot everyday, but at home you can accommodate with the size of casserole that you have. Cut them into chunk of cubs (3-4 cm) and layout in your casserole. Do not lay one on top of the other.

4. Cover the belly with the braising sauce mix with some ginger and whole small onions, then braise with medium heat till the sauce gets reduced and you get the silky texture. It will usually take around 2 to 3 hours.

[5. Serve with hot mustard.]

Tonkotsu Base
ingredients
pork belly liquid (from recipe above)
1 tub of discounted beef stock
2 chicken carcasses (£0.25 each from Borough Market)
2 leftover pheasant carcasses
kombu

instructions
1. Brown bones.
2. Add water to bones and boil for 5 hours.
3. Add pork belly liquid, beef stock and kombu and boil a little longer.

Ramen egg or hanjuku or ajitsuke tamago (based on J. Kenji López-Alt’s recipe for Japanese Marinated Soft Boiled Egg for Ramen and Joycelyn’s recipe for Perfectly Soft-Boiled Ramen Eggs)

ingredients (yields 6 to 7 nice ones)
10 eggs, room temperature not cold, each weighing about 60 gm, preferably free-range and 7 days old
3 litres water
1 tbsp coarse sea salt
2 tbsp rice vinegar

for the marinade
75 ml light soy sauce
75 ml sake
75 ml water
75 ml mirin
3 tbsp caster sugar

instructions
1. Combine water, sake, soy, mirin, and sugar in a medium bowl and whisk until sugar is dissolved. Set aside.

2. Bring water to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Carefully lower eggs into water with a wire mesh spider or slotted spoon. Reduce heat to maintain a bare simmer. Cook for exactly 6 minutes. Drain hot water and carefully peel eggs under cold running water (the whites will be quite delicate).

3. Transfer eggs to a bowl that just barely fits them all. Pour marinade on top until eggs are covered or just floating. Place a double-layer of paper towels on top and press down until completely saturated in liquid to help keep eggs submerged and marinating evenly. Refrigerate and marinate at least an hour and up to 3 hours. Discard marinade. Store eggs in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat in ramen soup to serve.

Miso Butter Corn (recipe from David Chang of Momofuku’s Corn with Bacon and Miso Butter)

ingredients
1/4 lb thick-sliced bacon (about 3 slices; preferably Benton’s bacon)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon white miso (fermented soy bean paste)
1 small onion, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
10 ears corn, kernels cut from cobs (6 to 7 cups)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup thinly sliced scallions (2 to 3)

Cut bacon crosswise into 1/8-inch strips. Cook bacon in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until browned and crisp, about 8 minutes. Transfer bacon with a slotted spoon to paper towels to drain, leaving fat in skillet.
While bacon cooks, stir together butter and miso in a small bowl.
Cook onion in bacon fat over moderate heat, stirring, until golden, 5 to 8 minutes. Add corn and pepper and increase heat to moderatley high, then cook, stirring constantly, until some of kernels are pale golden, 3 to 4 minutes. Add water and butter mixture and cook, stirring, until corn is tender and coated with miso butter, about 4 minutes. Stir in bacon, 1/4 cup scallions, and salt and pepper to taste. Serve sprinkled with remaining 1/4 cup scallions.

Mayu (black garlic oil) (based on Marc’s tonkotsu ramen recipe at, err, No Recipes)
ingredients
1/4 cup sesame oil
5 cloves of garlic finely chopped

instructions
1. Add the sesame oil into a small saucepan along with the garlic. Put the pan over medium low heat and let the garlic cook stirring occasionally until it is very dark brown.
2. When the garlic is very dark, turn the heat down to low and let it cook until it is black.
3. As soon as it hits black, turn off the heat and transfer the hot oil and garlic to a heatproof bowl.

It will taste burnt and slightly bitter, but this is okay as you only add a little bit to each bowl. Put it the oil in a container and refrigerate until you are ready to use it.

Tonkotsu Ramen (makes 2 bowls)
for soup
3 cups tonkotsu base (from recipe above)
1 tablespoon tahini
1 tablespoon strained braising liquid from stout and honey pork belly
2 cloves garlic, finely grated (not pressed)
1-2 teaspoons kosher salt (to taste)
1 teaspoon mirin
1 teaspoon red miso
1/8 teaspoon white pepper

to serve
1/2 batch homemade ramen noodles
2 teaspoons mayu (from recipe above)
sliced pork belly
ramen egg
corn
beansprouts
seaweed
2 scallions finely chopped

instructions
1. Cook ramen noodles according to instructions.
2. Heat the tonkotsu base in a saucepan.
3. In a bowl whisk together the tahini, braising liquid, garlic, salt, mirin, miso, and white pepper. Add this to the hot broth and whisk to combine. Taste and adjust salt as needed. Bring to a simmer.
4. Split the cooked noodles between two bowls. Pour the tonkotsu soup over the noodles. Top with pork belly, egg, corn, beansprouts, scallions and whatever else you want to add. Finish the ramen with a drizzle of mayu on each bowl.

End of Week Snack: Double Deep-fried Korean Fried Chicken Drumsticks

What synonyms can one use to convey the extreme fried-ness of the chicken drumsticks that were going for £1 for six at Sainsbury’s? None that I could think of after a small group leaders’ evening and two staff days.

Needed to express excess energy in some productive way. So still agog with the thought of poking stuff round boiling oil and spotting some cheap chicken in the supermarket, hit upon trying to replicate some fried chicken someone let me have off their plate a few years ago. There was, of course, nothing organic, biodynamic, or healthy (in the modern #firstworldproblems sense) about this snack. Much encouragement from Acts 10:34 – 11:18 and Acts 20:17-38, from team meetings that were not about corporate strategies and new programmes but about trusting in God’s promise that speaking the plain word would fulfil his purposes, and also over meals with church planters and people who have been reading the Bible with senior management in the Square Mile for decades and writers of soon-to-be-published books and materials and stay-at-home mothers whose children just had their first day at school.

Double Deep-fried Korean Fried Chicken Drumsticks
Ingredients
2.5kg of discounted chicken drumsticks (dark meat being better for deep frying due to the larger percentage of connective tissue)
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper

½ cup potato flour
¼ cup plain flour
¼ cup glutinous rice flour
(but really, just proportionally 2:1:1)
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda

vegetable oil

4 cloves of garlic, minced or thinly sliced
1 cup of tomato ketchup
½ cup of hot pepper paste
½ cup of honey
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Directions
1. Marinate chicken with salt and pepper for an hour while you cycle out to get the other ingredients.
2. In a separate container, mix the flours and the baking soda.
3. Beat the eggs in a bowl.
4. Dredge chicken in beaten egg, then cover with flour mixture. This gives a thicker crust (which is preferable in these parts) than real proper KFC (korean fried chicken). Set aside.
5. Heat oil to 180°C. Spread old newspapers on the floor next to the cooker to absorb oil splatters.
6. Fry chicken while talking to housemates about the ins-and-outs of the Church of England.
7. Make the sauce by saute-ing the garlic in some oil, then with the heat on lowest setting, adding the ketchup, hot pepper paste, honey and cider vinegar, stirring to combine.
7. Re-fry chicken – the curate’s genius idea from Sunday lunch for a superior crunch.
8. Immediately coat chicken with sauce.
9. Set aside and sprinkle with roasted white sesame seeds.
10. Think of buffalo wings and look around for blue cheese dips and carrot and celery sticks but find none. Offer a plateful to health-conscious housemates. Feed hopeful neighbours who, nosing the air, have appeared in the kitchen. Deliver a tupperware-ful to brothers living a 5 minute ride away.

Sunday Lunch: Double Deep-fried Pork Belly Confit

It is probably not the best time to experiment with new recipes and techniques when people are round for Sunday lunch. But my curiosity got the better of me. So had a go at confit-ing some pork belly (obtained on discount from Waitrose at less than £4 for about 2.5 kg):  – exciting stuff (for me at least):

the contemporary Asian bit of me shrieked silently at the sight of FOUR! BLOCKS! of LARD! melting in the cast-iron pot

marinated pork belly, slow-cooked for several hours in the oven in said lard, then left overnight on the kitchen table

collagen from the tough connective tissues turned to gelatin – to be reserved for ramen stock.

Excavated from the solidified fat (an exciting task in itself, pretending to be archaeologists etc), the pork belly slices were then to be deep fried in the same fat. As first-time visitors to the church and old hands sat chatting in the sunshine, nibbling hold-the-fort tapas, I contemplated the hazards of a virgin attempt at deep-frying. Being fully aware of my innate incompetence (having already had to rescue some plastic sausage packaging melting on a hot hob), a curate decided we needed a powder fire-extinguisher on standby.

Then, when it became apparent from my standing halfway across the kitchen, timid of the popping and spluttering hot oil, that there would be no lunch if he didn’t do something, the curate hazarded his shirt and, despite having no experience in the matter himself, played with the bubbling stuff (optimum temperature: 180°C). Refining his methodology and technique as he went along, there was soon a good supply of crispy double deep-fried pork on the table. Unfortunately, as he overloaded the penultimate batch into the small pot, hot oil frothed and bubbled over and flooded the hob and cascaded down the oven. Even more unfortunately, i then attempted to mop up the oil with a paper kitchen towel that soon started to smolder from the heat of the hob. The observant and quick-thinking curate had to save the kitchen and our collective skin by snatching the towels and dowsing them in running water.

Thus pre-emptively rescued from no main meal and an early death, we sat down to a late Sunday lunch with a big bowl of spinach + strawberry salad with balsamic + honey + poppy-seed dressing and sweet potato mash. It was good that we had a buffer for people we happened upon at the morning meeting and spontaneously asked along. And it was great to have brothers and sisters from all over the world (America, Martinique, England, Ghana, South Africa, Malaysia) working to assemble the tapas and the salad, and serve each other, and be generally good at this disastrous attempt at feeding.

A very small picture of the challenge from that morning’s John 17:20-23 – “What can we do to demonstrate unity and love with the people God has made us one with, because of his love for us?”

grilled apricots, peaches, and figs. with fragrant yoghurt. topped with crushed fennel seeds and fresh basil leaves

Jim Drohman’s Pork Belly Confit Recipe

Ingredients

For the dry cure
2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
3 bay leaves, crumbled
10 sprigs fresh thyme
4 tablespoons Morton’s kosher salt [used a mixture of Maldon flakes and table salt]
1 teaspoon pink salt (see Note) [left this out]
6 pounds pork belly, skin removed and cut into 1-by-3-inch chunks
dry white wine, as needed
rendered pork or duck fat, as needed [used 4 blocks of lard]
canola oil or rendered pork or duck fat, for deep-frying [used the confit-ed fat]

Directions
1. Combine all the cure ingredients in a bowl and stir to distribute the seasonings evenly.

2. Toss the pork with the cure to coat evenly. Pack into a nonreactive container and cover with white wine. Cover and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours.

3. Preheat the oven to 120°C. Remove the pork from the cure and pat the pieces dry with paper towels. Place the pork in an ovenproof pot or Dutch oven and cover with the rendered fat. Bring to a simmer on the stovetop, then place in the oven, uncovered, and cook until the pork is fork-tender, about 2 to 3 hours.

4. Remove the pork from the oven and cool to room temperature in the fat. If you simply can’t wait to eat this succulent bundle when it has finished its confit (we highly recommend chilling all confit, which intensifies the juicy tenderness of the meat), you can pour off and reserve the fat, then return the pan to the stovetop over high heat until the meat is nicely browned. If you have the stamina to wait, refrigerate the pork in the pan it was cooked in or transfer to another container and add the fat; the pork should be completely submerged in fat. Refrigerate until completely chilled, or for up to 2 months.

5. To serve, remove the pork from the refrigerator, preferably a few hours ahead. Remove the pork from the fat and wipe off the excess. In a deep, heavy pot, heat the oil for deep-frying to 175°C to 190°C. Deep-fry the pork belly until crispy and heated through, about 2 minutes if it was at room temperature. Remove and drain on paper towels.

Note: Pink salt, a curing salt with nitrite, is called by different names and sold under various brand names, such as tinted cure mix or T.C.M., DQ Curing Salt, and Insta Cure #1. The nitrite in curing salts does a few special things to meat: It changes the flavor, preserves the meat’s red color, prevents fats from developing rancid flavors, and prevents many bacteria from growing.

© 2005 Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn

Spinach salad
spinach, snap peas, other discounted leaves
four-parts olive oil
one-part aged balsamic vinegar
one-part floral honey
one tsp poppy seeds
strawberries, hulled and halved

Duck Hearts on Sourdough Toast

“Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” (Genesis 9:3) + good stewardship of the life of an animal + preparation for serving in frugal circumstances where good stewardship of money would require accounting for every penny (or should that apply not the future but, in fact, the present?)

Lightly grilled with aged balsamic and thyme, these were delicious. But overdone, a bit more liverish.

Mass Meals for Guests and N00bs

For once in my self-centered life, I’ve been arrowed to play the role of The Concerned Parent to the new associates and random guests. This has meant welcoming newbies, co-ordinating moves, settling people into flats, introducing various individuals, explaining how things work and hints on hacking London, making many beds, enduring hugs and kisses, and cooking big meals to sustain everyone in their packing/unpacking/unsuccessful bank runs.

Because i myself was running around so much and so also to allow for the fullest freedom for newbies and guests, the house menu consisted mainly of large quantities of food left in the fridge to be spooned out and re-heated whenever individuals were peckish; tummy-fillers not haute cuisine nor even experiments to satisfy morbid curiosity:
pork sausage bolognese. I begged the Italians to cook their own pasta, since I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. But they sniffed and said that it was impossible to cook good pasta here in London because the pasta and the water were wrong;

beef stew – overcooked the meat because I was in a good old yabber with one of the guests. But it seems that if you then dump the lot in the oven for some time with a glug of red wine, the meat relaxes again;

dense chocolate loaf cake with extra thick cream and homemade strawberry and redcurrant coulis. Malaysians were happy to have this for dessert. Good for unexpected Aussies, Canadians, and Englishmen, and other random drop-ins at teatime. French guests liked this for breakfast.

Ah, the start of the academic year. Greatly encouraged by the Rector’s welcome talk at staff meeting a few days ago, on 1 Corinthians 12 and John 15; we can all read the Bible and understand it for ourselves, but it’s always helpful when someone who has lived a little longer points out how God’s word applies to one’s own situation.

Lamb “Tagine”

Have been experimenting with Sunday lunch food – stuff that can be prepared beforehand and heated at the relevant time or left to cook in the oven at a low setting until people troop back from the morning meeting. A hot (especially since London’s summer heat appears to have slunk away rather suddenly) ready-cooked meal at someone’s home would be a good opportunity for new people to meet the rest of the crew and for all to carry on chatting about things learned from God’s word that morning.

Unfortunately, the number of people we can have over will have to be directly proportional to the size of our cookware, the largest of which currently is this enamel roaster tin.

Happily, the “tagine” worked in ye olde trusty tin – the lamb was literally fall-off-bone tender (said a visiting Melbournian who had obviously watched enough cooking programmes on telly) and fairly flavourful, but perhaps the stew needed a bit less boiling water. By no means refined food, but will feed the hungry and not distract people from the business at hand.

Lamb “Tagine”

ingredients
lamb neck (cheapest cut: scrag end*)
garlic
onion
ground ginger
ground cumin
ground coriander
paprika
saffron threads
dried chilli
tomato paste
anchovy and black olive paste
Marmite XO
courgette

instructions
marinate, brown, top with boiling water, then chuck in oven at 170 for 3 hours. serve with couscous.

*a stewing cut that’s difficult to find in summer when all stewing cuts are boned-off (butcher’s term, not mine) into burgers. Used lamb shoulder in this experiment.

Cod and Whitstable

not cod. another fishy dinner after Whitstable

Finished Mark Kurlansky‘s Cod: a biography of the fish that changed the world on the way back from Whitstable last week where we’d basked in the sun with very yummy prawn tarts from Wheelers Oyster Bar, stocked up at the Oxford Street Books, and feasted on the many local and Irish rock oysters available at the Whitstable Oyster Festival (the Whitstables rocks win gills down for small plump sweetness).

For a one-subject book, it was immensely fascinating – not just because of Kurlansky’s writing style, but also because he pointed out as he whizzed you past countries and centuries and recipes, how things connected. A bit of speculation on the part of the author smoothed the passages about he Basques and their secret cod-fishing spot in the Atlantic, politics through the ages, salting and smoking for preservation – with second-rate produce going to the slave colonies where their denizens acquired a taste for the cured fish, the risks taken by fishermen, the Pilgrims whimpering that they had nothing to offer their guests except lobsters, the evolution of fishing techniques and fishing vessels and their effect on the global cod population etc.

There was much suggestion too that the strident opinions promulgated, and the decisions made, by those in positions of influence were born of a narrow-mindedness, blinkered less by plain ignorance than selfish ambition. See, eg., Thomas Henry Huxley and his arrogant dismissal of fishermen’s claims that overfishing was wiping out the cod population, with “fishermen, as a class, are exceedingly unobservant of anything about fish which is not absolutely forced upon them by their daily avocations”.

A chilling thought. And also a vivid illustration of why it is important to adhere to eternal truth from proven trustworthy messengers, as set out in the Bible, rather than being tossed and turned by the intellectual fashion of the day.

“May those who come behind us find us faithful”? More than that, since man’s opinions are fallible and in any case, are ultimately of little consequence, may the eternal God find us faithful.

Roast Pork Belly and Christian Biographies

At dinner last night, over roast pork belly (with superbly crunchy crackling)* and several bottles of cider, we were discussing the usefulness of Christian biographies. Why waste precious time researching and writing these books? Why waste more time reading them? This was on the back of several people having read Old Wives Tales by Clare Heath-Whyte and some of us having given input for an upcoming book about a prominent Australian preacher.

Benefits:

• the encouragement of the testimony of brothers and sisters, albeit centuries removed, living out their faith in God, all over the world, through the years, in various circumstances – as missionaries, scholars, lecturers, pastors, nurses, doctors etc. Possibly in a Hebrews 11 way;
• the protection against legalism afforded by knowledge of the diversity of personalities and minds and personal circumstances that God has chosen to use for his glory – the loud beer-guzzling Martin Luther, the quiet cold John Calvin, the corpulent cigar-smoking C.H. Spurgeon, the careful austere Jonathan Edwards etc.;
• learning from the mistakes and follies of those who’ve passed this way.

Possible concerns:

• the tendency for biographers to make these people out as heroes with no flaws or whose sinfulness can be waved aside just because of the seemingly great sacrifices they made for the Christian cause. But there is no concept of good outweighing the bad in the Christian worldview, because sin is a personal affront to a holy God;
• the implication that one counts for nothing before God if one doesn’t go down in flames in an extravagant demonstration of devotion – but the Bible emphasises not grand gestures but daily perseverance;
• some books, taking a leaf from Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals, go to the other extreme of attempting to discredit popular “heroes of the faith”. Although it is arguable that this shows that they are sinful people in need of a Saviour, it is also probably that it is the excitement of Hello magazine-type sensationalism that sells copy;
• if the subject of the biography is still living, surely the book would present a great temptation to personal pride rather than thanksgiving to the God who sovereignly chose to work through that person in such a way that made a book about him/her potentially (financially, at least) profitable.

*this 3.39kg beauty was a Dingley Dell pork belly from M. Moen & Sons Butchers (The Pavement, Clapham Common) – good meat as a bit of a treat for the departing boy.

A Frugal Hungry Student In London Eats Decently For Less Than £1 A Meal

Though, assuming an average of 3 meals a day, this is 3 times the poverty line budget of £1 a day.

The School will attest that feeding church associates, apprentices, and ministry trainees, is like opening your storehouse to a family of locusts. They are always ravenously hungry, but are on a strict budget because of fundamental lack of funds, or being very conscious of the provenance of their supporters’ finances, and also because of the principle of the stewardship of money – that is, that what one has in one’s savings account isn’t really one’s own. Just like everything else in our lives (our gifts, our experience, our very breath), the money isn’t totally ours – God gave this to us as trustees to be used for his glory.

Yet at the other end of the spectrum, it is too easy for our sinful selves to be obsessed with saving money and getting the best discounts, to the detriment of our health (thereby then decreasing the amount of ministry that can be done) or to the detriment of our priorities in life (there being no inherent goodness in getting the best bang for our buck).

For my own future reference, here’s what can be had for less than £1 a meal:

Breakfast
a healthy energising bowl of strawberry yoghurt, sweet small Sonata strawberries, blackberries, blueberries sprinkled with Dorset Cereal granola for crunch;

or

a filling Duchy Originals English muffin stuffed with bacon (part of a 2 kg pack from Smithfields), sunny-side-up, and cheese…to be washed down with a mug of good hot coffee or tea.

Lunch/Dinner

steamed purple sprouting broccoli (with flowers), brown basmati + red carmague + wild rice, spicy peri-peri chicken drumsticks;

or

“revitalising tonic” chicken soup (Chinese herbs from a packet someone brought me from Singapore – so perhaps that’s cheating a little), stir-fried spring greens, brown basmati + red carmague + wild rice

or

1.6kg roasted pork belly with superbly crunchy crackling, delicious caramelised onions, sweet potato mash, steamed spring greens.

Billingsgate Fish Market

Billingsgate Market (Trafalgar Way, Poplar, London E14 5ST), say all the publicity, is the United Kingdom’s largest inland fish market. It is easily accessible by bus and DLR. There is a seafood training school onsite, the Billingsgate Seafood School where you can gain fishmongering skills and also learn how to make sushi from Feng Sushi’s Silla Bjerrumis. An opportunistic seal called Sammy resides in the waters just off the market.

Tsukiji Fish Market it was not. On Saturday morning, the wet floor teemed with a mess of both restauranteurs and Joe Public eager to get a good price for seafood, and also, camera-wielding tourists commenting on how it was not Tsukiji. Old clothes and waterproof footwear were the best gear for the occasion, and a ear out for warning cries of the porters shouting “mind your feet!” essential to avoid having ankles bruised by the heavy pallet trucks and trolleys pushing past.

The experienced came with marketing trolleys, not just because of the weight of the produce but also because bus-drivers have been known to refuse entry to people openly carrying raw seafood – for fear that the lingering fishy smell would affect other passengers. The marketing trolleys had to be left outside the main entrance.

Inside, fish and other seafood were laid out in styrofoam boxes. Because this was a wholesale market, some stalls only sold fish by the box. And certainly, there were no fishmongers to scale, clean, cut or otherwise prepare the fish for anyone, though some fish was sold already cleaned. On offer were mackerel, salmon, tilapia, catfish, milk fish, seabass, emperor fish, rohu fish, hara hara (?), plaice, stockfish; smoked fish from Scandinavia, and salted fish to cater to those from the African and Caribbean cultures,

live piles of oysters, crabs, scallops in their shells, winkles…

Since only a few people would be over for dinner that night (vs the housemate’s need to feed 20), I purchased a modest amount of scallops for £5 a dozen and 4 salmon heads for £1. Not being at all familiar with Chinese cuisine, fell back on the Asian food I understand most – pseudo-Japanese. The misomayo hotate was very well-received, accompanied by buckwheat noodles in steaming kombu miso soup.

The grilled salmon heads, with their crisp exterior, meaty front collar, and tender cheeks, were not quite as well-liked – because they resembled (they were!)… real fish…

We have been thinking about what it means to live for God – yes, there is the being obedient to specific commandments and also standing firm in one’s evidence-based faith, not being ashamed of Jesus because Jesus has already brought believers into his kingdom and because if we are ashamed of him, he will be ashamed of us on the last day. But what do we do that isn’t merely reactive? The working hypothesis (possibly the same vein as my frugal nasty-bits-diet-in-preparation-for-mission-to-supermarketless-lands policy, though not stemming therefrom) is to make the most of the situations (whether good or bad, humanly-speaking) God has placed us in, and of the gifts and character God has given us, to make God’s work in Jesus known to all – for surely that is what gives God the most glory.

Sustenance for Ministry

The bargain bins of London have been good for meals costing little more than £1, sometimes even with pudding thrown in! Absolutely ace for sustaining a crazy week of giving talks and leading bible studies and loads of intense conversations:

English fry-up

poached free-range eggs, smoked salmon on toast, lambs lettuce and bits of beetroot

pan-fried skrei cod with lamb’s lettuce and tomatoes

flat iron steak in red wine sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, petit pois

buffalo burger

rhubarb crumble with vanilla bean cream

But more long-lasting sustenance came during the leaders’ resus(citation) weekend away at Sunningdale Park, another De Vere venue.

2 Corinthians was a heartening letter – pity we didn’t have much time to wallow in its comforting words. In what is probably a vastly inadequate summary:

• a commendable ministry isn’t surface display ministry that teaches a Jesus but not the true Jesus, or teaches the gospel and about the Spirit but not about the true gospel or the real Spirit (2 Corinthians 11:1-4); a commendable ministry is a ministry of transformation (2 Corinthians 3:1-3, 18) – a changed life starts from a changed heart, a ministry of regeneration (2 Corinthians 3:4-6) – the changed heart occurs by the Spirit through the Son’s death so that our hearts of stone are changed to hearts of flesh (Ezekiel 36), a ministry of justification (2 Corinthians 3:7-11), a ministry of illumination (2 Corinthians 3:12-18);
• we do this ministry because of the coming of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:6-13) in the future and because of the cross of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:14-17);
• when our plans are frustrated, or when people are frustrating, when our work in the Lord seems futile, when opposition is fierce, and when we feel like incompetents and failures, we do not chuck in the towel because this ministry is God-given (2 Corinthians 4:1). We merely need to stay straight-talking, eschewing dodgy methods and dodgy professional standards (2 Corinthians 4:2). We do not judge our success by results, because we know that the results are out of our hands. Instead, we continue to do this ministry of selfless proclamation, knowing that its impact (where applicable) will be out of this world (2 Corinthians 4:6);
• the paradox of divine power ensures that God deliberately keeps his servants weak, so that the glory will always be His. In what can we boast? With what should we be content? (2 Corinthians 11:16-12:10)

Mixed Berry Tart, Joe Christian as Evangelist and Missionary, Wild Rabbit Stew

Needed a think some days ago, so made a mixed berry tart to allow all the stuff swirling in my head the opportunity to settle down and get organised. Had been doing quite a bit of reading on the Heresy Of The Month and argued variously with Associates and Staff Workers alike, many of whom thought me quite the heretic. Some said i was making a fuss merely to avoid God-given responsibilities or getting knickers into twists for useless academic reasons that were far removed from practical reality.

Thought none of this quite valid though. Finally had a good old chat with the long-suffering Tutor about my concerns. The total smack-down i expected didn’t come and he instead agreed with me, with gentle smack-arounds of caveats and corrections (both hermeneutical and pastoral) of course.

The query was this: is there an explicit biblical imperative for all people to do evangelism and/or mission? After all, we’ve all been on the receiving end of many a sermon or bible study that has laid the guilt on us for not telling our family and friends about Jesus.

Well, there isn’t any explicit imperative for every Christian to do so:

1. Many proof-texts used to rouse the masses were primarily applicable to the 11 (and later 12 (with the replacement of Judas) + 1 (Paul)) apostles, for example Mark 16:14-20 (also, this section wasn’t in the earliest manuscripts), Luke 24:44-49, John 20:21, Acts 1:8, and most famously, Matthew 28:19-20:
   

   Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

   (The Tutor thought that if these passages had to be applicable today, they would be to the church as a whole since the 12 disciples were meant to represent the whole people of God – the number “12” recalling the 12 tribes of Israel.)

2. It was the apostles who talked about bringing the gospel to people who did not know God, as themselves as ambassadors for Christ, and frequently asked for prayers for themselves to continue to preach God’s word with all boldness (Acts 4:29-30, Acts 9:19-43, Romans 15:18-21, 2 Corinthians 5:18-6:1, 2 Corinthians 10:14-16?, Ephesians 6:18-20, Colossians 1:25-28, Colossians 4:3-4, 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2).
3. There was a specific group of people called “the evangelists” in Paul’s list in Ephesians 4:11-12, alongside the apostles, prophets, shepherds, and teachers, who were to equip the saints for the work of ministry. See also Philip the evangelist (Acts 21:8) and possibly Epaphras (Colossians 1:5). (It is uncertain what an “evangelist” meant in New Testamental times; the word just means “gospeller”. We must certainly not import our modern definitions into the first century.)
4. Timothy was asked to the work of an evangelist (2 Timothy 4:5).
5. No where does Scripture explicitly require individuals other than these to do the work of evangelism or mission.

What is explicit and/or clear, though, is this:

• God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:3-4).
• Christians must ensure that they are good “witnesses” of the gospel and that their conduct does not hinder people from deciding to trust in Christ (“Give no offence to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.” (1 Corinthians 10:32-33); “If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?” (1 Corinthians 14:23); “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14).)
• We know that at least one church, the one in Thessalonica, proclaimed the gospel to those who had yet to hear it (1 Thessalonians 1:8).
• Romans 10 says: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? ¹⁵ And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!””

So it would seem that one of the main missions of the church would be to proclaim the gospel to those who are not yet saved. But there does not seem to be any basis for us to burden each individual to do so. God gave different gifts to the church (1 Corinthians 12).

However, one has to be careful not to (i) overstate the case (eg. by saying that no one should do so except for certain people who have been so gifted, nor that others not so gifted should not be assisting (in accord with proper behaviour and with their own gifts) in evangelism and mission); nor (ii) introduce false dichotomies in exegesis (eg. either specific to apostles only or applicable to all; either prescriptive or descriptive).

The ex-Principal said he thought that speaking the gospel would come from the overflow of the heart, citing John 7:38. We weren’t sure that John 7:38 definitely alluded to that, though any cursory observer of human nature could easily conclude that we speak most about things that are most important to us and occupy our thoughts. That’s not quite an imperative though.

To allow time to think further, proceeded to stew a wild rabbit in red wine. These free-range bunnies are cheap environmentally-friendly protein and with the recession on in the United Kingdom, might possibly be becoming just as popular as a nutritious thrifty food as they were during World War II. Unfortunately, the housemates were less than enthusiastic, likening the skinned carcass to an alien baby.

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