Yancey in Mumbai

Tomorrow afternoon Philip and Janet Yancey come to Thane. They will be staying overnight with Dr. Stephen and Claire Alfred. On Thursday morning they should be dropping in to see us at Jeevan Sahara Kendra.

How do you spend an hour with a person whose books you have devoured?

After mulling this for some time, we finally settled on pretty much our standard approach we interaction with visitors. We will show a short 10 min presentation to give an overview of our work. Then have each one of us share something that we appreciate about working at Jeevan Sahara - or a challenge we face - or a person whose life we have seen transformed.

Then we will give the last 20 mins to Philip and Janet to ask further questions or perhaps share a few words from their experiences.

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What's so Amazing About Grace still takes pride of place in books that were seminal to me.

Among the many memorable accounts, Yancey's recounting of a woman in the US who was renting out her daughter for sexual favours to get money to feed her own drug addiction - and then says: "Church - that's the last place I would go!" still haunts me.

Philip observes sympathetically, but not blindly. His irenic and gentle explorations bring an openness to so many challenging situations of life - while maintaining an unbroken strand of hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.

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At 7.30 in the evening Philip will be sharing about "Injustice and Reconciliation" at St. Andrews Hall in Bandra. He will be joined by a singer called Dayanidhi Rao from Calcutta. Before he talks there will be a short video presentation about the situation in Orissa and commentary by Bro. Joseph D'Souza who heads up OM India. Philip will then be sharing his thoughts and experiences.

From what my father said - having attended a meeting in Delhi earlier in the month - Philip speaks simply and powerfully.

I think we are in for a treat.