Always text or call when you are running late.

Regularly eat meals together.

Remember and celebrate special days and anniversaries.

In the case of an emergency – buy flowers.

Acknowledge your faults (incl. communication, body odour, and habits).

Go to bed at the same time.

Enjoy your life together.

Ramez is Egyptian and the leader of the Bible Society in Egypt. His talk, that i listened to this morning, is very powerful and challenging for anyone looking at or in ministry. He tells his story, speaks of what it is like to minister in Egypt, a bit of history about mission to Egypt, and also about the garbage people. Over-arching this talk is his five principles that a Christian leader should have.

After listening to both Piper’s and Ramez’s talks i think they are both worth listening to. I came away thinking that Ramez had put a few things in perspective for those of us in the West.

Highly recommended.

I did toy with the idea of working the Dewey system or using the Library of Congress numbers but decided that might be a bit extreme. In the end the best advice came from Andy Naselli’s post on “Why you should organise your theological library and a way how”. I’ve adjusted some of what he’s suggested but used the main categories to organise mine. My library is obviously not as big as his so it probably doesn’t need as much detail as what he has laid out. But here it is:

1. Biblical Theology

• Languages (NT Greek)
• Hermenuetics (how to interpret the Bible etc.)
• Commentaries (on each book of the Bible)
• OT & NT introductions, theologies, and overviews

2. Historical Theology

• Biographies
• Church & Christian History
• “Works” by old dead guys

3. Systematic Theology

• Bible doctrine (the sort of topics in a general systematic theology book)
• Apologetics
• Philosophy

4. Practical Theology

• Christian Living (all those great books people pick up at the front of Christian bookstores )
• Preaching
• Leadership
• Youth Ministry
• Church
• Pastoral Ministry
• Missions

At this stage all sub-categories are mixed in together in the broad categories. I’m not convinced this works for the Practical Theology section at this stage but it’ll take too much time sorting it out at the moment.

Comments? Suggestions? How do you sort yours?

If you’re like me then no doubt you visit the same sites each week, perhaps even each day. With GR the content that is on those sites come to one place and immediately after it’s posted. GR is then an efficient way of reading the articles and posts that i find interesting. It also means i don’t have to go searching for what i want, i can decide whether or not to read the content straight away, leave it for later or not even read it at all.

If you look at a number of sites each day or week then i’d recommend getting on GR. There’s just no other way.

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