Dan has gone to work! At Redcliffe College

Today is a Red Letter Day, for me if for no-one else... Dan has started work!!!! This is officially his first day as Head of Theology at Redcliffe College. No matter that the students all just left for the summer break... Dan is there, getting ready for their return, manning the college during the break, ready to welcome visitors and potential students, attending planning meetings, moving into his new office, (OK, still tweaking his PhD - although the first draft is 99 % done), and, earning some money!

Redcliffe is a wonderful college that we are blessed to be part of. It is a missions training college that moved from London about 25 years ago, into a beautiful Georgian building here in Gloucester. The staff team is quite small and so everyone is involved up to their necks, which makes for a good community.

Redcliffe has students from about 30 countries, training in theology, missions, and cross-cultural studies. It is accredited by the University of Gloucestershire, so that the students come away with recognised BAs and MAs. There are a number of interesting MA courses including one in Justice, Advocacy and Reconciliation, one in Member Care, one in Sports and Mission, MAs in European and Asian Mission studies, and others.

www.redcliffe.org

Our connection with Redcliffe seems to have always been by divine appointment, and goes back to 2002, when we had to leave Zimbabwe at very short notice. We had friends, Nick and Jenny Cole, who worked at Redcliffe for a while, and on a previous home leave we had visited them, and Nick had mentioned in passing that Redcliffe always had "visiting scholars," and if we ever wanted a sabbatical we could all go and live in the college accommodation and do some teaching for a term. So, when we were given three months to leave Zimbabwe, we contacted the college and asked if they could use us straight away!

Sure enough they took us on, so we moved into a college family house (five families with ten children all under the age of ten in one big house, sharing one kitchen, one washing machine, one living room...! Chaos but a lot of fun.) It was completely a gift from God for us that year. Abby was two and Alex a baby when we moved there. I don't know what else we would have done at that point. So we were extremely thankful to Redcliffe and to God. Also, Redcliffe was just starting up the MA courses that year, and getting a big review done, so the lecturers were very happy to have Dan and me teaching some of the undergrad and core courses, so that they could work on these big projects. We loved our year there.


So when in 2010 we felt it was about the right time to leave UCU, we contacted Redcliffe again (as well as some other places) and the principal came back to us saying that their head of Theology would be retiring, and they would be interested in having Dan as his replacement.

We are very happy to have this work, still involved with missions and particularly preparing people to go out on missions, living in this beautiful area of England, and well placed for all my family.

Today feels like a miracle, though, because, although Rob the principal emailed Dan that they did want him for the job about a year and a half ago, they were unable to give us anything definite, in writing, until May this year! So, we moved to Gloucester largely in faith, - faith in God and faith in Rob Hay(!), that the job would in actual fact be Dan's. It has been like walking on thin ice over a huge, eleven-month-long lake, trusting that we would reach the other side and find firm ground. Well, today it seems that we have reached it. Whew!!!!!

Dan's office is the top right window, in the roof! More photos to follow...

This shows the accommodation for students, and the garden with a sweet playground for little children, and a beautiful, huge conker tree.

The same tree, with crocuses in early Spring.