letter from Latvia
I am writing this letter while in Latvia on one of my regular visits to teach at the Latvian Biblical Centre (LBC) in Riga.
Over three weekends I am contributing to four of LBC’s programmes. So far, I have been teaching on Identity for the School of Christianity, Work and Society, Introducing the Prophets for the foundation course: Theology and Ministry, and The Kingdom of God on the Missional Church Programme. This is an example of the range of things that LBC offers. My final weekend in Latvia will be with the School of Preachers Course that I started in 2018. This is a two-year programme consisting of eight weekend teaching sessions with regular cluster group meetings for application in between these weekends. There have been 44 graduates from the course so far. It is a joy to see some of our students coming back to preach at our weekend sessions and field questions on how they approached their preparation.
One of these former students, Roman Ivasvekics has been asked to help facilitate breakout sessions for our weekend gatherings. We operate in three languages: Latvian, Russian and English, which can be a bit clunky, but Roman is fluent in all three languages and has made these sessions much smoother.
Latvia is a small country which means that its resources are limited. It is hard to find an adequate textbook on preaching for the students to read in Latvian. Therefore my book on preaching, God is in the House, has been translated into Latvian with the aid of a generous donor from the UK. The funding means that we can keep the cover cost to a minimum. The process has taken longer than expected but we had a pre-launch of the book this Autumn, where extracts of the translation were read by the translator. We are looking forward to this book being available to buy in early 2025.
