Happy Birthday (Next Year) Jean-Boy

Next year is the 500th anniversary of Jean Calvin's birth (10 July 1509 if you're interested). How can a church celebrate the faithfulness of God in giving us this significant chap? Should we? How? Can it even be evangelistic? Ideas on a postcard please. Or just post comments.

[Picture shows statue of the man holding his Sony Book Reader on which he put his Institutes, Collected Sermons and Commentary set - French and Latin - without the need for a further Memory Stick Duo upgrade: result, or resultat. Note also proximity of beer tent.]

3 comments:

Sam said...

When approaching the big birthday of one of our protestant "saints" I believe it opens our eyes to our dependence upon other Christians, present and past. So we can celebrate the birthday thankfully.

Yet as Christians we should view Calvin's legacy critically, not saying yes to every teaching and every action - compare his handling of Servetus.

Nevertheless, noting such things does not require us to discount all he said. We must try and understand why he, as a man of his day, assumed this was the right way to act. This in turn causes us to think hard about our own cultural blind-spots.

Regarding the question of evangelistic events, off the top of my head I can only think of one group of people who might find it interesting: economics-whizz-kids (compare this) - any other ideas?

Andy said...

What's the point in planning anything - it'll happen anyway.

;o)

Sam said...

Andy, that was very special :)