"...for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
- Galatians 3:26-28, ESV
Yesterday, I attended the second of a two-week class on marriage at Willingdon Church. It was particularly interesting because of two primary reasons. First, in all my three years at Willingdon, I had never been to a marriage-related talk, so I wanted to see how they would approach it. Second, this was more than a general marriage talk; it focused on a unique situation that many couples pursuing a romantic and marriage relationship in our cultural environment and time find themselves, where each comes from a different cultural and sometimes ethnic background. The series was appropriately titled "Intercultural Marriage in a Diverse Culture: Kaleidescope or Collision?", and was delivered by Pastor Cliff Ursel who serves as one of the overseers of the adult ministries at Willingdon. I had questions of my own regarding this topic that I wanted answers for, and so went for both sessions.
In all, it was a fascinating talk with tremendous insights that provided me with helpful tools to critically think through the challenge of such situations. I scribbled furiously during both sessions, trying to take down as much as I could on the worksheets provided. Regrettably, the idea of recording the sessions on video never occured to me until after the first session, but I made sure to do so for the second with my little Cisco Flip. This post is special in this regard, because it marks the first time that I am making use of the YouTube channel that I created some time ago, which will hopefully contain many more interesting videos in the coming months! Here then is the complete main talk of the second session, and as much as I could record of the Q&A period that followed it, before I ran out of memory on my video camera. Please note that although these videos can be played in High Definition at 720p!
In all, it was a fascinating talk with tremendous insights that provided me with helpful tools to critically think through the challenge of such situations. I scribbled furiously during both sessions, trying to take down as much as I could on the worksheets provided. Regrettably, the idea of recording the sessions on video never occured to me until after the first session, but I made sure to do so for the second with my little Cisco Flip. This post is special in this regard, because it marks the first time that I am making use of the YouTube channel that I created some time ago, which will hopefully contain many more interesting videos in the coming months! Here then is the complete main talk of the second session, and as much as I could record of the Q&A period that followed it, before I ran out of memory on my video camera. Please note that although these videos can be played in High Definition at 720p!
This is Pastor Cliff's main talk:
And this is most of the Q&A session that followed:
Like the Willingdon IRONMEN retreat that I went on two months ago, I will be updating this post in the next few days with the detailed notes that I took during the two sessions. I will post notifications on Facebook and Twitter when I do. If you aren't following or subscribing via e-mail and want to keep updated on this post, please check this space over this week! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the points put forward on this talk, so please feel free to leave them below this post, or on the YouTube channel here. See you soon!
- The Wisdom Seeker
