I have a couple of bookcases in my living room, as do many other people. Most of the books it has to be said are rarely taken out and opened, yet they continue to have some sort of importance, as visitors always take time to see just what is there.
Yesterday I had some visitors round and they did the usual looking task. One of my guests noted one shelf and even took out a volume to show to another guest. So which are these important books:
They were my engineering text books, a relic from my past life, a set of books I've owned since the early eighties and occasionally open to remind myself that once I actually knew this stuff!
My guest was thrilled to discover that I had studied engineering and marvelled that I was old enough to have been an engineer for 15 years before training for ministry, surely I was only in my thirties... Like many others I've met over the years, this guest saw my 'past life' as a positive, something that contributed to, rather than detracted from, my ministry. Every now and then people complain that there aren't enough life-long ministers, but the truth is Gods call comes when it comes and will weave all we are and have been into the ministry to which we are called. In my case I am fairly certain my background industry serves me well as the minister of decreptic buldings and doomed roofs!
Way back, at the end of my period as a probationary minister one of the Regional Team had to meet my deacons to discuss my suitability for transfer onto the fully accredited list of BUGB. It was a rather surreal evening as we held Deacons' meetings in the manse, so when he arrived I had to go and sit in my study whilst my performance was discussed in my living room. Later, as I was seeing him out, this senior minister confessed that he'd spent the entire conversation thinking 'ooh, I've got those engineering books in my house too.'
Of course we need lots of theology stuff (almost all of mine is at church these days) but sometimes it is the 'normal' (relatively, not sure how 'normal' a text on theory of thermonculear fusion is!) that makes the connections that allows real conversations to take place.
A quick search of Amazon showed that, to my amazement, thirty years on, the same core texts, albeit updated in some cases, are used in the education of students in engineering. Massey, Rogers & Mayhew, Stroud.... ahh happy memories!