This coming Sunday the focus is the call of the first disicples according to John's gospel.  Yesterday I had lots of fun comparing the four gospels, reading assorted commentaries and beginning to think a bit about the similarities and differences in what is said and why.

I have one big fat NavPress book on the topic of disicpleship.  I don't much like it, because it has a defensive tone along the lines of 'we had to rescue this ancient understanding from dodgy liberals and main stream churches and make it our own' rather than 'hey, look what we can learn from Catholics, and those with a different emphasis in their theology'.  I also don't like that is way to literal and precise in its time-scale of Jesus ministry (this phase took x months - really?!).  Despite that, dipping into it was very helpful in stirring my creative juices.

I also have an equally fat book on the varied quests for the historical Jesus, which also talks a lot about disicpleship/ disciple making.  Not defensive, and pretty academic, it expresses ideas and prompted thoughts consistent with and/or complimentaty to, those in the first book.

PAYG this week also has a 'call and response' flavour to it (today was the call of Samuel), which adds another slant to my thinking and hearing.

Lots of ideas bubbling away in my subconscious which will, hopefully, emerge into a half-decent sermon.

So, a teaser for anyone who wants to do a bit of advance thinking - what are the first recorded words of Jesus and why?  (And yes, that question is deliberately open-ended as to which gospels you look in!)