It’s a little wierd. I'm back in Australia after a year in South Africa. And I’m back just for a few weeks, staying close to my home town, in a Katoomba awash with Christians shuffling around with maroon handbags: CMS Summer School is on.

And this year, more than ever, I'm amazed at this gargantuan event.  Every corner you turn there are sessions and seminars for any age-group you could imagine, there's a park-and-ride ferrying people to the venues, Moore Books is on location, and there is a cast of missionaries returned from all over the world.

You get a bit of everything at Summer School " old and new, funky and daggy, high tech and low tech. This year we had Google Earth-style maps showing us Gilgal in relation to Jabesh-Gilead during John Woodhouse's Biblestudies, but when the PA died in the overflow tent this morning, the problem was fixed by the old "turn-up-the-volume' trick on the 70s-style TV monitors.

As a Blue Mountains local, it's the first time I've actually stayed up here the whole week: my main memories of Summer School are listening to Don Carson in the blistering cold wind of the overflow tent one year, or my frantic few days last year interviewing people for Your.sydneyanglicans.net.

But 2008 sees me chilling with the gen9.37 leaders at the Katoomba YHA " that's the new section focusing on 18 to 25-year-olds encouraging them to think deeply about overseas Christian service " and it's given me time to reflect and to marvel at what's going on here.  Summer School really is different to other conferences I've been on, and the difference " this may seem obvious " is the missionaries.

I never get tired of listening to them. They're passionate, thought through, sold out on Jesus, and, sometimes, even a little weird.

But genuine Christians are always going to look a little weird. It's not normal to spend your hard-earned cash on or your precious time praying for people in obscure countries that you've never even met.

It's certainly not normal to leave everything you know for potential frustration and deprivation somewhere else. But it all makes senses when you're following a king who did all that and more. 

I'm up for more of this Summer School thing.